Ignorance is not innocence but sin.
--Robert Browning Hamilton
In this episode of Back to the Stone Age diary, we keep up with the ongoing saga from Ken Ham, the ka-ching owner of a Christian Ministry and its notorious Creation Museum here in Kentucky. Ham is a former science teacher from Australia (what the hell is it with Australia exporting all their weirdoes over to us… first it was Rupert Murdoch and then this Ham bozo).
Ham set up his creationist Noah’s Ark Encounter museum with a little help from his wealthy (and very secretive) investors. They are tapping the taxpayers of Kentucky for millions of dollars to fund this creationism project along the northern Kentucky/Cincinnati border. And unfortunately, our dear Democratic governor has been bamboozled into endorsing this fleecing of Kentucky taxpayers.
Anyway, PBS ran a show this weekend titled Christian Theme Parks covering “Religion and Ethics” and Ham’s Creation Museum was front and center. Ham and his supporters consistently rationalize their religiosity with “can’t argue with God and the Bible” about the creation of the world in six days in their fight against the teaching of evolution and scientific knowledge.
Thankfully, the PBS video offers airtime to two wonderful Kentuckians to dispense more sensible viewpoints about the ka-ching Creation Museum of Ken Ham.
One of those is Dan Phelps, who is the president of the Kentucky Paleontological Society. The other is the Reverend Joseph Phelps, who is pastor of the Highland Baptist Church in Louisville, KY. [No clue if the two Phelps are related]
Just a gleaning from their statements on that PBS show says so much:
REV. JOSEPH PHELPS: I honor anyone who has a different understanding of creation than I or my church might have. That’s not the problem at all. It’s when, as in the case of the theme park, when they want to ask for public monies in order to fund putting out their particular point of view. That’s where we have a problem.
DAN PHELPS: In the original story, Noah basically built the ark on his own shekel. He didn’t have any government funding or anything like that involved.
DAN PHELPS: Almost every year here in Kentucky we have attempts to get laws enacted into the state legislature that would promote creationism, and right now outside of the larger cities a lot of students aren’t learning very much about evolution. The textbooks soft-peddle it. The teachers tend to avoid the subject basically for fear of offending people, and the Creation Museum and the ark park can only make this worse in Kentucky.
So, Noah took 100 years to build his ark and didn't chase down taxpayer dollars nor did he pursue government kickbacks to do his G*d work. Yet, the creationists are busy seersuckering our precious taxpayer monies for their vainglorious Stairways to Heaven’s Gate.
Anyway, to wrap up this segment of the ongoing saga of the “Fleecing of Our Tax Pockets” is this highway sign on your way to the Creation Museum. OMG... was this highway sign hacked by G*d? Or is it a sign from an omnipotent someone who knows what's out there? Cue the spooky Twilight Zone music.
And if you feel so inclined and have a few coins down in those sofa cushions… the pride of the Bluegrass blog Barefoot and Progressive could use some coin tossin’ their way. Vielen Dank.
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