OK, I moved this b/c I have a Jesus fish opinion that I didn't want buried in the smoking thread. And I have a "Jesus Fish" related struggle in my own life.

1) As a former Christian I am hugely offended by the Darwin fish. The fish symbol was developed by Christians as a way to meet secretly in the Roman empire when they were brutally slaughtered for their beliefs. That fish symbolizes a dedication to one's faith so strong that they were willing to risk death. I don't think it should be taken lightly and the Darwin fish just makes a joke out of the death of all those Christians.

2) That being said, I don't like people putting the Jesus fish on their car like they've done some great thing or deserved such recognition. I found that most people who put those on their cars are actually very bad Christians.

3) I bought a used truck and it has a Jesus fish on it and the dealer wouldn't take it off for fear of ruining the paint. So, even though I don't want the Jesus fish on my car, some moron has plagued me with it.

Hmm...

I had a darwin fish on my last car...

I can see your objection to it, and I now agree with you. The fish symbol was the secret symbol early Christians used to ID each other, and to use it lightly was to risk death.

But it is equally offensive when I see the jesus fish on a big fucking LTD or other expensive vehicle. Jesus lived a simple life of giving without expecting anything in return. A jesus fish on a BMW is contradictory and insulting to the true teachings of jesus.

About 2 years ago, I found a Christian bible tract under my windshield wiper. It was so old that it refered to "the red menace" and other 1950's bizarro political-christian references (not unlike what is going on today).

I don't think it was because of my darwin fish though...I think it was my other sticker:

"Jesus loves you, but I'm his favorite"

Offensive? I think not. But someone did. What do you think?

I respect your feelings about the Ichthos fish and the Darwin fish. I'm certain that the Darwin fish was not created (no pun intended) in order to piss off Christians as much as it was a reaction to the fundamentalist assault on science and particularly evolutionary science. If Christians had been able to accept both Christ and evolutionary science, the Darwin fish would have never been contemplated.

--PunkDavid

If the Darwin fish was created solely in response to to the Jesus fish, in a form of mockery, then I understand your offense to it. From what I understand, it was. But at the same time, the people sporting these fish are not representative of all Christians, as you've pointed out. And as also mentioned, if many of the same people in question weren't attempting to assault science and spread a fundamentalist belief, none of this would have probably happened. I think the use of Jesus fish itself in this way is just as much a mockery of the deaths of early Christians, for the reason you mentioned. And as far as I can gather, the Ichthus fish wasn't developed by Christians at all, but is merely another pagan symbol that was molded into Christian beliefs and practices, like so many others. Used at first b/c it would be unsuspicious, but over time, hijacked, in a sense.

If you think the darwin fish is bad, what about this thing? I think it highlights the ridiculousness of the whole affair.

Interesting story I found about it all:

http://www.theness.com/articles/enterta ... s0302.html

Trawling for the truth behind the bumper battle known as the ‘fish wars’.

By Sheila J. Gibson

The New England Journal of Skepticism Vol. 3 Issue 2 (Spring 2000)

In the beginning, there was the fish.

Christian motorists felt it was good. The fish was fruitful and multiplied, and iterations developed: ‘Jesus’, the Greek ‘Ichthus’, a fish with a cross inside.

Then in the early 1990’s came a fish, with feet, that said ‘Darwin.’ The Christians ‘shot back’ with a bumper sticker depicting the Darwin being swallowed by a larger ‘Jesus’ or ‘Truth’ fish. Others shot back with a reversed version of the bumper sticker.

That wasn’t strong enough for some. Nona Williams is a co-proprietor of Ring of Fire (http://www.rof.com), a Darwin fish vendor and creator of freethought-friendly plaques and stickers. Several customers called ROF asking for something with which to ‘fight back,’ against the Jesus-eating-Darwin sticker.

Williams is not a violent person. The new plaque she created is sure to provoke some violent reactions, however. It depicts the Darwin fish and the Jesus fish forming what Shakespeare jauntily termed ‘the beast with two backs.’ She admits she is too timid to put it on her own car.

The right to cheap gas and open roads isn’t enshrined in the Constitution, but the right to free speech is. Americans have always used their automobiles to express their personalities. Skeptical magician Penn Jillette’s bubblegum-colored SUV, named ‘Pink Death’, has custom-painted sides bearing the name and a ‘6SIX6’ license plate. Physicist extraordinaire Richard Feynman’s cheerful pro-science van was a familiar sight at CalTech for years.

Many succumb to the lure of the bumper sticker. I am one of them. I saw my first Darwin fish and laughed out loud. I had to have one. It never occurred to me that it would offend others.

When a friend pointed this out to me, I was intrigued. That was my introduction to the weird cultural hiccup some call the ‘fish wars,’ indirectly responsible for the chrome piscines spawning across our highways: Satan. Angel. Buddha. Devil. Alien. Hindu. Cthulhu. Linux. Pagan. Evolve. Science. ‘n Chips. Hooked on Fishing.

There’s a joint-smoking Rastafarian fish. Humanists who didn’t want to offend anyone opted for the peaceful dolphin. Fans of the heir apparent band to the Grateful Dead have the Phish Fish.

Not surprisingly, some Christians are rather upset by what they see as a mockery of a sacred symbol. Hence, the counter-stickers. Hence, the ‘fish wars.’


Can’t we all just get along?

The Origin of Fishies

Christians have long embraced the fish symbol (http://www.religioustolerance.org ). It was used by early Christians to identify fellow believers during times of persecution. The Greek word for fish, ichthus, is an acrostic that spells out “Jesus Christ, of God, the Son, the Savior.”But Christianity can’t claim exclusive ownership of the fish. The symbol has long been associated with goddesses, according to the Religious Tolerance site.

TGIF should stand for ‘Thank Goddess It’s Friday’— Freya and Aphrodite Salacia, specifically. Freya gave her name to the day of the week. Her divine sister gave us the word ‘salacious’, a fair description of the orgiastic revels of her worshippers.

Humorless Christians might sandblast the little piscine off their vehicles if they knew its scarlet pagan past.

Imagine a fish.

Now tip it on its tail so its nose points skyward.Thank Goddess It’s Friday!

“The symbol itself, the eating of fish on Friday, and the association of the symbol with a deity were all taken over by the early church from pagan sources,” so says the site. “Only the sexual component was deleted.”


A Mean Meme?

The Darwin Fish is already the subject of scholarly study ( http://www.uga.edu/columns/991025/campnews.html ). Tom Lessl, an associate professor in the department of speech communication at the University of Georgia, spent three years surveying motorists with Darwins on their cars. Lessl visited college campuses in Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, and Wisconsin, spotting Darwin cars and tucking surveys under their windshield wipers. He distributed close to 150 surveys, about 1/3 of which were completed and returned.

His data convinced him that the majority of respondents put Darwins on their cars not to support science but to tweak the religious right.

“Anti-religious themes were particularly prevalent in the survey responses,” he said. “This seems to suggest that the emblem serves as a kind of ritual expression of aggression against Christianity. People can take vengeance through their bumper stickers. That’s one interpretation of what rituals are for—they give us symbolic control over that which we can’t otherwise affect,” he said.

“Many of the respondents expressed a sense of frustration, the feeling that they were a persecuted minority living in a social environment where religion is dominant. Since most surveys were distributed in the South, where evangelical Christianity is prominent, it is not surprising that many respondents would feel this way,” he said.

Lessl is now compiling his findings for publication. He does not have a fish on his car.


Darwin’s Creator

The Darwin Fish has a father in Chris Gilman, a thirties-ish founder/owner of Global Effects Inc., a Hollywood special effects house specializing in realistic space suits. Gilman won a technical Oscar in 1991 for inventing the ‘cool suit’, a device that lets actors stay in full-body costume all day without overheating.

The Darwin Fish came into being in the early 80s as a joke. As he and his colleagues made rubber prop AK-47s for a network miniseries, they discussed a creationism-related issue in the news. The discussion drifted from religious beliefs to religious power. Gilman mentioned that churches advertised. Someone asked him how. Gilman cited the bumper Jesus fish, noting that other religions didn’t do that. Then he joked about making a Darwin fish, with feet. His co-workers roared.
“I told that joke for three years or so before I had enough people say to me, ‘I’d buy that if it existed’,” he said. Still, he didn’t act until the late 80s, when he created a prototype by gluing feet onto a Jesus fish. He pointed the Darwin’s nose to the right simply to contrast it against the left-pointing nose of the Jesus fish, not for political reasons, he said. By the turn of the decade, he had largely handed off the newborn business, Evolution Designs, to his then-girlfriend, who marketed the Darwin Fish. Today, ED carries t-shirts, mousepads, and knick-knacks with slogans such as “They Can Have My Opposable Thumb When They Pry it from My Cold, Dead Hand.” ED has been involved with a few dozen lawsuits over copyright and image ownership, and its profits won’t let Gilman retire young, but he is having a lot of fun. He had a special, one-of-a-kind Darwin fish, cast from unbreakable magnesium, made for his car.

It says “Creator.”

“That really confuses people,” he said, laughing.

The business also exposed him to the darker side of Christianity. “Here’s a religion about forgiveness, peace, and love, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard about Darwin fish being torn off of cars and broken,” he said.

Gilman has his own unique response to the vandals. He has become the Darwin fish fairy. “If I see a broken or faded one, I’ll slip a new one under the windshield wiper,” he said. He gets to do this about once a year.

He remains amused by the ripple effect the Darwin fish has had on the zeitgeist. He has no plans for a follow-up, however. “I learned long ago about humor that jokes that are as simple as possible are funnier. The Darwin fish with feet is as simple as you can get.”

But that’s what it was—a joke.

“The Darwin fish was not meant to insult anyone,” he said.

Paul Jaffe appreciates Gilman’s joke. Jaffe, youthful president of National Capital Area Skeptics of Washington, D.C., keeps an impressive collection of bumper fish. He has more than 30 plaques (he does not collect stickers), none of which are on his car.

Jaffe enjoys the simplicity of the original fish design, which became a template in turn for the sequels. “It’s an interesting thing to examine--how we express ourselves differently, how different the designs are,” he said.

That’s why I feel the fish wars, such as they are, have not been fought in vain. Sure, the Darwin fish is offensive to some. But it has done a very valuable thing for the culture.

Rather than wreck the Christian symbol, the Darwin fish has democratized it through the power of parody. The fish is no longer the sole property of one faith. It now belongs to all faiths, as well as those who eschew faith altogether.

The parody fish force self-righteous believers to realize there are others out there who don’t agree with them, and these others have just as much right to the road as they do. In fact, that nice person who let them merge could be a heathen. Sure, it will make them mad. Maybe it will make them think.

The variety of fish parodies reflects the diversity that flourishes in America, and symbolizes our right to express ourselves differently without fear of reprisal.

Even if our expressions are less than eloquent.

“A lot of these are pretty silly,” Jaffe said, looking at his fish collection..

The "Jesus Fish" is a very ancient symbol, that is known as the "vesica picses". In its most pure form it does not have the tail, but only the "vessel" part. It is a symbol in sacred geometry and symbolizes the number three. It is the "root" of three, and is constructed as follows:

You contruct a circle of radius 1. Then you construct another circle of radius 1 with its center point as a point along the arc of the first circle. The two circles will intersect at two points and the vesica will be formed between them. If you then draw a line between the two center points of the circles, and four lines from the centers to the points of the vesica, you will have constructed a pair of equilateral triangles with sides of length 1. A line drawn between the two points of the vesica will have a length of the root of 3.

The symbol was probably chosen by early Christians because of the story of Jesus feeding the multitudes with one fish, but the trinity aspect and the vesica symbolizing the number 3 is also a possible secondary meaning contemplated by them.

--PunkDavid

I used to have a Darwin fish sticker on the back windshield (am I blanking on a term for this?) of my car until it started to deteriorate due to Michigan's horrid weather conditions. I've considered getting the more permanent adhesive versions. I'll admit, I originally bought the first sticker as a supporter of science, but also as a slap in the face of fanatical religous followers. I grew up in a very conservative area, and when I drove back home to visit, I got numerous looks/comments which made it all the more worthwhile.

I've often thought about putting one on my car in support of science. However I live in the very conservative county of Lancaster and my friend had his car defaced and keyed because he had one on his car.

How can people be so destructive?

"I love Jesus...so I am supporting my cause by keying your car!"

If I bought a second hand car with a jesus fish on it (pretty fucking big if) I would rather sratch the paint off than leave the fish there.

well it's a personality type that's pretty pervasive among that political mindset

My only choice is to put a bumper sticker over where the fish is, but I'm not a bumper sticker kind of person so I've been frozen in inaction. Brew Your Own magazine makes BYO Euro Stickers and I was thinking of getting once of those. That felt appropriate.

I think that it lends itself more to the White Trash sect of Christianity.