|
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO BEN . . .
"THEY SAY EARTH IS 6 000 YEARS OLD. MY FRIDGE IS OLDER THAN THAT".
- BEN TRAVATO fights Creationism and ‘Intelligent Design’.
He accepts he is the flawed product of whoever cares to claim him, and writes in GQ – the Gentleman's Quarterly - about his supposed beliefs, for those aspiring to be gentlemen. (GQ March 2007)
To be honest, I don't feel like I am the creation of an intelligent designer at all. I drink too much, never watch rugby and pretend that my dogs aren't mine when they defecate on the beach. I don't give to charity and I shout at old people whe they drive badly. I have way too many design flaws and should have been recalled long before now. Maybe that's what death is. You get recalled because you are defective.
After your warranty is withdrawn, you line up outside the intelligent designer's
workshop along with all the other broken people. The queue must be horrendous.
Bring a book. After waiting a few hundred years, the intelligent designer hoists you up on to his workbench, clamps you in his divine vice, and gives you a tweaking with his celestial spanner and supernatural screwdriver.
Then it gets a bit tricky. The only way he can I get you back into the race is by rebirthing you, but now the good ship Faith is drifting dangerously close to the rocky shores of Hinduism and Buddhism.
So scrap that idea. Perhaps the designer simply strips you of your consciousness and tosses your carcass into an unmarked grave way, way north of the Pantene Nebula. Well, it would be unmarked, wouldn't it?
You don't get to be the intelligent designer by leaving a trail of evidence that could see you appearing on charges of gross negligence in a court presided over by whoever it was that created you in the first place.
I don't really feel like God made me, either. God is responsible for some terrible things and even though at times that I feel like I am one, I can't help thinking that he doesn't actually exist. I mean, really, make the earth in just six days? It takes me a week to put up a bookshelf. If God is in all of us, as the creationists say, then you'd think he'd chivvy me along. Maybe God has fallen asleep, because sometimes the sound of him snoring comes out of my bum. Or maybe God is speaking through my bum. Maybe I have fallen asleep and he is telling me to wake up and be a better person. Maybe I should put my bum on eBay.
Creationists also tell me that the universe is six thousand years old. I'm not so sure. I have stuff in my fridge older than that. They also tell me that I am being punished because Adam and Eve got up to no good in the Garden of Eden and that a carpenter died for my sins. I'm a white South African.
I can deal with guilt. But, when they tell hen me that Noah was around at the time of the dinosaurs, I have to ask why he didn't save the poor bastards from the flood. 'Let the sheep and chickens through, but those scaly things aren't coming anywhere near my shiny new boat,' shouted Noah to the deckhands. It is this kind of discrimination that makes me angry and disinclined to believe in God.
After watching a documentary called Planet Of word_ The Apes, I realised that evolution was the only theory that made any sense to me. We are lucky to are alive in a country where people make no bones about showing their origins. Nelson Mandela, for example, comes from good microbial stock while someone like Wouter Basson clearly comes from blue-green algae. I come from a microbe that started hanging out on weekends with scum on the far side of the primordial pond.
I realised, maybe a bit late, that these were not my kind of people and it took my fellow microbes quite a while to trust me enough to have sex with one of them again.
Most Americans don't believe in evolution. This is not because they are shallow in-bred reactionary rednecks, as you might think, but rather because scientists are pathetic when it comes to marketing. The remnants of a five-million-year-old Homo are dug up in one or other godforsaken corner of Africa, and a man in a white coat appears on television squinting nervously into the camera, saying, 'Um. Sorry to bother everybody, but we seem to have found something that could be, well, rather important.'
What they should be doing is dressing up in yellow seersucker suits and top hats and taking the bones on the road. Turn it into an event. A drunken carnival of discovery. They should ride through towns on the backs of elephants, drinking champagne from the bottle and brandishing the skull of the flat-faced man of Kenya while shouting through primitive megaphones, 'So where's your god now?'
After all, the creationists and intelligent design nut jobs aren't shy to tell us we're all going to burn in the hellfire of eternal damnation unless we accept God.
In the meantime, I've applied for membership to the fastest growing carbohydrate-based religion in the world.
Pastafarians believe the Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe and life on earth. I think they may be on to something. In the words of founder, Bobby Henderson: 'We tend to be very secretive, as many people claim our beliefs are not substantiated by observable evidence.' I am particularly drawn to this church because every Friday is a religious holiday, heaven has a beer volcano and a stripper factory and a $250 000 reward is offered to anyone who can provide evidence proving that Jesus is not the son of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Amen.
|
