Wrestling with the Rottweiler: On Reading Mr. Dawkins

So I finally read the controversial bestseller The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, two years after I read--and almost unquestioningly accepted--one of its formal rebuttals, Karen Armstrong’s The Case For God. Critics of Armstrong who also happen to be fans of Dawkins may be disappointed that my respect and admiration for Armstrong has not diminished, after reading Dawkins’s work. This is in part because I don’t believe that they’re direct, natural opponents. But I will disagree with Armstrong in her portrayal of Dawkins as overly aggressive or militant. What I have found in Dawkins is a mind as scrupulous as he is unflinching in his search for truth. The God Delusion is full of wit, robust logic, and great passion. There were moments where his contempt for religion nearly overrode the content of his arguments, but the content itself was virtually airtight, especially where it concerned religion’s track record. But again, his love for the natural world is greater than his hatred for the supernatural. I especially felt his love for the reality of the universe that science has unveiled, in the very last segment of the book, titled “The Mother of All Burkas”. But I’ll say no more about whether he takes it too far or not. You should go and read it and decide for yourself.

Theist? Atheist? Agnostic?

I decided to read this book because I felt it would be irresponsible of me not to. I read Armstrong’s response to New Atheism, so it’s only fair to examine New Atheism itself, right? Prompted by The Case for God I’ve spent the past two years reading books on religion, written by believers and nonbelievers alike. I’ve been reading book after book in an attempt to clarify not just what stance is best to take on religion, but exactly what it is I believe to be the truth about existence. I read this book most recently because I have been trying to sort out a very complicated relationship I have with religion and the idea of God.

To say I had lost my faith in God would be inaccurate, because I’m not quite sure I had any to begin with. My history with faith could be characterized by a series of attempts to get it, as though it were something I was lacking. This seems like a good enough indicator to stop trying,yet I’ve been compelled by and attracted to many aspects of religion all the same. Every time I thought I was done with it, something pulled me back. I felt very confused, and didn’t know where to stand. Whether it was faith (whatever that could possibly mean) or merely a sentimental loyalty, this feeling clearly demanded my attention. I felt condemned to agnosticism, and I didn’t particularly like being there, hoping that if I dug just a little deeper, I could discover what notion is enthroned in my psyche. So I wanted to see if ‘Darwin’s Rottweiler’ Richard Dawkins could tip me--poor, indecisive wretch--in the direction of atheism. I wanted to see if he could change my mind. I hoped to test my own views on religion and see if they stood up to the author’s rhetoric. Any God that could be argued away by just a book, I reasoned, was obviously a god I didn’t truly believe in, and not something worth believing in in the first place. Not just considering his arguments, but observing my reaction to his arguments would reveal myself to myself. So reading a book like The God Delusion was a method of honing, sharpening, and clarifying.

Biting Back

I was surprised by it, in a few ways. First, I didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as I did. I’m not a huge fan of polemic, but I must admit it was great fun to read, thanks to the wit and clarity of Dawkins’ prose. The kind of atheism Dawkins espouses is a much more politicized one. He encourages atheists to stand up to the discrimination they face. Atheists and skeptics are not given the same respect afforded to believers in many parts of the world, the uber-religious United States being one of them. Yes, he does outright attack religion in many places (mainly the parts where it sucks), but he wasn’t nearly as aggressive as I thought he would be. He seemed less pugnacious as Sam Harris in The Moral Landscape (and even less so than Hitchens in God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything). But if his words do seem barbed, you can hardly blame him, seeing as his own profession and everything he’s worked for is itself under threat from religious lobbyists trying to force schools to teach creationism and Intelligent Design alongside evolution. And let’s not forget when he was writing this book, the Bush administration had been halting funding in the U.S. for stem-cell research, a potentially life-saving pursuit. He feels his world--which is also everybody’s, by the way--is under attack. They bite, and he bites back (with pen, sans sword). So, fair enough.

Zeitgeist

But above all, I was also surprised at how much I agreed with him. A lot of his arguments I had at least heard the gist of before (such as were phrased by Comte-Sponville in The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality, and John Shelby Spong in The Sins of Scripture), while other conclusions he made were ones I had arrived at on my own, only to find them articulated better here. For example, I was always troubled by the way people tend to be selective of which parts of the Bible they obey, depending on their own cultural standards. This suggested that people don’t actually derive their morals from the Bible, but rather from standards outside and independent of it. Dawkins covers this in the chapter titled ‘The “Good Book” and the Changing Moral Zeitgeist’:

Remember, all I am trying to establish for the moment is that we do not, as a matter of fact, derive our morals from scripture. Or, if we do, we pick and choose among the scriptures for the nice bits and reject the nasty. But then we must have some independent criterion for deciding which are the moral bits: a criterion which, wherever it comes from, cannot come from scripture itself and is presumable available to all of us whether we are religious or not.

Of course, many religious people today don’t take the Bible literally, and don’t feel as though they have to, in light of the Bible scholarship that has emerged in the past two hundred years. But a non-literal view makes it much trickier to hold on to religion as we know it. Some can manage it, others can’t. I have been trying to find out which camp I belong to, and if God has any meaning left to me. If anything of my spiritual ties to Christianity remains, it has a closer resemblance to Spong’s non-theistic version. And for that reason, I actually found it easy to side with Dawkins on many points.

Religion = Child Abuse

Another point Dawkins raises that’s bothered me so often in the past is the contingency of religious belief. The biggest reason why I might prefer to be a Christian rather than a Muslim or a Rastafarian is because I was raised, more or less, as a Christian, and have lived in a predominantly Christian culture. How unfortunate for those living outside of Christendom! Are they to be damned forever because they weren’t lucky enough to be raised with a bias toward Lord Jesus Christ? More often than not faith is not a choice, so how could a loving God force an impossible choice on us? The habits we’re taught in childhood are incredibly powerful. And what Dawkins wants us to consider is calling a child a “Muslim girl” or a “Christian boy” is as ridiculous as calling one a “Marxist child”. He does not ask people to raise their children as atheists per se, but to raise them to think for themselves and decide what they believe after they’ve learned enough about the world and are mature enough to make that decision on their own. Makes sense to me. At first, I was a little shocked that he went so far as to call indoctrination a form of child abuse, but the more I consider it, the more I realize he’s definitely on to something.

“Gateway Drug” Religion

Religious moderates and religious liberals may resent the way Dawkins lumps them in the same camp as fundamentalists, but he does make a compelling case for doing so, however much it rankles people. One thing he mentions which I hadn’t considered before, and which I find very difficult to shake off, is that even though a religious practice and the doctrine behind it may be perfectly innocuous in most cases, it may lead to more sinister strains, as so many are based on something not based on conclusive evidence, and driven by faith, which doesn’t require evidence. The fact that so many of the 14th Dalai Lama’s followers regard him as a reincarnation of the semi-divine spirit Avalokitesvara makes them vulnerable to all sorts of abuses of power. Thankfully Tenzin Gyatso is an open-minded and compassionate person, and has given up his role as head of the Tibetan government-in-exile, and remains only a head of state and their spiritual leader. This is great, but this lineage is still a gamble, like all monarchies that claim power by divine right. Again, he has done much to bolster the hopes and morale of his people and promote peace throughout the world; I think this can’t be overstated. But while the Tibetans of Dharamsala are more democratically organized now, keep in mind that it took thirteen (Buddhist) predecessors to get to this point. And those ones didn’t seem to mind having all that power.

Credo: A Rough Sketch

If nothing else, I realised from reading this book that I have much more in common with atheists than I do theists: I believe in evolution. I believe the universe came into being 13.7 billion years ago. I believe that human beings are just another form of complex life, one more species among the billions on this planet, and we have an intelligence to which other animals are not entirely restricted, therefore we are not as special in the animal kingdom as we thought. I believe we are capable of uplifting acts of goodness, as well as chilling acts of evil, and neither are necessarily proof of a good or evil will pervading the entire, non-living universe. We are extraordinary, but we are not the be-all and end-all of evolution, because it’s an ongoing story and something better than us will emerge, (if we don’t destroy the planet, that is). I believe in all of these things which we have learned through the scientific method. And if new evidence came along to discredit it all, I would simply have to change my beliefs to suit the facts.

There are theists who believe all these things as well, but where I differ with them is that whatever transcendent experience we can acquire in this lifetime--satori, Grace, Brahman, creative flow--it is not likely to be the result of a Super-intelligence coming in from outside of our universe and deliberately injecting us with Himself. Whatever divinity is, it probably comes from within us, not from Elsewhere. Also, I don’t believe in the literal Virgin Birth, Resurrection, or any other such miracles, any more than I believe in the literal virgin birth of the Buddha or the literal resurrection of Osiris.

I can’t express how tempted I am to think in theistic terms, but if I were to be ruthlessly honest I would have to admit that there is no proof that our access to enlightenment is caused by Someone Else. I believe our focus on the hereafter is a threat to the good that comes from the here and now: this is the only good we’ve known, because now is all we have. There’s a reason our visions of heaven resemble Earth but shinier; it’s the only point of reference we have. C.S. Lewis’ assertion that because nothing on earth could satisfy his deepest longing implied there must be something beyond this world that does is unconvincing, though extremely attractive. It feels redundant to state these empirically verified beliefs, because I’ve held them for a long time now. But this book confronts me with them, and reminds me that to accept these things as truth and then adopt a worldview not based on them is irresponsible and lazy.

“To you be your religion; to me, mine.”

What I also appreciated about this book is that Dawkins cuts admirably through all the moral relativism that floats around in secular society. In a culture where it’s more P.C. to say ‘I don’t agree with you’ than to say ‘your argument is wrong’, I’m kind of impressed by his brass. If a Christian believes that only through accepting Jesus can we be saved, then this belief implies the corollary that souls of non-believers are in mortal danger.

He may not admit it in polite conversation, but it’s there. And yet I can’t even count how many conversations I’ve had that have shied away from it, out of politeness, or politics. Of course, a Christian can also believe in another person’s right to disagree. But that same person believes in a God who presides over believers and non-believers alike. It’s the same with an atheist. Even if an atheist says “You can believe what you like, I don’t agree with you,” he is implying that he thinks the other person’s worldview is false. We associate argument with discord and aggression, but it can have positive benefits as well. Being goaded into a kind of intellectual sparring match can helps us to clarify what it is we're defending. In arguing "your views are incorrect and here is why..." he forces readers to be really honest with themselves.

Let’s Talk

Attacking, demonizing and belittling the other side is obviously no solution. As the religion debate is enflamed more and more every day, I think we’ve got to be as compassionate and respectful as possible as we attempt to carry on a dialogue. Of course, it is difficult to hold a conversation when the other side is wholly devoted to your annihilation. But even in more peaceful company there is a danger in simply saying ‘you have your beliefs and I have mine’, agreeing to disagree and then going off and living in one's own hermetically sealed worlds. Living so subjectively makes it nearly impossible to speak meaningfully about anything, and we start to teeter over into nihilism. I think by taking a bolder stance on the matter Dawkins is trying to call our attention to that danger. Just because, as the truism goes, truth is subjective, it doesn't mean we aren't allowed to have our own convictions about the world. We’ve simply got to keep talking, and be open to our minds being changed. People accuse Dawkins of the same narrow thinking he diagnoses in his fundamentalist opponents, but he claims that if there was any sufficient evidence to discount evolution by natural selection or the Big Bang for that matter, he would be obliged to abandon these concepts, because that's what scientists must do. A fundamentalist, on the other hand, would dig their heels in deeper. Skeptics may have the upper-hand in this ongoing dialogue, because they are more ready to say “I was wrong” than their religious counterparts.

Homo Religiosus

Alright, so once finishing, the question remains: has Dawkins changed my mind about God? How about religion?

Dawkins covers almost every possible angle on religion, and you feel compelled to take a side. Let’s face it: religion’s track record is abysmal. And it is not just because it has been hijacked by human greed, hatred, fear and lust for power. People also do terrible things because they believe in them.

Perhaps religion should just die off, but in all honesty I think it won’t, not any time soon. However, I also think there’s still a great deal we can learn from religion, even if many of us can no longer return to its insane orthodoxies. I’ve talked about this before, but I’ll try to go into more detail about where I stand in a later post. For now I'll finish by saying I can’t agree with Dawkins, one hundred per cent, though I'm pretty close. Does this mean I am an atheist? Well, from everything I've just written it may sound like de facto atheism. This may be so, but even now the matter feels unresolved in my mind, and needs a post of its own, so I'll hold off here as well. I am far from finished with God. As far as religion is concerned, there may be ways of rethinking and reinventing it. It may take an imaginative leap not seen since the Axial Age to do it, but I still believe, however naïvely, that it is possible. If our name truly is Homo Religiosus and we are wired for religion as many anthropologists claim, this leap will have to be possible, or we may be seriously screwed as a species.

RSA Animate - The Divided Brain

Some may have already seen this video on Youtube or Facebook, but I liked it so much I thought I would post it again on here--also to atone for my lack of posting last week. And if you haven't already seen it, here it is for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!

It's James Ussher Day! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, THE UNIVERSE!

That's right, folks. Today's the day it all began. One sleepy day in late October, while strolling through the endless stretch of Nothingness and Chaos, God decided to make the Universe. And if it weren't for the dogged efforts of a 17th century Irish Archbishop named James Ussher, we never would have known it was today, 6015 years ago. If it wasn't for him paying close attention to the Bible and calculating back to the days of Adam and Eve, we would still be living the erroneous belief that it was 13.7 Billion years ago, not in 4004 BC. Whew! That was a close one! Thanks for putting that to rest, Jim. Good sleuthing!

Never mind that God started Time on a date as arbitrary as the 23rd of October (why not January 1st? Or Christmas? Or International Talk Like a Pirate Day?). And never mind that he started the clock counting down. Or that the earliest homo sapiens, the dinosaurs, most rocks, and Mickey Rooney all predate Ussher's reckoning of Genesis. Ussher was a smart guy! He was an Archbishop. You don't get promoted to Archbishop if you're the village idiot; he must've been doing something right. And hey, why not 4004 BC? Stranger things have happened. Besides, those creationists seem so darn sure about it. They must be right!

So for that, we thank you Mr. Ussher. And to you, the Universe, I say Bonne Fête à Toi! (And please don't stop existing just yet, k? I enjoy pizza too much!)

Two Selves

I am very glad to be on this side of the ocean right now, even though the west coast was under warning. I didn't hear about the catastrophe in Japan until later this evening, long after the wave was merely a ripple in our harbour. All the same, I'm grateful to be alive.

* * * * *

When I was reading The Moral Landscape, one concept I came across was the concept that we are split up into two "selves", the "experiencing self" and the "remembering self". The psychologist David Kahneman came up with these terms to describe the differences and contradictions in our own emotional lives. The remembering self is the one that does just that; it remembers, and it allows you to base your state of mind and predisposition on past experiences. The experiencing self is the one that exists in the present on a moment to moment basis, influenced by immediate circumstances. Kahneman makes this distinction because, Harris says, "these two 'selves' often disagree. Indeed, they can be experimentally shown to disagree, even across a relatively brief span of time.' To Harris and Kahneman's understanding, both selves have an equal share in the measurement of one's overall happiness.

This got me thinking about my own life, and how this concept applies to it. During the rehearsal process of Twelfth Night, if I were to be totally honest with myself, I probably had more periods of either frustration, boredom, depression, anxiety, or indifference, than I did moments of sheer delight, excitement, contentment, or creative flow. More often than not I went in to rehearsal to get it over with, and my mind was elsewhere. Even in performance those golden moments were few. And yet I can look back with an overriding feeling of fondness, and even pride at what we did.

Now this isn't unusual in any way. It's characteristic of anybody's emotional ride when creating theatre, and any sort of creative act for that matter. I imagine it's like an extremely milder form of childbirth, where the end somehow makes you forget the hell you went through. We're built this way, I get it. But we often forget the experiencing self when those good, nostalgic vibes come flooding in, and this seems counterproductive to becoming more self-aware and honest. We certainly don't think that way when we're in the thick of it. At the worst moments of rehearsal I found myself asking why I bothered doing it, and whether it was even worth it to continue. Furthermore, every trough seemed deeper and darker by the fact that I was already doubting myself and uncertain of where my path in life lies-- that's enough without all the added stress of a potentially rocky rehearsal.

And yet, reflecting on it, things seem rosy. Is this my mind blurring the details, protecting itself from melancholy? The main problem is when Harris says that both "selves" are equally valid. What are we to do about this, then? Which "self" is more accurate and truthful of how we really feel about these experiences? It's only a model, a way of describing something incredibly more complex and intricate than we can really conceive (like the model of an atom being a cloud of electrons; it's inaccurate, but it's the best we can do with words and symbols). Harris points out that the remembering self is just one mode of the experiencing self, since even when a person's mental state is affected by memories, it is being affected in the present moment. I look at photos on Facebook of Twelfth Night backstage, and I think "ah, good times", but even this is happening in the present. I am presently experiencing nostalgia, and it may be a blanket statement, but who's to say it's wrong? Moreover, how do we tell if a time in our life is bright, punctuated by dark moments, or dark, punctuated by bright moments? How many bad experiences do we have to have and how intense do they have to be before this period becomes a dark age? And vice versa?

Until we do better understand the brain, the mind, and the science of well-being (and I'm hoping Harris and his ilk are working hard at it!) we can delegate our experiences to the scrutiny of history. I still have trouble looking back on my journal entries from this past summer without getting emotional; it's still too soon, I guess. But the objective side of me knows that that time was extremely beneficial for me and yielded much. For the sake of the question I'm curious to see how I'll feel about Twelfth Night down the road, in the next few months. The next year. Five years down. Maybe just the same. Maybe not. But I loved the people, and I love the play, what more matters? We'll see. And when in doubt, we can remember what Shakespeare himself wrote:

"O Time, thou must untangle this, not I. It is too hard a knot for me t'untie!"

Two Month Catch-Up, Harris, and Armstrong

Wowza! It's been almost two months since I've posted on here. Two whole months! Well, enough of that silliness.

Let's see, what's happened since then? We've rehearsed Twelfth Night and recently opened it this past week and it's been generally quite well received. That's always nice, being a part of a show you're proud of AND the audience liking it too! Also, when not performing in the evenings, I spent my Reading Week with my family, which was just great. My sister, Gabrielle Volke, is going to be a published author very soon, with a short story in her university literary journal. Let's all cheer her on! Hurrah! Mazeltov! Olé! I'm quite proud of her.

In class we've been talking a lot about the logistics of going into the "real world" and how to survive there: we had a whole class on how to do taxes as an actor, another on resumés, and another still on writing cover letters and thank you letters to theatre companies. Another prof. of ours came in to talk to us about how to get an agent. We're being constantly reminded that we're not long for this undergrad world. As helpful as it has been, it scared the shit out of me, thinking about it so much. My doubts and uncertainty about my future course were only further fed when we were asked to write out a plan of where we want to be in the next year, in five years, ten years, fifteen. Some people had some ambitious and fantastic goals, and I wish them all the best. Others had a little more uncertainty and vagueness to their plans. I fell into the second camp. I noticed that I couldn't really see where I would be in five years like others, let alone the next one. I was considering attending the National Voice Intensive this summer, but I kept flip-flopping about it. So I decided I would wait on that one, and if I was still considering it around this time next year, then it would be the right decision. Only time will tell.

The through-line of my wishy-washy plan was that I be creating new work at every stage. I think this has revealed a very important strain of my artistic leanings, and perhaps what will keep me in theatre. I am not content to just be performing works that other people have made. I have to make my own. Whether it's in the form of a one-person show, collective creation, or as a playwright who lets others perform it, I need to generate new stories. I always believed in the actor as creator, so why not go the whole nine yards on that principle? That's not to say I've fully abandoned the path of auditioning for repertory theatres and whatnot, but there is a lot about that life that will not fully satisfy me. The writer in me will not be denied. On that note, I'm even considering going back to finish my Writing degree. But that's just one option. I'm pretty sure I want to continue with some kind of post-graduate schooling, whether it's for acting or writing. In fact, here is the complete list of options I've even briefly considered:

-Finishing Writing degree at UVic
-Writing MFA at UVic (after I've amassed a sizeable portfolio of written work)
-Acting MFA at York University
-Birmingham Conservatory at the Stratford Festival
-3-year certificate at National Theatre School
-Acting MFA at Yale School of Drama (thanks to Gen and Sarah for pointing it out)

Right now the first two options burn the brightest. But in the interim I need to not be going to school for a while. Again, time will lend some perspective on the matter, and I have no doubt that things will be a little bit clearer if I wait.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now, on the book front, I've had the pleasure of reading two books, the authors of which disagree with each other, and so naturally I'd love to hear a conversation between them. The first book was The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris. This guy has been lumped into the "New Atheism" camp, along with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. The premise of this book is basically this: moral relativists can sit down and shut up, because there is a way of determining "right" and "wrong", and science is going to figure it out. That's right, not only is science able to show how people behave, but in time it may also show us how we should behave.

He says that the values we hold as human beings (morality) can be related to facts about the world (science). The rightness or wrongness of an act is measured by its effect in the physical world, and in a person's brain specifically, translating into well-being or suffering. These are what we should use to measure a system or morality. He is quick to add that he is not claiming that science has the answers already, especially to some morally ambiguous actions. Nor does he claim that there is just one way. Rather, morality is like a landscape with many peaks and valleys. Some moral systems might be at an equal height on this landscape. Some might not. He points out that they are not all created equal: a moral system that multiplies misery and suffering in this world is not equal to one that mitigates suffering and creates well-being. Hence the peaks and valleys. This is why, he believes, we need not stand back and let something like the Taliban repress women in the name of religion. Those who feel they cannot do anything because who are we to say what's right and wrong? can simply view morality not as a mere cultural norm without any absolute value, nor even a set of arbitrary laws sent down from Heaven, but as a set of actions that translate into measurable facts about human suffering or well-being.

He makes some very fascinating arguments, drawing from his own experience as a neuroscientist, from psychology, and philosophy, but he always keeps it accessible and engaging to a broader audience. I'll admit he devotes a great deal of bile for religion, which disappoints me slightly, because I wanted to read more about a science of morality and save the critique of religion for a different book. But he does focus on the way some people have tried to combine science and religion, or rather used pseudoscience to justify articles of religious faith, with disastrous and embarrassing results, and I suppose this has something to do with his argument. Either way, this has been an extremely provocative read. Here's his TED Talk discussing the idea of this Moral Landscape:



The second book was Karen Armstrong's book Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life, which my lovely girlfriend got for me on Valentine's Day. It's a short little book, but it is very clever and has a lot to offer. Following her TED Wish to have leaders of world religions to draw up a Charter for Compassion, an act of restoring compassion, and the Golden Rule to the centre of the major religions and moral systems, Armstrong wrote this book. It's basically what its title says: a step by step guide in becoming a more compassionate person. Cleverly modelled on the Twelve Step program for AA, it is a template for how we can take specific action and make compassion a tangible part of our day to day lives.

As you read it, Armstrong advises us to work one step at a time, and not to move on to the next one until you have a firm grasp on the one you're on. She also reminds us that this will not come easily or quickly. It will take all of our lives and requires diligence, patience, humility and will. It is no less than a summary of what all the major religions are at their best: guides for compassion. On that note, she draws freely from these major religions and moral philosophies as points of reference, from Islam to Confucianism to Buddhism to ancient Greek philosophy (Socrates and Plato). She doesn't say anything new; she just repeats what these systems prescribe as far as compassion goes. But I think it's very smart to organize these actions into steps, from easiest to most difficult. This should make the process a little less daunting, in theory. The first step is basically about educating oneself about compassion, and its history. The next is learning about how it can translate into our own contemporary world. The third is learning to be compassionate toward yourself. It goes from there, in an ever-expanding circle, from "love thyself", to "love thy neighbour", all the way to the final step, which is "love thy enemy". The tools at our disposal, she tells us, are our capacity for empathy, practice of mindfulness, and even restoring the ancient practice of Socratic dialogue, a means of arriving at wisdom and understanding, as opposed to the other ancient rhetorical tradition of proving yourself right at whatever cost and shouting down your opponents, something our political leaders indulge way too much in. This book is a great follow-up to The Case for God, where she explains how religion was originally meant to be a spiritual technique that could only make sense in the doing, in action. Here's her TED Talk about the Charter for Compassion:



Alright, that's all for now. So in case I can't blog again until after school's done, this should make up for lost time.

Happy Birthday, Universe!

Today is James Ussher day. Why is that? Because 6014 years ago, God created the universe, and this 17th century Irish Archbishop figured it all out. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, on the eve of October 23, 4004 BC, EVERYTHING came into being. And we all owe it to Ussher's intrepid scholarship for pinning that date down.

Darwin was obviously on crack. Clearly, the dinosaurs and other prehistoric flora and fauna were wiped out in the Great Flood. It's a fact. Get used to it, evolutionary theorists. So today is for you, Creationists, you wacky bunch, and your champion, Mr. Ussher. I salute you!