Comedy and Evolution

There seems to be a lack of comedy and Evolution being allowed for discussion in fundamentalist circles. The rank and file don't like Carlin or Kinison and don't even know who Hicks is. Evolution is frowned upon as an excuse to rule out the existence of God.

From my experience the fear of evolution and the dislike for comedy is a protection mechanism. If one of the flock starts to understand the basic theory of evolution they might start to question how the current belief system they hold came to be. I know it was enlightening when I figured out my old church was going off DL Moodys fundamentals of the faith dating back to the late 1800's.

Comedy teaches you to analyze situations and find the funny in it. If you can do that you can point out hypocrisy and not take things too seriously. In most cases if there is subject you can't joke about then you need to dig deep and figure out what the sore spot is.

Fundamentalist churches want people who can't think for themselves and avoidance of these 2 topics keep people in the fold. They want you to think the pastors are the only ones smart enough to interpret scripture and can do the thinking in these matters.

I guess knowledge is power and the more you have the less appealing black and white belief systems are. Giving up fear based systems with all the answers is scary and living with ambiguity is scary at first. Giving yourself the freedom to explore and grow in a new direction is so freeing.

My suggestion to anyone leaving fundamentalism or conservative evangelicalism is to take in lots of comedy and study basic evolutionary theory. This will help you confirm why this system ran out of gas for you and give you motivation to move on.