Creationists and penguins
Are there creationist penguins? Suppose you’re a bird that cannot fly and that has to waddle 70 miles from the ocean to the nesting grounds through minus 50 degree snowstorms – barefoot – or scooting on your belly to take a turn standing for months in minus 50 degree snowstorms, balancing your one egg on your bare feet to keep it from freezing. Now suppose a creationist tells you that, yeah, God made you like that, that God, the intelligent designer, decided it would be great to make up a bird that cannot fly and that has to waddle 70 miles from the ocean to the nesting grounds through minus 50 degree snowstorms – barefoot … if you were that penguin, what do you think you would tell that creationist where he can stuff his “scientific theory?”
Are the creationists adopting the emperor penguin as their mascot? They appear to be all excited about the movie March of the Penguins because it proves to them that there is a god.
At a conference for young Republicans, the editor of National Review urged participants to see the movie because it promoted monogamy. A widely circulated Christian magazine said it made “a strong case for intelligent design.”
March of the Conservatives: Penguin Film as Political Fodder – New York Times, 9/13/05
The creationists are completely nuts. March of the Penguins is a fine documentary, but it proves nothing beyond that emperor penguins are exceptionally tough birds. The movie does way too much anthropomorphising of these birds. They are birds; they have teeeeeny brains. This is not about love, dedication, or monogamy. It’s about a bird that occupies a very specific niche in nature. Penguins are not very smart, and I doubt they have much in the way of complex emotions like love. And they reproduce with a different partner every year – that’s hardly monogamous. Yeah – they are cool birds and tough survivors, but their existence offers no more evidence of a god than male nipples* or crop circles.
*) Laura’s point