How Many of These Describe You?

Posted by jrosenhouse on August 21, 2009
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I am currently working my way through the book The Evolution Controversy in America, written by historian George Webb and published in 1994. I got a kick out of the following quote. It will help to know that the Reverend Ben M. Bogard was the pastor of a church in Little Rock, Arkansas in the 1920′s. He was not too fond of evolution.

To assist in the initiative drive, Bogard organized the American Antievolution Association. This group solicited membership from all individuals except, “Negroes and persons of African descent, Atheists, Infidels, Agnostics, such persons as hold the theory of Evolution, habitual drunkards, gamblers, profane swearers, despoilers of the domestic life of others, desecrators of the Lord’s Day and those who would depreciate feminine virtue by vulgarly discussing sex relationship.” (p. 102)

I’m thinking I wouldn’t be welcome there.

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Comments

  1. #1 Sigmund
    August 21, 2009

    I think I’m disqualified from membership on almost all of them!
    Then again if he’s restricting membership to those of non-african descent I guess modern genetics has turned it into a rather exclusive club.

  2. #2 Mike Haubrich, FCD
    August 21, 2009

    Right, Sigmund, it becomes the club that no person can join. I am in 9 of the groups excluded, pending definition of the word “habitual.”

  3. #3 MarcusA
    August 21, 2009

    Sounds like Bogard is describing the most boring party, ever.

  4. #4 Vasha
    August 21, 2009

    I presume that by “despoilers of the domestic life of others” he means adulterers, but the way he chose to paraphrase it is really interesting. This suggests that it’s okay for a married person to cheat as long as the person they’re cheating with isn’t married, then they’re not “despoiling” someone else’s marriage. Given that Bogard’s list is obviously addressed to men only, this makes sense — according to old Biblical tradition, it’s far less wrong for a man to cheat on his wife than to “steal” another man’s wife.

  5. #5 Baron Scarpia
    August 21, 2009

    He left out the gays!

    But I’m still disqualified on many, many grounds.

  6. #6 NewEnglandBob
    August 21, 2009

    Whose definition of ‘infidels’ did he use? If it is the Muslim version then all Christians are ineligible, including Bogard.

  7. #7 HP
    August 21, 2009

    Well, I don’t enjoy gambling, so I got that going for me.

  8. #8 Takis Konstantopoulos
    August 21, 2009

    Baron Scarpia: “He left out the gays!”

    Obviously, they didn’t exist back then :-)

    Actually, Reverend Ben M. Bogard’s list reminded me of the following reply that one radio listener, an apparently very hard-core Texas redneck bubba, gave to a person who asked him what he thought of Austin, TX:
    “Austin? Austin? I’ll never set my foot there. It’s full of communist homosexuals.”

    You see, being a “profane swearer” and being a “supporter of the theory of Evolution” are, to the minds of creationists, equivalent.

  9. #9 qetzal
    August 21, 2009

    Too bad for Bogard that we’re all “persons of African descent.”

  10. #10 natural cynic
    August 21, 2009

    He left out the gays!

    I think that is included in “despoilers of marriage”. It certainly would be nowadays in certain groups.

  11. #11 Other Jason
    August 21, 2009

    I’m trying to figure out what it means that the first group he excludes from his Anti-Evolution group is not people who support evolution, but African Americans.

  12. #12 Kate from Iowa
    August 21, 2009

    Yay! Negroes and persons of African descent are on there twice! We win!

  13. #13 Anton Mates
    August 21, 2009

    I don’t gamble, I rarely drink, and I don’t think I’ve despoiled anyone’s domestic life…although, wait, I encouraged a friend to come out of the closet while she was still technically married to a guy so he could keep his green card. That probably counts.

    Other than that, I’m disqualified on all counts.

  14. #14 TuckerK
    August 22, 2009

    Well, I don’t gamble and I’m not black, so…

  15. #15 SC (Salty Current)
    August 23, 2009

    I’m so out.

    The other AAA has been aggressively soliciting me, though…apparently unaware that I don’t have a car.

  16. #16 Leni
    August 24, 2009

    Oooh, so close! Hey, I could get them all if I made bets about sleeping with other people’s spouses!

    And I like how you can get in if you a drunkard, but not a habitual one. “Define habitual”, lol.

  17. #17 Evolution denier
    August 26, 2009

    I think I will join this organization. Maybe we can run ads on city buses that says “Darwinism is for losers”.

    Maybe it might say ” Evolution is Satan’s Greatest joke on mankind”.

    That would make a great t-shirt or bumper sticker as well …

    Maybe even a billboard…

  18. #18 Evolution denier
    August 26, 2009

    “Too bad for Bogard that we’re all “persons of African descent.”

    —

    What do you mean? We did not come from Africa. We came from the region which is the middle east. The Garden of Eden was in the general area of Iraq and Iran. The modern races started in Babel now called Iraq. People from Babel may have moved into Africa later on after mankind was split up and the languages seperated, but we are not from African descent. We are from middle eastern, maybe asian descent.

    If evolution is your basis and “millions of years” your basis, then you are wrong. The region of Iraq / Iran is where humanity began. Creationism happened, not darwinism.

  19. #19 CortxVortx
    August 27, 2009

    re: #18

    So, “Evolution denier” thinks we’re all Iraqis?

  20. #20 ml
    October 7, 2009

    #18, we know where your people came from: egypt, the land of DENIAL!

    *ba-dum-tsssh*

  21. #21 John Harris
    February 7, 2011

    I do agree with the ‘Evolution denier’ point of view.