THE ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES -- BY MIKE FROM GROWING PAINS

This is ex child actor/evangelical Christian Kirk Cameron. It seems Cameron still can't wrap his tiny mind around the concept of evolution and accept that the universe simply happened, so when renowned British physicist Stephen Hawking issued a statement asserting the notion of Heaven was basically a fairy tale, Cameron defended his deeply held faith by mocking Hawking's facial expression -- the result of the ravages of ALS, a disease he has lived with for some 40 years. So essentially Cameron's defense of his view of religion was to contort his face and say: "See, I can make that face, too, tough guy." 

A few facts:

1) Stephen Hawking is an theoretical physicist and cosmologist, who taught at Cambridge for 30 years, and whose work has advanced our understanding of the nature and origin of the universe. 

Kirk Cameron played Mike on Growing Pains.

2) Hawking studied at Oxford and Cambridge. 

Cameron finished high school... with honors.

3) Among the honors that Hawking has received are: The Eddington Medal, the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society, the Albert Einstein Medal, the Franklin Medal, the Order of the British Empire, The Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, the Member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Wolf Prize in Physics, the Prince of Asturias Awards, the Companion of Honour, the Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society, the Michelson Morley Award of Case Western Reserve University, the Copley medal of the Royal Society, the Fonscea Prize of the University of Santiago de Compostela and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States. 

Cameron was awarded the key to the city of Cullman, Alabama, by their Mayor, Max Townsend.

3) Stephen Hawking has lived with the degenerative and typically fatal disease ALS for over 4 decades which has paralyzed him and robbed him of his speech, forcing him to speak through a computer.   

Cameron never won an Emmy for playing Mike on Growing Pains. 

4) Hawking wrote A Brief History of Time, which stayed on the British Sunday Times Bestseller list for almost 5 years. Cameron handed out a Christian-themed revision of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" on college campuses. 

A few observations: 

5) Hawking is 100% correct. The notion that there is a physical place called heaven is, indeed, a fairy tale for small minds. The phrase "The kingdom of heaven is within you" from the Thomas Gospels was meant to communicate the existence and importance of a psychological experience, not a magic sky Disneyland that only good Christians travel to after they die. 

6) If Cameron were as devoutly religious as he purports, he might understand the concept of compassion, an idea at the heart of every religious tradition. I think Jesus might have alluded to it once or twice. Does he think mocking someone who suffers from ALS is the act of a religious person? If you're going to talk the talk, then walk the walk. 

7) Cameron's behavior is merely a symptom of a childish understanding that masquerades as religion in western culture, one that is based on a literal interpretation of religious texts, and sends intelligent people screaming into the night reaching for some kind of sanity, which they usually find in the comforting arms of atheism.  

8) The universe is 14 billion years old. Our silly little myths and stories are several thousand years old. Does anyone really think that a man named God created the universe 14 billion years ago, then waited 13,999,997,000 years before waking up one morning and thinking: "you know, maybe I should tell some people how I did this..."?

9) Truth is what it is. Scientists look for truth. They don't become so enamored of a theory that they are unwilling or emotionally incapable of revising or changing it in light of new evidence. Hawking is a scientist. Cameron is a believer who childishly clings to a literal interpretation of every word in the Bible, which includes treating the book of Genesis as both an historical and scientific document, regardless of any evidence, facts, or more subtle theories that may have arisen over the last several thousand years. 

And an opinion: 

10) Cameron is a self-righteous, sub-educated, smug little turd who should study more and believe less and if he can't wrap his mind around that, then he should donate his fucking vocal chords to Hawking thus enabling a genius to speak and sparing the adult world from having to listen to the effluence that spews out of his mouth. And until that becomes a scientific possibility, then he should learn to defend his silly little position more intelligently, without resorting to bullshit schoolyard mockery. He outs himself by his own stupidity.