It started, oddly enough, with creationism.
As I sat somewhat nervously in the classroom, I noticed that there were only twelve minutes left in the lunch break. A 10th-grader in the corner - a boy I’d never heard speak before until now - piped up. “What are some of the ways that we can prove God exists?”
I glanced at the clock again. Ten minutes left. He promised this was the day he would talk about evolution and creation.
I slouched in my chair, exasperated.
Eight minutes.
“How in God’s name is he going to treat evolution in eight minutes?” I thought. A moment later, the well-dressed young man at the front of the room spoke.
“If you were to find a painting nailed to a tree in the middle of the forest, would you assume that the colours of a palate combined - completely at random - to produce it? Of course not,” began Jason Cole.
“A painting” he explained, “implies a painter.”
Right. *rolls up sleeves*
This teleological argument is refuted easily enough. First, it’s a logical fallacy. An argument from personal incredulity is being employed in the following way: “I can’t imagine how evolution could have produced such complexity, therefore it didn’t.” Just because we can’t imagine how something is possible, doesn’t mean it isn’t.
Further, everyone agrees that life is complicated, but complexity is not the same as design, and complexity arises by self-regulating processes in nature all the time. What kind of “designer” would give you a vestigial organ that serves absolutely no purpose except to possibly kill you? The existence of the appendix alone should be enough to show how ridiculous this notion is on it’s face.
Would that I had the rhetorical fortitude - or the time - to communicate these ideas that day last October.
But this rehashing of William Paley’s famous “watchmaker” argument would serve as my first introduction to the world of the “Inter-School Christian Fellowship.”
My friends are all well aware of my philosophical leanings, and when one of them learned that a new “youth pastor” running the school’s Christian Fellowship was issuing challenges to atheists in the school, he suggested that I attend a few meetings with him just to see what was up.
What followed were several weeks of spirited debate with one Jason Cole - youth pastor at the local “City Heights Church” (one of those non-denominational evangelical types). Although I’ve since graduated, Jason and I still more or less keep in touch. Last week, we both had a chance to appear on a local radio station where we sparred once again over evolution.
Borne out of this saga however, is the beginning of a story much more interesting, and culminating in an event much more spectacular than anything I could have imagined.
Apparently, a “
I wish I was that cool. How many vampires do you know who talk into their cell phone like it’s some kind of futuristic Star Trek-esque communications device? I’ll tell you how many: 0.
It’s Pi day (3/14 — haha, get it?), and I can safely say I have accomplished something today. Ready? Here goes: