Creationist Idiots And Their Love For Darwinian Sports

[L.B.]

Ever notice that the same Christard morons who scream about Darwinian "survival of the fittest"/natural-selection and call it ungodly are often the most rabid fans of sports?

 

There's NOTHING in the modern world outside of wild nature that demonstrates natural selection more than a sports game.

 

I used to play basketball (not on organized teams) in very, very competitive environments, often against players from top-flight colleges.

 

Trust me when I tell you that it's the little adjustments - the minute changes - that give one player an edge against a defender and cause another player to lose if he fails to make them.

 

There are legendary teams in every sport that, while they rank among the most successful franchises ever, still lost many games in their seasons.

 

There have been players who were not necessarily the most physically gifted who nonetheless were hard-working enough and savvy enough to overcome much more imposing opponents.

 

Christ-inanity is stupid to begin with, but listening to these people talk about how their god has blessed their team's season or caused their player of choice to excel is just hilarious. You never hear these idiots talk about how god caused their team to lose, or caused their favorite player to get embarrassed on the field or court.

 

Evolution is evident in training for sports, too. You simply must, MUST learn new physical skills and develop sharper mental acuity over (granted, shorter) periods of time in order to continue to be able to compete at any sort of level of notoriety or success.

 

I'd love to see some Sunday-School bunch of emasculated sissies play against some players I've known - all the Christards would be allowed to do for preparation is read their bibles and pray to their god. No amount of practicing the actual sport would be allowed, because, after all, evolving from one level of skill or complexity of performance to another is hellish and of the devil.

[★ Citsonga ★]

You never hear these idiots talk about how god caused their team to lose, or caused their favorite player to get embarrassed on the field or court.

 

[♦ ficino ♦]

Compare a pentecostal revival and the stands of a football game. Fat (white?) guys dressed up jumping up and down screaming in a group. Not all ex-Christians are non-sports, but maybe the personality types who are attracted to being in domineering groups are attracted to fundamentalism and rabid sports fandom, and personality types that hate that stuff get into other pursuits and types of groups.

[Lilith666]

I read in some book, I think it was Answers in Genesis, that claimed evolution is cruel because "survival of the fittest" is mean. (But burning towns and killing babies and stoning women for having sex and terminal disease and making animals eat each other is all fine.)

[Bhim]

OK let me start out by saying that I hate sports such as football, basketball, baseball, etc., and view them as the reason Americans demean academics and are stupid. If I were as rich as Trump I'd buy all the sports teams and ship them to China. Alas, that's completely off topic.

 

While I hate sports, I think that it may be a bit of a stretch to say that sports are object lessons of the very principles of evolution that Christians deny. Keep in mind that (to my knowledge, anyway), the phrase "survival of the fittest" is nowhere to be found in the academic works of Charles Darwin. The term was coined by the sociologist Herbert Spencer, which he applied to his social theory. The idea of the fittest surviving doesn't quite comport with what we observe concerning biological evolution. "Fit" is really context dependent. For an example, see sickle cell anemia. In its homozygous form it can cause various pathologies. But individuals who are heterozygous for this trait have a decreased susceptibility to malaria. So here we have a specific example of less fit people producing children who have an enhanced ability to survive.

 

Also, while I know this isn't the point you intended to convey, allow me to mention that learning traits over a short period of time is not analogous to evolution. In fact it's the opposite. Evolution by definition does not occur within a generation of organisms. It's a process, aided by natural selection (among other mechanisms), which changes allele frequencies over time and slowly alters the genetic makeup of populations. Just to provide some context here, evolution occurs on a similarly long timescale to the lifespan of an average main-sequence star (i.e. a literally astronomical timescale).

 

Again, if you hate sports then I'm your biggest fan. I think a more serious charge against Christians in this regard is that of hypocrisy. When I was a Christian I always found it telling that Christians devote so much mental and physical attention to idiotic head-butting when they should have been reading the Bible and studying it with their fellow Christians. "Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." (1 Corinthians 10:31). If you take the Bible seriously, there's no room for being obsessed with anything besides Jesus. I can understand Christians being devoted to their jobs, since the Bible tells them to be loyal slaves to their masters. Since I was a scientist even when I was a Christian, I knew other Christian scientists. I could understand why Christians were devoted to science, because "the heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork." (Psalm 19:1). What I can't understand is Christians watching grown men strap shock absorbers over their testicles so that they can impact their bodies into one another. I suppose this is just another manifestation of the evangelical culture of entertainment (e.g. "praise and worship" music) which began turning me off to Christianity before my deeper problems with it surfaced. There is little room for an intellectual in the Christian church. During my six years in the faith, I was interested in studying theology and discussing it with my fellow believers. But most of those fellow believers were more interested in watching football, going shooting, camping, or basically doing anything other than reading the Bible they claim to believe in. My experience is a testament to the fact that evangelical obsession with sports does not show the alleged glory of God to a certain segment of the church population.

 

Here's how I see it: let those dumbasses keep tuning in on Monday nights, or whenever the hell football airs these days, so that more of their theologically-literate cohorts may fall from their ranks.