Creationism Upheld, Theoretically

Father of Evolution Theory still stirring debate

Monkey's Uncle or not, Charles Darwin framed the contentious debate over who we are and where we came from. Meanwhile, Chupacabristas cry foul at the goal line in Amazing Updates and on this Date in Amazing History Fidel Castro settles in for a long stay at the top in Old Havana.

Much of the scientific and academic world this week has observed the 198th anniversary of the birth of the eminent English naturalist Charles Darwin, whose 1859 landmark work, The Origin of the Species, laid the foundation of the Theory of Evolution. Darwin subsequently became one of the 19th and 20th Century's most controversial figures. Even today his towering legacy is contested as fiercely as ever by proponents of Creationism and Intelligent Design. Not long after his passing in 1882, doctrinal zealots in London circulated a story (proven false) that Old Charlie had a deathbed conversion to Christian Orthodoxy whereupon he recanted his celebrated Theory.

Happy 198th Charlie!

Therefore it is quite appropriate at this time that I should address a question that has, over the past fifteen years or so, often been posed to me by a number of sincere individuals. Does my own cornerstone Integrated Theory of Inversional Constructs (ITIC) allow for the POSSIBILITY of Intelligent Design? That is to say, could ITIC allow that all life on the planet was deliberately and precisely placed here (and perhaps within a much shorter time frame than conventional scientists believe) by a single All-knowing, All-Powerful Creator?


To that question, the answer is an emphatic YES. Of course it is possible. Is it probable then? Before dealing with the latter question I should point out that an ITIC embrace of Creationism would raise the corollary, but equally valid presumption or possibility of Unintelligent Design or what has been termed Abortionism. According to this theory, everything on the planet is attributable to a Vastly Powerful but Unknowing and Mostly Incompetent Supreme Bungler who has botched or miscarried almost every single undertaking He has put His clumsy Hand to. Abortionism would explain the myriad inconsistencies and biological blind alleys that proliferate in Nature. It would also go a long way toward explaining many senseless cataclysms and disasters that have befallen the earth over millennia, including meteors slamming into the planet, the Black Death and the Bush Presidency.

Accordingly, the inverse corollary would stipulate that not only did dinosaurs and people NOT share the planet at the same time but dinosaurs themselves were separated by geologic ages so vast that a Tyrannosaurus might have had to wait centuries before a Brontosaurus would show up and provide him with lunch. The age of the Earth is not four or five billion years but more like 40 or 50 billion. Noah and his family didn't spend 40 days and 40 nights on the Ark but 40 years and 700 grandchildren must have spilled out of the boat when it landed at Ararat. By which time the throng of hungry Noahans had eaten every last pair of animals on the craft except for two types of rodents: rats and rabbits which the passengers learned to breed and prepare in an infinite variety of ways. As for fresh vegetables, try having seaweed soup everyday for four decades.

Theologian Melvin postulated
God as an Adorable Boob

These and other such teachings formed the basis of Melvinism, a Protestant sect that arose in 16th Century France and was later spread by ardent missionaries to Equatorial Africa and Brazil. According to Jean Michel-Ange Melvin, the Paris-educated theologian who founded the faith in 1527, mainstream churches had completely misinterpreted the Old Testament texts and Christian gospels. God was not a jealous and vengeful Omnipotent Deity who could order the massacre of thousands at the drop of an idol, declared Melvin, rather He was a kindly and well-meaning, but essentially accident-prone Celestial Parent (named Yeeow-zaah) who just got things wrong most of the time. Jesus wasn't crucified on purpose but accidentally nailed to a cross-bar during a sandstorm that blew up as the Helpful Carpenter was assisting Roman soldiers to erect a suburban racetrack. Actually, it was a gladiator ring but the soldiers withheld that information from the pacifist Savior. Melvinist doxology doesn't involve prayers to the Heavenly Father but for Him.

A number of Melvinist churches flourished in France and its colonies up until the eve of the 1789 Revolution and then rapidly dwindled when Napoleon condemned the faith as an anti-Republican heresy. Today only a few remote Melvinist congregations in Northeastern Brazil continue the practice where it survives as a curious blend of Candomble, Macumba, Spiritualism and Reform Judaism. Melvin himself was buried beneath a small headstone in a corner of the famed Cimetiere Pere LaChaise in Paris but was dislodged in 1971 to make room for Jim Morrison of the Doors. The current location of the Melvin reliquary remains a mystery.

To sum up: In terms of classic (if something first advanced in 1954 could be called classic) ITIC analysis, Creationism and its presumptive corrollary Abortionism must be seen as equally valid and logically compatible alternate theories of the Earth's origin and, I would say, merit equally serious study in our schools and institutions of higher learning.

AMAZING UPDATES:

Rev. Chong Migillicuddie has written from Barranquilla that several of his Iglesia Adventista Chupacabrista (IAC) parishoners are furious that 19-year-old Hamish Gomez of Miami Beach dared to associate the miraculous reappearance of the "Chupas Divinas" in Florida with anything so tawdry as betting on the American Super Bowl. "It's unfortunate nonsense like this," says Chong "that utterly ridicules and sensationalizes the Chupacabra manifestations, obscuring the true nature of their heavenly mission. I would have thought that a person from a Jewish background would have deeper sensitivity for this wondrous apparition. After all," the Reverend continues,"We now know It wasn't really a ram that got tangled in the brambles as Abraham prepared to make a burnt offering of Isaac. It was a goat, placed there by an angelic Chupacabra under orders from On High." Rev. Chong says an IAC task force is working on a Chupacabra Cabbala citing numerous Old Testament passages that are suggestive of Chupa intervention.

We've received the latest revised forecast for the Year of the Pig (which begins next week), from noted Shanghai astrologer Dr. Yao Man Fu-Zi who foresees several startling political omens in the zodiacal alignments for 2007 and beyond. This subject will be further explored in the next Amazing Realms installment.

El Jefe goes the distance
Photo: Philippe Halsman
cover LIFE Magazine 1961

THIS DATE IN AMAZING HISTORY:

14 February 1848 Democrat James Polk becomes the first U.S. President to be photographed in office (by Matthew Brady) and so begins a charming American political tradition: the White House photo opportunity. This tradition will be utilised a great deal by succeeding presidents, especially embattled Republicans waging unpopular wars.

13 February 1865 The desperate American Confederacy approves the recruitment of slaves as soldiers on the proviso that their owner's approval is gained. Thus blacks in the South are offered the unique opportunity to fight on the losing side of a war aimed at keeping them in bondage forever. General Robert E. Lee surrenders at Appomattox two months later thereby permanently ending both the Civil War and slavery in the U.S.

16 February 1959 Victorious revolutionary Fidel Castro takes the oath as Cuban premier in Havana. Exiles in Miami and American CIA agents immediately start planning the Bearded One's downfall but the wily El Comandante-en-Jefe will be around a very, very long time.

Chupacabra Omens Erred with Bears at Superbowl XLI

The notorious Chupacabras may be back in the Everglades again reopening the debate over whether they are real, imagined, from outer space, heaven-sent harbingers of a New Covenant or did they augur an auspicious but erroneous omen for the Bears in Super Bowl XLI? At least one local astrologer thought so. In Amazing Updates, a Hong Kong electronics heir ditches a run for the US Congress in order to pursue Britney Spears and On this Date in Amazing History Edna Everage misses her first chance to meet the Queen.

Allegedly first sighted in Puerto Rico in the summer of 1995, no rumored creature in recent memory has caused quite as much stir and media hyperventilation (in Latin markets at least) as the notorious Chupacabra or goat-sucking demon. Breathless reports about "beasts which drained the blood of goats", made by the San Juan tabloid El Vocero, were quickly followed by similar manifestations in Mexico, the Florida Everglades and even Brazil. The "creatures" were variously reported as walking on two-legs, having bat-like-wings and fearsome dentition or curved fangs. Further accounts mentioned reptilian skin, spines or quills on the back, muscular arms, hands with three fingers and a thumb tipped by thick sharp claws, large red eyes, many sharp teeth and a long tongue or extractor.

CHUPACABRA by Ricardo Pustanio

Low-budget Mexican and US filmmakers, always on the look-out for fast-buck monsters, lost no time in transferring the "terrifying" beasts to the cinema and video screen, churning out a total of eleven productions since 1995: Ataca el chupacabras (1996); El Chupacabras, (1996); Adventures Beyond: Chupacabra (1997); Guns of El Chupacabra (1997) aka "Chupacabra, El" - USA (working title); Legend of the Chupacabra (2000); Chupacabras (2000); El Chupacabra (2003); Bloodthirst: Legend of the Chupacabras (2003); Bloodthirst 2: Revenge of the Chupacabras (2005); Night of the Chupacabra (2005) Chupacabra Terror (2005) aka "Chupacabra: Dark Seas" - USA (TV title). In most depictions, excepting a 1997 "documentary," the chupas are clearly portrayed as a menace to humans, even slaughtering passengers on a ship. Yet in the "real-life" testimonies and evidence compiled to date, the chupa victims have all been livestock or household pets. Then again who would pay good money to watch a movie about a terrified goat or an imperiled parakeet?

In his latest foray into the case, psychic detective Herschel Gomez once again called in his distinguished relative, Dr. Domingo Dombrowski, widely noted for being the first scholar to receive an advanced degree in Chupacabrology from Puerto Rico's Instituto de Cryptozoologia de Caguas,1974 (formerly the Caguas College of Applied Phrenology). Dombrowski, who now resides near Orlando, FL is the same researcher who solved the celebrated 1960 "Bat Monsters of Bayamon" controversy (a hoax) and the sensational 1963 case of the "Cataño Fairy" (a runaway juvenile midget from the touring Nicaraguan side-show El Circo de Tacho). He claims the earliest "chupacabra" sightings actually date back to the 1600s when Taino Indians still lived on Puerto Rico. The name, he says, derives from a Spanish approximation of an Arawak dialect (aboriginal) appellation.


IMAGE SOURCE

Together Gomez and Dombrowski first visited a West Everglades site in 1996 where four eviscerated goats were discovered over the Easter Weekend. Dombrowski dismisses the notion that the chupacabras were either dogs (the opinion of local zoo officials) or creatures from outer space. Nor does he believe that they have recently migrated to Florida from Puerto Rico. "As stated in my 1974 work, The Chupacabra Chronicles of Las Casas, it is my firm opinion that these are hybrid creatures that have existed in the Caribbean basin since the earliest days of the Spanish conquest. The Chupacabra," affirms Dombrowski, " is probably a centuries-old cross between a now extinct species of South American lemur and a Malaysian flying fox (fruit bat) introduced to the region by Catalonian sailors previously stationed in the Philippines."

Elsewhere this past year, the first chupacabra sightings were reported in Central Russia where the creatures were said to be feeding on turkeys. In Turkey, where no chupas have turned up yet, turkeys are called hindi implying they come from India. Although there have been no chupas reported on the sub-continent, some researchers now think the 2001 case of the Monkey Man of New Delhi bears renewed examination.

Meanwhile, fresh reports of Everglades sightings have excited Reverend Emiliano Chong-McGillicuddie, a South American clergyman who eleven years ago first proclaimed sightings of the chupacabras to be " apparitions intimately connected with world changes and the spiritual reawakening foretold by so many visionaries including Edgar Cayce and Madame Blavatsky." Chong-McGillicuddie, formerly Pastor of the Asemblea Espiritista Carismatica de Medellin, Colombia, had just announced that a new congregation--Iglesia Adventista Chupacabrista-- was formed in the port city of Barranquilla to propound a revised cosmology in which the "divine chupas" were the heavenly harbingers of a New Order "in which the Lion shall not only lie down with the Lamb but the Goat shall hang out with the Bat."

Chong-McGillicuddie spent three days in Virginia Beach in December 1995 pouring over the Cayce archives for possible references to the chupacabra apparitions. Based on his research--correlating certain Cayce readings with six key Nostradamus quatrains--the pastor had concluded that the chupacabra phenomenon signaled the New Advent of Planetary Salvation. Rev. Chong notes that the letters in "Chupacabrista" easily form "CabraChrista" (Christ-goat). He plans to lead a party of his followers to the Everglades later this Spring in hopes of a revelatory sighting.

Finally, Herschel Gomez's young nephew Hamish Gomez insists that the most recent chupa appearances were also an omen for the SuperBowl XLI being played in a stadium not far from the Everglades itself and where livestock-devouring creatures were first reported in 1996. "Look," says Hamish, an avid astrologer like his uncle, "the Bears secured their conference title earlier this month under Capricorn, the Sign of the Goat. Chicago is a city famous for its stockyards and it was once burned to the ground by a cow!" "Not only that", adds Hamish, " if you rearrange the letters of the Spanish word "Chupacabrismo" (meaning Chupacabra-ness more or less) you get "Chicapo B'ars". " Close enough, even for Nostradamus maybe. But not for Peyton Manning as it turned out much to young Hamish's considerable embarrassment. Uncle Herschel also pointed out that the Colts won their conference title under the Goat as well. The Chupacabras, for their part, have no comment. And those unfortunates who bet heavily on Chicago turned out to be the biggest suckers of all.

AMAZING UPDATES:

IMAGE SOURCE

Hong Kong Electronics scion Fu-Tze (Footsie) Feldman, a Fort Lauderdale tax attorney, has notified local Republican Party operatives that he will not contest freshman Democrat Ron Klein in a 2008 US Congressional race. "Call it the surge that broke the camel's back," he told friends recently. "The way this war is going, the GOP nomination won't be worth a pitcher of warm spit," he added, colorfully recalling the candor of a Depression Era vice-president.

For the present Feldman is in Hollywood (the West Coast one) hoping to wrangle a way to escort Britney Spears to the Academy Award Ceremonies later this month. "She'll forget all about K-Fed once she's exposed to the special aura of F-Foot," he said, though his friends admit that the family's $6-billion fortune might have some bearing on Ms. Spears outlook. If Feldman manages to take to the young pop-star to the Oscars then he'll also invite her to a Chinese New Year Gala at uncle Chuk Wam-Bang's sumptumous mansion in Malaysia the following weekend.


ON THIS DATE IN AMAZING HISTORY:

Feb 3 1690
The first paper money in America is issued in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. But the local Indians refuse to accept it. Nor, after hearing what happened in Manhattan, will they accept glass beads either.

Feb 3 1954
Millions greet Queen Elizabeth II in Sydney on her first royal
trip to Australia. Unable to attend, future honoree/housewife Edna Everage sends regrets from Moonee Ponds.

Feb 4 1889
Harry Longabaugh is released from Sundance Prison in Wyoming, thereby acquiring the famous nickname, "the Sundance Kid." Upon seeing himself in the mirror for the first time after a long period of incarceration, the Kid is devastated to realize that he looks nothing like Robert Redford.

Young Edna
GREAT WIGS

Feb 4 1909
California law segregates Caucasian and Japanese schoolchildren, thereby extending to the Nipponese youngsters the same honor that Chinese pupils in the state have enjoyed for decades. Academic test scores for both groups soar while white kids in the Golden State go on to distinguish themselves in swimming, square dance and choir.

Feb 5 1900
The United States and Great Britain sign the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, giving the US the right to build a canal in Nicaragua but not to fortify it. Nicaragua, a sovereign nation at the time, is not a signatory and the Americans later decide to stiff the British by building a canal in Panama instead.