Friday, September 23, 2011

My thoughts on irreducible complexity -or- What good is half an eye?


Sometimes I go to church with my dad. Not because I love church, but because I love my dad, and we don't have a lot of things in common. He's very religious, and it means a lot for him to have me there. I'm fine with it.

A few nights ago, he invited me to a seminar that the people of his church were attending. I had joined him for something like that last year, and my night was free, so I accepted.

On the way in, I was required to get a barcode card that I would use to check in. I would later learn that if you attend for so many nights, you'd get a free family Bible. The signup for the card asked my address and other contact information, which I gave slightly altered versions of, pretty sure that the host would ever need to contact me at my home. We got seated, and I watched a woman play organ music on a keyboard, wondering about the business plan of the speaker, and if he would end up selling the contact info he was gathering. I realized how much more cynical I had become over the years.

Before the speaker came out, an image of Charles Darwin popped up on the twin projector screens, and I tensed. I could listen to a man preach about sin, or hell, or the ways to please God, but evolution is a subject that I'm fascinated by. It excites me to think about it. I did not want to hear a man talk about how evolution was wrong for an hour.