If You Are on The Wrong Track, You’ll Get Run Over If You Just Sit There

My apologies to Will Rogers for bastardizing his famous quote (“Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”) but you’ll understand when you see my topic.

The Answers in Genesis people, a creationist group which is behind the Creation Museum (you know the museum that shows humans and dinosaurs living side-by-side, Alley Oop like), is building a theme park including “Ark Encounter” celebrating their God’s decision to kill 99.99999% of all human beings and animals. This “museum” with its replica of Noah’s Ark is being sited in Kentucky which is probably no surprise, but you may be surprised at the $43 million dollar tax break the state felt it could afford the project amongst its education and social service cuts.

The Answers in Genesis crowd, like the Discovery Institute and a number of other creationist organizations, are vehemently opposed to Darwinian evolution and the multi-million-year fossil histories because they are clearly lies in that they conflict with their interpretations of holy scripture. To them, such science is an attack on the Bible that threatens to drive faith out of human life. (Ironically the Ark Encounter is sited over some spectacular fossil beds.)

These so-called “young Earth creationists” insist the God made the earth with the fossils embedded in it less than 10,000 years ago. Of course, any alien being capable of doing that could have created the Earth 10 minutes ago with all of our memories embedded in us making us believe that the world had existed for a long time, so this is a classic example of magical thinking that doesn’t resolve anything.

Now come back to the title. No one is forcing these people to stand in the path of science holding up their hand and shouting “Stop!” They are volunteering to do this. If they had chosen to not protest, would anyone have noticed the “conflict” between reality and the Book of Genesis in the H.B.? I think not. Most Jews are quite comfortable with Genesis being allegory and don’t find that modern science undermines their faith at all.

For those of us finding religion not just unnecessary but a roadblock to fulfillment of our promise, the Answers in Genesis people and their Ark Museum are doing us a favor. They are on the wrong track and they will continue shouting “Stop!” and they will be run over, thus fulfilling their fear by further driving their faith onto the ridiculous side of the ledger of human activities.

Keep up the good work AIG, we atheists are behind you (pushing).