The Questioning Librarian

Congratulations to Answers in Genesis! You are now an award-winning institution, having become the proud recipient of the Upchucky Award, the second distinguished prize of that name, given by the National Center for Science Education to the most egregious, anti-science promoters of creationism, acting bravely in the face of all facts, logic and reason! http://ncse.com/evolution/second-annual-upchucky-awards-announced It was a tough field this year, what with the creationist teacher who branded crosses onto several of his students using a Tesla coil being in the running, but thanks to the lunacy of AiG's "Ark Encounters" project, supported with taxpayer money by the governor of Kentucky (stand proud, Kentuckians!) Ken Ham's brainchild pulled ahead and won. Its particular brand of crazy was, this year, just enough to make all rational folk throw up, if only just a little. Thanks for the endless entertainment, AiG. I would say, "Keep up the good work," we...

"Dr." Jason Lisle, the token astrophysicist at Answers in Genesis, has devoted much of his career to explaining how stars and galaxies that are several million or billion light-years away are actually visible to us in a creation that is, in their view, six thousand years old (which means that we should not see stars that are further than 6,000 light-years away). As though a Ph.D. astrophysicist prostituting himself out to Answers in Genesis wasn't bad enough, Lisle now has an article up which asserts that Darwin, and all evolutionists, are "unwittingly" creationists. http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v4/n1/darwin-creationist He asserts that, in order to argue against creation they must first assume it is true. Wait, what? So, in Lisle's view, relying on the principles of logic to do science proves Biblical creation? If that doesn't show the good doctor's poor grasp of logic, then I do not know what will. Let's take another example...

What might this man mean in "taking back" Earth Day? Who is he taking it back from? Well, I guess it must be all of those godless environmentalists who have the silly idea that we should protect the planet for its own sake, and that taking a single day, just one day, out of the year to remind everyone that Earth is something worth preserving, worth not trashing and worth at least planting a tree for is a good idea. Well, I guess bearing his father's torch of stupidity didn't end with his championing of Young-Earth Creationism. Eric Hovind wants to "take back" Earth Day for God, by making it into "God Created Earth Day." http://www.godcreatedearthday.com/sign-up/ And how is one doing this? By "planting seeds of truth" about God having created Earth, by wearing a t-shirt that says "God Created Earth Day" that one purchases from, you guessed it, Eric Hovind! We are assured that 100% of the proceeds will go right back into his ...

Two homeschooling conventions have officially kicked Answers in Genesis out of their roster, leaving Ken Ham stunned and angry! Sadly, the organizers of the one, in an email to AiG, stated that the suspension of Ham's folk was not because they disagreed with his fundamental positions; they do, completely! No, they were annoyed by Ham's public attacks on one of their speakers, a man from the notorious BioLogos, an organization that twists itself into ever-greater levels of nonsensical complexity in arguing for the fundamental compatibility of the Genesis story and modern scientific findings. The Australian biology teacher and childhood indoctrinator extraordinaire was upset that someone who "compromises" on God's word in Genesis was allowed to peddle material to homeschoolers. He only wants his  material expressing his viewpoint to reach the little children, and makes his case in a long, rambling response that I only link in order to give you the full text of the e...

I just finished up Gene Logsdon's book, The Contrary Farmer , and I have to admit how impressed I was by it. One might just as well label this book, Cottage Farming for Dummies , so well did it convey ideas and concepts about small-scale farming to this non-farmer who likes to play at gardening. Logsdon, a small-scale farmer with around thirty acres in Ohio, writes passionately not only about what is wrong with our modern, industrial way of farming, but about what it right with modern farming and how we can do it better. In chapter after chapter, he talks about how he and other "contrary farmers" produce livestock, grains, and other things. What is the "contrary farmer", to answer a key question? The contrary farmer is one who spurns the supposedly "correct" idea of how a modern farmer should run his lands. The modern farmer is supposed to buy up as much land as they can by taking out loans, loans to buy $100,000 combines and tractors, who is suppose...

Ah, well I see that once again it is time for either "Dr. Dino" or his son to enlighten an ignorant population on some of the finer points of Earth history. Hovind posts on the Creation Science Evangelism website "facts" about Noah's Flood (available here:  http://www.drdino.com/noahs-flood-points/ ), a rather humorous beginning to a big chuckle-fest of an article, listing point after point purporting to be a true assertion about the Flood or the Ark. I find it hard to believe that anyone, even "Dr. Dino" himself, reading this list would be able to do so with a straight face. Let's try one out to see how it goes: "All animals (and people) were vegetarians before and during the Flood, according to Gen. 1:20-30 with Gen. 9.3." Are you laughing yet? I guess the teeth of Tyrannosaurus rex  and the claws of Deinonychus were just for show then, as were the admirable canines of Smilodon . Well, how about this one: "Only land-dwelling,...

After several months of anticipation for the paperback (I was too cheap to spring for the hardcover, and I don't own a Kindle, so that wasn't an option), Peter V. Brett's latest in what is being styled "The Demon Cycle" arrived in paperback. I bought The Desert Spear  two days after it came out, only because the store in which I purchase most of my books receives its book shipments on Thursdays, and that was when it arrived. I started it that night, and finished it fairly quickly. The Desert Spear continues the narrative established in the first book, The Warded Man , in which the main character of Arlen Bales progresses in his fight against the demons that plague mankind in Brett's fictional world. We begin with an inside look at the rise of Jardir (ostensibly the human villain of the previous book), in a culture someone akin to the Arabic cultures of our own day, a culture based on battle and honor. The Krasians have a brutal way of life, but that is perha...

Welcome to the mind of the shameless, and apparently heartless, Ray Comfort, creationist and so-called Christian apologist extraordinaire (also known as "the Banana Man" in rational company for one of his less-spectacular arguments for the existence of God. Seriously, look it up, it's rather amusing). In a recent blog post, he writes that atheists, who obviously can't "blame God" for the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, must view it as a positive, part of the workings of evolution that is itself a good process bent on improvement. Such a foolish misunderstanding of what evolution is (likely a purposeful one, used to attack his critics, like Oxford professor Richard Dawkins) never fails to get my hackles up. Full article here:  http://raycomfortfood.blogspot.com/2011/03/atheists-explanation-for-killer-quakes.html First of all, it does not follow that an atheist, lacking a God to "blame" in Comfort's view, would view any such tragedy as a pos...

It's no great secret that I consider myself to be a center-right kind of guy. But frankly, people like James Inhofe make me ashamed to label myself as such. I try to base my opinions on facts and sound reason to the extent possible, but I don't think the good Senator from Oklahoma would know facts or reason if they stood and danced in front of him. Here's the full article:  http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/inhofe-obama-oil-gas/2011/03/08/id/388782?s=al&promo_code=BD37-1 Inhofe claims that the administration has admitted, specifically Energy Secretary Steven Chu, that they wish to drive up gas prices to the level of Europe in order to make alternative fuels competitive. What planet did this man arrive from? I have very serious doubts that any administration figure would seriously assert the notion that gas prices should rise to the level of Europe (about 7-8 dollars per gallon). The Administration's credibility depends upon an economic recovery before 2012, and...

In dealing with Mr. Hovind's post of yesterday, it crossed my mind that someone randomly stumbling across this blog might look at its contents and wonder just why it is that Ken Ham and Kent Hovind seem to receive so much of my ire. Surely they are harmless, this person might argue, just fringe kooks, one in Kentucky and the other in jail. Why take the time and effort to attack them and their arguments? As much as I wish that I could dismiss them as simple loons, crazy but harmless, to regard them as such would be a dangerous underestimation of who they are and what power they hold. Fringe they are, but to dismiss them because of that would be premature. The numbers of people who either actively follow them or accept what they believe puts these two in the majority, not a small minority as so many of us would like to believe. Whether it is on a literal, six-day creation, Noah's Flood or the alleged young age of the earth, poll after poll of Americans agree about these issues,...

Kent Hovind, the false "Dr. Dino", and his ilk are at it again. In a new article on his website, Hovind (or whoever authored the piece, perhaps his son) claims that while creationists have no problems using miracles to explain events (a habit that perpetually makes them unfit to do real science), evolutionists criticize them for it, even though, in Hovind's mind, they rely on miracles just as much to explain their "religion" of descent through natural selection. This is, at its core, demonstrably nonsense. He claims that a "miracle" is needed to make stars and planets form out of gas, a supposed violation of Boyle's Law because there was no "outside force" acting on the gas and dust. How about gravity, Dr. Dino? That would certainly explain it, no miracles needed here. This attack is a non-sequitur. The objection has everything to do with astronomy and cosmology and nothing to do with evolution, which is the development of new species o...

Last week, I had to read Machiavelli's famed "The Prince" for my Renaissance history class; it was a good thing, actually, to be compelled to read it, as it was something that I had always meant to get to but never found the time. First, I was surprised by just how short it is, just over ninety pages in the Penguin edition that I had. Second, and perhaps most importantly of all, I can't help but feel like it wasn't written almost five hundred years ago. It reads in many places like it was written yesterday. It seems that, as a political culture, we have learned more from Machiavelli than many of us would wish to admit. That is not to say that there isn't much he wrote about that is good and useful. He explicitly condemned the use of mercenaries in wartime, asserting rightly that they owe no loyalty other than to themselves and their pay. Give them a little more and they'll stay, or perhaps as the Sforza did in Milan, simply take over the government thems...

In the House yesterday, the vote to strip oil companies of the subsidies that they've so enjoyed in the past years (from 2005-2009, worth $485 billion) failed, the GOP voting as a block, with several Democrats, to keep the unnecessary subsidies for Big Oil going. This from the same party that sees any aid to alternative energy as creeping socialism, from the same people who voted to cut heating subsidies for the poor and want to use this budget debate to zero out funding for NPR and PBS, just to get back at them for perceived "liberal" bias. What's worse than this is that I had to find out from a friend's post on Facebook. That's right, as yet no media coverage on this from the main media channels. An internet search found just three stories, all based off the original from ThinkProgress (DailyKos and ClimateProgress were the others). They link to the original House vote in the story. http://climateprogress.org/2011/03/01/house-gop-big-oil-subsidies/ We ...

As the snow melts, the mud piles high and the days gradually grow lighter, a sense of relief is growing within me as I know that the time is near where winter meets its death. The human spirit grows lighter as the darkness lessens, and I begin to long for the latter days of spring and of summer, with all its assorted activities that I so love; bike riding, lawn mowing, cooking outside, tending to flowers and vegetables, watching my herbs grow large and green, reading on the deck with a cup of coffee in the late morning or in the evening, watching the fireflies, walks with the dogs. The oppressive dominion of mind and body by the winter season is finally broken, and at this point in the year, I'm so thrilled to see winter's retreat that I feel happy enough to go stick a maypole in the ground and dance around it, no matter what the neighbors would think. What I most look forward to at this time of year is gardening, when Persephone returns from her time in Hades and fair Demete...