The future of science in America

If you think that the creationism vs. evolution debate is simply angels dancing on the head of a pin, guess again. The creationists want nothing less than a Biblical framework for all scientific study in America. Creationism, or even "intelligent design", isn't scientific theory, it's throwing up our hands and believing what the preacher tells us because some things are just Too Big To Understand.

When every other developed country in the world is adhering to scientific methodology in their research, how long do you think it's going to take for us to become a third-world backwater if the scientific community is constrained by blind faith in a much-translated 2000-year-old book?

Case in point:

Ken Ham has spent 11 years working on a museum that poses the big question when and how did life begin? Ham hopes to soon offer an answer to that question in his still-unfinished Creation Museum in northern Kentucky.

The $25 million monument to creationism offers Ham's view that God created the world in six, 24-hour days on a planet just 6,000 years old. The largest museum of its kind in the world, it hopes to draw 600,000 people from the Midwest and beyond in its first year.

Ham, 53, isn't bothered that his literal interpretation of the Bible runs counter to accepted scientific theory, which says Earth and its life forms evolved over billions of years.

Ham said the museum is a way of reaching more people along with the Answers in Genesis Web site, which claims to get 10 million page views per month and his "Answers ... with Ken Ham" radio show, carried by more than 725 stations worldwide.

"People will get saved here," Ham said of the museum. "It's going to fire people up. If nothing else, it's going to get them to question their own position of what they believe."

Ham is ready for a fight over his beliefs based on a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament.

"It's a foundational battle," said Ham, a native of Australia who still speaks with an accent. "You've got to get people believing the right history - and believing that you can trust the Bible."

Among Ham's beliefs are that the Earth is about 6,000 years old, a figure arrived at by tracing the biblical genealogies, and not 4.5 billion years, as mainstream scientists say; the Grand Canyon was formed not by erosion over millions of years, but by floodwaters in a matter of days or weeks and that dinosaurs and man once coexisted, and dozens of the creatures including Tyrannosaurus Rex were passengers on the ark built by Noah, who was a real man, not a myth.

This isn't "creation science", it's bullshit. It's Biblical faith claiming to be science. And it's going to put the U.S. at a strong disadvantage in the future. If individuals want to believe this pap, fine. That's part of living in a free society. But don't call it science, and don't teach this crap to kids as science. Call it religion, and teach it to kids as just what is is: what some people believe. Not as Absolute Truth.