Jesus Fish
July 1, 2008
Diesel’s take on the little Jesus Fish symbols:
Historically the fish was used as a secret sign by Christians to identify themselves to each other, back when being a Christian meant persecution and possibly execution. The last time I checked the local paper, though, Christians weren’t being rounded up and burned alive by the authorities in California. So to me, using the fish symbol smacks of a persecution complex. [ Something Fishy This Way Comes ]
You think?
Posted in Religion
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July 1st, 2008 at 9:01 am
http://evolvefish.com/
And that’s all I have to say about that.
July 1st, 2008 at 9:04 am
Oh, but I wish you would say a little more.
July 1st, 2008 at 9:56 am
I am a Christian and my wife has one of the fish on the back of her car. Still, I thought that “Darwin” fish with the little feet was a brilliant comeback. I little snarky, but you can’t deny the wit.
I feigned outrage.
July 1st, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Thanks for the mention, thud. I was just thinking that I hadn’t heard from you in a while. :)
July 1st, 2008 at 9:11 pm
Have you guys seen the larger Christian fish swallowing the Darwin fish? Pretty cool.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/PublicStore/product/Truth-Fish-Auto-Emblem,4709,260.aspx
July 1st, 2008 at 9:40 pm
Yeah, the fish arms-race. Great.
When I see a fish symbol on a car, I think “that person is telling strangers he or she is Christian, and I need to be careful what I say around them.” That may turn out to be a false assumption, but it does adjust my first impression.
When I see someone with a “Darwin” fish on their car, I tend to think “that person is an arrogant jerk who thinks s/he knows a lot more about religion than s/he actually does.” That is more frequently true, and the concerns I have about the Confederate flag (that it is a symbol intended to provoke) I have about the Darwin fish as well. Now, I have friends that display the Darwin fish. But on the matter of religion they are arrogant jerks. Christians do not all accept short-history Creationism, and Darwin’s theory does only incidental harm to actual religion-as-practiced.
When I see someone with a “Truth” fish eating a “Darwin” fish I think to myself “there goes an ignorant asshole completely unmoored from reality.” Because, first of all, Truth cannot eat itself and second of all, Jesus would have been more concerned about feeding people with fishes — or whatever else was on hand — and *not* arguing over evolution. And he certainly wouldn’t be sticking plastic fishes on the back of cars so he could feel good and superior about himself.
What it all comes down to is, in general, the people who put the simple Christian fishes on their cars are probably the least obnoxious of the bunch.
But me, I’m a sourpuss.
July 1st, 2008 at 10:41 pm
But me, I’m a sourpuss.
Yup. :)
July 2nd, 2008 at 9:34 am
Thudfactor,
First, I’m a Christian.
Second, I pretty much agree with your feelings on the general disposition of folks displaying fish of any kind.
As for the persecution complex from Diesel? I wouldn’t take it that far, but try telling someone you’re a Christian (and a Baptist, at that) when it comes up in conversation and see how quickly the tides shift. The mark of a true believer is someone who knows this, accepts it, and says it anyway; not what’s clinging to the back of his or her car.
July 30th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
While I haven’t personally used the fish symbol on my car, I may, because I tend to use whatever devices are available to put more pressure on ME to be a better person. If I put a fish on my car, I hope it is there to remind me that I need to be a better driver, a kinder person, a better representative of my religion.
August 17th, 2008 at 2:31 am
When studying Darwin . . . and his theories - it becomes evident that he was a troubled bitter man who was trying to prove the inexistance of God because he could not overcome the loss of his sister at such a young age. Even Darwin has admitted his mistake - that the eyeball was to complex to evolve. That it had so many intricate parts that all had to develop on the same spatial level - an impossiblity - even C.D. called for “Intelligent Design”
Charles Darwin himself shuddered at the thought that evolutionary processes had to explain human vision. He said, ‘To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.”
The actual anatomy of sight is a wonderful example of what Intelligent Design theorists and Creationists call ‘irreducible complexity.
August 17th, 2008 at 7:36 am
ID and creationists call the eye “irreducible complexity” because they ignore the evolutionary theories of the eye. In fact, they believe most of what they believe because they ignore contradictory evidence and existing scholarship.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/01/1/l_011_01.html
August 18th, 2008 at 1:26 am
The problem with many ID theories, including “irreducible complexity” is that the proof is kind of like Supreme Court Justice Stewart’s proof on what is pornography or not… i.e., “I know it when I see it”. But there are many things in this world that gut feelings alone will give you the wrong answer (Monty Hall problem). For it to be science, there has to be a way to prove one’s answer and then after that, there has to be a lot of evidence to back the answer up.
These ID problems are also known as the “God of the Gaps”. And that is, an ID person tends to see God in anything that science has yet to explain. But the moment science explains it, they just move to another gap in our knowledge and put their stake in the shifting sands there.
The default is always to assume intelligent design (or creationism) until proven otherwise.
BTW, I’m still waiting to meet someone who supports ID but is actually open to the possibility that the intelligent designer is something other than God, possibly some old alien race. Maybe, there’s a Scientologist out there like that?
None the less, note that biological features don’t NEED to be useful to be carried down from one generation to another. As long as it doesn’t create a negative effect before the creature procreates, then there is a possibility of continuing its existence in future generations. Also note that evolution isn’t always about adding parts, but also many times taking away parts to create or extend what may seem to be irreducibly complex functionality. Put three stones in a row, and you have a primitive bridge. Put a flat stone across all three. You still have a workable bridge. Now take away the middle stone. Now you not only still have a workable bridge but one in which if any one part went away, it would NOT be a workable bridge. I could see many ID-oriented people looking at that example initially and not see anyway for that bridge to be created without ID even though I just showed each step and with each step, all the features still functioned as something useful.
As for the eye. Again, I say, just because you can’t immediately imagine the numerous steps it took to create the eye doesn’t mean by some default that some intelligent designer did it. And don’t give me Occam’s razor as a means to say that we’ve made something more complex than it needs to be. Occam’s razor is, btw, a philosophical stance, not a scientific one. And in addition Occam’s razor never guarantees truth it only suggests a direction to getting to truth by using simplicity. However, Occam aside, science still requires testable hypothesiss, and just inserting God or some intelligent designer into one’s solution is not testable, and thus unnecessary… and anything unnecessary is making something more unnecessarily complicated which goes back to the heart of Occam’s razor.
BTW, some sites that try to explain the evolution of the eye: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye
http://library.thinkquest.org/28030/eyeevo.htm