Brave old world

Let us imagine, you and I, gentle reader, that the evangelicals have triumphed, and that the teaching of evolution is banned in schools, and all books that mention the word have been burnt in a jolly bonfire in town squares across the country. Dawkins and Dennett and Horton have been sent to a gulag for re-education in intelligent design ('Yes, yes, I see it now, bacterial flagellum, irreducible complexity, please, please, not the waterboard again'), and any medical or biological research which depends on evolution for its interpretation has been shut down. I know, I know, but be brave, there is method in my madness.

In this brave new world atheists would walk outside, and the scales would fall from their eyes, and they would see the glorious vestiges of creation, all around them. 'What would they see?' you ask, unable to wait any longer for this new millennium, the rapture that would surely be just moments away.

Well, Virginia, in order to answer that, you would have to set aside everything you know about the real world, and, brain washed to a clean slate, look around you at Evangelical World.

It is a world without radioactive elements, and one in which the atom has not been split (I like this world). There are no sedimentary rocks, but when you dig down a few inches into the soil, anywhere in the world, you will find a single layer obviously deposited by a flood. Your mouth feels a bit odd, and running your finger along the tooth row you discover you no longer have canine teeth. That appendicitis scar has gone, you never had an appendix (this is good stuff!). When your DNA is analyzed you will find that it is absolutely unique, as different to the DNA of chimpanzees as to mice or mussels.

There are dogs barking in your street, as always, but you suddenly sense that something is different, and when you see the dogs, out on the side walk, they are all identical, all look like tame wolves, all the same color. As are the cats on the fences, all tabby, all the same. And everywhere you look, you realize that all the sparrows are identical, and all the elms, and the roses (all with small, pink, single flowers, Evangelical World is a boring world).

And there are other people out on the sidewalk, and you realize to your horror that the men all look like you, and the women are all identical too. The men have one less rib, but you can't see that. All of the men and women are so alike that they seem to come from the same family, as indeed they did, all descended from one original pair of humans. Amazing what 300 generations of inbreeding can do, is it not?

You walk down to the zoo, anxious to see the new arrivals, a pair of Stegosaurus. Everyone had thought that people had killed off almost all the dinosaurs, just before the Flood, and the Flood had finished the rest. Of course plesiosaurs have always been an attraction in the marine aquarium, jumping through hoops, but nobody thought any terrestrial dinosaurs were left - must have clung to floating branches you suppose. Phew, those Stegosaurus are big and well armored - hard to believe people could kill them with spears, but you know they did, having seen it in the Creation Museum.

You walk on, this is such a nice day. But it is a worry, this global warming. As the preacher said on Sunday, there has never been weather as hot as this in the last 6000 years - no mention of it in the bible, or any history books, so it must be connected to the industrial revolution and all that coal being burnt. As the preacher said, we are only 6000 years from God resting after creating all this lovely world, and here we are destroying it. 'Must stop' he thundered (I like this world). I was a bit puzzled about coal - why did god make it all if he didn't want us to burn it? Just another of his mysterious ways I thought.

On to the museum. I wanted to check out an exhibition of animals from the Galapagos Islands. Some man called Darwin, nice fellow, became a preacher I believe, had collected them on a boat trip. Very interesting it was, but so few animals - just one kind of tortoise, and one kind of bird, and some funny water lizards. Still, no point in god making a whole lot of different kinds of animal on a tiny group of islands like that. That's what Mr Darwin said too.

Outside there is a big old oak tree someone has cut down. Interesting how they have all those rings in the stump. Wonder what they were for. Wonder how old the tree was.

Off again, time to go home. I passed the hospital. Hadn't been there for a long time. In fact they were thinking of closing it all down except for the part that fixed up broken bones. Used to be diseases around of course, in the bad old days. But pretty quickly everyone had become immune to the Cold, and the Measles, and that was that of course. Good old god, he didn't want us to be sick, just as well those diseases couldn't find a way to change. And just as well we couldn't catch any animal diseases - well, we are so different that we couldn't could we, the animal diseases would have had to change a lot to bother us.

The hospital was never much use anyway - they couldn't figure out how the human body worked (just as well god could, eh?). The veterinary school knew how animals functioned, but that didn't help much - no comparison really, and why would there be? They developed medicines for animals too, but they couldn't do the same for humans, nobody wanted to be the one to have a new medicine tested on them, and no use testing on animals, that told you nothing about how they would work on us. Pity really.

Getting late, the Sun has set. Good planning to have it go round the Earth every 24 hours, everyone gets a turn that way. And there are the stars. Some so big and some so small, almost hard to believe that they are all stuck on to the sky, all the same distance away. And heaven just behind them - good old god up there, watching down on us. Hope no one ever tries to fly up to the stars - god would get a shock, wouldn't he?

One of the children has lost a tooth. We all wonder, once again, if tonight will be the night we see the tooth fairy, but we never have yet.

Tomorrow to hear Mr Falwell speak. He is getting old. more than three score years and ten, which is odd because no one is supposed to live longer than that. Guess god thinks it is good that his world has such people in it.

And so to bed.

Like George Bernard Shaw 'I am the messenger boy of the new age. If you piece the various messages together, you will find an astonishing unity of endeavor, often, I admit, disguised and embroidered'. Come and piece them together at The Watermelon Blog http://www.blognow.com.au/mrpickwick