Natural History

I don’t think I could have made a better comparison than this piece in the Oklahoma Daily:

Suppose a father tells his son that a stork delivered him as a baby. At first this might seem perfectly fine and innocent, but then suppose the son is 15 years old and has yet to attend biology class.

It gets worse. The father also has instructed the boy to reject any notion that questions deliverance by stork. Why might the father do this? Perhaps his own dad told him something similar, or he was absent from the delivery room at the time of his son’s birth.

After all, why should he accept something he didn’t observe firsthand?

In case you’re still not disturbed, let’s have him — with a group of influential, like-minded friends — do everything in his power to make stork theory universally accepted doctrine.

It may not be a perfect allegory, but I hope putting things in this context will help you understand the incredulity I felt last week as I read the news.

Come 2014, Kentucky will be known for a biblical creationist theme park, brought to us by Answers in Genesis, an apologetics ministry known for twisting scientific facts and promoting a literalist interpretation of the Bible.

This is the same group that established a creationist museum in 2007, which features dinosaurs eating pineapples with penguins in the Garden of Eden. In the context of my story, the group members believe storks deliver babies.

Aside from debate about tax incentives (separation of church and what?), this proposal should spark serious concern. In establishing a museum dedicated to falsehood, Answers in Genesis seeks to undermine our integrity. Now, by building a theme park, it’s blatantly attempting to indoctrinate children.

According to a 2008 Gallup poll, 44 percent of Americans still believe literally in the Bible’s account of human origin. For something that is scientifically invalid, that is much too large a number.

A literalist, young-Earth creation like that in the Bible can now be disproved with more or less the same certainty we can disprove the stork theory.

Forget evolution, I’m talking about what we’re pretty sure didn’t happen. Even the Catholic Church has admitted a literal Adam and Eve never existed.

As a society dependent on our youth’s proper education, I thought we had agreed that lying to children should be looked on with contempt, whether it’s backed up by religious convictions or not. If anything, that should be all the more reason to be concerned: taking Bible readings literally can ultimately lead to fundamentalism, which is incredibly dangerous.

To show I’m not raging purely against religion, let me recommend finding a more educated understanding in prominent Christians who accept evolution. One such man is Francis Collins, Human Genome Project and the National Institutes of Health director. You don’t need to be a critic of religion to keep the children rightly informed.

Unfortunately, because Answers in Genesis is particularly stubborn, I can only ask for your indignation. Take a look at what this group is trying to do, realize why it’s wrong, and guard against it. It has the right to build what it wants, but it’s time we — inhabitants of the Bible Belt — consider the immorality of lying to children and reject a literalist interpretation of the Bible.

Also, there will be no rides at the park, so don’t bother supporting it even if you disagree.

And this is  one reason why America is in decline as a power.

If too many of us celebrate the denial of objective reality, how on earth can we come up with solutions to solve our many challenges we currently face?

Denying the facts about evolution is just a training ground for denying facts about so many other things.

One can still be a person of faith and accept evolution. See Gould’s  “Nonoverlapping Magisteria.”

Our nation was born out of the Enlightenment.

It would be a shame that it would die as the result of increasing religious fundamentalism.