The Questioning Librarian

Usually in writing about young-earth creationism, the focus is on the damage it does to science and to science education. This is quite understandable, as the primary focus of the young-earthers is to push a narrow, sectarian, and highly unscientific worldview that has done serious harm to science education. While this is, usually, enough to worry about, I've been thinking over the past few days about the damage that creationism does to women, having read my way through a handful of feminist books in recent weeks. At first glance, one may think that this is a silly idea, but as creationism in the United States represents the worldview of reactionary elements within Christianity it also does serious harm through its portrayal of women. This may seem incidental, that the view young-earth creationism holds of women is merely collateral damage from an already harmful worldview (to say nothing of their view of homosexuality, which is, as it were, rather unevolved ), but it is important...

Often I find that I'm overwhelmed by the sheer amount of output that the young-earth creationist organizations are capable of producing. I'm only one man, and even when I blogged more frequently I couldn't keep up with it. At most, I can deal with and dispense with a few articles from some of the major creationist organizations. This week I thought that I would take a different tack. Rather than focusing on a single article, I'm going to give a brief overview of some of the most recent articles coming out of Answers in Genesis, Creation Ministries and Creation Moments. Here we go... Creation Ministries International: (home of the supposed "Unanswerable Questions" for Evolutionists and of the Hovind clan) --Creation Ministries condemns the "framework hypothesis" as untenable in an article about history and pseudo-history. The framework hypothesis is one way of stating that Genesis 1-11 is literary rather than literal, and CMI won't stand for ...

Creation Ministries International is having a conference coming up this year in September. Called "Creation not Confusion", an ironic title if there ever was one, it will feature the notorious creationist Dr. Jonathan Sarfati, who answered Richard Dawkin's The Greatest Show on Earth with the resounding propaganda tract The Greatest Hoax on Earth. Sarfati is also the author of Evolution Refuted , which the website claims is the best-selling creationist book of all time (no one tell Ken Ham), though, save for the associated paycheck, that is a dubious honor. The other speaker, Gary Bates, is the current head of Creation Ministries International, and I have to admit that until today I'd never heard of him, but in fact, though the website offers nothing about his educational background, we may surmise that he does not have a PhD given the fact that creationists love nothing more than adding their letters after their name on a book (as Sarfati does). It is as though their...