Demagogue

After watching the documentary "March of the Penguins" last month the last furthest thing from my mind was anything like this.

To Andrew Coffin, writing in the widely circulated Christian publication World Magazine, that is a winning argument for the theory that life is too complex to have arisen through random selection.

"That any one of these eggs survives is a remarkable feat - and, some might suppose, a strong case for intelligent design," he wrote. "It's sad that acknowledgment of a creator is absent in the examination of such strange and wonderful animals. But it's also a gap easily filled by family discussion after the film."

Hold on a minute, this film affirms that there is an "intelligent" designer? If anything this film is evidence that even if one were to concede, for argument's sake, that there is a sentient "creator" that he/she is far from intelligent. Do these people actually believe that someone intelligent created these fat, clumsy, flightless, defenseless birds who must walk 70 miles back and forth in the coldest place on earth for their basic surivival, meanwhile the food that they need so desperately to keep them and their species alive is RIGHT BELOW THEM. Intelligent designer? No. Cruel designer? Yes.

Then there are other Christians who think the films is an affimration of marriage/monogamy.

"March of the Penguins," the conservative film critic and radio host Michael Medved said in an interview, is "the motion picture this summer that most passionately affirms traditional norms like monogamy, sacrifice and child rearing."
...
Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, told the young conservatives' gathering last month: "You have to check out 'March of the Penguins.' It is an amazing movie. And I have to say, penguins are the really ideal example of monogamy. These things - the dedication of these birds is just amazing."
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Richard A. Blake, co-director of the film studies program at Boston College and the author of "The Lutheran Milieu of the Films of Ingmar Bergman" said that like many films, "March of the Penguins" was open to a religious interpretation.

"You get a sense of these animals - following their natural instincts - are really exercising virtue that for humans would be quite admirable," he said. "I could see it as a statement on monogamy or condemnation of gay marriage or whatever the current agenda is."

Sure they're the ideal of monogamy if monogamy means staying together just long enough to have sex and try to have a baby. If the baby doesn't hatch, they go their seperate ways. If they do successfully rear a baby they only stay together for the sake of the baby. After the baby is grown they both abandon it along with all the other defenseless babies and next very season they try to find each other again, but if they don't they'll mate with someone else. At best this is an example of serial monogamy, or on-again-off-again monogamy, but I'm sure if any humans actually lived like emperor penguins conservatives would consider them anything but monogamy affirming. For pete's sake, they're not even married! As for the anti-gay marrige comment, the existence of same-sex penguin couples that mate for life are well publicized. More evidence that these conservatives are using very selective reasoning to support their childish notions of an omnipotent sky-daddy is that the beginning of the film opens with the narrator describing how the penguins have been living like this for millions of years. MILLIONS. Not to mention that the Bible says nothing about penguins.

At least George Will shows signs of intelligent thinking, "If an Intelligent Designer designed nature," the columnist George F. Will asked recently, "why did it decide to make breeding so tedious for those penguins?"

You said it, George. There are so many expamples on non-intelligent design in nature that only a truly delusional, un(der)educated person can wholly reject the theory of evolution and believe that the earth is "new" and created by an intellgent, sentient being.