Creationism

In what may be the most entertaining review of “Expelled” yet, Roger Ebert gives Ben Stein what for in the Chicago Sun Times: This film is cheerfully ignorant, manipulative, slanted, cherry-picks quotations, draws unwarranted conclusions, makes outrageous juxtapositions (Soviet marching troops representing opponents of ID), pussy-foots around religion (not a single identified believer among the ID people), segues between quotes that are not about the same thing, tells bald-faced lies, and makes a completely baseless association between freedom of speech and freedom to teach religion in a university class that is not about religion. And there is worse, much worse. Toward the end of the film, we find that Stein actually did want to title it “From Darwin to Hitler.” He finds a Creationist who informs him, “Darwinism inspired and advanced Nazism.” He refers to advocates of eugenics as liberal. I would not call Hitler liberal. Arbitrary forced sterilization in our country has been promoted mostly by racists, who curiously found many times more blacks than whites suitable for such treatment. Ben Stein is only getting warmed up. He takes a field trip to visit one “result” of Darwinism: Nazi concentration camps. “As a Jew,” he says, “I wanted to see for myself.” We see footage of gaunt, skeletal prisoners. Pathetic children. A mound of naked Jewish corpses. “It’s difficult to describe how it felt to walk through such a haunting place,” he says. Oh, go ahead, Ben Stein. Describe. It filled you with hatred for Charles Darwin and his followers, who represent the overwhelming majority of educated people in every nation on earth. It is not difficult for me to describe how you made me feel by exploiting the deaths of millions of Jews in support of your argument for a peripheral Christian belief. It fills me with contempt. ...

The Door Christian Fellowship, a creepily cultish Pentecostal Christian sect that’s an offshoot of Aimee Semple McPherson’s Foursquare Gospel Church, is putting on a “hell house” in Chandler. They’re calling it “Hell 101," and, as usual, they are advertising it in a deceptive manner that attempts to hide the fact that it’s religious propaganda. I say “as usual” because not only have they put on such “hell houses” for years around Halloween, they’re also known for advertising events such as Christian rock concerts while conveniently forgetting to mention the “Christian” part. Such deception has long been associated with Aimee Semple McPherson (1890-1944), who was a fraudulent faith healer, alcohol Prohibitionist, and anti-evolutionist who later in life faked her own abduction in order to run off with her lover, Kenneth G. Ormiston, who had been an engineer for her radio station KFSG in Los Angeles. After disappearing for 35 days, she stumbled out of the desert in Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico, just south of the border from Douglas, Arizona, and told a phony story of kidnapping which quickly fell apart when witnesses came forth who had seen her at a resort in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. She ended up dying of an accidental drug overdose from taking too many Seconol sleeping pills, but her Foursquare Gospel Church still exists today with over two million members, mostly outside of the U.S. (Interestingly, as a teenager McPherson was an agnostic who defended evolution in letters to the newspaper.) The Potter’s House, The Door, Victory Chapel, and other Foursquare Gospel spinoff churches are Pentecostal churches that engage in faith healing, speaking in tongues, being slain in the spirit, and other activities of anthropological interest. They can be very hardcore in the pushiness of their evangelism, and engage in cult-like conversion techniques such as separating people from groups they come with, pairing them off with someone of the same approximate age and sex, and bombarding them with rehearsed questions designed to push someone to a conclusion that they need to accept Jesus and join their group. (The Wikipedia page on The Potter’s House describes this particular sect’s origins in Prescott, Arizona in 1970, originally officially affiliated with the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel. The Wikipedia biography of its founder, Wayman O. Mitchell, is also of interest. The sect’s origins trace back to Los Angeles, as does the Pentecostal movement in general.) “Hell 101”’s website calls it “Final Destination III,” and describes the hell house as “a twist on a haunted house style attraction that was described by Phoenix Arizona NBC News Affiliate Channel 12 as ‘scary, horrifying, suspenseful, sick….’ NBC 12 News had a live video feed from our annual event where hundreds waited up to two hours in line to have the hell-scared out of them.” Their FAQ has the question “If I quit because I was scared or anything else can I get a refund?” The “anything else” would include feeling defrauded by having paid money for a haunted house, but getting instead Christian propaganda. The answer: “There are no refunds if you get scared, cry, feel angry, get sick, hate it, love it or just want to run!!! Our job is to confront your senses and that we do!" A Christian hell house can be quite entertaining, so long as you know what to expect and are prepared to exercise your right to walk away at the end when the attempts at conversion go into overdrive (they may suggest that the doors are locked and that you may not leave). George Ratliff’s documentary film “Hell House” is a great way to get a preview, and shows some of the unintentional comedy that can be produced when a bunch of ignorant people try to put together a scary haunted house designed to persuade you that you’re going to hell unless you believe the way they do. That documentary also shows how ineffectual some atheists can be in their confrontation of Christians, and I highly recommend that anyone planning to visit one of these hell houses for any reason give it a watch before going. A “hell house” usually follows a common script template which the churches purchase and customize. They go through a writing, casting, and production process similar to a high school stage production. The “hell house” script typically guides a group of visitors through a series of rooms, each of which contains a brief performance by actors portraying some scene that argues for certain practices, beliefs, or actions as likely to terminate with eternity in hell, though that latter point may initially be somewhat subtle. (By the end, it is anything but.) I attended a hell house at a Potter’s House church in Tucson in 1990, from which the flyer image was obtained. (Also see this PDF of an Arizona Daily Star newspaper story about that particular hell house, which got in trouble with the local fire department for fire code violations.) That hell house followed a female character from scene to scene which included a car crash caused by teenage drinking (featuring an actual wrecked car and empty beer cans), a band of demons playing AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” (suggesting that at least some rock music is demonic in origin and consequences), and the ever-popular hanging nun in hell (Catholicism is regarded by this sect as ruled by Satan) and young woman on a stretcher with a pool of blood between her legs shrieking that she’s killed her own baby (the anti-abortion segment). At the end, there’s a high-pressure call to Jesus which provides an opportunity to argue with someone who may be something like a street preacher in their skill of providing pre-programmed responses to common objections they’ve heard many times but is unlikely to have actually thought deeply about. If you do choose to visit one of these, I advise not getting involved in such a discussion if you’re somebody who is likely to blow up, call people stupid, or otherwise lose your cool–that’s just going to be seen as confirming evidence that you’re under the control of the devil and anything you say can be dismissed without consideration. UPDATE (October 31, 2008): New Times has a review of The Door’s “Final Destination III” hell house. ...

Dustin Chalker, stationed at Ft. Riley, Kansas, has filed a lawsuit about being forced to attend Christian proselytization events in the military, including a presentation which claimed that Christianity and creationism give life meaning, while evolution and atheism remove hope. The complaint describes this event, which took place at a U.S. military base in England, delivered by Chaplain Christian Biscotti (!) and was approved by Lt. Gen. Rod Bishop (!) who spoke afterward: Another slide titled “Contrasting Theories of Hope, Ultimate Theories Explaining Our Existence,” has two columns, the first titled “Chance,” and the second “Design,” comparing Charles Darwin, creationism, and religion are also part of a chart comparing the former Soviet Union to the United States, concluding that “Naturalism/Evolution/Atheism” leads to people being “in bondage” and having “no hope,” while theism leads to “People of Freedom” and “People of hope/destiny.” After several more slides like these, the presentation continues with a slide titled “Christian’s Message,” and a slide with an image of a man looking upwards with his hands outstretched and the caption “Please open up both of your hands to receive this powerful tool."This lawsuit, like that of Jeremy Hall, was filed by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. Chaplain Biscotti is a real person, currently stationed at the Joint Warfare Centre in Stavanger, Norway. (Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.) UPDATE (October 18, 2008): Jeremy Hall has withdrawn his lawsuit on the grounds that he will soon be out of the military and suspects the case will be dismissed for lack of standing once he’s out. Chalker’s case continues. UPDATE (January 7, 2009): Chalker’s suit has been updated and expanded to add further examples of “the noxiously unconstitutional pattern and practice of fundamentalist Christian oppression” in the military, including the Air Force sponsoring “Team Faith” motocross stunt shows, promoting attempts to convert Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan to Christianity, and the Army’s 2008 manual on suicide prevention, which promotes “religiosity” as a necessary component. ...

Troy Britain gives John Morris of the Institute for Creation Research a thorough debunking regarding his article in the September 2008 issue of the ICR’s Acts & Facts, demonstrating that Morris really has no idea what he’s talking about.

I’ve previously written to critique claims that Sarah Palin is a Christian reconstructionist or dominionist, or that she’s a young-earth creationist or tried to put creationism in the public schools. I still stand behind the former argument, but I think there is now some evidence that she is a young-earth creationist and supported Mat-Su Borough School Board candidates who aimed to put creationism in the public schools, but never got a majority on the school board. There’s also now evidence that Palin is an advocate of pushing an allegedly secularized version of principles from Bill Gothard’s Institute in Basic Life Principles, which I previously wrote about here when serial killer Matthew Murray blamed them for his problems. Palin’s Creationism David Talbot’s article at Salon.com about Sarah Palin’s clashes with Rev. Howard Bess over his book about how churches should deal with homosexuality contained a passage that stated that she is a young-earth creationist: Another valley activist, Philip Munger, says that Palin also helped push the evangelical drive to take over the Mat-Su Borough school board. “She wanted to get people who believed in creationism on the board,” said Munger, a music composer and teacher. “I bumped into her once after my band played at a graduation ceremony at the Assembly of God. I said, ‘Sarah, how can you believe in creationism – your father’s a science teacher.’ And she said, ‘We don’t have to agree on everything.’ “I pushed her on the earth’s creation, whether it was really less than 7,000 years old and whether dinosaurs and humans walked the earth at the same time. And she said yes, she’d seen images somewhere of dinosaur fossils with human footprints in them."Munger said the same thing on his own blog: In June 1997, both Palin and I had responsibilities at the graduation ceremony of a small group of Wasilla area home schoolers. I directed the Mat-Su College Community Band, which played music, and she gave the commencement address. It was held at her [former -jjl] church, the Wasilla Assembly of God. Palin had recently become Wasilla mayor, beating her earliest mentor, John Stein, the then-incumbent mayor. A large part of her campaign had been to enlist fundamentalist Christian groups, and invoke evangelical buzzwords into her talks and literature. As the ceremony concluded, I bumped into her in a hall away from other people. I congratulated her on her victory, and took her aside to ask about her faith. Among other things, she declared that she was a young earth creationist, accepting both that the world was about 6,000-plus years old, and that humans and dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time. I asked how she felt about the second coming and the end times. She responded that she fully believed that the signs of Jesus returning soon “during MY lifetime,” were obvious. “I can see that, maybe you can’t - but it guides me every day."I spoke with Philip Munger by telephone on September 17, hoping to be able to find others who could confirm Palin’s creationist views. Unfortunately, he said that there weren’t other witnesses to his conversation, but he did give me a lot of background information about Palin’s political career. He said that the Wasilla government had been dominated by Democrats until 1994, when it shifted to Republicans and John Stein became mayor. Stein was Palin’s original political mentor, but she decided to run against Stein in 1996, under the tutelage of Alaska State Rep. Victor Kohring, Republican representative from Wasilla, who began a 3.5-year prison term for corruption in July. Munger described Kohring, a member of the Christian Businessman’s Association, as a member of the religious right. Stein, while a Republican, was vulnerable to attack as being not sufficiently conservative, due to the fact that his wife is a pro-choice Democrat who hasn’t taken his last name. Munger told me that Palin also supported a slate of religious right candidates for the Mat-Su Borough School Board, including Cheryl Turner, who he described as a creationist. But he said that the creationists didn’t win a majority on the school board, and as a result made no attempt to push that agenda. Munger said that he called in a question to Sarah Palin when she appeared on the Don Fagan program around October of 2006, and he asked her if her views on creationism had moderated since the Dover case. Her response indicated that her views had not changed, and that she had no idea what the Dover case was. Munger offered to explain it to her in detail if she contacted him, but she never did. He said that she didn’t say anything to explicitly endorse creationism, instead resorting to the same tactics suggested by the Discovery Institute of protecting academic freedom, allowing “both” views to be taught, teaching the controversy, etc. My impression is that Palin is likely a young-earth creationist, but not one who knows much about it or has it high on her agenda for political change. She’s probably smart enough to see that such could be a liability for her future political career and so will avoid questions about it or answer in generalities. Palin and Bill Gothard Sarah Posner has a new article at Salon.com titled “Sarah Palin, faith-based mayor." This article points out that the Wasilla City Council passed a resolution in April 2000 at her direction declaring Wasilla to be a “City of Character” and a supporter of the International Association of Character Cities, run by Steven Menzel. This organization promotes a secularized version of the principles from Bill Gothard’s Institute in Basic Life Principles, which is a sort of Christianity-lite cult that promotes the prosperity gospel and a whole lot of craziness like this: Wives who work outside the home are to be compared to harlots — Bill Gothard ...

Kat and I went last night to see “Walking with Dinosaurs” at the U.S. Airways Center in Phoenix. It was a visually impressive show–they did a great job on the dinosaurs, which were quite realistic in appearance and movement, with only minor distractions. The smaller dinosaurs were operated by a person inside, whose legs were partially visible since a human’s legs don’t fit into the shape of the dinosaur’s legs. The larger dinosaurs were each mounted on some kind of flat long vehicle that was colored to match the floor, but was still visible. The music was loud and somewhat bombastic, the kind of stirring movie soundtrack music that can be sometimes irritating–but not as much so as the typical Phoenix Suns intro that regularly happens at the same location. The dinosaurs movements involved very limited interactions with each other–only occasionally so much as touching each other–which made the “battles” more of a suggestion than a depiction. No doubt this was to avoid damaging some expensive dinosaurs. The production was narrated by an actor playing “Huxley” the paleontologist, who walked around on the floor with the dinosaurs, describing the historical context with the help of video projected onto several screens. The arena itself was encircled by inflatable plant life that “grew” and “died” at the appropriate times. Some lighting and smoke effects also contributed to the atmosphere, for fires, volcanos, and the comet theory of the K-T mass extinction. Some other props included some giant rocks which were also used to represent the continents, and a big ball of dinosaur poop (one of several kid-pleasing elements that I also appreciated). It was definitely a bit more on the entertainment side of “edutainment” than the education side. Although the script tried to convey the timescales involved, it didn’t try very hard–some visual analogies on the video screen might have helped. It explained the difference between fossils of dead animals and trace fossils that show evidence of how they lived, but made no attempt to talk about the geological strata or how we know the enormous ages involved. It didn’t, to my mind, do much of anything to try to proactively counter young-earth creationist nonsense about the dinosaurs. And that was a pity, because as we left the arena, we were confronted by young-earth creationists from the Arizona Origin Science Association handing out copies of Ken Ham’s booklet, “What REALLY Happened to the Dinosaurs?” I heard one gentleman come back and ask for another copy, saying “my brother[-in-law?] is an evolutionary biologist, and I want to give him one.” I hope that man’s relative takes the time to rebut it. There are some photos and video of “Walking with Dinosaurs” at Brian Switek’s Laelaps blog, along with his description of the show. ...

Factcheck.org has a section up on “Sliming Palin." Check it before forwarding on emails, and reply to the authors who are spreading falsehoods. Palin didn’t cut Alaska’s “special needs” education budget by 62% (she tripled it), she didn’t ask for any books to be banned, she was never a member of the Alaskan Independence Party (though her husband was), she didn’t endorse Patrick Buchanan for president in 2000 (she wore a Buchanan button as a courtesy when Buchanan visited Wasilla, but worked for Steve Forbes’ campaign), and she hasn’t tried to put creationism in schools. UPDATE (September 16, 2008): Apparently one of the books that Palin had inquired about how to challenge and remove from the library was a book by a local Palmer, AK pastor named Rev. Howard Bess titled, Pastor, I am Gay. It does appear that there were some particular books that caught her attention which is why she made the inquiry. UPDATE (September 16, 2008): Philip Munger of Wasilla says that Palin is definitely a young-earth creationist: In June 1997, both Palin and I had responsibilities at the graduation ceremony of a small group of Wasilla area home schoolers. I directed the Mat-Su College Community Band, which played music, and she gave the commencement address. It was held at her church, the Wasilla Assembly of God. Palin had recently become Wasilla mayor, beating her earliest mentor, John Stein, the then-incumbent mayor. A large part of her campaign had been to enlist fundamentalist Christian groups, and invoke evangelical buzzwords into her talks and literature. As the ceremony concluded, I bumped into her in a hall away from other people. I congratulated her on her victory, and took her aside to ask about her faith. Among other things, she declared that she was a young earth creationist, accepting both that the world was about 6,000-plus years old, and that humans and dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time. I asked how she felt about the second coming and the end times. She responded that she fully believed that the signs of Jesus returning soon “during MY lifetime,” were obvious. “I can see that, maybe you can’t - but it guides me every day."Surely there must be other witnesses besides Munger to her creationist views who can provide confirmation. ...

Tom Willis, the creationist behind the “Lucy’s knee joint” claim I debunked in a Talk Origins FAQ, who in June stated that evolutionists should be “violently expelled” from the United States or denied the right to vote, now says that evolutionists should be imprisoned in labor camps. I think Mr. Willis is either a lunatic or desperate for attention. I think he should get the latter, as a poster boy for creationist rationality. I discussed Willis and the Lucy’s knee joint claim in the fourth ApostAZ podcast. (Willis is not actually in Kansas, but in Missouri, where he runs “The Berry Patch.") UPDATE: Ed Brayton has a more detailed take-down of Willis’ latest at Dispatches from the Culture Wars. ...

Daniel Radosh has a new book out titled Rapture Ready!: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture, which might be entertaining. There’s a chapter on creationism that talks about Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis, and possibly the split by Creation Ministries International, since Google Books tells me my name is mentioned on p. 279. Anybody at Scribner want to send me a review copy? Based on the reviews at Amazon.com, it sounds like Radosh gives Christian pop culture a sympathetic and even-handed portrayal that also points out its absurdities and self-contradictions, similar to the excellent documentary Hell House.

Creation Ministries International has updated its website to respond to the trove of documents released by Answers in Genesis. The Answers in Genesis site now includes the U.S. judge’s order to compel arbitration in the U.S. (PDF). The court’s order requires arbitration to occur in the U.S., but does not put a stop to the legal action in Australia, on the grounds that one of the documents at issue (the Deed of Copyright License or DOCL) says that the parties do “not object to the exercise of jurisdiction by [the Australian courts] on any basis” (to quote the judge’s quotation from the document). The judge describes his order as granting in part and denying in part the Answers in Genesis petition, though Answers in Genesis describes it merely as granting their petition to compel arbitration. The CMI update has a lengthy list of “WHAT AIG IS CAREFUL NOT TO TELL YOU” that makes the point that the U.S. and Australian groups were not as separate as AiG has tried to convey, with interesting examples such as that the U.S. group had appointed a CEO/COO to report to Ken Ham as president, and Carl Wieland of the Australian group was given the task of firing this person. Another is that the letter from Wieland to the U.S. board that AiG describes as “unsolicited” was actually specifically requested by the U.S. board in response to Wieland’s criticisms that he had previously made to the Australian board (three members of which were also on the U.S. board). AiG describes its former executive VP, Brandon Vallorani, as a dupe or co-conspirator with Carl Wieland, but doesn’t note that when he was terminated he was given a payment in return for being bound to silence, and so is unable to comment on what actually happened without breaching that agreement. The CMI summary notes (as I mentioned, via Kevin Henke, in my previous post) that the Thallon document contradicts other testimony from Thallon about whether the Australian board was pressured to accept the October 2005 agreement: “Ironically, there is eyewitness testimony of people having heard Thallon himself claim that they acted under duress in signing, and we have in writing (written back at the time) from a leading creation scientist and professor that Thallon personally told him that Ken Ham had threatened to not buy the next issue of the magazine if they failed to sign. So Thallon is either telling the truth to this scientist, or he is telling the truth in these documents–it’s hard to see how both can be the case.” It’s also interesting to note that the Thallon document alternates between U.S. and Australian spellings of some words (e.g. “organization” and “organisation” are both used in paragraph 22), which probably indicates a document prepared by Thallon (an Australian) and one or more Americans (such as AiG’s attorneys) that was not fully reviewed carefully for consistency. ...