Crazy Creationist of the Month

Posted by Lionel Boyd Johnson.

This month's crazy creationist goes to the Texas State Board of Education, with emphasis to Don McLeroy.

Who is Don McLeroy?

He is a practicing dentist and super-conservative Christian creationist who has been on the Texas Board of Education for a little over ten years before recently being defeated by just a sliver of votes. Before leaving, he managed to oversee the textbook standards revisions done once every decade. Where in the past he has attacked evolution and called for teaching weaknesses of evolutionary theory alongside the theory itself (if he knows enough about it to name any weaknesses at all), he and fellow ultraconservatives on the board were narrowly overturned by more sane and rational members. The Board has turned their sights this month on history standards, with minor adjustments to sociology, government, and economics as well.

The myth has been propagated for a long time that America was founded as "a Christian Nation," and the Texas BOE would like to continue that myth. Although in a sense, the first pilgrims were fleeing religious persecution in their native countries, almost immediately upon arrival did they manage to commit similar or equal atrocities against people of different faiths from their own. When the time came to construct a government for the United States, it was decided, by enlightened, rational minds, that religion of any kind deserves no place in the formation of any government. For that reason, America was founded to be the first secular nation, neither condemning nor condoning any one faith over any other.

Evidently, however, the members of the Board don't want their children to know that, which is why they voted down students learning "the reasons the founding fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring the government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion above all others.” This is also why they completely removed Thomas Jefferson, who is credited with the term "separation of church and state," which, even though is not verbatim mentioned in the constitution, is clearly implied, as the first amendment cannot mean anything else, and have decided to teach John Calvin in his place. Predictably enough, they removed teaching the first amendment and all its implications, choosing to stress the second amendment, and all its implications.

In an attempt to teach balance, the BOE has pushed for the teaching of the Venona papers, which loosely try to vindicate McCarthyism. They seek that students learn the violent acts of the Black Panther Movement alongside the works of Martin Luther King Jr, but strangely they rejected any addition of any Black or Hispanic names that contributed to American History.

The phrase "capitalism" has been replaced with "free-enterprise system." “Let’s face it, capitalism does have a negative connotation,” says Terri Leo, one of the Board members. By changing the name, they attempt to shadow any criticism or flaw with capitalism, plus they probably like using the word "free," because it makes them sound like freedom-loving patriots.

They would like their children to think of America as a haven of tolerance, incapable of making mistakes. That's why they want to play down the internment of Japanese-Americans in WWII, and what's more, because they consider tolerance to be a Christian virtue, they want tomorrow's leaders not to understand that the government cannot promote Christianity over anything else. In McLeroy's own words, “History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left.” You could make a case for that, but it can't be "canceled out" by imposing conservative bias into the curriculum, that's called "truth is in the middle." Biases should be corrected with factual accuracy, not by swinging the pendulum all the way around, so that the system is still broken, just in another way.

Why should you care that Texas educational standards are being decided by biased religious fundamentalists with no expertise is history, sociology, psychology, or economics? Well, because of Texas's large size, textbook publishers but a lot of weight on what Texas wants in their books, and many other states simply follow Texas's lead and buys whatever books they buy. In other words, what they teach in Texas could eventually make its way to your state, though California is large enough to fend off Texas standards for a while. Moreover, these standards will be difficult, if not impossible, to change until the next revision comes around in ten years, which means that your children could be at risk at learning incomplete or skewed facts about basic history.

Thankfully, Don McLeroy is on his way out, so there's not much more damage he can cause, but he managed to deal a heavy blow to educational standards before leaving.

I'm a feather on the wind.

Posted by Hoban "Wash" Washburne

I drive an old pickup truck with gauges that work when they want to or not at all. It squeaks and yelps as it goes over bumps. It rumbles when it is taken out of gear and roars when turned on. I refer to my truck as a she. She is a very finicky truck and I love her to death.

And sometimes, when I am driving her around, I feel like a pilot in a movie.

I say this because tonight reminded me of exactly that feeling. Let's start from when my brother and I head off to the store at around 11pm.

As we are leaving the shady liquor store some fellas try to get us to buy any drug we can think of. My brother, naturally, tries to shake a good deal out of them as a joke while I get the car running. Except that she won't start. Here's what was happening in my head:

Click click click--silence.
"Dammit, I knew that damn starter was trouble. Shoulda gone for the name brand."
Click-----
"Come on honey. I'm sorry, but I just need to you start now so I'm not stuck with some angry drug dealers and you are stolen from me and taken apart."
Click click ROAR.
"Thank you thank you thank you!"
Look at each other:
"We barely got out of that one!" (cheesy I know)

Off to the next store but this time I say I will be staying inside to keep the truck running. My brother takes longer than usual at this other shady liquor store. As the rain begins to come down like in that scene in Jurassic Park I notice the Oil Pressure Gauge is alarmingly low and the Engine Temperature Gauge is alarmingly high. Shit. Now what?

"Keep her running! We can't risk her not starting back up again here!" (yes, now it's 'we')
"She can't run much hotter! Especially with the Oil Pressure so low!"
"Wait, maybe at idle the fan isn't kicking in and we already know that the pressure drops when at idle... What if we get her running to get some air flow, the fan going, and oil cycling?"
"Yes! Make it so! (shut up)"
"We can't leave him in there!"
"Go without him!"

Suddenly, perfectly on cue, out comes my brother running through the rain into the truck and off we go. As we speed into traffic the Oil Pressure raises into the green and the Engine Temp backs off as the fan kicks in... Narrow escape.

To sum up: I glamorize my boring life by comparing the mechanical failures in my aging pickup to exciting Hollywood action scenes.

You know you do it too...

Poll for the Silent

Posted by Malachi Constant.

I was walking along, about to board the bus home, when I saw someone I know. We're very close, but not as close as we used to be; I know her, and I know her well, but I don't know her well anymore. I wanted to wave, and even to stop and chat, but for some reason I didn't. I walked towards her for about fifty feet, in her plane view, on my way to the bus. I eventually got less than ten feet in front of her, looking at her the whole time expecting her to see me and wave, but I finally turned and entered the bus, without saying a word. I feel like I should have made more of an effort to say "hi." I should have waved in some way, or smiled, or even gone up and tapped her on the shoulder, but I just couldn't bring myself to care enough. I tried to rationalize it, "Why should I bother, she didn't notice me," "Never mind that she was talking to other friends, she's not blind, and I was close enough to spit on her," but I realized that if I really cared about her, I would've gone out of my way just to bid greetings.

I bring this up only as a specific instance, but this kind of thing happens to me all the time. Almost once a day do I see someone I recognize and can name, but they seem to give no hint of recognition to me, not because they don't remember me, but because they never notice me in the first place. Because I feel there's an expectation that they, as a conscious human being, should notice that I'm right there in front of them, when they don't notice, I usually don't feel responsible to call attention to myself, but rather just let them keep walking, without any knowledge of my existence.

When I say "right in front of them," I'm not exaggerating. There are a handful of people I know whose personal space I can invade, not sneaking around, either, before they notice I was within eyesight for a hundred feet. In other words, on the occasion where I decide to stop by and say "hello," I habitually get close enough to physically poke them on the shoulder, staying within their line of sight the entire time, before they learn that I'm there at all. On rare occasions, I can get that close under the same circumstances and still go unnoticed.

So I ask you, reader, how often does this kind of thing happen to you? How often do you go unnoticed by someone you personally know for what seems like too long? Have you ever gone unnoticed so long that you decide to remain unnoticed, and walk right past someone you know and like without saying a word? Have you ever been shocked to find someone you know standing right next to you, with no other explanation than that they walked right up to you, right in front of you, and you none the wiser until long after you should have reasonably seen them? Comments can be left anonymously and I eagerly await your thoughts.

I Gotta Go

Posted by Lennie Small.

I was on campus today leisurely making my way to class, but it was relatively unfamiliar land on campus. In accordance with normal bodily functions, I had to pee, which means I had to walk past my classroom to go hunt for a restroom. Halfway through circling the building, I found one, but it was the women's room, so I quickly hypothesized a couple potential locations where the men's room should be found. At first I tried the door ten feet down the way, but that was the entrance to some administrative office, which not only did not have a bathroom but was also no place where I belonged. My next guess was on the other side of the structure, by symmetry, but there would be no door at all to be found there.

After one more circle around the building I was left with no choice but to conclude that this small lecture hall was built without a men's room. Perplexed, I eventually wandered to the adjacent building and finally found somewhere to do my business, but I feel like such a basic need should be better covered in the modern times in which we live. After all, how hard should it be to find a bathroom in a college lecture building, particularly when they obviously found enough room for the ladies' room?

Crazy Creationist of the Month: February (Part 2)

Posted by Lionel Boyd Johnson.

Welcome back. We were just getting to the part where Ken Ham calls his fellow Christians to action.

The Bible says if you're not with me you're against me (Matthew 12:30). [...] There is no neutral ground.

It's not enough for Ken Ham to deny science and reasoning, or to influence others to do the same. He has to rally Christians to fight against science, education, and intelligence. And when he says neutral ground, he doesn't mean between religion and secularism, he means between the Bible and science. In other words, everyone who is Christian must assert as fact what the Bible says regardless of what any evidence may indicate, and to have doubt or honest skepticism is unacceptable.

What [separation of church and state] really means is we get rid of the Bible. That's what it really means in people's minds today, in the secularist's mind.

True, but only half true: it's only getting rid of the Bible in government institutions, but it's also getting rid of the Quran, The Book of Mormon, The Bhagavad Gita, Dianetics, or any other religious scripture. Ken Ham is under the impression that freedom of religion means anti-Christianity. The truth is that separation of church and state inhibits government from imposing any religion with tax dollars paid by people who have the freedom to worship any other religion. Freedom of religion means that unlike in Iran, where apostasy is punishable by death, Americans have the right to practice (peacefully) any religion they choose, be it Christianity or no religion at all. However, since Ham has already claimed that having no religion is a religion, then of course he must assert that separation of church and state is just rejecting Christianity for another religion. Here's a lovely quote.

You can't have freedom from religion because everyone has a religion. In fact, there are only two religions, ultimately, either you start with God's word, or man's word. So what they really mean is, freedom from Christianity.

Where to start? Okay, the beginning. Not everyone has a religion, but we've already tackled that. Next point of dishonesty, that the Bible is God's word. This allows Ham to dismiss every other religion whose holy book is claimed to be on God's word, but it is well know that the Bible was written by men, and by today's standards, inferior men at that. Therefore, in this case, God's word is man's word, whether Ken Ham likes it or not.

The next section of the speech is where he bashes the newly released film, Creation. I can't say much about it, because I never saw it because it seemed boring, but this has nothing to do with the loss of a belief in God (unless, like Ham, you equate evolution with atheism). The film clips he shows transitions him into the point that belief in evolution leads to moral relativism, which Ham equates to having no morals at all. He says that "children of evolution" are committing school shootings as an act of natural selection. This is offensive, but you wanna talk about beliefs leading to violence or murder? How about when someone kills an abortionist as a "service to women?" How about when a mother prays instead of taking her daughter to get medical treatment, and the daughter dies? How about the people who were killed in the riots against the Danish cartoons depicting and image of Muhammad? Ken Ham is forgetting not only that his religion is responsible for the deaths of millions, but also that evolution does not claim any moral standing, it's just a model of reality.

Then we get to the Gap commercial. Ham claims that the Gap holiday commercial is more secularized and shows how we're losing God in America. Here's a brief summary about what happened: Gap made a commercial including Christmas, Kwanza, Hannukah, and winter solstice. The American Family Association, a Christian activist group, saw it and threw a bitch-fit, calling for the boycott of all Gap stores. Gap responded by cowering like a dog who's been beaten too much, and making a new commercial that only mentions Christmas. The AFA ended the boycott and the Christian fundamentalists win again. If anything, this shows that religious fundamentalists have too much power over the free market, but I wouldn't even extrapolate that much from it.

Next he talks about how blasphemy is so widespread and acceptable. He says that it's too common that Christianity is openly mocked and that Jesus is blasphemed against. Kind of like how Ken Ham blasphemes against and dishonors the God of any other religion, such as Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism? Kind of like how Ken Ham openly mocked Catholicism and mainstream Christianity earlier in this very speech?

Ham cites his book, Already Gone, and claims that too many young people are abandoning the church.

Research shows that two-thirds of our young people are walking away from the church, and you know the number one reason the research found? Because of hypocricy.

He clarifies that hypocrisy means that the church is saying that one must obey and believe the Bible, but it's ok to not consider Genesis as historical fact. He says that if people think it's ok to dismiss some of the Bible, then why not get rid of the whole thing, and that, he says, is how Americans are losing faith. For once, I agree with him. If people choose to dismiss the Genesis fables, or any of the huge number of inconsistencies or contradictions, then they've already found one flaw with the Bible, and that automatically nullifies when the Bible says it's infallible. With that in mind, you can't reasonably trust anything in the Bible that's not verified by anything else, so if you're going to have to filter it through your own interpretations, why not throw it away and view the world through your own interpretations and formulate what's right and wrong for yourself? You already do that anyway, whether your a religious believer or not. For example, Ken Ham is taking it literally when the Bible says to preach the gospel to as many people as you can reach (Mark 16:15), but he's neglecting to preach that the Bible says that when a man rapes a woman, she must marry him (Deuteronomy 22:28-29), or that any man who does any work at all on the Sabbath must be put to death (Numbers 15:32-36), or that Jesus said you must hate your parents if you are to be with him (Luke 14:26). Ken Ham, as well as any other sane believer, ignores these instructions, because they're morally reprehensible, but that just shows that the Bible is not a literal and perfect account from God, and they know it, so to say that it is literal and perfect is hypocrisy. The internet has made this information widely available and easily accessible and that may be the hypocrisy that causes young people to leave the church, many of whom choose to worship God in their own way.

The next statement cites BioLogos as a form of Christianity accepting evolution. Francis Collins, who founded BioLogos and worked on the Human Genome Project, thinks that God drove evolution and that Adam and Eve were a metaphor for the first evolved humans. He says this because he believes in God, but also searches for truth and is forced to assign God the role of creating evolution. Ken Ham doesn't search for truth, he has already decided truth, and therefore he must attack and dismiss any evidence, legitimate or not, that conflicts with his absolute truth.

Billboards are a noticeable theme in Ham's address. He calls attention to the billboards put up by atheist groups, billboards that say "You can be good without God," or "Don't believe in God? You're not alone," or a quote from Richard Dawkins. Ham claims that these are examples of secular humanism seeping into the culture and replacing God's word. This is interesting because later in the speech, he calls for more billboards like the ones his organization produces, billboards that speak out against abortion or gay marraige from a biblical perspective. Basically, freedom of speech should only apply to him. He can't be bothered with opposing views except to attack them.

He ends with a little suggestion to fix the economy: prayer. Because we Americans turned away from the Lord, he says, He has turned away from us, and if we turn back to God we will be an economic superpower by His will. Of course this implies that by praying, we will deserve a better economy than any other country, even if they pray, because Ham doesn't care about anyone who doesn't believe what he believes. Anything bad that falls on them is what they deserved for not worshiping God the same way he does.

I could only write so much on this, and to get the full effect of the stupid you'd have to watch it for yourself. It's an hour long, but if you have the time, you might get some laughs. Since all the points I've commented on have been better said on Youtube alone, I'll cite some of the major flaws in his reasoning with links to well-made corrections. Flaws like that atheism is a religion, and therefore requires faith, that God has established moral absolutes, that evolution is intrinsically atheistic, and most importantly, that the Bible is God's word.

Long Way From Home?

Posted by Lt. Dan Taylor

There is a young man who I have seen in my work a couple of times recently. As far as I can remember he has been wearing the same shirt every time. He is clean, his are clothes clean, his facial hair is trim and tidy but he has the feeling of someone lost or homeless.

Some of the girls have said they get the creeps from him. I can see why. He is always there for a couple hours just staring off into space or just watching people around him with a detached semi-smile on his face. He doesn't look menacing or crazy. Just... there.

Whenever he comes to the counter he knows what he wants and can talk well enough but has a slowness that goes with the whole creepy/lost feeling. Today he bought a tin of tea, out of the blue, and then asked me:
"Could you tell me where I am?"
"You mean, like, what streets we're at?" I asked. He shrugged a bit as if to say: 'sure.' So I told him the cross streets as I pointed and he almost reluctantly followed my gestures. Feeling as if I hadn't answered his question I asked:
"Where are you trying to go?"
He took a long sort of look at me then said:
"Well...Originally: Hershey Pennsylvania."
My face must have shown my complete bewilderment because he nodded and said:
"Well, thanks. 'Night." Then he sort of meandered out.

I still feel a little unsure about the whole situation. It had the feeling of in a movie or book when an angel or something comes to someone and asks them questions that they need to ask themselves but in a less literal way. "Could you tell me where I am?" or "Where are you trying to go?" Hershey Pennsylvania? It was so odd that I can't help but wonder about it still.

Crazy Creationist of the Month: February (Part 1)

Posted by Lionel Boyd Johnson.

This month's crazy creationist is Ken Ham, for his State of the Nation address on February 16.

Who is Ken Ham?
Ken Ham is the president and founder of Answers in Genesis. He believes that the Book of Genesis should and must be interpreted as a literal account of the universe being created in 6 days. He is also responsible for the building of the Creation Museum in Kentucky, which portrays Adam and Eve coexisting with dinosaurs before The Fall, Noah herding every animal on the Ark, and a number of other biblical tales, as certain fact.

Following the president's State of the Union address, Ken Ham has made his second annual State of the Nation about what's wrong with America and what, if anything, good Christians can do to bring it back.

He starts off citing that President Obama has declared that America is "no longer" a Christian nation, but a nation of many faiths. This offends Ham because he thinks his religion has the right, over any other, to govern the United States. He goes on to emphasize that this used to be a Christian nation, but that things have changed.

He then states that problem number one for the country is that we are losing faith (just like the Israelites did in the Book of Judges). We are forgetting good Christian values, such as reading the Bible, heterosexual marriage, and banning abortion and euthanasia.

This is why so many people have a problem with fundamentalists, because they think their Holy Book gives them the right to impose themselves into public matters, like abortion rights, gay rights, and setting biblical verses on government property.

His next outrageous claim is that when people compare Creationism to Science, they're not talking about observable science, the science that brought you all the modern technology you enjoy today, but about evolution which, he claims, is not real science.

When they use the word 'science,' I'm going to talk about that later on, but when a lot of people us that word, they're not really talking about observational science that built the technology to make a broadcast like this happen. They're really talking about evolution...

As if speciation has never been observed, a topic that can be thoroughly researched by two minutes on Google, Ham is clear that because evolution conflicts with his view of Scripture, it must be wrong and therefore, not science. However, there is no separation in the real world between science that everyone agrees on and evolution, they are both equally science. Evolution is as much a part of science as gravity is, and in fact there is more evidence behind evolution than gravity, because the law of gravity can be shown to be demonstrably wrong in rare instances.

What has happened that has really caused this? Such a fundamental change from a nation built on the authority of God's word to a nation now where we see those reminders of being built of God's word are basically being removed...

When Ham says America is a nation that was built on the authority of God's word, he is lying. The founding fathers were secularists who knew the value and importance of keeping religion out of government. I have no clue where Ham is getting this idea.

Ham's next fallacy is that evolution is a belief about the past, about origins specifically. Evolution is not a belief like Christianity is a belief. It's not really believed at all as much as accepted because it has been shown to be true. Creationists like to drag down evolutionary theory to a belief because then it looks like they are on equal ground, and that creationism has the benefit of being supported by God. But that was never true and evolution requires research and study to believe, not faith.

He then quotes Shirley Tilghman, president of Princeton, as saying

"Christian fundamentalists in the United States have launched a well-publicized assault on the theory of evolution..."

She's exactly right, people like Ken Ham are attacking evolution in order to try to convince the public that there is a controversy in the scientific world where there is none. For example, more historians deny the Holocaust than scientists deny evolution. Tilghman is saying that schools have a responsibility to teach real science, and too bad for Ken Ham if he doesn't consider evolution science, because the scientific community does.

Another cheap attempt to bring down evolution is to declare it the religion of atheism.

They're saying, 'When you look at the universe, life; mankind; all of reality, the supernatural has nothing to do with it. Everything is explained by natural processes.' Do you realize that that's the religion of atheism or the religion of naturalism.

When people say that atheism is a religion, or requires faith, or is a belief system, they just show that they don't understand the basic definitions of the terms they're using. When properly defined, it becomes clear that atheism cannot be a religion in any sense of the word. Moreover, evolution is not synonymous with atheism and never has been. Ken Ham says these things because he wants you to think that theism and atheism are just two different religions, and that his religion has the authority of God behind it. As usual, he's completely wrong.

Do you realize what they're doing? They're redefining science, and they've redefined science as having to do only with naturalism and the supernatural can't be involved, so they're eliminating the Bible, they're eliminating Christianity and replacing it with another religion.

Ham is redefining science, not anyone else. Science has always assumed to be working with natural processes because there has never been a case where assuming supernatural causes has shown to be right over natural ones.

Stay tuned for part 2 of February's Crazy Creationist of the Month, where we'll go over the second half of Ham's ridiculous blatherings.