withallyourmind.net

Frederica Mathewes-Green has written a post at First Things called When Mother Comes Home. She compares the materialists of the world to the children in the Dr. Seuss childhood storybook, The Cat in the Hat. The kids have watched the cat in the hat, along with thing 1 and thing 2 make a complete mess of the house, when suddenly they notice that Mom has arrived and will walk through the front door immanently. The crisis point of the book arrives here:

Then our fish said, ‘LOOK! LOOK!’ And our fish shook with fear. ‘Your mother is on her way home! Do you hear? Oh, what will she do to us? What will she say? Oh, she will not like it to find us this way!’

Green proposes that the outrage against Intelligent Design is related to the fear the materialists have of “Mother” coming home:

I think that’s how our materialist friends feel when they hear the term “Intelligent Design.” It is essential, indispensable, to believe that Mother is never coming home. Otherwise the things we do might have unanticipated meanings and unforeseen consequences.

For materialists, it’s essential that the material is all there is.

Green closes this comparison with a final quote from The Cat in the Hat and a final observation:

“‘But your mother will come. She will find this big mess! And this mess is so big and so deep and so tall, we can not pick it up. There is no way at all!’”

For those banking on the theory that that this is only a material world, it would be a very uncomfortable thing if Mother were to appear. They were just having fun on a rainy day, assuming that the cake and rake and cup and ball were their toys to play with. But all these bodies we were indulging or starving or tearing apart might turn out to belong to someone else after all. And that is a prospect the materialist cannot bear.