The Obfuscation Report

I finally bought myself a car. I do have to admit that I have no idea how it works, it just does. I could tell immediately when I bought it that it was intelligently designed because it’s waaaay too complicated for me to understand. And everybody knows that if you don't understand how something works, the only logical solution is magic.

To open the door on my new car I had to grab and pull a handle on the side of the car. Oddly enough these handles fit perfectly in my hand and I knew that my car had to have been made by an intelligent designer. They couldn't have just happened. I was glad to see the intelligent designer created these door handles which makes it much easier to get in my car, I thought after watching the Dukes of Hazzard I might have to jump through the window.

After a few days I went back to thank the salesman for intelligently designing such a wonderful machine. He said “Hey man, I just sell them, I didn’t design it.” Then he asked why I don’t take the sticker out of the window. I told him that the designer must have had a purpose, so I’m not going to change anything. He told me the designer didn’t put that sticker in the window, the dealer did, and you were supposed to remove it after you buy it so you can see out the window. This was my first introduction to the difference between the original design and dealer add-ons.

My first big problem came after I’d had the car about a week. I was driving down the road when the car began to sputter and eventually stopped. No matter how hard I tried, it would not start again. I called a tow truck and had it taken home.

My friend and I then sat down beside the car and tried to figure out what was wrong with it. My friend, who is much smarter than me decided that the best way to figure out what was wrong with it was to figure out what was different about the car from when I first bought it. I told him that I bet it was the sticker in the window. I took the sticker out and now it doesn’t work.

My friend laughed at me at pointed to all the cars driving down the street. “Do you see any of them with stickers in the window?” “No,” I replied. “Well then, it must not have anything to do with the sticker.” He always has a way of explaining things so I can understand them.

At that point I began to think about what else was different and realized that there were two things that had changed. One is that there is a little set of numbers on the dashboard that started out at zero when I bought the car, but now has gone all the way up to 294. The other is a small gauge that has an E or the left side and an F on the right. As I drove, a little needle that started out on F had slowly moved to the E. When it finally reached the E the car stopped.

My friend exclaimed “Eureka! I have it!” He then explained to me that what we needed to do is crack open the gauge with the numbers that go up and roll it back all the way to zero. Then the car would start running again.

I decided to call my salesman and ask about those numbers. He told me those numbers were called an Odometer. Believe it or not, those numbers were the distance I had traveled in my car. All I could say was “I’ll be! Magic numbers!” He said the numbers do not tell you why the car is no longer running, and that in fact it would be a crime to crack open the odometer and roll it back.

Now that I knew that the Odometer wasn’t the cause of my car no longer running, I went back to my friend and explained to him that it must be the other gauge with the E and F on it. My friend suggested we crack that gauge open and push the needle from E back to F. I decided this was a good plan.

I told another friend of mine about my plan to crack open the E to F gauge to make the car work and he told me that I shouldn’t be trying to understand why the car doesn’t work. He said that the Intelligent Designer must have had A PLAN, and that I shouldn’t be messing with that plan. He said I should just go buy another car. He said we should trust that the designer knew what he was doing and we shouldn't try to understand how. He then made a joke I didn't understand about George Bush, Republicans and the Kansas City School Board.

At that point I didn’t know what to do so I called my salesman again and explained the problem. He laughed at me and told me it was the fuel gauge and that I was out of gas. Now I had heard of gas and had seen gas stations before, but I really didn’t understand what they were all about. So the salesman took me to the gas station and showed me how to fill up the tank. He told me I would have to do this regularly. He also made a joke I didn't understand about George Bush being an Oil Man and how cheap gas would be if the Republicans would just drill in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge.

A few weeks later I was bragging to one of my college educated friends about my new car and how it was designed so intelligently that it ran on this magic water called gasoline. He told me that it wasn’t magic water, it was refined oil.

“Oil,” he said, “comes from dinosaurs.” I told him that dinosaurs don’t exist, and he said, “How do you know?” I said, “Because, I’ve never seen one.” He said, “What about all those bones at the museum?” I told him, “They were put there by the Devil to confuse me and make me not believe in the Bible.” And he said, “How do you know the Bible wasn’t put there to confuse you and make you not believe in the dinosaurs?” We don’t talk anymore.

I told another friend of mine about how intelligently designed my car is and he laughed at me. He said his car was cheaper, safer, and got better gas mileage. "How intelligent is your designer now?" he said. I said "I know my intelligent designer is a GOOD intelligent designer." He laughed and made a joke I didn't understand about Lee Iacocca and Pinto's.

But as time went on I realized that although I believe my car was intelligently designed, if I wanted it to continue to work, I had to understand the basics of how it worked. I didn’t need to understand all the complex parts, like the computer chip engine and the positraction rear-end, but it was necessary to work toward understanding how it works. Maybe someday I'll understand everything about how it works, but I'm not going to prevent other people from trying to learn.

The one question I will never know the answer to is WHY that car was built. The WHY I guess, I'll leave to Philosophers and Theologians.