the spirit and the gene

On a nameless youth-oriented networking site a cousin (16, boy, so-cal) has taken to posting bulletins that declare his love for Jesus through various calls to faith. The posts usually involve hideous anecdotes like the following:

Evil science teachers asks class can you see a tree? Yes. Can you see the sky? Yes. Can you see god? No. So God doesn't exist. Six-year-old girl replies can you see a tree? Yes. Can you see the sky yes? Can you see the teacher’s brain? No. Well, according to your logic, it must not exist. Ha ha ha, the girl is smart because she has Jesus. Atheists are simplistic!

Other ones blame terrorism and natural disasters on the removal of prayer from schools and Dr. Spock (don't ask).

This is a wants-to-be-hip kid who sends me messages about indie bands, who is painfully aware of his slim and somewhat effeminate demeanor, but has not transformed himself into a hyper-masculinized teen-beast to accommodate for it. I babysat him when he was younger. He was amazingly articulate as a child; He was speaking in full sentences at two and a half, memorizing rap lyrics at four. He was always enormously curious and quick. So I hate to hear this business coming from him. I hate to see the ways in which the respites of my youth (punk rawk! teenage angst! loneliness) are being invaded by pop-culture Christianity. Feel lost? Rock out in anger against the God-less. Amen. Oh, the evils of co-option, of cultural parasites, of mimicry. Do you have sexual desires and a broken home? Blame Charles Darwin. The connections are all loose, free-association gone amok, fear-driven.

I, constantly recovering from a religious upbringing, cannot help but say something to the kid. I sent him a quote I heard this weekend on Speaking of Faith (NPR's soothing voiced show on religion). It's from John Polkinghorne (a scientist and priest)

"God did something much more clever than create a deterministic world. Rather, the world has the freedom to make itself."

I just like how easily it ends an evolution debate. So don't believe in Darwin, so don't get down with the last hundred years of science. At least, in all your praise and admiration, give the almighty credit for some creativity. For perhaps putting into place something a little more powerful and awe-inspiring then a regular, unaltered, dude. Instead hope for growth, for change, for your free will (on the conscious and the cellular level) to actually have weight.

Then again, back when we had God and prayer in schools we could still treat our wives as chattel! We had lynching, segregation, and vigilante justice! You know, all those true and anointed markers of true human progress.