Last week, I brought you a video from Chaplain COL Lembke, referring to Spiritual Fitness. In it, he claimed that, “Life without faith is like a tree without roots”. Here it is again:

www.youtube.com/embed/CV5BgQVvp4E?

There was some spectacular replies from military members, veterans, and our supporters on my Facepalm wall.

Gregory S: More like “life without faith is like a dog without a cell phone.” Rich W: ‎… or a fish without a bicycle, or a human swimming without an attached anchor … Claire L: Like Bill O’reilly in a library Rich W: Life without faith is like escaping a funhouse of mirrors, or taking off ‘drunk simulation goggles’ and using telescopes and micro scopes, or learning to fly. Jason L: Life without faith is like seeing the world in color for the first time. Trevor N: Actually, faith itself is the tree without roots. It’s grounded in nothing. (Justin Griffith: This one was my favorite) Rich W: Faith is just a theory, or actually a hypothesis, one can’t continue to ignore the repeated results of evidence of it’s failures. 😉 Bruce H: I would say that life without faith is more like a bird without a cage. …or maybe a fish without a lamprey. Jeshanah C: Religion does not have a monopoly on faith and belief. We all experience those things in one way or another. I, for one, believe in myself and have faith in the human spirit. Rise above.

FIX’D: A life without faith is like a *family* tree with roots.

But I found another tree that has no roots. The biblical literalist’s family tree of the creation story! This image represents an inverted tree. It also seems to conveniently overlook the female gender for the most part, side-stepping questions like “where did Cain and Abel’s wives come from?”

Click to embiggen:

Answers to the obvious question usually propose nearly a millenium of Adam and Eve having children who have sex with each other a lot. A thousand years of incest, until well… more incest (Lot? survivors of Noah’s flood?)

A tree with less incest

At least ‘our incest’ was generally speaking, hundreds of millions of years back. Slightly outdated tree from Ernst Haeckel (circa 1879)