Some lizards lose their tails when something grabs them (by the tail). It's a strategy of defense. Sacrifice the time and energy that went in to making the tail in order to avoid the total sacrifice of becoming prey.
In an organizational model what you have are individual members, or sub-groups, of a larger group, who do things, accomplish things, steal things, destroy things, lie, murder, cheat, etc. whatever. And it benefits the group. But anytime there's an accounting, anytime there's a legitimate complaint, anytime the immorality of what took place is lined out clearly, the tail is sacrificed. So that a man who shoots a doctor in his home because that doctor works in a clinic that provides abortions to some of its patients, or an expedition of missionaries accompanied by soldiers who kill natives who resist their advance and claim the land those natives were defending, are not Christians in the sense of acting for Christianity, even though they are, even though they say they are, even though right up until the moments when the actions that are undeniably immoral are committed everyone is agreed that these are Christians.
But once the doctor's shot the shooter's a lone actor, an exception, abnormal, and he's set apart as not being one of the faithful, even though behind the scenes there is sympathy and support, and compassionate understanding. It's just that the illegality of what's been done will never be shared by the group that caused it, that encouraged it, that benefits from it.
So the lizard can risk exposure to get to what it needs, can risk more exposure thanks to its disposable tail, and it benefits from that increased radius of possibility. And the "church" benefits from many things that it is not responsible for, or not held responsible for. This isn't unique to Christianity, many political bodies behave this way, championing a set of moral codes they don't adhere to except in the most abstract way, while on the ground, in the clinch, they have no morality at all, just the same headlong lunge toward survival and reproduction that every other creature has.
It gets clearer when you see how accountable the enemy must be, for all actions by all its affiliated members no matter how loosely connected, no matter even if they've been disavowed already. So that many Arabs who have publicly condemned the actions of terrorists will be treated as though they support everything, even the most violent acts of the most radical Islamic jihadists.
But the consequent symmetry is missing.
Christians in the center of America won't take the blame for the inhuman tortures and cruel and savage killing of non-combatants, not just now in Iraq, but for most of the last two centuries, won't take that blame as Americans, nor as Christians, even though the torture and the killing are done in the name of both those powerful groups.
Lies, and easily discarded truths, and sacrificial players. It isn't about morality, it never was, it's about survival, about living and reproducing.
So that the anti-evolutionist stance of many fundamentalist Christians is actually an evolutionary strategy, it culls the unwanted from the herd, it separates one kind from another and says one has more value than the other. It's a kind of sexual competition, though it takes place on a higher level of complexity than between two competing individuals.
The dispute means nothing except as a rallying point.
In an organizational model what you have are individual members, or sub-groups, of a larger group, who do things, accomplish things, steal things, destroy things, lie, murder, cheat, etc. whatever. And it benefits the group. But anytime there's an accounting, anytime there's a legitimate complaint, anytime the immorality of what took place is lined out clearly, the tail is sacrificed. So that a man who shoots a doctor in his home because that doctor works in a clinic that provides abortions to some of its patients, or an expedition of missionaries accompanied by soldiers who kill natives who resist their advance and claim the land those natives were defending, are not Christians in the sense of acting for Christianity, even though they are, even though they say they are, even though right up until the moments when the actions that are undeniably immoral are committed everyone is agreed that these are Christians.
But once the doctor's shot the shooter's a lone actor, an exception, abnormal, and he's set apart as not being one of the faithful, even though behind the scenes there is sympathy and support, and compassionate understanding. It's just that the illegality of what's been done will never be shared by the group that caused it, that encouraged it, that benefits from it.
So the lizard can risk exposure to get to what it needs, can risk more exposure thanks to its disposable tail, and it benefits from that increased radius of possibility. And the "church" benefits from many things that it is not responsible for, or not held responsible for. This isn't unique to Christianity, many political bodies behave this way, championing a set of moral codes they don't adhere to except in the most abstract way, while on the ground, in the clinch, they have no morality at all, just the same headlong lunge toward survival and reproduction that every other creature has.
It gets clearer when you see how accountable the enemy must be, for all actions by all its affiliated members no matter how loosely connected, no matter even if they've been disavowed already. So that many Arabs who have publicly condemned the actions of terrorists will be treated as though they support everything, even the most violent acts of the most radical Islamic jihadists.
But the consequent symmetry is missing.
Christians in the center of America won't take the blame for the inhuman tortures and cruel and savage killing of non-combatants, not just now in Iraq, but for most of the last two centuries, won't take that blame as Americans, nor as Christians, even though the torture and the killing are done in the name of both those powerful groups.
Lies, and easily discarded truths, and sacrificial players. It isn't about morality, it never was, it's about survival, about living and reproducing.
So that the anti-evolutionist stance of many fundamentalist Christians is actually an evolutionary strategy, it culls the unwanted from the herd, it separates one kind from another and says one has more value than the other. It's a kind of sexual competition, though it takes place on a higher level of complexity than between two competing individuals.
The dispute means nothing except as a rallying point.
