That’s just revolting.

Obviously he is just desperate....understandably, since adults who put a little thought into such a matter would be appalled. Then again, i’m not even so sure about that anymore…
The thing that’s sad is how people present creationism as an equally valid theory to explain the world as it is now, even though it has no scientific background.

Obviously he is just desperate

The frightening thing is that anymore I suspect “Dr.” Ham and his ilk are feeling less desperate about their prospects of deluding others (along with themselves) with their outlandish beliefs. The growing numbers of evangelical Christians in this country don’t seem to bode well for science (I’ve also heard that Australia is not doing much better; perhaps not too coincidentally, Ken Ham is Australian). This should not be surprising, yet Americans are just now becoming aware of the country’s declining scientific edge. When an idiot is elected to the position of president, it makes sense that idiocy will become more prominent and acceptable in the national psyche.

By far the most disturbing quote from the L.A. Times piece:

We’re going to arm you with Christian Patriot missiles,” Ham, 54, recently told the 1,200 adults gathered at Calvary Temple here in northern New Jersey.

How can we have modern breeds of dog like the poodle if God finished his work 6,000 years ago? He created a dog “kind” — a master blueprint — and let evolution take over from there.

That is from the news story as to what some of his literature answers. So the poodle “evolved” from something like a dog master blue print but humans didnt evolve from something like a human blue print?
And holy bajesus the whole cave painting thing (if you read the whole story) You think they are going to paint a herbavore dinosaur or the big ass im going to kill you dinosaur on their cave walls. A painting of something he thinks could be something else does not combat the fact that there are about a billion other cave paintings that do NOT have dinosaurs in them anywhere. No wonder we are starting to fall behind the rest of the world in science. Parents burn this garbage into their kids heads.

It’s about the same as trying to figure out how a person with a science degree can really, really believe that evolution is a lie and the world was created six thousand years ago. Aparently there are such creatures around, and - being self-prophetic, they haven’t evolved either.
I always thought in my younger days that, sure, there were people around who believed in the bible verbatumbut that they were uneducated hicks who just fell off the back of a cabbage truck.
Imagine my horror when I discovered there were
1. Well educated people who believed in Creationism, and
2. Western Educated Islamic extremists!
I guess there is a scientific explanation and even a term to descibe these people but I prefer my own: just fucking nuts!

I know it’s completely unwarranted, but whenever I hear about the lastest crap this guy is trying to stuff into the heads of schoolkids I feel a little embarrassed… because he’s from the same country as me.

Like I said, completely unwarranted. Especially since his antics would never be tolerated here.

Meh, I’ve nearly given up caring about what creationists are doing. They’re going to do it regardless of what I think, so I find it fruitless to give a damn anymore. I’m not going to be living on this planet forever, so I figure I can just ignore all the people I disagree with until I die. Sorry for sounding selfish, but I honestly don’t care about the future generations who will be around when I’m dead (I feel the same about the people who lived long before me). As long as I’m happy with my life, other people can screw up the world as much as they want.

Holy shit.  Way to indoctrinate the young-uns!  I think we’re headed towards a surge of God’s Army.

Religious “faith” is such a hard thing to battle.

A gal in one of my classes recently commented that there aren’t enough hours in the day.  Another gal, a “Christianity is awesome!” proponent, said, “Actually, the days were designed to have just enough hours in them.  Maybe you’re trying to accomplish too much.”

Higher education my ass.

I used to hold some solace that, eventually, these peck-heads would die-off, and the younger generations would act in a more rational way in the world.  But now there are new crops of hypno-mind-fucked Lil assholes being FARMED like illiterate cattle (wait, that’s redundant… you know what I mean).
At some point, when these turds grow up, the mental arsenic they’re being fed will be annihilated by the reality of a world that increasingly displays their Jesus-voodoo upbringing null and void. 
Lets hope anyway.

Meh, I’ve nearly given up caring about what creationists are doing. They’re going to do it regardless of what I think, so I find it fruitless to give a damn anymore. I’m not going to be living on this planet forever, so I figure I can just ignore all the people I disagree with until I die.

Problem is just that these all kind religious terrorists don’t let other people live like they want because it’s ultimate totalitarian control what they desire.

“Everything Hitler did to the Jews, all the horribly unspeakable misdeeds, had already been done to the smitten people before by the Christian churches. . . . The isolation of Jews into ghetto camps, the wearing of the yellow spot, the burning of Jewish books, and finally the burning of the people - Hitler learned it all from the church. However, the church burned Jewish women and children alive, while Hitler granted them a quicker death, choking them first with gas.”
-Dagobert Runes

“Men never do evil so cheerfully and so completely as when they do so from religious conviction.”
-Blaise Pascal

I’m thinking more about the majority who are really harmless (realistically). Terrorists are a whole other category to me.

P.Z. Meyers covered this over on Pharyngual, in which he described Ken Ham as ‘a slimy ass-pimple, a child-abusing freak”. 

Tell us what you really think of him, PZ! 

“Big concerns grow from small concerns. You plant them, water them with tears, fertilize them with unconcern. If you ignore them, they grow.”
Babylon 5 - Londo Mollari

One more tag to close.

Hey, look at the bright side:

They’re training the next generation of burger flippers, chicken fryers and burrito wrappers.

I mean, really. If these kids ever get a clue how the world works, they might expect (or even get) decent jobs at decent wages when they grow up. That conflicts with corporate outsourcing, which simply won’t do at all. Therefore, crush any possibility that these kids will ever be qualified to function in a modern economy, and voila!

Republican macroeconomics in a nutshell.

Apologies if this posts twice...it didn’t seem to take the first time.

Obviously he is just desperate....understandably, since adults who put a little thought into such a matter would be appalled. Then again, i’m not even so sure about that anymore…

These people aren’t desperate..they are on the attack. This is their golden opportunity, like nothing else they’ve had in the last 50 years. This is the culmination of the Christian-Right’s 20-year-plan.

And as Les has shown in several postings of survey results, they are not as much of a “vocal minority” as one might hope.

And of course, the image of 1200 kids being forced to listen to such drivel as “do you believe God or those evil atheist scientists” is both depressing and infuriating.

Sadly, I will also defend people’s right to believe pretty much whatever they want--and I leave them alone...I only wish that they would afford me the same courtesy.

I suppose I’m forced, once again, to apologize on behalf of my religion, and to remind people that an idea isn’t responsible for the people who believe in it.

They’re training the next generation of burger flippers, chicken fryers and burrito wrappers.

I mean, really. If these kids ever get a clue how the world works, they might expect (or even get) decent jobs at decent wages when they grow up. That conflicts with corporate outsourcing, which simply won’t do at all. Therefore, crush any possibility that these kids will ever be qualified to function in a modern economy, and voila!

Republican macroeconomics in a nutshell.

Pretty unclear on how this involves Republicans in any way.

And don’t kid yourself.  A lot of these kids will go much further than burger flipping, their parents certainly have.  Look where the megachurches are being built.  It ain’t in the ghetto and it isn’t in the sticks.  It is in the suburbs where the congregation that goes to work, has two kids, owns a house and an SUV, and whose kids play soccer and take piano lessons live.

Intentional ignorance may be stupid, but it does not mean that the individual that is practicing it is stupid.  It allows for a gross underestimation of the IQ on the other side of the evolution debate, and thus an underestimation of what the other side can accomplish.  Something that will only allow for the anti-evolutionists to charge a hill that you and I didn’t think could even be charged.

Sadly, I think Consigliere is correct (imagine that I’d ever say that!  ). Willful ignorance is the current fashion. Look at president Bush.

By the way, “sadly” is meant to modify the merit in Consigliere’s words, not meant to imply that it is necessarily tragic that he may have a valid point. It’s not a personal and/or ideological slam. Just wanted to clarify.

*On a personal note, of late my avatars are changing more rapidly than the seasons in Vermont. I just can’t stick with one for too long.*

If a teacher so much as mentions evolution, or the Big Bang, or an era when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, “you put your hand up and you say, ‘Excuse me, were you there?’ Can you remember that?�?

I think the best way for a teacher to deal with this would be to do like one of my high-school teachers, who called us a ‘bunch of little fuckers’.  Ironically, he was a creationist, but him saying that actually really startled us and we sat in stunned silence for awhile.

Sadie, what is the pic in your current avatar?

Considering that Hovind’s schedule, the last time I looked, was all pretty rural, it does seem surprising that Ham’s making it to the megachurches with the same drivel. 

I think the best way for a teacher to deal with this

I’ve had one or two who threw chalkboard(not whiteboard) erasers at us.  That heavy felt was dense enough to get a half decent hit with a chalk cloud and not leave incriminating marks and bruises.

Sadie, what is the pic in your current avatar?

It’s of a young woman at a Love-In in Los Angeles in 1967. I thought she was cute, plus I am a big hippie myself and wish I were alive in those times (I was born in ‘77).

Double-dipping here:

Puppets, I’m a Simpsons fan, so I enjoy your avatar.

Ragman, I love basset hounds, so your avatar brings a smile to my face.

Len’s avatar intrigues me. I can’t tell what is going on there.

Karst’s disturbs me slightly.

I still think Jeffercine’s a cutie based on his.

We ought to have a thread devoted entirely to waxing poetic about each other’s avatars. Pardon me if one exists already.

If some smart arse kid pulled that stunt in a class I was teaching I’d give him a 5000 word assignment, the subject, proving god as the author of the bible using scientific method.

I picked it b/c it’s the stealth basselope from Bloom County.  I kinda want to change it to the one I had on gravatar.

Serai, you’d probably have the smartass kid(or parent) come back and say it can’t be done, thereby proving the scientific invalid.