The Fish Wars

Jim Miller wonders if there is a truce in the fish wars, and offers the picture at right, from the back of a Toyota Prius, as possible evidence. What are the fish wars? Well, they're the wars between the Christian fishies and the Darwin fishies (you know, those little car trunk symbols), yet another proxy fight in the larger culture wars.

Back in the dark days before the blogosphere existed, I used to correspond on Usenet on a couple newsgroups. One, alt.fan.cecil-adams, is a group devoted to discussions of skepticism and mythbusting in popular culture. Back in 1998, I had this to say to a put-upon Bible-belt humanist who wondered why the Darwin fish symbol might be considered arrogant:

Actually, I've always thought that the Darwin/Fish sticker is arrogant (and silly) and not because it is blasphemous (Though I'm religious, I don't consider the sticker to be at all blasphemous). It is arrogant because it is childish and it sports a worldview that is every bit as closed-minded, wrong-headed and moronic as that which it purports to poke fun at. And here I am not saying that Darwinism is close-minded or wrong, just the silliness that would prompt someone to put such a sticker on his car.

I don't live in the Bible-belt, so I don't think I can appreciate the pervasiveness and oppressiveness of the overbearing religious culture that many rationalists claim exists there and prompts them to such fits of pique that they find it necessary to childishly thumb their noses at religiosity. However, I see plenty of "Fish" stickers and a small, but significant number of "Darwin/Fish" stickers. The "Fish" stickers usually appear on Pontiacs, Hondas, and the like, with no other markers indicating the religious vehemence of the owner. No rapture, hellfire and damnation, Honk-if-you-love-Jesus, or any other fundamentalist sentiment whatever. To me they seem to be the equivalent of wearing a small crucifix. They say "I'm a Christian"...Beyond that, they usually don't show many other clues about the owner. Maybe an NRA sticker, or a Dole sticker, or a Perot sticker (or even a partially scratched off Clinton/Gore sticker). The cars don't scream out "I'm a Christian, and not only that, I'm a God-fearing, Bible-reading, home-schooling, fundamentalist Christian, and you, Sir, are on the way to Hell for your un-Godly secular humanist beliefs"

The Darwin/Fish stickers are often found on Volvos and sometimes sport other stickers of the "In-Your-Face Humanist" variety: "Question Authority", "I'm Pro-Choice and I Vote", pink triangle, rainbow, etc. Maybe a Nine-Inch-Nails sticker. The owners seem to be ... college educated, and also seem to think of themselves as "right-thinking". But because they are obviously putting themselves in distinction and opposition to plain-vanilla Fish people, they seem to say "I'm a rationalist Humanist and proud of it, and you inbred Fundy mouthbreathers are ignorant fools."

The arrogance comes in two flavors. First, the sticker seems to assume that anyone who would sport a plain-vanilla Fish sticker is a Biblical-literalist creationist. Or, worse, that all Christians are such. This shows ignorance and arrogance about Christianity. Arrogance, because the person making the criticism (or poking the fun) purports to be a rationalist bien-pensant, and hence should know how to make distinctions. Second, the sticker assumes a false dichotomy between religion and science. What the sticker is also saying is that Darwinism (and by implication, all science) and Christianity (and again, all religion is usually implied) are incompatible and mutually exclusive. This is not only logically false, but neither is it assumed by all intelligent Christians, or for that matter, by all rationalists. Thus the "wearer" of that sticker arrogates to all rationalists a certain childish, petulant, and close-minded view of our state of knowledge.

I don't know if the wars are any less hot now. But maybe there is peace in one car.