Who’s your daddy?
Every once in a while I get bored and end up reading a bunch of Chick tracts. Today was one of those days and the one that really caught my eye was “Big Daddy?” This tract is a great combination of all the things I love about the work of Jack Chick. In order of their appearance, here are my top five favorite parts of this comic :
1) Our father?
Seriously, I need one of these posters.
2) The classic good/evil dichotomy
According to Chick tracts, every Christian is a calm person who would rather reasonably explain his/her beliefs rather than denigrate the beliefs of others. Nonbelivers, on the other hand, are hotheaded brutes who fly into an uncontrollable rage at the first mention of Jesus or the Bible. Also, heathens always say “Haw, Haw” when they laugh.
3) What the hell is he talking about?
Six types of evolution? Items one through four on his list have nothing to do with evolution. As far as five and six are concerned, what’s the distinction? Creationists like to seperate evolution into micro- and macro- because things like bacteria becoming immune to antibiotics prove that evolution exists. This distinction doesn’t exist in scientific circles. Also, Chick uses the word “kinds”, but the last time I checked, life wasn’t divided by “kinds”. Does he mean kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, or species? (Remember “king phillip came over for green salad”?)
4) Who are these “most experts”?
Just because you say “most experts now agree” doesn’t make it true. There’s a mountain of evidence that supports the evolution of humans and more of it is being discovered all the time.
5) The sudden conversion
Like all Chick tracts, this one ends with the sudden conversion of the heathen and a reaffirmation that Jesus is lord, blah, blah… It’s funny how Jack Chick is able to find the weakest-willed characters on earth. Every argument breaks down to something like this :
HEATHEN : Are you crazy!? All light on earth comes from the sun!
X-IAN : Well, Jesus said “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12)
HEATHEN : Wow! I’ve never thought of it that way! Praise Jesus!
X-IAN : Amen!
Also worth noting, like most creationist arguments, (incorrectly) pointing out holes in evolutionary theory doesn’t suddenly make creationism true. Suppose I could prove without a doubt that the earth isn’t really round. Does that mean the flat Earth society is correct? Of course not. There’s still the possibility that the earth is a pyramid, a cube, etc..
For a much better examination of the flaws in “Big Daddy?”, check out the examinations here and here.
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Well Greg, this is the first I’ve ever heard of Big Daddy, obviously I need to be hanging out at Hollywood Boulevard for some bad-ass tracts. How do you argue with someone who believes the world is 10,000 years old and that I came from a rib? Duplication of DNA from the rib would produce an exact replica (including sex chromosomes), therefore I would be a man… but then again, if they used logic, we wouldn’t be in this predicament in the first place… so you “Got to have Faith!” Fuck!! George Michael’s gay!!!!!
Comment by Erin — July 2, 2003 @ 7:03 pm
Adam was told not to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil nor from the tree of eternal life. Adam via Eve ate the fruit from the former, condemning all of us. But what if Adam had eaten the fruit from the tree of eternal life instead: would the world, though perhaps overcrowded, be a better place, especially with all the people there ever were available to tell all accurately what has been happening? Would people have been better off not knowing about good and evil?
Comment by Shag from Brookline — July 3, 2003 @ 4:46 am
Atheist: But if Adam and Eve didn’t know good and evil, how would they have known that disobedience to god was evil?
X-tian: Holy cow, I never thought of that. They couldn’t have.
Atheist: And if the whole concept of original sin is based on a false premise, then there is no original sin, Jesus didn’t come to redeem mankind, and the whole Bible is a sham.
X-tian: Damn you, Jack Chick. Oh, wait, can I still say that?
Atheist: Sure, what the hell.
Atheist and (Former) X-tian: Haw haw.
Comment by j — July 3, 2003 @ 8:55 am
jack chick is great!
i remeber this old track started with a board meeting of hellians below the earth’s surface. the ceo, satan, was wearing a peace sign and was expressing great joy over the reports of how this “sign of satan” (upside-down and broken cross) was working its way into youth culture.
i wrote the baptist church that stamped the back and gave them the history of the peace sign (it was a painting incorporating the cemophore positions of “n” and “d” for nuclear disarmament) and asking them if they should mabey consider a more reliable source to flyer with and they responded back to me by sending me MORE tracts.
Comment by josh — July 3, 2003 @ 11:42 am
I also tackled “Big Daddy” on my blog
Comment by Greg Morrow — July 3, 2003 @ 12:53 pm
I read this tract many years ago. The funniest part of it, if I remember correctly, is that as the young Christian convinces the other students evolution is bunk, their hair gets shorter.
–Rick T
Comment by Rick Taylor — July 5, 2003 @ 7:37 am
I must say I enjoyed reading the comments on this page. However, I have something to add. The Bible does not attempt to prove God created the universe, nor does it even attempt to prove God’s existence. These two ideas are part of the unwritten preface, which is creation itself. I think God asumed that by creating such an amazing, intricate and beautiful universe, mankind would seek their creator. To see if He was right, we must examine history. And indeed history tells us that every culture has sought out some kind of deity, including our own culture, and including myself. I say this not in boasting. I say this in fact. I sought God, I challanged God, I couldnt find God, but one day He appeared to me. All you have to do is ask. God is real. His name is Jesus. I hope many of you will take up the challenge of challenging God to his face. Dont just talk behind his back. Speak up and ask Him to come inside of you. Jesus became the Spirit (1 Cor 15:45) so He could come into your spirit (John 4:24). He created us and I’m thankful to know my Creator, Jesus Christ.
Comment by pdf — August 8, 2003 @ 1:24 am
If Christians believe in life after death what do evolutionists believe after death becomes them?
This is a serious question, please answer it truthfully, void of sarcasm and judgments.
Comment by sturk — October 8, 2003 @ 8:41 am
you asked for serious: I guess I’ll evolve into pure energy or decay into humus. Either way, I’ll be dead. But I will say honestly, as an alive person, I know a part of me that I call soul, that may paradoxically be *all* of me, including the parts that my ego sees as separate, that seems to be connected to something greater than the “me” I call “Me”. Therefore I guess I’d have to say I’m connected to “God”, but not necessarily a “God” that could be classified within the limits of the English language.
I’m reaching to an example of music that can be defined in English and mathematics, but on the whole contains more - a sense of spirit maybe. I know this sounds convoluted. It’s paradoxical. I think evolutionists and X-tians can both handle paradox without a major mind-melt, right?
Anyhow, when my brain is dead, and my identity is gone, I may very well have a soul or spirit that still “exists” in some sense, but how would that soul be identified as “me”? … it couldn’t. It would have to be part of some universal soul, not individuated soul, like a single raindrop falling into the ocean. I think that’s reasonable, and not in conflict with any either-or arguments.
THIS CONCEPT appeals to my sense of spirit and does not defy logic, but I must say WHO THE HELL KNOWS and WHO THE HELL CARES! I do good and try to “serve God” now because it works NOW, and other ancient teachers taught us clearly that all that ever can exist, exists NOW. I’ll cross that next bridge when I come to it, and I trust that God will be there.
Emmet Fox, eminent Christian theorist, pointed out that it’s [paraphrase] a fucking waste of time to contemplate post-Death while avoiding dealing with what to do NOW.
Comment by Gary — January 4, 2004 @ 2:55 am
Funny and true. I, too, argued the case against Jack Chick on my blog.
Incidentally, evolutionists DO differentiate between microevolution and macroevolution (speciation). But there is still plenty of evidence for macroevolution.
Also incidentally, there’s another category for taxonomy now–the domain.
Comment by Pygoscelis adeliae — January 21, 2004 @ 4:06 pm
I know (used to date) a vicars daughter who is fairly sure that god created life, and it evolved into people.
I really don’t understand this fixation with literal belief in a book of stories, what’s wrong with believing what makes sense?
All life on this planet has free will, it’s just that mankind has become intelligient enough to actually use it, not just rely on instinct.
Can’t see what the problem is really.
griff
Comment by griff — April 4, 2004 @ 6:34 am
if you like ‘big daddy’, you might enjoy the popDEAD parodies at http://www.geocities.com/xiansamongus
Comment by majordomo — September 22, 2004 @ 8:53 pm
PDF’s post is so right-on!
It’s my prayer that each of you discovers the Truth and come to know Christ before it’s too late. It’s unfortunate how mean and intolerant some of you have to be toward people who believe differently than you. The whole thrust of Evangelical Christianity is to show love, bring life and salvation to the world, through Christ. Such spitefulness really proves that not only does God exist, but so does Satan.
You can think you’re right all you want, but it would be a terrible shame to see eternity wasted on the error of your beliefs. We (our souls) are all going to live forever someplace, whether you choose to believe it or not. And, supposing I were wrong, we would all just live a short, happy life on earth, then blow away like dust. If I am not wrong, then we have eternity to lose. Is damnation and eternal torment worth the risk? Someday, you will not think it is.
I hope that someday you remember reading this post and have a reason to feel so glad that you did. And, I hope that none of you find yourself remembering this and wishing, with all of your hell-bound soul, that you would have received it.
Comment by Brenner — September 22, 2004 @ 11:16 pm