Friday, August 21, 2009

 

Welcome to Salem


Jim Gaines of the Bowling Green, Kentucky Daily News wrote a column about an embarrassment in his back yard. Here is a nice representative sample:

[Ken Ham's Creation "Museum"] devotes a huge amount of its 70,000 square feet to justifying a literal worldwide flood, and to explaining away the extensive geologic evidence of a 4.6-billion-year-old Earth. Most of those problems are just ignored, but the exhibits make ludicrous attempts at a few. Rivers slowly eroded canyons? Nope. Volcanoes can move rock, too. In short, they can't tell the difference between the effects of water and explosions. So if your house ever catches on fire, don't ask a young-Earth creationist to put it out.

A thoroughly predictable screed followed in the Letters to the Editor, and here it is with a few of my comments interspersed:

Jim Gaines is finally overt in his attempt to pervert the beliefs of the populace. ...

Funny, I thought we were discussing a museum that was supposed to be about science. If we knew it was advertised as a theological theme park, we probably never would have bothered.

Being a scientist myself ...

Uh, oh ...

(professional engineer) ...

Salem Hypothesis!

and having read the works of Einstein and Carl Sagan, among others, ...

Misplaced appeal to authority ...

I understand that it takes as much faith to believe in science as it does in intelligent design (God).

It takes exactly as much faith to believe in engineering as it takes to believe in science, namely: an assumption that the forces of nature are consistent and understandable ... unless one, say, designs buildings in which angels are counted on to hold up the roof! One can only assume that the writer's employers and/or customers don't know that he is only praying that his designs work.

But thanks again for the confirmation of who the "Designer" is universally understood to be.

[Skip similar blather.]

If you want truth, read God's word! I wonder if Gaines ever has. He certainly has read the secularists! God is not held to the laws of nature. If he wants to make something appear as millions of years old, which he did, nothing constrains him.

Except, maybe, by his own design criteria ... why give humans the intelligence to do engineering and science and then trick them that way? Omphalos is a cruel joke.

He warns of those who foolishly seek false knowledge!

Or an even crueler trap that belies any moral claim to righteousness by the one who set it.

I think it's high time we ostracize those of us in this small community who believe and publish lies that seek to disrupt.

Never heard of two-edged swords, has he?

The Bible tells us to just wipe our feet and move on when we fail with the unbeliever. And remember, if you doubt what God is written, either you are wrong or God is a liar!

And he's never given any thought to third possibilities.

________________________________

Update: Jim Gaines is over at The Sensuous Curmudgeon accepting accolades and, in the process, revealing some more information:

Bowling Green’s actually not bad, and as a college town it’s locally considered an island of llllllllllibrul civilization in a right-wing sea. It’s the only place Chevrolet Corvettes are made, but be warned: The “professional engineer” who wrote in does his engineering at the Corvette plant. In the original letter, by the way, he managed to spell it “professioanl."
So, it's not buildings in and about Bowling Green that we need worry about; it Corvettes all around the world!
.

Labels:


Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 7:58 AM
Comments:
Poe's Law strikes again. With people like Right Rev. Ben M. Bogard, D.D., LL.D. around to confound our spidey senses, you never know I guess. But then Rev. Ben might have been a Poe himself in it for the glory and $$$ too, who knows.
# posted by Anonymous 386sx : 11:46 AM
 
Huh, I learned something new today. I'd never heard of the Salem Hypothesis. I've seen the correlation, but didn't realize that it had its own label.
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 6:40 PM
 
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