[The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind] Good Things Come to Those Who Wait...

Hey! John Scalzi finally took the trip and posted his thoughts on the Temple of Stupid that is The Creation Museum.

I recommend popping over there to read his review and do make a point of taking the time to look at his collection of photos with delightful snippets of heavily Scalzified snark included. It's the funny-stuff that makes these Mondays so damn enjoyable.

Anyway, I found John's write-up to be quite easy to digest and embrace, and I love his statement that:

The problem with this is that creationism isn’t a theory, it’s an assertion, to wit: The entire universe was created in six days, the days are 24-hour days, the layout for the creation and for the early history of the planet and humanity is in the first chapter of Genesis and it is exactly right. Everything has to be made to conform to these assertions, which is why creationist attempts at science are generally so damn comical and refutable.

And, this will always be the death blow to the notion that creationism is a science. It will always be nothing more than a simple assertion. That's it. So long as they cling to this notion that "the Magic Man did it" and ignore every bit of contradictory evidence, there will never be even the slightest hint of science involved. It doesn't matter how tall that pile of gibberish grows, nor how many books are chiseled out on the subject, the fact remains that creationism is, at best, a desperate refuge for the intellectually lazy and educationally apathetic. There is no theory to learn. There is no testing via scientific approach and method allowed since every single unbiased analysis of creationism will result in the dissolution of its foundation beneath a great flood of reality.

How long are our learned minds required to waste their precious time paying lip-service to these flailing mystagogues and the fictional accounts of their meddling sky-faerie?

I think my biggest problem with creationism lay in the duplicitous, and wholly destructive nature of allowing something that has no rational foundation by which to claim itself a science into our academic institutions as a science. Teaching this nonsense in our schools is not simply lowering the bar of academic standards. It's taking that bar and throwing it out the window and teaching our children that whatever nonsense they believe, regardless of how unprovable it may be, is to be considered a rational, valid truth. If a college student wants to believe Santa Claus is real, so be it.

Perhaps that's the horrendous slippery slope?

If we allow creationism to call itself a science, we then have to consider the hocus-pocus of things like astrology, phrenology, and a whole host of other pseudo-science deceits as legitimate scientific disciplines. Creationism simply belongs in the mystical with the rest of these silly things which have no foundation in reality.

As far as I'd like to say America's academic future is a bright one, I can't. Creationism is just another way for the brainwashed lemmings of religion to cram their mythology into places where is doesn't belong and pollute our educational system. In a nation where religious freedom supposedly exists, teaching children some bastardized pseudo-Christian dreck about the creation of the earth and passing it off as scientific fact will do more damage than I think these indoctrinated zealots realize.

Set your mind ten years into the future, and imagine a horde of religiously home-schooled, young-earth creationists banging upon the doors of our state colleges and universities. They believe they are qualified to enter, but they can not fulfill even the most meager of science requirements as a result of being taught this irrational, unscientific nonsense that is creationism. What are these institutions supposed to do?

Do they lower their standards by allowing this mythology to fulfill the science requirement for graduation? Or, do they rightly turn these under-educated students away as their cries of religious persecution grow louder and louder? That's the rub, huh?

Damned if you do; damned if you don't.

So, that's what I fear an acceptance of this woefully non-academic idea of creationism will inevitably bring. And, while those far more qualified and important than I continue to waste their lives and precious time spinning in the same damn circles disproving and pointing out creationism's multitudinous errors, America's academic potential and our intellectual advancement remains stagnant and crumbling beneath the dead weight of the irrelevant pseudo-science of creationism. In other words, creationism is not worth the time of our nation's educated minds, and I'd much rather they do things like cure cancer than deal with childish nitwits and their irrational figments.

As it stands, creationism deserves to be mocked and ridiculed. We should laugh until it is marginalized and harmless, and it becomes nothing more than an irrelevant notion for the cultists dwelling on the fringe of humanity to entertain along with crop circles, Xenu and the notion of a flat-freakin'-earth.

It ticks me off that here humanity finds itself in the 21st Century, and we're still having to deal with the rudely religious as they cram their foot in the door of reality. Intellectually, we should have moved past all of this ages ago. It's archaic, and it makes no sense clinging to a bronze-age lifestyle in a world of digital watches, cellular-phones and microwaveable dinners. Take a look at the Bible. There is no way a person can follow the so-called teachings and rules of the Bible without being thrown in jail, so believers are reduced to treating it as though it was nothing more than an ala-carte menu. Most other religious texts suffer the same fate as well when held up to reality. At what point will these religious minds stop and say "You know? Maybe we should step aside and actually see what good can come from this beast called man. Our meddling isn't needed, and we are holding humanity back from what could be very good things."

And there be my two-cents...

-DP


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Posted By Dan to The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind at 11/12/2007 11:37:00 AM