Dominant Species?

Dear George,

The reason religion rocks is that it’s a classic bait and switch scam. A faith that espouses love and humility is often the catalyst for violence and hubris. The reason is simple: The Bible is not what it says it is; it is what we say it is.

Let me give you an example. Humans are destroying the planet and each other because of the belief that the species Homo sapiens is the dominant species. We know this is so because God told us so. It’s right there in Genesis 1:26:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.

There you have it! If we want to turn the earth into a global parking lot, God has green-lighted the project.

Except…

There’s one little problem, here. God gave us dominion before Eve went apple picking.

Things went downhill after that. Talk about a pissed off deity, check out Genesis 3:17-19:

And to Adam he said,
“Because you have listened to the
voice of your wife,
and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
“You shall not eat of it,”
cursed is the ground because of you;
in toil shall you eat of it all the
days of your life;
thorns and thistles it shall bring
forth to you;
and you shall eat the plants of the
field.
In the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.

It sounds to me like God sort of outsourced man and demoted us to a derivative species rather than a dominant one.

However, thanks to our ingenuity, we have elided over that passage and remain convinced that we are still the dominant species. The world hasn’t been the same since.

I’ll give God credit for one thing; he has a wacked out sense of humor. Look at what he said to Eve in Genesis 3:16:

To the woman he said,
“I will greatly multiply you pain in
childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth
children,
yet your desire shall be for your husband…”

With that little stroke of genius, God gave woman the stronger sex drive, and men have been slaughtering and enslaving ever since in an effort to compensate for this deficiency.

God didn’t make us the dominant species; he gave us the hubris that will facilitate our ultimate self-destruction because we continue to operate under the delusion that we are the most blessed of all species.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones