Monkey's Uncle, 1985: May 2012

Interview With God

Monkey's Uncle
Fun With Atheism Issue, Fall/Winter 1985
Editor: E.T. Babinski

Reporter: Why Evolution?

God: Because I wanted man to discover the immensity of my creativity throughout time as well as in space. I wanted man to stand far enough back in space and time, in order to view my majestic artwork properly. You must admit, a 6000 year old creation with the earth in the middle of it would only give man an enormous ego -- having all of space and time revolving around him! Instead, he has finally woken to the fact that he must seek a deeper center to space and time, not a superficial one. I also wanted to show man, via evolution, that I could do anything -making man out of an amoeba!

Reporter: Rather like the trick of turning black, crumbling coal into...diamond!

God: Exactly! And man, like diamond, is also made of billion year old carbon! Besides, I could have used any number of substances, hidden up my sleeves, to form man out of 'nothing'. But, out of an amoeba? That's what I call a trick!

Reporter: So do I! But what about the dinosaurs?

God: I wanted you to find their bones and tremble in awe. All that you find is my gift, to induce awe, surprise, even laughter. Take penguins for instance! Look for all the things you can in my cosmos. It is the grandest easter egg hunt ever! and don't forget to hunt for me too! I am the divine Fox! Hunt, and always be prepared to be... surprised!

Anti-Reductionists' Collections of Sayings

Anti-Reductionist Collection of Quotes

Monkey's Uncle
Fun With Atheism Issue, Fall/Winter 1985
Editor: E.T. Babinski

WHAT IS REDUCTIONISM?
It is merely the old trick of making things absurd by reducing them to their lowest terms. It is trying to explain away the music of Kreisler as a mere scraping of cats' entrails with horsehair. Or explaining away a handwritten Shakespearean sonnet as mere ink-worms scrawled on train-track flattened tree guts.

"Words placed in a random order would obey the laws of vocabulary but not those of syntax. If the words were rearranged in a proper syntactical order, the laws of vocabulary would not be annulled but a new and higher principle or order would also come to expression. Each higher level relies on the principles of action in the next lower one -- there could be no syntax without vocabulary and phonology -- but the higher level cannot be derived from, reduced to, or accounted for by the lower. Thus each level in a text is given its meaning by the next higher level. But what is the meaning beyond the text that gives meaning to the whole text?
-- from Via's Kerygma and Comedy in the New Testament

MAN IS ONLY AN INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE (since he obtains energy by 'burning' carbohydrates via a simple oxidation/reduction reaction) "Dr. Frankl's junior high school science teacher used to walk up and down the class explaining to his pupils that life in its final analysis is nothing but combustion, an oxidation process. The boy Frankl at once jumped to his feet and said, 'Dr Fritz, if this is true, what meaning then does life have?' Now imagine what it means that thousands and thousands of young students are exposed to indoctrination along such lines, are taught a reductionist concept of man and a reductionist view of life."--from Ayala's (ed.)
Studies in the Philosophy of Biology

THE ORGANISM IS ONLY DNA'S WAY OF MAKING MORE DNA. THE HUMAN MIND IS A DEVICE FOR SURVIVAL AND REPRODUCTION, AND REASON IS JUST ONE OF ITS VARIOUS TECHNIQUES. 'BELIEFS' ARE REALLY ENABLING MECHANISMS FOR SURVIVAL . . . THUS DOES IDEOLOGY BOW TO ITS HIDDEN MASTERS THE GENES--from E.O.Wilson's Sociobiology, and On Human Nature
Contra Wilson, notice that "the eye is, in an important sense, a device for informed movement and so for survival. But this does not mean that it can serve no other purpose. Constable and Rembrandt used it for all sorts of other ends and it would be mere confusion to suggest that these ends were somehow unreal, or that they were illicit and ought to be abandoned. Again, play no doubt has a function. It has been developed among human beings, as it has among the young of other intelligent species and sometimes among adults too, for evolutionary reasons which presumably have something to do both the satisfactory working of the higher faculties, with the need for practice in developing them, and with the sort of social interactions needed in a society which is much freer and less mechanical than those of the insects. It seems sensible to say that this tendency evolved because it has some value in promoting survival--that is, as a result of its having that value. But to say 'then it is only a means to survival' would miss the point entirely. What evolved was not only a tendency to act in certain ways, but a capacity for delighting in certain things, and thereby of taking them as ends. The ends of art and sport are now our ends. They are not delusions, nor provisional and superficial forms of the real end, survival. And the end of reason, similarly, is not survival, nor reproduction, but consistency and truth. People, even childless people, can die for these things. There is nothing confused in their doing so."--from Mary Midgley's Heart and Mind (St. Martin's Press)

"In an elemental sense, the egg only exists to produce the chicken. But the chicken does not exist only in order to produce another egg. He may also exist to amuse himself, to praise God, and even to suggest ideas to a French dramatist. Being a conscious life, he is, or may be, valuable in himself." --from G.K. Chesterton's What's Wrong with the World? (Dodd, Mead & Co.)

"The motivation of living creatures does got boil down to any single basic force, not even an 'instinct of self-preservation.' It is a complex pattern of separate elements, balanced roughly in the constitution of the species, but always liable to need adjusting. Creatures really have divergent and conflicting desires. Their distinct motives are not (usually) wishes for survival or for means to survival, but for various particular things to be done and obtained while surviving. And these can always conflict."--from Mary Midgley's Beast and Man (Cornel Univ Press) "In the last analysis most common things will be found to be highly complicated. Some men of science do indeed get over the difficulty by dealing only with the easy part of it: thus, they will call first love the instinct of sex, and the awe of death the instinct of self-preservation. But this is only getting over the difficulty of describing peacock green by calling it blue. There is blue in it. That there is a strong physical element in both romance and the Memento Mori makes them if possible more baffling than if they had been wholly intellectual. No man could say exactly how much his sexuality was colored by a clean love of beauty, or by the mere boyish itch for irrevocable adventures, like running away to sea. No man could say how far his animal dread of the end was mixed up with mystical traditions touching morals and religion. It is exactly because these things are animal, but not quite animal, that the dance of all the difficulties begins. The materialists analyze the easy part, deny the hard part and go home to their tea."--from G.K. Chesterton's What's Wrong with the World? (Dodd, Mead and Co.)

ANOTHER REDUCTIONIST ERROR IS TO BELIEVE THAT WHEN YOU HAVE DISCOVERED THE EMBRYONIC FORM OF A PHENOMENON YOU HAVE ALSO DISCOVERED AN 'EXPLANATION' OF IT. AS IF THE ACORN 'EXPLAINS' THE OAK TREE!

"I was sitting under a tree with a great biologist. Suddenly he exclaimed, 'I would like to know something about this tree!' He, of course, knew everything that science had to say about it. I asked him what he meant. And he answered, 'I want to know what this tree means for itself. I want to understand the life of this tree. It is so strange, so unapproachable.'"--from Paul Tillich's The Shaking of the Foundations. "Science has raised the possibility that there are as many different consciousnesses in the world as there are organisms capable of perception. It also has raised the possibility that consciousness may arise in ways that seem very alien to us. The symbiotic superconsciousness I vaguely sense in forests is not outside scientific possibility... Instead of myths peopled with talking trees, we must begin to create the opposite... Instead of inflating our human consciousness to fill trees, we must let the trees into our minds. We are very different from trees, but we are also like them. As we learn how they live, we learn a great deal of how we live."
-- David Rains Wallace's The Klamath Knot (Sierra Club Book)

WE ARE, EACH OF US, AN ISLAND UNIVERSE IN A SEA OF SPACE
-Aldous Huxley

On the other hand, "Nothing that exists is an island unto itself...everything that holds membership in the world is an element of a seamless garment--the 'ragged edges' of every individual reality splay off into those of another, and the world is a wedding"
--Nathan Scott

TO AN ASTRONOMER, MAN IS NOTHING BUT AN INFINITESIMAL DOT IN AN INFINITE UNIVERSE.
"An interesting point of view," remarked the bishop, "but you seem to forget that your infinitesimal dot of a man is still the astronomer."--from The Wit and Wisdom of Bishop Fulton J. Sheen (Prentice-Hall)

THAT ALL THE MATTER OF THE COSMOS, GATHERED TOGETHER, COULD BE CONTAINED IN A DIE; THAT ON THIS LITTLE EARTH HANGING IN THE VOID WE ARE BUT FURTIVE AGGREGATES OF DUSTY STATISTICAL CLOUDS; THAT ACCORDING TO SCIENCE AND ITS TRUTH ALL IS VOID IN THE DIMENSIONS OF THE UNIVERSE (MILLIONS OF LIGHT-YEARS IN SPACE, BILLIONS OF TERRESTRIAL YEARS IN TIME) . . .

Obviously, the miracle is that there are forms! That there are consistency, landscapes, faces. . . and that vacuity could have given birth to the plenitude of bodies, that light should have become vision, energy emotion, structure myth, and gravitation desire -- from Denis de Rougemon's Love Declared "A strange mystery it is that nature, omnipotent but blind, in the revolutions of her secular hurryings through the abysses of space, has brought forth at last a child, subject still to her power, but gifted with sight, with knowledge of good and evil, with the capacity of judging all the works of his unthinking mother"
-- from Bertrand's Russell's "A Free Man's Worship"

"Music at its highest, as in Bach or Mozart, is pure play. . . The intricate melodies flow on and on, and there never seems any necessity from them to stop. Bach and Mozart composed them in tremendous quantities, with the same Godlike extravagance to be found in the unnecessary vastness of nature. . . in countless suns blazing away so many billion kilowatts of energy; vacant planets spinning in profusion; flowers blooming in their myriads in impenetrable jungles; weeds, insects, fish, birds, micro-organisms swarming upon the earth . . . Returning to the human arena, this may be compared to the long Alleluias of Gregorian chant, the endless arabesques of Persian miniatures, the illuminated margins of medieval manuscripts, the wind-swept bamboos of Chinese painting, and the entirely satisfying and purposeless figures of the dance as it may sometimes be seen in Russian ballet. Such playfulness is the very nature of the divine Wisdom. . . Indeed, every attempt to find plan and purpose and respectable rationality in this universe, whether on a supernatural or a merely naturalistic basis, is bound to end in absurdity, and of the two the naturalistic explanations are the more absurd. Perhaps the song of birds is 'explainable' simply as a device for sexual attraction; perhaps the radiant wings of insects are no more than protective coloring; perhaps the beauty of the morning-glory is merely to entice the bee, appealing no doubt to his acute aesthetic appreciation of color and form. Perhaps. But if the aim of so much splendor is merely to stimulate the sexual processes of purely instinctual organisms, the mountain has labored and brought forth a mouse.

"The trouble is that we are too proud to be children and appreciate the playing of God...

For there is so much tragedy on the surface of life that were there not somewhere, right in the center of things and in the center of each and every pain, a state of absolute and unconfined joy accessible to all, the whole realm of Being must be damned."
--from Alan Watts' Behold the Spirit (Random House Inc.)

"The problem of darkness does not exist for a man gazing at the stars. No doubt the darkness is there, fundamental, pervasive, and unconquerable except at the pin-points where the stars twinkle; but the problem is not why there is such darkness, but what is the light that breaks through it so remarkably; and granting this light, why we have eyes to see it and hearts to be gladdened by it"
-- from Santayana "Plotinus and the Nature of Evil"

"It is consciousness running around like a dog with its tongue out -- literally cynicism -- that asks the too simple question and shapes up the vulgar answer. To be conscious of the nature of the sacred or of the nature of beauty is the folly of reductionism"
--from Gregory Bateson's Mind and Nature

Postcard from Nietzsche

Monkey's Uncle
Fun With Atheism Issue, Fall/Winter 1985
Editor: E.T. Babinski

(The following 'creation account' was found on the back of a postcard little Friedrich Nietzsche mailed his Dad from a summer camp in Switzerland, after having just been tossed off the Alps, as a prank, by the bully who slept in the bunk below him.)

Dear Dad:

IN THE BEGINNING...
..the earth was formless and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep. Naturally, the Spirit of God had holes, huge ones, in his hiking boots from treading on the void for so long, whilst he kicked a can...
...OVER THE SURFACE OF THE WATERS.
Many eons of darkness passed till one day (or was it night?) his foot missed the can and he mumbled, "Boy, I wish there was a little...light."
Instantly, THERE WAS LIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Enough LIGHT to fill the shadowy gap between each and every pair of soon-to-be-created misplaced front teeth in the cosmos! Enough LIGHT to make darkness take a taxi to Edison, New Jersy, and attempt to strangle Thomas Alva Edison in his sleep! Enough LIGHT to fill Times Square, Tokyo, and Tolula Bankhead's cranium!
"Holy Shit!" God exclaimed, blinking in surprise, "the word I said... suddenly became a thing!" Whereupon God bit his tongue crushingly. For knowing he was God, he also knew it was impossible for him to go back on his word.
Meanwhile, God peered glumly at all the holy...shitty things he'd just created.

Please, PLEASE let me come home before another holy shitty thing happens to me at camp!

Your loving son, Freddie

Atheist Musings

Monkey's Uncle
Fun With Atheism Issue, Fall/Winter 1985
Editor: E.T. Babinski

Atheist Father To Son: "Son, life is a swirling eddy of despair, lit briefly by false hopes and shattered dreams, and ending in eternal oblivious..."
Son: "I guess that means I won't be getting the 10-speed I want for my birthday?"

ODE TO MS. MADELINE O' HAIR

What is she really after?
An atheism free of Laughter?
Why not accept... "In God We Trust,"
And use those bills to buy Nietzsche's Bust!

DOGMA
It is abundantly evident that belief in God is often destructively dogmatic. Is the problem then that humans tend to believe in God, or is the problem that humans tend to be dogmatic? Anyone who has known a died-in-the-wool atheist will know that such an individual can be as dogmatic about unbelief as any believer can be about belief. Is it belief in God we need to get rid of, or is it dogmatism?
--M. Scott Peck, from The Road Less Traveled

Four Major Views On How God Interacts With The Universe!

God does not play dice with the Universe-- Albert Einstein's View
God does play dice with the Universe; He even throws them where they cannot be seen, and randomly switches dots on each die after it stops rolling.--Quantum Mechanical View
God plays dice with the universe rather well. In fact, he's probably a professional gambler.-- Theistic Evolution's View.
God does not play dict with the Universe. He play darts with it.-- John Slader's View (He's a prominent Sci-Fi Writer).

WHAT IS EVOLUTION?

Herbert Spencer, a contemporary of Darwin, defined evolution as "an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion, during which the matter passes from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity."

However, William James. the famous Harvard psychologist, remained unimpressed, and chose to delight his students with the mocking parody, "Evolution is a change from a nohowish untalkaboutable all-alikeness to a somehowish and in general talkaboutable not-all-alikeness by continuous sticktogetherations and something elseifications."

The Wrong Word
We were talking of the Universe at tea, and one of our company declared that he at least was entirely without illusions. He had long since faced the fact that Nature had no sympathy with our hopes and fears, and was icily indifferent to our fate. The Universe, he said, was a great meaningless machine; Man, with his reason and moral judgements, was the product of blind forces, which, though they would so soon destroy him, he must yet despise. To endure this tragedy of our fate with passionless despair, never to wince or bow the head, to confront the hostile powers with high disdain, to fix with eyes of scorn the Gorgon face of Destiny, to stand on the brink of the abyss, clenching his fist at the death-pale stars-this, he said, was his attitude, and it produced as you can imagine, a powerful impression on the company. As for me, I was carried away completely.

'By Jove, that is a stunt!' I cried.

Matter or Music?

Monkey's Uncle
Fun With Atheism Issue, Fall/Winter 1985
Editor: E.T. Babinski

The earth naturally oscillates to two 'notes,' one with a vibration period of 53.1 minutes, the other of 54.7 minutes. They are about 20 octaves lower in pitch than the tones we know and therefore, unless transposed, resemble silent, periodic earthquakes. It was the violent Chilean earthquake of 1960 that provided the first clearly "heard" ringing of Earth, when scientists excitedly observed that volume of the oscillations from each blow of the Andean "clapper" of the Pacific "bell" diminished by almost half every two days.

Now if the song of a planet is pitched 20 octaves below man's hearing, the song sung a complementary 20 octaves above it, leaving us musically midway between the trebles and basses of the cosmos.

It also seems like the 'smallest indivisible particles of matter' may be actual 'nodes of resonance!' Some physicists are even hopeful that the dynamic school of physical research (which mostly studies what happens when such sub-atomic particles collide) and the theoretical school (which mostly tries to categorize the same particles relative to their presumed least common denominator, the 'quark') will harmonize their disciplines through acceptance of something called "exotic resonance" (because it transcends quark harmonics) .--excerpted from The Seven Mysteries of Life: An Exploration in Science and Philosophy by Guy Murchie. Published by Houghton Miffin Company, Boston. © 1978 by Guy Murchie.

Radio waves carried by the solar wind are filled with whistles, hisses and pops. While those from Saturn's magnetosphere resemble whines and hissing clicks. (When played through a music synthesizer at higher speed the signals can be made to produce a slow, dreamy melody.) Even the sun is a "great musical instrument" ringing like a gong, according to Dr. Martin Pomerantz, of the Bartol Research Foundation. Studying the sun's surface, scientists observed oscillations that they believe arise from acoustic waves inside the sun. Dr. Pomerantz says that 80 overtones (different ways that the sun vibrates) with periods of two to eight minutes have been identified. --from Discovery magazine, a brief insert titled: "Cosmic Song."

Atoms and Materialism

Monkey's Uncle
Fun With Atheism Issue, Fall/Winter 1985
Editor: E.T. Babinski

WHAT IS EVERYTHING? If everything is matter, then what is "matter?"

Physicists no longer define "matter" as indivisible bits of particular size, weight and position. They don't even say that matter is "made of" bodies called atoms, protons, electrons, and so on. The word atom or electron is now used as part of an overall descriptive observation that has no meaning except as used by people who know the experiments by which it is revealed. "In field theory, instead of having matter sitting out in space like lumps, you concentrate on the way things interact. The relationships of matter and energy and time are what's determinant. Nothing is static, everything is dependent on and defined by the movements of everything else. The field is not so much a place where all this happens, but a conjunction, the interaction itself. As if the universe is recreating itself, moment by moment" (from Disturbances in the Field, a novel by Lynne Sharon Schwartz).

That a certain particle is able to pass, in its undivided state, through two different holes at the same time.
There are large 'holes in the sky' into which time and space not only disappear but in which they actually cease to be.
And that the term 'quark' describes a particle of which the essential property when three of them combine, their collective weight is less than that of any one of them by itself; although nothing has been lost by their conjunction.
Of course the apparent 'solidity' of 'matter' does not exist on the atomic scale, wherein all things are in constant and rapid motion.
Lastly, note the book review.

Thus, modern physics focuses more on the configuration of the cosmos, rather than on proving its solidity or materiality!

But doesn't this mean that the philosophy known as "materialism" is a bit more difficult to believe in today, than during the machine-minded 19th century? Back then, the cosmos was pictured as a giant watch. But today it is picture as a vast flowing 'field' of space/time/matter/energy.

So today, the heart of 'matter' is thought to resemble 'brain waves' more closely than 'billiard balls!'

Secondly, there has always existed the philosophical objection to materialism that, since we only know "matter" through our senses, and our senses only detect the outer sensations of things, then how do we know what the essence of "matter" really is? "Belief in 'matter' is thus a faith in the unseeable--in the famous 'pincushion hidden by innumerable pins' which Coleridge uses as the perfect analogue of Matter hiding behind sensible phenomena" (Jaque Barzun in his book, Darwin, Marx, and Wagner).

Theory of Light and Matter

QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard P. Feynman (Paperback - Oct 1, 1988)

QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter (Princeton Science Library) by Richard P. Feynman and A. Zee (Paperback - April 4, 2006)

Feynman Lectures On Physics (3 Volume Set) by Richard Phillips Feynman (Paperback - Jun 1970)

Feynman's Thesis: A New Approach to Quantum Theory by Laurie M. Brown and Richard Phillips Feynman (Hardcover - Aug 30, 2005)

Atheists' Club

Monkey's Uncle
Fun With Atheism Issue, Fall/Winter 1985
Editor: E.T. Babinski

(Scene: A small, smoke filled back room in a little pub in Hackensack, New Jersey, filled with too much talk.)

"To Order! To Order!" Chairman Angersol shouted above the seething sea of chaos that was...the Atheist's Club.

"To hell with ORDER!" spake Will Tu Power Zarathinski.

"Yeah, let's only allow for an instant of synchroneous silence if its number comes up in the Monte Carlo games," seconded Jack Monad.

"Shut up, I said, GOD dammit!"

Everyone did, and stared at Angersol with expressions of malevolence and wonder on their faces.

Angersol continued, "Soooo, there is something to be said for God after all. He's obviously claimed your attention!" (General laughter bumbled around the room, blindly.)

Then Angersol announced, "As we agreed last week, tonight is 'problem of evil' night..."

"And my problem, night after night, is that I can't get enough of it" Mark E. Desade yodled.

"Really, let's get serious, men. We've got a job to do. God is an intolerable brute, and this is his funeral, so let's get to burying him!" Whereupon, Angersol clicked his mug with his neighbors', downed it, and earnestly began "God, you see, cannot be both God and All Powerful, or everything would be all powerfully good. But obviously it's not!"

It's snot! It's snot!" the club repeated seriously for a full half minute till and eruption of suppressed laughter caused beer to suddenly squirt out of a few members nostrils, like they were the models for some obscene Greek fountains.

It was then that a peculiar sound summoned the group's sobriety. It was a loud "PSSSSST." First, everyone thought only to stare at the person seated beside themselves. But the origin of the sound remained elusive. "PSSSST." They stared down the hall leading to their meeting room; a few opened windows and peered out. "PSSST. PSSST, PSSST." It was then that everyone motioned toward Angersol's left hand pocket, for that was where the sound was unmistakably emanating from.

"Uh?" Angersol said, as he slowly reached down into his left hand pocket and withdrew its contents, setting them on the table before the club: a Gideon's New Testament with all the biblical contradictions underlined (by Angersol), a sweaty handerkerchief, and a matchbox. "PSSSSSSSSST," went the matchbook, and everyone stood up in their seats, some standing upon them, to gain a better view. With both hands steadied to keep them from trembling, Angersol opened the matchbox. He looked in and tipped it over. A few matches fell out, nothing more. It was empty. Everyone could see it was empty. Air possessed all the space within that miniscule matchbox. Then the emptiness within that little matchbox... spoke. "You were expecting maybe a pillar of fire? It's me, God. Lord, Creator of the Universe. All Creation, thanking me, breaks bread, drinks wine, and toasts J.C."

"Oh, good joke, Angersol. Where's the micro-speakers?" asked Ripley B. Leavitt Knott.

Angersol didn't reply.

Others pressed him for an explanation.

Angersol stood firm.

The matchbox answered, "Look guys, a few of you were blitzed a moment ago. Now you're sober. Go ahead, walk a few straight lines, touch your noses. I sobered you up, so you could ask questions and hear me reply. This is a golden opportunity I'm granting you boys. You may believe anything you want about who or what's talking to you. That's not the point. I don't need your belief, I'm God. I just want a little of your attention."

At this point Angersol, the matchbox's owner, and presumably the man who knew the most about what the hell was happening, sat calmly down. Everyone could sense hiscerebral caverns filling with blood, swelling to engage the matchbox in intellectual combat. Everyone else politely refrained further comment, allowing the chairman first crack at the attack.

"My dear little deluded matchbox, or whomever is on the receiving end of this micro-circuit, I have a question to which I unhesitatingly demand an answer. It is the question raised this evening, the gravest question of them all, and the one which shall bury you. What about evil, my friend? Whence comes it? And, Why?"

"Evil? Whew. I thought you were going to ask me a toughie, like, how I created something out of 'nothing,' about which I'm sure I'd never be able to explain. Not in understandable terms, anyway.

"Well, 'evil' is sort of like the side of me that likes to take risks. Like Zarathinski's always saying, man's glory is in seeking to overcome himself, to walk the tightrope between himself and the overman. But that's part of my glory too! To seek to outdo, or overdo myself! It was a risk, it was a challenge, but I eventually put so much of myself into my work that I came up with little co-creators. Don't you guys enjoy taking risks? The vigor of mountainclimbing, car racing, fastball pitching, football tackling: conducting experiments. And don't forget all the games you enjoy playing, which purposely involve more risks than real life is apt to contain!

"If I was to remove all the challenge, risk and responsibility from your lives, you would be driven crazy by irresponsibility. Like if I changed all knives to rubber as soon as an assassin flung one. Or reversed the law of gravity just because an individual was about to take a fall? Or made flying fists sail harmlessly through the body of each person being socked? And while we're on the subject of fantasies, how about if I supplied you with endless food, drink, all gourmet, and magnified your sexual enjoyment one hundred fold? Would you like that too? Or would you become omnibored? Untalking, irresponsible slaves to perpetual pleasure? By the way, I tried such a plan out once with the angels, and not everyone found such a 'Utopia' to their liking. So, guys, why not admit I'm right? Captain Kirk, going someplace boldly, and risking all, even just in movies, is more appealing. I know it, and you know it."

"Yes, but what about the crucifixion?" Mark E. Desade gloated aloud, "Why not admit that you're into S & M. You love it!"

"I'm no masochist, Desade. I shared the cosmos' pain that it might be fully born and alive. For the price of responsibility and self knowledge happens to be pain. This is not to say that all pain will automatically bring one to a greater self knowledge, as you imply. It won't. However, the cosmos is still such a part of me that I like with its painful growth as a whole, from Jesus' suffering on the cross to the pain of every sparrow that falls."

"Yet the sparrow still falls!" Mark Twayne shouted, standing on a chair in the rear of the room.

"Yes, it does, Mark, and you'll understand more about why, after you've fallen. Till then, this is a purposely risky cosmos."

Mark, exulting in his precarious perch began to hop up and down upon his seat, "O.K., so this cosmos isn't hell, but we're not living in heaven either."

"I never said you were, Mark. For all you know a comet could collide with this planet and wipe out life at any time. That would not be the most satisfying way to end our friendly evening together, but you must admit, death is not a dull moment. Likewise, one reason life is thrilling is that it ends in unexpected ways."

Mark lost his balance and landed on the table before him nose first. He wanted to say "God dammit!" but was so caught up in the unexpected nature of the fall itself that he calmly and quizzically accepted the whole thing, even the pain.

"But what about pain?" Angersol demanded. "Do we really need it in every case? You seemed to say 'no' to that question a little while ago. Obviously a deformed infant suffers to no purpose. Yet you are the ultimate creator of such suffering! That is, if you are the 'God' to whom I am speaking."

"I agree with you, Angersol, that was the hardest part of deciding to create this cosmos. But, if I'd created an easy, irresponsible one, would you have given a damn about each other or any 'infant' at all? You'd be mute slaves of irresponsibility with no need to responsibly interract, since I'd be taking care of everything for you.

"Please keep in mind that I'm not a Pantheist. I do not teach that the world ought to be full of horrors, since so it is. That view is often embraced by tender-hearted people to spare themselves the distress of admitting that anything is horrible after all."

"Rather, I struggled within myself over whether or not to create this cosmos, and decided that it would be irresponsible of me to
create a lesser one. Therefore, I risked putting my all into it.

"All I ask in return is that you fight with me, my little co-creators. For in learning how to overcome is a lesson greater than the pain, and greater than the evil implied in all the risks. If you do not try to see beyond the evil but succumb to it, then you lose your humanity, disgrace yourselves, and I die an evil ogre in your eyes. But whenever you overcome evil and pain, you shine brightly in the eyes of both man and God."

"Yes, but what real risk did you take? That's something you haven't made completely clear." Angersol inquired.

"I live in and through you, as long as you never accept the 'necessity' of evil, as long as you continue to ask what the 'problem' of evil is. For I live in the asking, the highest desire for good that is found in your heart."

A mighty wind blew the matchbox shut, and with the sound of a match being struck, tiny flames began dancing upon the heads of all those present.

"Remember , I am not far. In me you live, move, and have your being, and... vis versa."

The next day, Ripley B. Leavitt Knott examined the six-sided paper object in his laboratory with the aid of all the scientific instruments at his disposal. After a few hours he grew discouraged and decided to slice the box up into pieces only several microns thick, and gaze at them beneath an electron microscope. After a few weeks he totalled the exact number of atoms which had previously composed the empty box. But his thorough examination left no final remains of anything for which he'd been searching.

THE END

Is God Necessary?

Monkey's Uncle
Fun With Atheism Issue, Fall/Winter 1985
Editor: E.T. Babinski

Is God Necessary?

Let us grant, for the sake of argument, that God's existence is unnecessary. That is still not the same as saying that he does not exist. After all, why must the existence of anything be necessary? Why do we have five toes, nine planets, the vastness of space, more brain than man knows what to do with, why is life so fecundant in nature, etc.? I once drew up a story about a group of future scientists who tried reducing man to his bare essentials. These scientists lived, naturally, by eating their own vestigial organs, like their pinkies, the frenulum beneath their tongues, the nictating membranes in the corners of their eyes, their appendixes, the muscles behind their ears, and in fact, eventually ate half of their entire bodies (to have a body with matching halves was merely redundant). Thus, these scientists wound up looking like bowling pins with one arm and one leg hoping about the laboratory. Then they ate portions of each other's tongues so each member of their group could only produce a single letter of the alphabet. Then they hooked their half brains up together and spoke as one being, each member adding his particular sound to their group speech. Lastly, they found a way to live off no each singular atom remaining in their bodies, gathering the maximum energy from each atom, which would enable each of them to exist for approximately 50 quadrillion years. Well, as you can see (with both of your eyes) they reduced their lives to their necessary basis. Everything unnecessary was discarded. All I have to add is that if belief in God is unnecessary, would not most people still prefer living with it, and with the unnecessary vastness and mystery of life, than with bare bones rationality?

Natural Selection (if that was the only thing responsible for the process) has obviously provided man with a brain whose capacity for thought goes far beyond any such necessity to do so. Primitive men surviving in Australia have brains no less inferior than graduates at MIT, anatomically speaking. Why then does such unnecessary vastness, and/or an immense capacity to expand, exist both in space and time, and in our heads?

Also, what is the necessity of laughter and play? These things occur when nothing more needs to be done. They reflect life's over-abundant quality. And yet we somehow sense that their foolish energy is the magnet that draws us toward life, and not the bland, analytical need to survive that the Darwinists proclaim. For really, when you think about it, nothing needs to survive, extinction is the rule! But at least we get to strut our stuff on this planet for a while, and perhaps for fun and laughter and life, and not for survival. (Species replace each other in time and space comparatively quickly, and not unlike the guests on a variety program like Johnny Carson's Tonight Show.) Isn't that the real secret of life?

Perhaps that's why even Koko, a 14-year-old lowland gorilla (who has a vocabulary of over 500 hand-language signs) makes jokes:

THE FOLLOWING INCIDENTS ARE FROM "CONVERSATIONS WITH A GORILLA" BY FRANCINE PATTERSON, WHICH APPEARED IN NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, OCTOBER, 1978:

Cathy Ransom, one of my assistants, told me that Koko and her had been arguing... Koko was shown a poster of herself... Manipulating hands and fingers, Cathy asked Koko, 'What's this?' 'Gorilla,' signed Koko. 'Who gorilla?' asked Cathy. 'Bird,' responded a bratty Koko. 'You bird?' asked Cathy. 'You,' countered Koko. 'Not me, you are bird,' rejoined Cathy, mindful that 'bird' can be an insult in Koko's lexicon. 'Me gorilla,' asserted Koko. 'Who bird?' asked Cathy. 'You nut,' replied Koko, resorting to another of her insults. (For Koko, 'bird' and 'nut' switch from descriptive to pejorative by changing the position in which the sign is made.) 'Why me nut?' asked Cathy. 'Nut, nut,' signed Koko. 'You nut. not me,' Cathy replied. Finally, Koko gave up. Plaintively she signed, 'Damn, me good,' and walked away signing, 'Bad.'"

Koko the Gorilla
Want to skateboard?, Penny asked Koko with a sign representing two legs on a platform. Koko's tight-lipped grimace indicates slight annoyance after seeing Penny fall several times. Koko does not like to stand on the skateboard, but will scoot around on it.

"My associate, Barbara Hiller saw Koko signing, 'That red,' as she built a nest out of a white towel. Barbara said, 'You know better, Koko. What color is it?' Koko insisted that it was red--'red, Red, RED'--and finally held up a minute speck of red lint that had been clinging to the towel. Koko was grinning. Another time, after persistent efforts on Barbara's part to get Koko to sign, 'Drink,' Koko just leaned back on the counter and executed a perfect drink sign--in her ear. Again she was grinning."

"I asked Koko, 'Tell me something you think is funny.' She signed, 'Nose there,' pointing to a bird puppet's tongue. 'That red,' showing me a green plastic frog. When I put a stethoscope to my ears, Koko smirked and put fingers over her eyes."

"I asked Koko, 'Are you an animal or a person?' Koko's instant response, 'Fine animal gorilla.'"

Cro Magnon Man
Cro-Magnon man's self portraits show his sense of humor.

Fun With Atheism - Atheism Test

Monkey's Uncle
Fun With Atheism Issue, Fall/Winter 1985
Editor: E.T. Babinski

ARE YOU AN ATHEIST?	(TAKE THIS SIMPLE TEST TO FIND OUT!)
Question #1	Do You Have Free Will? (A) Yes (B) No
Question #2	What Do You Say After Receiving An Unexpected Sock In The Face? (A) "God Damn!" (B) "Blind Chance!"
Question #3	Is It Possible To Stand On A Platform Outside The Universe And Snipe At It? (A) Yes. (B) No.
The Following Questions Are Either True Or False Circle The Correct Answer): Man Is A Machine The Manufactures Manure... True? Or False? The Average Human Being Is Close To 70% Water (H²0) True? Or False? Human Beings Were Invented By Water As A Device For Transporting Itself From One Place To Another... True? Or False?
ESSAY QUESTION (Worth Nearly The Whole Enchilada): A) Pretend That You Are God B) Pretend That You Are Nothing. Examine The Universe And Alternate Furiously Between Pretensions. After completing this test, rish it to Monkey's Uncle where your score will be calculated by a million monkeys entering a million digits every millisecond on a million pocket calculators for a million years, at the end of which time... All of the monkeys will have expired, along with the warranties on the pocket calculators. So don't expect a prompt, certified, special delivery letter in the mail, letting you know if you're an atheist or not. I guess we each have to decide that for ourselves.

Theistic Evolution

Monkey's Uncle
Fun With Genesis Issue, Summer 1985
Editor: E.T. Babinski

THEISTIC EVOLUTION -- AN UNFINISHED SYMPHONY
The cosmic hierarchy I perceive resembles a row of drunken, dancing Russian revellers. Or it resembles the pointlessly abundant yet beautiful filagree lining the margins of medieval manuscripts. Or its like the endlessly extravagant music of Bach. God's play is likewise, splendiforous! And as I gaze at the universe I do not see an ironclad PURPOSEFULNESS clenched tightly between God's teeth, but an utter extravagance of space--God's gracious gratuitous improvisation of immensities! I surmise that God, like most great artists, needed a cosmic-sized loft' in which to loose the reins of His creativity. None of that crowded cluttered desktop appearance that might suggest God was a business executive in a three button suit savagely seeking to increase his net worth...No, He sets off each star like a prime jewel, against infinite yards of black-velvety space.

The Big Bang was a festive firework! Imagine God bellowing, "Everybody stand back! Gimme room! I'm gonna create!" He rolls up His sleeves, and infinite space appears a blank artist's canvas. He points a finger at the center of the canvas and a bright ball of light instantly begins to sparkle there. A few angels fly over to take a peek. 'It's ticking!" they chime. God remains impishly silent. Suddenly, KA BOOM!! The sparkling ball of light discharges into zillions of tiny bits careening all over the canvas. As the sparks settle, God nudges one shoulder towards a rather far off insignificant spark, spinning near the edge of the Wheel of the Milky Way Galaxy. All the angels then bend toward that spark with eager eyes and ears, for it suddenly begins ticking. In only a third of the time it took for the Big Bang to subside, that star flares up: Nine little sparks shoot forth from the sun, and they slowly begin to cool. But now the pace accelerates even more. The third planet is ticking! Suddenly a veritable explosion of life floods the oceans of that tiny planet! (The Cambrian Era!) followed quickly by more explosions, the Devonian, Pennsylvanian, Cretaceous, faster and faster...age of mammals, for ever since the first creative act the pace has been inversely astronomical! Life explodes in profusion upon the earth like kernels of sunripened popcorn.

One day an angel, examining this strange world hears a sound in a tree overhead... a hairy little creature in the tree is ticking! BOOM! Hunters-gatherers, Agriculture, Civilization...then one day a man heard the ticking of the universe in his own heart. He obviously took this as a sign that an imminent explosion was on the horizon. He preached the apocalyptic end of all things, a new heaven, a new earth. "Come closer God! Abba, Father!" he cried. "just a step closer, and the sky will surely tear asunder, the veil of the Temple will be torn in two, and grave stones will be kicked aside like pebbles!" Tick, Tick Tick!

Hammer, hammer, hammer! "Pass me another nail, Cestus, this one didn't go all the way through his feet. (An Unfinished Symphony...)

The Fall of Man Taken Allegorically

Monkey's Uncle
Fun With Genesis Issue, Summer 1985
Editor: E.T. Babinski

THE FALL OF MAN TAKEN ALLEGORICALLY
"All the optimism of the age had been disheartening for this reason, that it had always been trying to prove that we fit in to the world. The Christian optimism is based on the fact that we do not fit in to the world. I had tried to be happy by telling myself that man is an animal, like any other which sought its meat from God. But now I really was happy, for I had learnt that man was a monstrosity. I had been right in feeling all things as odd, for I myself was at once worse and better than all things. The optimist's pleasure was prosaic, for it dwelt on the naturalness of everything; in the light of the supernatural. The modern philosopher had told me again and again that I was in the right place, and I had still felt depressed even in aquiescence. But I had heard that I was in the wrong place, and my soul sang for joy, like a bird in spring... That is the inmost philosophy of the Fall. In Sir Oliver Lodge's Catechism, the first two questions were: 'What are you?' I could only answer, 'God knows.' And to the question, 'What is meant by the Fall?' I could answer with complete sincerity, 'That whatever I am, I am not myself.'" --G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Naming the Animals in Eden

Monkey's Uncle
Fun With Genesis Issue, Summer 1985
Editor: E.T. Babinski

EVER WONDER WHAT GOD WAS THINKING ABOUT WHEN HE CREATED THESE BEASTIES?

Dinosaurs in Eden

Adam must have had a lot of fun naming the above animals, but did you know that there are some animals that Adam didn't name
like the "geep," for instance? A "geep" was produced in Cambridge, England in 1984 by crossing early-stage cells of the embryos
of a goat and a sheep! (cf. Science Digest, Jan '85, p. 52)

Carnivores, Meat Eaters in Genesis

Monkey's Uncle
Fun With Genesis Issue, Summer 1985
Editor: E.T. Babinski

"TO EVERY THING THAT MOVES ON THE EARTH. I HAVE GIVEN EVERY GREEN PLANT FOR FOOD."

In the October ' 83 issue of Bible-Science Newsletter (on page 16) one reader asked:

While I am a Christian, I have difficulty reconciling the Bible a particular account of creation with nature. In Genesis 1:30 the animals were given plants to eat, but not meat. How can Genesis 1:30 be reconciled with all the carnivores? Were carnivores created after the fall of Adam? Or are we supposed to believe that carnivores actually were "designed" and "structured" for plant eating and that their present apparatuses employed for pursuing meat is contrary to what they were actually destined to do? Can you list some special books or references which show that carnivores can be made to live contentedly on a vegetarian diet?
M.R., Long Beach, California

To which the editor replied:

1. We cannot obtain direct evidence supporting either the Genesis or evolutionary account of carnivorous origins.

2. A "meat-eaters" teeth and claws are well suited to eating plants with fleshy stems and tough skinned fruits, like for instance, the fleshy trunk (in reality a vine) of the banana tree. One may speculate that though animals today do not generally eat material such as banana stalks, the animals which once filled that niche have switched to meat.

3. The editor also quoted Henry Morris to the effect that carnivores today can live on a vegetarian diet if they must, though they cannot be made to exist contentedly on such a diet. He also added that his own cat loves corn on the cob and sauerkraut. Lastly, he suggested that plants existing before the Flood provided more complete nutrition than plants do now.

But questions still remain. Like...

1. True, we cannot obtain direct evidence supporting either the Genesis or evolutionary account. But there does exist fossil evidence of large skeletons with smaller skeleton remains of their final meaty meal tucked neatly in their rib cages. Futhermore, no one seems to doubt that many dinosaurs were carnivorous. (Or there must have been some very big banana stalks for Tyrannosaurus Rex to chew on, while gazing longingly at the brontosaurus-burgers he could be eating instead.) And since these and other fossilized remains were supposedly laid down by the Flood, this evidence does refute claims made by many creationist authorities (cited by the editor) that "all animals were vegetarian before the Flood."

2. Where did these heavily clawed and sharp toothed animals learn to stalk their prey prey, after living on nothing but banana stalks before the Flood? Of what use were special adaptations of hollow fangs, and their accompanying venom, and the spider's ability to build a web in the garden of Eden. if the spider only ate green plants? Were green plants, like Venus fly traps, allowed to eat flies in Eden? Did the female praying mantid mate without having to bite off the male's head to induce copulation? Did the bees and wasps in Eden have stingers? Did the wasps partially paralyze a caterpillar, then use their ovipositors to insert their eggs into its flesh, afterwhich the eggs hatched and ate the caterpillar from the inside out? The editor explains that "all abilities and features known today were present in perfection (in animals in Eden) although, like recessive genetic traits, they may not have been expressing themselves." So I guess God utilized his foresight and creative ability to include the genes for venomous poisons in plants and animals, web-making in spiders, stingers in bees and wasps, etc., to be expressed later. Thank God.

3. Creationists deplore evolution since it requires millions of years in which billions of creatures fed on one another, with over 50% of all known species (as evidenced in the fossil record) becoming extinct. To creationists this is a 'brutally harsh' scenario inconsistent with a creation that God found to be initially "Good." But is the evolutionary tale more 'brutally harsh' than God wiping out all life on earth in a great Flood; punishing animals that knew no sin for man's sin; making carnivores out of harmless herbivores; or even making his own Son suffer extinction on the cross? (Not to mention the eternal suffering awaiting 'the many.') Compared with the brutal harshness of a fundamentalist's unquestionable God. it is the evolutionary scenario that appears rather 'Good!' After all, evolution is no worse than the 'brutal harshness' going on around us right now.

"The Biblical words about the genesis of heaven and earth are not words of information but words of appreciation. The story of creation is not a description of how the world came into being but a song about the glory of the world's having come into being. 'And God saw that it was good' (Genesis 1.25). This is the challenge: to reconcile God's view with our experience." --from The Wisdom of Herchel, ed. by Ruth Marcus Goodhill

Geocentricity of Genesis

Monkey's Uncle
Fun With Genesis Issue, Summer 1985
Editor: E.T. Babinski

THE GEOCENTRICITY OF GENESIS
According to Genesis the earth was made first. All the rest of the universe was an accessory. On the fourth day of creation the sun, moon, and "the stars also"--mere trifles, lumped together at the end of the inventory--were brought into existence. These were "created" and "set" in heaven "to give light upon the earth." With as much reason it might be said that mice were made to eat cheese. The celestial systems do not exist for the sake of the earth any more than an army exists for the sake of a single soldier. He gets his share of rations, but he is not the object of the combination. Astronomy shows us the insignificance of our planet. It is but a drop in the ocean, a grain of sand on the sea shore. We know of at least 182 stupendous objects revolving in regular orbits round the sun, of which the earth is far from being the largest. For them also, and not merely for the sake of the earth, does the sun "rule the day." And when we look beyond our solar system into the mighty universe of other suns and planets we might well ask what light is ruling each of them. The Genesis account, compared with our wealth of knowledge, does appear like a geocentric dream. When Anaxagoras dared to suggest that the sun was as large as the Peloponnesus he startled his Greek contemporaries. What must have been the notions of a pre-scientific people like the ancient Hebrews? For them it must have been easy to regard the sun, moon, "and the stars also" as mere satellites of the earth, set up in the sky as lanterns for the human race. Calvin stated, in his Commentary on the Book of Genesis, that "God himself took the space of six days, for the purpose of accumulating his works to the capacity of man." Inotherwords, the creation of all the various planets and suns in the cosmos revolved conveniently around man's weekly time schedule, measured in earth days. How geocentric can you get?

Two Creation Accounts in Genesis

Monkey's Uncle
Fun With Genesis Issue, Summer 1985
Editor: E.T. Babinski

IRRECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES?
Genesis contains, not one, but two creation accounts. The first runs from Gen 1.1 to Gen 2.3. While the second runs from Gen 2.4 to Gen 2.25. Noticeable differences exist between the two accounts:

1. In the first, creation is completed in six days (1.31). In the second, only one day is mentioned (2.4).

2. In the first, the earth emerges from water, whereupon plants appear the next day (1.9,10). In the second. the 'whole face of the ground or earth' requires moisture before plants may grow (2.6).

3. In the first, the trees are created before man (1.12,27). In the second, man is created before the trees (2.5-9).

4. In the first, beasts are created before man (1.21,24,27). In the second, man is created before the birds and beasts (2.18-19 'It is not good for man to be alone; I will make him a helper...and God formed every beast').

5. In the first, man is created in the image of God (1.27). In the second, man is made of the dust of the earth, and merely animated with the breath of life (shared by all living things, cf., Gen 2.7,19; 6.17; 7.15,21,22 & Eccles 3.19,20); and it is only after eating the forbidden fruit that 'the Lord God said, Behold. the man has become as one of us, to know good and evil' (2.7; 3.22).

6. In the first, man is made lord of the whole earth (1.28). In the second, he is merely placed in the garden of Eden, 'to dress it and to keep it' (2.8,15).

7. In the first, God enjoins the primal pair to 'be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth' (1.28). In the second, the pain of childbirth is imposed upon the woman as a curse (3.16), and she has no offspring until after the expulsion from the garden of Eden (4.1).

8. In the first, man and woman are created together, as the closing and completing work of the whole creation, created also, as is evidently implied, in the same fashion, to be the complement of one another, and, thus created, are blessed together (1.28). In the second, the beasts and birds are created between the man and the woman. First, Adam is placed by himself in the garden, charged with a solemn command, and threatened with a curse if he breaks it; then the beasts and birds are made, and man gives names to them 'but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him' so God makes a woman from Adam's side, but merely as a helpmate for man (2.7,8,15,22).

The fact is, that the second account of creation, together with the story of the Fall (Gen 3), is manifestly composed by a different writer. This is suggested at once by the circumstance that, throughout the first narrative, the Creator is always spoken of by the name Elohim (God), whereas, throughout the second account, as well as the story of the Fall, he is always called Jehovah Elohim (Lord God), except when the writer seems to abstain, for some reason, from placing the name of Jehovah in the mouth of the serpent (3.1,3,5). This accounts naturally for the above contradictions. It would appear that, for some reason, the productions of two pens have been here united, without any reference to their inconsistencies. (The above is from Bishop Colenso's work on the Pentateuch)

Does Genesis Pose More Questions Than The Book of Revelation?

Monkey's Uncle
Fun With Genesis Issue, Summer 1985
Editor: E.T. Babinski

DOES THE BOOK OF GENESIS POSE MORE QUESTIONS THAN THE BOOK OF REVELATIONS?
Among questions frequently raised (concerning the Genesis account) are the following:

"If God created everything (Gen 1), why did he create problems for himself by creating a serpent (Gen 3.1) who would lead his creations astray? Why did God create a tree he did not want Adam and Eve to know about, and then go out of his way to warn them against it? God grew angry when he found out he had been defied. If God is omnipotent and omniscient, didn't he know? Why couldn't he find Adam and Eve when they hid? If God had not wanted Adam and Eve to taste the fruit of the forbidden tree, why didn't he warn the serpent? Could God have prevented the serpent from tempting Adam and Eve? If yes, why didn't he? If no, does that mean that the serpent Was as powerful as God?"--Harlan Ellison, from his classic short story, "Deathbird"

According to Gen 2.15-23 Eve was created after Adam had already been given the prohibition with regard to the forbidden fruit. Eve apparently heard the prohibition only from Adam. She believed the serpent (the craftiest of all creatures) and has been blamed for the Fall of mankind (by Paul in I Tim 2.14-15). Was Eve framed?

According to Gen 2.17 Adam was to die "in the day" that he ate of the forbidden fruit. Moreover, the phrase translated "you will die" is mot tamut in Hebrew. The same phrase occurs in numerous passages in the Old Testament. For example, in I Ki 2.37, Solomon threatens Shimei, "The moment you go and cross the Kidron Valley, know that you shall die (not tamut)." Sure enough, when Shimei violates the king's orders, he sends his hatchet man, and Shimei is killed. Other parallel passages support this one in showing that mot tamut refers to a punishment by execution which is to take place immediately after the transgression. However, Adam lived 930 years (Gen 5.5)! This fact vindicates the serpent, who told Eve correctly, that "in the day that you eat (the fruit)... shall not die...(but) your eyes shall be opened" (Gen 3.4-5). Eve, of course, understood that God's prohibition involved immediate death, as when she argued with the serpent, "but God has said, 'You shall not eat from it or touch it, lest you die.'" (Gen 3.3) So apparently the serpent knew more about the truth of the matter than Eve! (The preceding two questions are from Don Morgan's Crusade Publications)

Why wasn't Eve startled by the talking snake? Was it common for animals in Eden to talk? Or is Genesis an allegory, like Aesop's Fables, which also contain talking animals?

Having brought "luminosity" into existence, Jehovah "divided the light from the darkness." How was this done? And how did light and darkness ever mix? Darkness is a minus quantity; it is simply the absence of light, as cold is the absence of heat. (The ancient Babylonian creation epic, Enuma Elish, mentions Anu killing one half of Chaos (Apsu), and stealing his tiara of light, thus dividing the light from the darkness!)

Why did God not create two couples instead of one? Adam and Eve's sons must have had children by their sisters. Surely an all-wise and all-good Creator would have prevented the cradle of the race from being stained with incest.

After completing the work of Creation the Lord "rested." According to Exodus 31.17, he "rested and was refreshed," like someone mowing the lawn who takes a swig at a can of beer. According to Dr. Geddes, and other learned editors of an annotated Bible published in 1774, the true meaning of the Hebrew original is, "on the seventh day he rested, and fetched breath." (Sir William Donville, The Sabbath, p. 54) What a pretty piece of anthropomorphism! (The preceding three questions are from George Williams Foote's book, Bible Romances)

Why did God have to rest after he made the world? What does God do when he rests?
What does He do in His spare time? --graffiti

I've always wanted to ask, Why six days? What's the Lord's hurry? High labor costs?
--Wm. R. Fix, The Bone Peddlers

You ask me what God was doing before he created Heaven and Earth... He was creating Hell for people who asked questions like that --
Augustine of Hippo

Three 'Whys' Men: Voltaire, Shaw, Twain

Monkey's Uncle
Fun With Genesis Issue, Summer 1985
Editor: E.T. Babinski

THREE 'WHYS' MEN: VOLTAIRE, SHAW, TWAIN
Asking 'why' is not a sin. It is a privilege adults grant each other, and even one that an adult may grant a child. Furthermore, even Jesus patiently answered Nicodemus' idiot question, "How can a man enter his mother's womb and be born a second time?" The history of theology is itself a history of the questioning process, wherein men progressively dared to ask every question allowable concerning the Bible, and finally some that weren't allowable...

Is the book of Genesis literal or allegorical? Did God really take a bit of Adam's side in order to make a woman? How did God create the light before the sun? How was the firmament formed in the midst of the waters since there is no firmament, this false imagination of ancient Egyptians, Babylonians & Greeks? There are some who conjecture that Genesis was written only after the Hebrews had some knowledge of the erroneous philosophy of other peoples. . . I wholeheartedly long to eat of the fruit that hung from the tree of knowledge, and it seems to me that the prohibition against it is strange; having given man reason, God should have encouraged him to learn. Did he want to be served by a dunce?..How shall I make the history of the Tower of Babel sound plausible? This tower must have been higher than the pyramids of Egypt (and the Twin Towers of Manhattan--Ed) since God let them be built! Did it reach to Venus or at least to the moon? (Since Voltaire wrote this, man has reached the moon, without interference by God--Ed) -- Voltaire, from "Zapata's Questions"

According to Paul of Tarsus, death entered the world through Adam's transgression (Rom. 5; I Cor 15. 21-23). In other words, Paul assumed that there was no death before Adam's Fall...No Death? No conceivable way that Adam could die? He had a body--gravity existed. Couldn't he fall off a cliff; out of a tree, breaking his neck? Or get sucked down by a rapid river while swimming? Or choke on an apple core? What about the animals? Couldn't a brontosaurus step on an ant (oops)? Or a monkey swallow a fly, or squash a caterpillar while swinging from branch to branch? Notice that if a single instance of death occurred in Eden then Paul is in error. While, if what Paul said was true, this raises another question. It means that God threatened Adam and Eve with a punishment (death) that they had no experiential knowledge of. And that hardly sounds very threatening, to be threatened with what must have appeared to them to be an invisible club. George Bernard Shaw in his play Back to Methuselah tackled the question his own unique way: "(The Garden of Eden. Afternoon. A glade in which lies a fawn all awry. Adam is staring in consternation at the fawn. Eve arrives and notices the animal.) E: What is the matter with its eyes? A: It is not only its eyes. Look. (He kicks it.) E: Oh don't! Why doesn't it wake? A: I don't know. It is not asleep. E: Not asleep? A: Try. E: (trying to shake it and roll it over) It is stiff and cold. A: Nothing will wake it. E: It has a queer smell. Did you find it like that? A: No. It was playing about, and it tripped and went head over heels. It never stirred again It's neck is wrong. (he stoops to lift the neck and show her.) E: Don't touch it. Come away from it... Adam, suppose you were to trip and fall, would you become like that? A: (he shudders.) E: You must be careful. Promise me you will be careful. A: What is the good of being careful? We have to live here for ever. Think of what for ever means! Sooner of late I shall trip and fall. It may be tomorrow; it may be after as many days as there are leaves in the garden and grains of sand by the river. No matter: some day I shall forget and stumble. E: I too."

On Paul's notion that death entered the world through Adam, Mark Twain had this to add: "Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world." Among Twain's other opinions... "Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principal one was that they escaped teething." "Adam was but human--this explains all. He did not want the fruit for the fruit's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent." (above quotes from Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar)

Why Man Must Question God

Monkey's Uncle
Fun With Genesis Issue, Summer 1985
Editor: E.T. Babinski

WHY MAN MUST QUESTION GOD
Genesis states that God habitually "walked in the garden in the cool of the day," so, presumably, there were open channels of communication between Him and man. If so, why didn't Adam or Eve ask God, "We're curious as to why You don't want us to eat any of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We really like it here, and we don't want to seem ungrateful, but Your rule on this matter doesn't make much sense to us, and we'd really appreciate it if you explained it to us"? Of course they did not ask this. Instead, they ate the fruit without taking the effort to pose a question or communicate with God on a reasonably adult level. . . Were Adam and Eve afraid of what might happen if they were to question God? Instead, they took the easy way out, the shortcut of sneakiness, to achieve knowledge not worked for, and hoped they could get away with it. They did not. To question God may let us in for a lot of work. But a moral of the story is that it must be done.--M. Scott Peck, from The Road Less Traveled, Simon & Schuster, NY, 1978, p. 272 & 274.

WHY GOD MUST ANSWER MAN
Like Scott Peck, above, I believe that man must question God. However, I disagree that Adam's only reason for not questioning God was either because Adam was lazy or fearful, or being sneaky. There is another reason. Adam may have suspected all along that God simply would not have given him a straight answer. And perhaps God would not have! Take the following conversation: "Hey, God, must I avoid eating the fruit you've placed in the middle of the garden?" "Because if you eat of it, you'll die, Adam." Why will I die? Is the fruit poison? Or is it your favorite fruit you'd rather not share with anyone? If it's just your rule that I'll have to die, will you ever change the rules? If so, when? If not, why not?" "AH, ah, BECAUSE! Enough questions! Rules are rules!" "But they seem like reasonable questions to me and Eve. And if you won't discuss them with me (Adam spies talking snake in tree) I'll find someone else." "Fine. Adam. But don't tell me I didn't warn you. (God walks off). "Hey there Mr. Serpent! Why is God so frustrating? My mind is bursting with a thousand questions and newly born thoughts! I'm so curious, and this is all so new to me!" "I understand where you're coming from, Adam. Lately I've been sucking on this fruit and a lot's been made clear to me." "So, that's where you learned to talk! Boy, that fruit must be great stuff!" "Here, try a piece." (Snake shakes branch with his feet, and a piece of fruit falls into Adam's palm. Adam takes a bite. Whereupon God leaps out from behind a nearby bush!) "GOTTCHA!!" The moral is that having your questions frustrated is another road to temptation. So God must answer man!

Fun With Genesis

Monkey's Uncle
Fun With Genesis Issue, Summer 1985
Editor: E.T. Babinski

One small step for man...........................One giant step for australopithecus!

RIGHTEOUS FOLKS DON'T MAKE JOKES! At least that's what some people still believe. But the fact remains that we've come a long way from those "all fear and trembling" days, or even from those dreary days of deadpan devotion to the Deity. And people have begun to accept humorous criticism in many areas of their lives previously sealed off as 'sacred.' Today we joke about sex, death, taxes, politics, race, and even religion. So why aren't there more religious joke books on the market? Probably because burning eternally in hell does not make a terrific punch line.

But on the brighter side it must be admitted even by the righteous few that the Bible itself contains hints of humor! Psalm 105 speaks of God creating great sea monsters just so they may 'play in the sea'. Proverbs speaks of Wisdom playing and dancing before the Lord. According to the Gospels, Jesus spoke about a camel being threaded through a needle's eye, and moving mountains with only a teeny weeny 'mustard seed' of faith. He also told outrageous parables demonstrating how the righteous could learn from the behavior of thieves and moneylenders! (This was undoubtedly big-time rabbinic humor in his day!)

In our century some have even been bold enough to exclaim that "The test of a good religion is its ability to laugh at itself," and "A good joke is the one ultimate and sacred thing which cannot be criticized. Our relations with a good joke are direct and even divine relations" (G.K. Chesterton spoke both quotes). For perhaps all laughter is God's laughter, and no form of hearty humor is unholy!

IN THE BEGINNING GOD WAS A STAND UP COMIC, WITH A GREAT IMPROVISATIONAL ACT THAT HE CALLED, 'THE CREATION.' IT WAS ONLY SCHEDULED TO PLAY SEVEN DAYS (in a little bistro on the edge of the Milky Way), BUT IT RECEIVED SUCH RAVE REVIEWS THAT GOD DECIDED TO LET IT RUN FOREVER. Remember Job?
He was down on his luck and on the verge of cursing God. But at the last moment God swept down from heaven and spoke out of a whirlwhind-playing with Job's hair, blowing his rags around, and ticking Job's ribs. And God performed one of his funniest stand up bits, just for Job, to make him laugh. God said: "Have you ever in your life commanded the morning? Has the rain a father? Can you lift up your voice to the clouds so that rain falls on your head? Can you send forth lightnings that they may go and say to you 'Here we are?' Do you know the time the mountain goats give birth? Who sent out the wild donkey, free? The ostrich's wings flap joyously with the pinion and plumage of love. For she abandons her eggs to the earth, and she forgets that a foot may crush them. Though her labor be in vain she is unconcerned, because I have made her forget wisdom. She laughs at the horse and rider. Do you give the horse his might? Do you make him leap like a locust? Behold now Behemoth, which I made as well as you. He eats grass like an ox! With barbs can anyone pierce his nose? Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook? Can you put a rope in his nose? Will he speak to you with soft words? Will you play with him as with a bird? By this time, of course, God, the ticklish whirlwind, had Job in stitches. In fact, Job was laughing so hard he cried, "I lay my hand on my mouth!" (see Job, chapters 38-41, for the verses given above).

Longevity

Monkey's Uncle
Premiere Issue! April Fool's Day! 1985
Editor: E.T. Babinski

LONGEVITY
LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH

"But when you are as old as I am!" I said to the young lady in pink satin.

"But I don't know how old you are," the young lady in pink answered almost archly. We were getting on quite nice.

"Oh, I'm endlessly old; my memory goes back almost for ever. I come out of the Middle Ages. I am the primitive savage we are all descended from; I believe in Devil-worship and the power of the Stars; I dance under the new Moon, naked and tattooed and holy. I am a Cave-dweller, a contemporary of Mastodons and Mammoths; I am pleistocene and eolithic, and full of the lusts and terrors of the great pre-glacial forests. But that's nothing; I am millions of years older; I am an arboreal Ape, and aged Baboon, with all its instincts; I am a pre-simian quadruped, I have great claws, eyes that see in the dark, and a long prehensile tail."

"Good gracious!" said the terrified young lady in pink satin. Then she turned away and talked in a hushed voice with her other neighbor.

T.H. Huxley's Famous Answer To Bishop Wilberforce

Monkey's Uncle
Premiere Issue! April Fool's Day! 1985
Editor: E.T. Babinski

T-H-HUXLEY'S FAMOUS ANSWER TO BISHOP WILBERFORCE
Six months after the publication of Darwin's Origin, Bishop Wilberforce addressed the British Association for the Advancement of Science, attempting in his presentation to crush the newly born Darwinists. At the conclusion of his speech Wilberforce turned to T.H.Hux1ey, seated in the audience, and with smiling insolence begged to know, "Was it through his grandfather or his grandmother that he claimed descent from a monkey?" Huxley struck his knee with his hand and remarked to an old friend seated beside him, "The Lord hath delivered him into mine hand." whereupon Huxley was called upon to rise and speak. Huxley recorded his answer to Wilberforce's taunt in a letter to a friend: "Has the rumor of the (Darwinist) row reached you? It was great fun--I had said that I could not see what difference it would make to my moral responsibility if I had an ape for a grandfather then, said I, the question is put to me would I rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather or a man highly endowed by nature and possessed of great means & influence & yet who employs those faculties & that influence for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion-I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape. Whereupon there was inextinguishable laughter among the people and they listened to the rest of my argument with the greatest attention."

EXCERPT FROM T.H.HUXLEY'S EVIDENCE AS TO MAN'S PLACE IN NATURE
We are told by those who assume authority in these matters, that the belief in the unity of origin of man and brutes involves the brutalization and degradation of the former. But is this really so? Could not a sensible child confute by obvious arguments, the shallow rhetoricians who would force this conclusion upon us? Is it, indeed, true, that the Poet, or the Philosopher, or the Artist whose genius is the glory of his age, is degraded from his high estate by the undoubted historical probability, not to say certainty, that he is the direct descendant of some naked and bestial savage. whose intelligence was just sufficient to make him a little more cunning than the Fox, and by so much more dangerous than the Tiger?

Or is he bound to howl and grovel on all fours because of the wholly unquestionable fact, that he was once a fertilized egg cell, which no ordinary power of discrimination could distinguish from that of a Dog?

Or is the philanthropist, or the saint, to give up his endeavors to lead a noble life, because the simplest study of man's nature reveals, at its foundation, all the selfish passions, and fierce appetites of the merest quadruped? Is mother-love vile because a hen shows it, or fidelity base because dogs possess it? (As Mark Twain wrote, "Heaven goes by favor; if it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in." --Ed) The common sense of the mass of mankind will answer these questions without a moment's hesitation. Healthy humanity, finding itself hard pressed to escape from real sin and degradation, will leave the brooding over speculative pollution to the cynics and the "righteous overmuch" who, disagreeing in everything else, unite in blind insensibility to the nobleness of the visible world, and in inability to appreciate the grandeur of the place Man occupies therein. (i.e., creationists criticize evolutionists for the ignoble and demeaning idea of "coming from apes," and say that man is more noble than that, and then have sermons where man is called a miserable worm worthy to be burned eternally in hell--Ed).

The Grass Snake Vs. The Oppossum

Monkey's Uncle
Premiere Issue! April Fool's Day! 1985
Editor: E.T. Babinski

-- SCENES YOU WON'T SEE ON WILD KINGDOM --

If threatened, a grass snake hisses and strikes with its mouth shut. If that fails to scare an enemy it produces a foul smell. Finally it will sham death.

The Grass Snake Vs. the Opossum
Night. James Bond theme music slowly rises. Camera focuses on grass snake slithering through grass. Opossum, overhead, dozes off and falls out of tree, landing beside the snake. The grass snake strikes with mouth shut. Opossum feels itself, and notices that it has not been bitten. Angered opossum slaps snake in mouth. Snake farts. Then both animals feign death. An apt illustration of 'survival of the deadest!'

Monkey's Uncle - The Man From S.T.O.R.K.

Monkey's Uncle
Premiere Issue! April Fool's Day! 1985
Editor: E.T. Babinski

The Man From S.T.O.R.K.
By Bert Atsma

Dr. Ralph Sanity walked up the stairs of the shiny new office building. Gold letters on the front window spelled out: "Paid For By Donations to the STORK THEORY OF REPRODUCTION KLAN (S.T.O.R.K.)"

He mused. "The money these people must rake in . . . " He walked in, and as he followed the arrows to the executive meeting room. He recalled the chain of events that had brought him here. . . .

Dr. Sanity was having his usual after-work drink at Sigmund's Bar and Grill discussing the day's cases with other psychiatrists.

One of his colleagues said to him, "Ralph, today I had one who takes the fruitcake. This guy comes in saying he's sure that storks bring babies."

"Obviously a drunk," replied Ralph's office mate.

"Wrong. In fact he's a Baptist minister who is allergic to alcohol."

Dr. Sanity became curious. "Where did he get this, pardon the expression, crazy idea?"

"Well, it seems there is a new, supposedly fast-growing organization trying to get the 'Stork Theory' equal time in public schools. This poor minister seems to be a victim of one of those high-pressure propaganda groups. Poor guy--his mind is gone!"

Then and there Dr. Sanity decided something had to be done. Somebody had to take up the sword of rationality, and it might as well be him. The barside conversation began to drift into other channels, but his attention remained fixed on this stork problem. Perhaps, he contemplated, he could pose as a believer, actually join a local chapter of this strange "Stork Theory" group, and learn what he could from the inside. When the group of friends broke up to head home for be night. Ralph Sanity didn't remember much of their idle chatter. but all strategy was all planned out.

It didn't take long to locate a chapter of S.T.O.R.K. here in the city, and it was a simple matter to join up. Once they saw his advanced degree and heard his profession of faith in the Stork Theory of reproduction, he was in like flint.
Ralph had, of course, expected this, since pseudo-scientific groups like this one always sought respectability by recruiting as many MDs and PhDs as they could get their hands on. In fact, it wasn't long before Ralph was invited to be interviewed for a seat on the executive committee of the national S.T.O.R.K. organization. His plan, in short, had succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, and much more rapidly. That was a good thing, too, since he didn't know how many more of these absurd Stork Theory speeches he could take listening to. Yet here he was at S.T.O.R.K. headquarters about to be interviewed. Could he carry it off?

He took a deep breath and entered the large meeting room. Four men sat at a big mahogany table with a statue of a stork at its center.

"Welcome, Dr. Sanity! I'm President Adam S. Apple. This is Vice President Wayne Fish, Vice President Henry Morass and Vice President
Kelly Seagull."

"Pleased to meet you, gentlemen. I've learned much from your scholarly works," said Sanity, hoping these words wouldn't be held against him on judgment day. As he looked around at the vacant grins they all sported, he could see he'd gotten off to a good start.

"Please sit down," said Apple, indicating a plush chair. "Let us explain our operation to you. We feel that belief in the Stork Theory requires no more 'faith' than the Birth Theory. Dr. Fish . . . ?" Fish continued.

"You see, Dr. Sanity, the most vehement defenders of the Birth Theory are obstetricians. Obviously. they can't admit the Stork Theory is true, or they'd lose their jobs! Our members, on the other hand, are not specialists in the field, and this puts us in a much better position to view things objectively!"

"If most S.T.O.R.K. members aren't in obstetrics, what field are they in?" asked Dr. Sanity, trying to keep the skepticism out of his voice.

"Well, er, ah, most of them work for us. But that doesn't influence them at all!"

Apple cleared his throat and said, "Dr. Morass, would you like to take it from there?"

"Surely. We feel that this whole birth thing is a conspiracy by the medical profession. They convince people with films, books, and school education that birth occurs. Then those crafty devils put mom to sleep, wait for the stork to come, and the obstetrician gives you the bill! It's all a fraud!"

Ralph Sanity knew it was time to ask a question that had been puzzling him ever since he'd infiltrated S.T.O.R.K. "What about the bulging abdomen during pregnancy?"

"That's psychological," answered Morass. Ralph averted his eyes to conceal his stunned disbelief.

"Vice President Seagull, why don't you take it from here," said Morass as he yielded the floor.

"Thank you. Let me explain our multifaceted strategy to you, Ralph. First, we recruit people with advanced degrees in anything to write books and tracts. Second, we use Madison Avenue techniques to sway public opinion. Third, we rally the public and support politicians who uphold traditional family values. Fourth and finally, we create enough confusion as to our moral and legal objectives that the judicial system bends our way bit by bit. It's all very scientific, you see."

"Well," said Apple, peering at him with an expression of almost hungry eagerness, "are you with us?"

"Oh, yes, certainly, but I wonder if you might clarify a couple of little matters for me. Have you any real evidence that storks deliver babies?"

Dr. Morass waxed quizzical. "Well, ah, no. But it could be true, and that's good enough for us! Have you seen your own birth, Sanity?!"

"My eyes were closed at the time, of course, but I have seen other babies born!"

Seagull interrupted: "Look, Sanity, those heartless, uncaring. ruthless, cunning, and deceptive obstetricians will stop at nothing. You know, place a baby in there beforehand, bring you into the operating room, and pull it out--like a rabbit out of a hat."

Ralph Sanity was beginning to see exactly what he was involved in. Quickly he thought of a persuasive argument. "But you must have seen something come into being through a natural process. Chickens laying eggs, guppies giving birth, plants growing from seeds! Come on men, be rational!"

The four were stunned for a moment. Recovering his composure, Apple said, "Everyone knows animals can give birth, but Human babies are brought by the stork. Surely you don't think God would want people to reproduce by a messy and sinful process like mating, do you?" Apple's face took on a look of suspicion, but vacant smiles reappeared on the other three faces. Ralph knew the jig was up now; he'd put his cards on the table too soon. But maybe he could fire one parting shot.

"Isn't a theory supposed to be based on a preponderance of evidence, not just the bare possibility that it's true?"

"Who can trust evidence that's provided by be very people who oppose us? asked Apple angrily.

In frustration Sanity shouted. "YOU GUYS ARE NUTS!"

This outburst shocked the others out of their blissful reverie, but Apple was already on his feet, shouting, "I knew all along that you were one of them! Bruno! Get in here!" From an adjoining room appeared a hitherto unseen uniformed guard. From the look of the man, it must have taken a mighty strong stork to deliver him. "Throw this spy out!"

With that, Sanity found himself pulled from his chair, dragged down the stairs and sailing toward be gutter. As he sat there nursing his bruises and assessing the damage to his suit, he saw an amazing yet unmistakable sight out of the corner of his eye. About to fly into the window of the S.T.O.R.K. building, was a large bird with a bundle hanging from its beak!

The next morning President Apple turned on the radio. He'd caught the local news and didn't have to wait long for what he was looking for. " . . Yup, he was just sitting there babbling away."

"What exactly was he saying, Officer?" inquired the reporter, eager to extract every lurid detail of the story.

"The same word over and over again. I don't know what sense it makes, but it sounded like, 'Stork,' 'Stork.'"

"Well, there you have it. The officer who found a city psychiatrist raving hysterically in the gutter this morning. Back to you. Don."

President Apple decisively clicked off the radio and called in his secretary. "Sally, write a letter to Frank in New York. Tell him he did a great job on that mechanical stork." A big smile spread across his face as he remembered to add, "Oh, and be sure to finish filling out those new membership papers for Ralph Sanity, won't you?"

Monkey's Uncle - April 1985

Monkey's Uncle
Premiere Issue! April Fool's Day! 1985
Editor: E.T. Babinski

"For apes to come out of the trees, and change in the direction of being able to write down (Maxwell's equations (and Monkey's Uncle!--Ed)...I don't think you can explain that by natural selection at all. It's just a miracle"--Freeman Dyson (theoretical physicist)

DO YOU SUFFER FROM MONKEYPHOBIA?--Irrational fears are always the most difficult to eliminate. However, I've found that an irrational story based on our irrational fears often helps us to obtain a firmer hold on our reason. Sound paradoxical? Let's consider a prominent fear since Darwin's day: 'fear of tracing one's family tree back to friendly furry... tree dwellers.'
To discover whether or not you suffer from this fear answer the following simple question: Do you reply involuntarily, "You may be a monkey's uncle, but I sure as hell ain't," whenever the topic of 'evolution' arises in polite conversation? If you answered 'yes,' then the following tale was written especially for you, to help you understand your irrational fear and loathing of the simian species.

FINAL EXAM
For two biology classes at ***** Bible College, recess approached like the awakening of a partially dissected frog from the influence
of anesthesia. The professors of each class began summarizing their lectures. And professor Shlodbender in room 201 trumpeted, "Well class, as I have demonstrated, Scientific Creationism is the only alternative to the godless, atheistic, demon-inspired theory of (pause) evolution." Boos and hisses flew like darts from the student's throats, crucifying that heretical theory to the blackboard. The professor smiled at the response that word provoked from his youthful audience. "I feel confident they have been tutored correctly," he mused in his mind. "Henceforth they will not be deluded, led into sin nor tempted to study evolution for the rest of their lives. But wait. Let's give them the final exam." The professor directed the student who, a moment ago, had emitted the noisiest Bronx cheer, to turn off the lights and switch on the slide projector. Whereupon, an image of a monkey swinging upside down from a tree flashed on the screen at the front of the class. "My what a silly looking simian! Soulless beast! Did we evolve from that?" the professor queried his students, stabbing the screen with a wooden pointer. The class congealed into laughter. "Well, did we?" retorted the professor. "No way!" the class ballooned in unified pride. "Next slide, please." This time a devil-browed reptile flashed on the screen. "And what about this fellow? Are we second cousins?" The class, sensing a greater gap and less humorous affinity with the lizard than with the tree-loper, did not laugh half as loudly as before. But they did manage to babble boisterously a second time, "No way!" Next slide, please." A goggle-eyed fish appeared, staring straight at the students with its mouth opened cavernously. "No doubt this fellow is meditating on the universal mantra of the Hindu religion." One girl, who had taken an elective course in comparative religion, giggled at the professor's jest. The rest of the class remained silent at the sight of the odd alien water breather before them. Not because they'd never seen a fish before, but because their minds were still brooding on the previous creature's ominous looking eyelids. "Now how about Mr. Lipski, here," the professor barked (the class suddenly waking to laughter). "Do we have any great-great-great-ad infinitum grand parents in common?" "No way!" "Next slide, please." A large Campbell's soup can, of Andy Warhol op-art vintage, appeared on the screen. The students were perplexed till they read the label on the can. Then they all chuckled:

The professor read the label out loud for added effect. "And here we have a can of 'Campbell's Primeval Soup.' The directions on the side of the can state, 'Heat for 900,000 years, or until the first self-reproducing organism appears. Then serve.' Do you believe that we originated from that" The class roared out loud with hilarity. "No.. Way!" Some stood up on their desks, pounding their chests, mimicking monkey howls. Others leered like lizards. Still others made enormous rings with their lips. The professor's final remarks, after the class' temperature had descended a few degrees were, "I don't see how anyone can believe that man originated from such a succession of ape-like, reptile-like, fish-like, and soup-like ancestors!" "Yeeeeuck!" the class agreed. "The ultimate lie being, of course, that this soup produced the first self-reproducing organism, the first proto-cell. Evolutionists say it took about three billion years for that cell to evolve into man! But I'll give them triple that! I say such a feat couldn't happen in nine billion years! Or even 900 billion years! Now does anyone here think that we (pause) evolved? Unable to restrain their anti-evolutionary reflexes at the mention of the word, the professor's class proceeded to go totally ape, adopting "No Way" as their banana mantra.

Meanwhile, professor Blinkly, in class 202 across the hall, was lecturing a less boisterous bunch of students on the relatively tame subject of how each human being develops from a tiny embryo. "It takes nine months for a human infant to develop from a single cell. Everyone in this room arose that way, from a single cell. This cell divides and redivides in the womb, passing through unusual stages of development. As the professor lectured he projected slides on the screen of human embryos. ages 1-5 weeks. Commenting on a particular slide the professor chuckled, "I suppose that is what the psalmist David referred to when he wrote about us being "Fearfully and wonderfully made" (see following picture)!

These photos suggest that man is an adult-sized version of a juvenile primate, i.e., not a monkey's uncle, but a juvenile's monkey's uncle.Showing how humanlike the juvenile chimpanzee is, compared with adult.

Human Embryo at Three Days

The Embryo in the Fourth Week

Face of Human Embryo at Fourth and Fifth Week

At that remark, one girl bolted out of the room, viscerally upset at the sight of her embryological origins. Once in the hall, she heard wails and howls coming from the classroom adjacent to hers. Curious, she crept up to the door and placed an ear against it. Within, she heard a professor mocking the forms of man's assumed evolutionary ancestors -- the apes, reptiles, fish, etc. "He shouldn't mock them so," replied her mind, "none of their forms are any more grotesque than four and five week old human embryos, forms we know we originated from." She then listened as the professor explained how a human being (even given 3 billion years) could never have developed from a single cell. "But, but..." her mind stuttered, "it only takes a human being nine months to develop from a single cell! Certainly there's some plausibility to the theory that..." Her stomach arched painfully, and she withdrew her ear from the door, as doubts began tickling her intestines.

THE TAIL END OF THE DEBATE
At the ***** Scientific Institute two chimps (taught a complex sign language), began conversing with their hands. A hairy discussion ensued. Human researchers, entering the room at the tail end of the argument were only able to observe one chimp gesturing vehemently to the other: "Man, related to us?? NO WAY! He abuses and destroys nature. He fights till death with members of his own species, on a massive scale! And look at the ways this ridiculous creature conceals his hairless hide!" The chimp pointed out the observing humans to his friend. "Our relation? Why I wouldn't have him! Even if some simian Darwinian should prove beyond question that man descended from us. I, for one, will never admit to being a Neanderthal's nephew!"