Creationists: The Stupidest People On The Planet Week (Day Five)

Memo to Creationists: JUST 'CAUSE THE WEEK'S OVER, YOU DON'T STOP BEING DUMB.

Welcome to the final day of Creationists: The Stupidest People On Earth Week here at You Are Dumb. We've covered a lot of ground this week, ranging from stupid creationists to idiot creationists to moron creationists to racist innumerate fucktard creationists to a president who has no problem supporting creationists.

Let's take one last peek into the fucked up minds of the Six Thousand Year Universe people, shall we? Or even, in the case of "Molatar Seth Pyrargent", the ten thousand year old universe people.

You may have seen references to "MSP" on the Internet this week - his site appears to have been discovered and passed around to the point of server-crashing. MSP is a self-proclaimed transspecies dragon shapeshifting evangelist who feels it is his job to bring the Gospel to the furry and werewolf communities.

Molatar is one of the Broken People. People who, for whatever reason, cannot cope with the world at all, and retreat into fantasy worlds and subcultures in an attempt to find a purpose, a place for themselves. Molatar is fairly unique in this regard in that usually people EITHER hook up with the Sonic-Fuckers OR the Psycho Jesus-Freaks, but Molatar has dedicated himself to uniting the worlds of people who like drawings of centaur dicks and people who like big-eyed porcelain angels.

I'm not going to make too much fun of Molatar - there's no sport in the powerless, terminally fucked-up. Plus, if he does succeed in turning the furries into rabid (so to speak) Christians, I might have to start showing up at Sunday services just to watch the resulting culture-clash implosion. But what's interesting about Molatar is that, even in the grips of MULTIPLE psychotic delusions, he's able to say that "I don't believe the Earth is as young as 6000 years." Admittedly, he then goes on to add only 4,000 years to the total, and spout some completely insane bullshit about God making the Earth's magnetic field super-strong, but he's still, technically, 67% more sane than the people petitioning your school board these days. And he thinks he can turn into a dragon if he concentrates hard enough.

Molatar is not the problem. You are. Or, rather, the person next to you is.

Just this week, a CBS News poll shows that 55% of the people they surveyed (885 adults, margin of error +/- three percent) believe that humans were placed on Earth in their current form by God. That humans didn't, and don't, evolve. About half that number, 27%, take the more reasonable view that humans did evolve, but that God created the process of evolution. And about half of THAT number, 13%, believe that whatever god or gods exist or don't stayed the fuck out of the whole species thing.

If the poll is correct, some form of creationism ends up with a higher margin of victory than BUSH. An even higher margin, 65%, felt that creationism should be taught side-by-side with evolution in public schools, and a whopping 37% thougth that creationism should REPLACE evolution in schools.

Lest you think, by the way, that this is ENTIRELY a red/blue state thing. out of those 885 people, some unspecified number (around 40%) voted for Kerry. And of those who voted for Kerry, nearly a quarter also felt that evolution should be scrapped in schools in favor of the Judeo-Christian creation myth. And the Democrats wants to move farther to the right to appeal to 2008 voters? I think they've locked up all the drooling morons they can manage at this point.

And this, by the way, is after 17 years of creationism being booted out of the public schools. So what can we do about it? We have to grow a pair. We have to stop respecting the opinions of people who say the sky is plaid. We have to realize that "Intelligent Design" theory boils down to "we don't know and we can never know", and thus, even if it weren't complete bullshit, is not a topic that belongs in BIOLOGY textbooks. Save it for philosophy class. We have to reject, outright, the efforts of people to demean and devalue the work of thousands of dedicated scientists just because it doesn't mesh with what they larnt in Sunday scherl.

If these people want to rot their own children's brains, that's fine. That's what their home life is for, after all. Believe what you want to believe. Spend 28 grand on a Virgin Mary cheese sandwich. But that's not what they want. They want the rest of us to follow their rules, too. Eat what their book says we should eat. Fuck who and when their book says it's OK for us to fuck. And learn only what their book tells us we need to know, plus maybe a class on Microsoft Word so we can print angel borders for our fucking scrapbooking projects.

Fuck them and the dinosaurs they rode in on.

Creationists: The Stupidest People On the Planet Week (Day Four)

Memo to Creationists: YOU ARE STILL DUMB.

Welcome to Creationists: The Stupidest People On The Planet Week: Day Four. Happy Thanksgiving. Hope you've checked in before the L-Tryptophan hit your brain, or you might find yourself agreeing with the creationists, who believe that as recently as 500 years ago, Thanksgiving was celebrated by eating Triceratops, mashed potatoes, and gravy. If you can count the number of things wrong with that sentence, congratulations! You can count higher than a creationist!

We know the creationists are out there. We know they're not that bright. And we know that, in a few small communities, they are gaining a toehold by getting "intelligent design" bullshit into textbooks or classrooms, thanks to a few highly-placed godly types on school boards. But schools aren't the only place the Six Thousand Year Universe People are pulling their crap. It's a big wide world, and hey, we've had a science-hating born-again president for four years...

I'd like to introduce you all to Tom Vail. whose middle name is probably not "Iwaseducatedforyearstonoa". Tom Vail works at the Grand Canyon. You remember the Grand Canyon. Like dinosaurs, the Grand Canyon is a bit of a gigantic, pesky thorn in the side to creationists, because, well, we know how fast erosion is, we know how deep the Grand Canyon is, and when you do the math, you come up with a number a lot bigger than 6,000. Or... do you? It's ACTUAL CREATIONIST QUOTE TIME!

"For years, as a Colorado River guide, I told people how the Grand Canyon was formed over the evolutionary time span of millions of years. Then I met the Lord. Now I have a different view of the Canyon, which according to a biblical time scale, can?t possibly be more than a few thousand years old."

Now, that's just fine. Well, not FINE, I mean, he is, after all, wrong, but he's wrong on a personal and individual level as a result of "having met the Lord". The Lord never shows up to my parties. Although to be fair, I haven't invited him into my heart, because as this website clearly shows, my heart is not nearly big enough to host the kind of party the Lord would show up to. He's welcome at my apartment anytime, though. He doesn't even have to bring snacks.

The problem with Tom Vail is that he feels so strongly that his life in the Grand Canyon has been a lie, that he has compiled a book. "The Grand Canyon, A Different View". Creationists like terms like "different view" or "alternate view", because those sound much nicer than "wrong". I would love to be able to present my bank with a book entitled "Five Minus Three: A Different View", in which, through rhetorical wordplay, ad hominem attacks, and general ramblings, convince them that five minus three is in fact FOUR, and that my checking account should be retroactively adjusted accordingly.

But even that's not so bad. People are free to write any book they can get paid to (or themselves pay to) publish. But Vai's "Grand Canyon: The Talking Out Of My Biblical Ass View" is being sold. At the Grand Canyon. By bookstores affiiliated with the National Park Service. You know, the branch of the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT?!

This did not escape notice. When the NPS's head of the Geologic Resource Division found out about it, he tried to get the book out of National Park Service stores, feeling that it is not the government's place to be actively promoting pseudocientific, religious hoohah. Or, at least, it wasn't. Before 2000. According to Time Magazine, the park service overruled the decision, promised to lead a high-level review of the book, never actually performed that review, and it appears that the Bush Administration is actively ensuring the book stays on Park Service shelves.

Unlike it's anti-science views on global warming, pregnancy, and STD prevention, the Bush Administration's 4,500 year old Grand Canyon won't get anyone killed, unless some poor fool does the math the other way, figures it can't possibly be more than a few feet deep, and jumps in. But it's egregious, and shows that whether out of true belief or just pandering to the base, the idiocy that is creationism, like so many other idiocies, stretches all the way to the highest office in the land.

Tomorrow: It all comes to a screeching end, as you learn things about your fellow man that even the last election could have taught you.

Creationists: The Stupidest People On The Planet (Day Three)

Memo to Creationists: YOU ARE STILL DUMB.

Welcome to Creationists: The Stupidest People On The Planet Week: Day Three. Thus far, we've learned that creatinonists want to teach your children, think black people are like monkeys, and believe that Martin Luther may have had to wait for a DINOSAUR to finish walking past before he could nail things to a church. And we're letting them rewrite biology textbooks.

It is a battle taking place in the year 2004, what many of us considered "the future" when we were growing up. It's a battle pitting 200 years of hard work, learning, and thought against remarketed superstition and hokum. At most, they should be treated like a pesky six-year-old who's patiently explaining to his mother that he's found an elephant in his closet. Nod, smile, give them a cookie, and under no circumstances let them drive the minivan. But showing remarkable savvy for people who can't count past 6,000, the creationists are fighting all over the country, and winning.

Dover Area School District, Pennsylvania: Henceforth known as the Scraggly Toehold of the Stinky Foot of the Creationist Horde. The district has just become the first in the nation to approve the teaching of "intelligent design". Now, remember, I.D. is creationism with the serial numbers filed off. It's a pseudoscientific rubber mask covering the ugly face of the Six Thousand Year Universe People. It is a lie, and it will be taught to children in rural Pennsylvania in the name of "balance".

It's important, by the way, to remember WHY the mask is necessary, and why the creationists have to put on a white lab coat from the Halloween Store before they can say anything. Teaching creationism in public schools is ILLEGAL. Unconstitutional. Can't do it. Supreme Court said so. Not allowed. No way, no how. If creationists robbed a bank, and explained that it wasn't a robbery, it was an "unconventional transfer of funds", they would still go to prison. Yet "Intelligent Design" gets a pass, because there are plenty of people in positions of power willing to aid and abet the obvious charade.

People like William Buckingham, born-again Christian and, coincidentally, evil fucking idiot. It's ACTUAL CREATIONIST QUOTE TIME!

"I think it's a downright fraud to perpetrate on the students of this district, to portray one theory over and over," Mr. Buckingham said. "What we wanted was a balanced presentation." Really. That's a downright fraud, Mr. Buckingham? If teaching the thing for which there is evidence instead of the thing for which there is not is "downright fraud", then bypassing a constitutional restrictions using a name change and some sleight of hand is first-degree intellectual murder.

Mr. Buckingham also said that "This is not an attempt to impose my views on anyone else." Interestingly, there are two competing and equally valid theories behind the source of this statement - the Bastardists believe that Mr. Buckingham is both lying through his teeth and knows it, while the Delusionists believe that Buckingham actually believes that he's not imposing his view on others, even though he patently is.

Grantsburg, Wisconsin: The school board there has approved the teaching of "multiple theories of origin", which also means CREATIONISM. The president of the school board that approved this decision is David Ahlquist. Ahlquist is the pastor at the town's Grace Baptist Church. He also says, "I've tried not to let my particular view on evolution or origins get in the way of my academic. To promote only one view is indoctrination." Given that viewpoint, I'll be looking for a Buddhist with a bullhorn who's free on Sunday and knows where the fuck Grantsburg, WI is. Wouldn't want the Grace Baptists presenting only one view, would we?

Georgia: In the land of Zell Miller, they're trying to decide whether to add a "warning sticker" to textbooks informing students that evolution is not all that, and certainly should not have a bag of chips added to it. A WARNING STICKER. It should have a little cartoon devil on it. "Dipshit the Devil says - DARWIN'S IN HELL WITH ME! Don't be like Darwin, kids!"

Today, it's two small towns and a hick state. But that's three more locales than there should be. It just emboldens them. Makes them try for more. And they have allies in high places.

Creationists: The Stupidest People On The Planet (Day Two)

Welcome to Creationists: The Dumbest People On The Planet Week here at You Are Dumb. Yesterday, we learned in general that creationism is bad, evolution is good, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a literalist idiot who needs to have their Bible shoved so far up their ass they can turn the pages with their uvula.

The gentler among you - and you do exist, the gentle, kind angels in my audience who are quite pleasant to the idiots they meet in their day-to-day lives while secretly enjoying the dark, hateful bile-spewing that is this site's stock in trade - you may, at this point, be thinking to yourselves that perhaps I am being a bit too harsh on people merely because of their faith. Their faith in the idea that, lest we forget, the Earth was created by the Official Christian Beardy around six millenia ago, and that we are all literally descended from Adam and Eve. And while the subsequent massive inbreeding would explain "Desperate Housewives", it just ain't so.

But they believe, and have faith, and for that alone, should they be mocked by some guy with a website? Yes. But if more evidence is required, allow me to turn your collective heads toward Pensacola, Florida. Specifically, Dinosaur Adventure Land.

Dinosaur Adventure Land is a dinosaur-themed attraction run by creationists. Being run by creationists, D.A.L. is run on the premise that since the Earth is only 6,000 years old, dinosaurs walked the Earth with Adam and Eve and stuck around at least until the Great Flood. Think of it as "Six Flags Over A Horrible, Traumatic Brain Injury".

They have a web site. Don't go. Like a brand new induction roller coaster, the DAL website is not intended for people with heart conditions, the easily excitable, and pretty much anyone who can walk past an EEG without the device audibly weeping. I went, so don't let my sacrifice be in vain. See their site as God intended it. THROUGH MY INCREDIBLY JUDGMENTAL EYES.

There is a "Science Fact of the Day". On Sunday, it was that "gold is 19.3 times heavier than water", which I cannot argue with, and is quite impressive for creationists, who, when visiting the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, must have noticed that none of the pirate booty was floating. On Monday, we learned the airspeed velocity of an unladen housefly, which is only useful, really, if you race flies.

There are the "DAL Funnies". According to their site, "THEY'RE FUNNY!". The current DAL Funny is labeled "The Untold Truth About Evolution", and shows five identical pictures of monkeys, and five identical pictures of a black man in business casual. The reader is left to draw their own conclusion - that the people involved with Dinosaur Adventure Land, in addition to being raging creationist fuckwads, are also filthy racists from Deep Pigfuckerland.

There is a video on the Big Bang, which makes up some shit about the Big Bang, then comes to the conclusion that since the shit they made up wasn't true, the universe must have been created by God. I kid you not. They use the conservation of angular momentum on one poorly described version of one of dozens of different models of universal origin to say that because stuff is rotating in different directions after (alleged) billions of years, that all science is poo. They call this an "EXPERIMENT", which it is not. They call "Conservation of Angular Momentum" a "big word" too, which means that they're a bunch of moronic, illiterate racists who CAN'T FUCKING COUNT, EITHER.

They have a trough filled with sand. And a faucet at one end. And you turn on the faucet, and it forms a small trench in the sand. This is intended to demonstrate that the Grand Canyon was in fact created in a matter of moments by Noah's Flood, which carved through a V-shaped chunk of solid Colorado rock, while leaving all the other rock untouched.

There's a Flash cartoon. In the Flash cartoon, promoting a Creationist seminar, the speakers at the seminar, in a cartoon tank, complete their mission to "DESTROY EVOLUTION" by taking a tank and blowing up a building marked "Evolution". The sole resident of the building has a weak, quavery, high-pitched nerd voice, and the sign on the building has a backwards capital "E". This shit makes "Blue Collar TV" seem like "Masterpiece Theater".

These are the people that want to teach your children about science. People who cannot count to four. People who can't even manage a funny fifteen second Flash cartoon. People who claim, in all seriousness, that there have been TRICERATOPS SIGHTINGS "as recently as 500 years ago". These people cannot be trusted to cut their own fucking meat and tie their shoes, and they are being listened to by textbook makers and school boards. If we cannot stop the agenda of people who think dinosaurs were around at the same time as Leonardo Da Fucking Vinci, then we're not gonna stop a flat tax, I'll tell you that much.

TOMORROW: Where We're Losing To These Droolers

Creationists: The Stupidest People On The Planet (Day One)

Memo to Creationists: YOU ARE DUMB.

Welcome to Creationists: The Stupidest People On The Planet Week here at You Are Dumb. At least four full days of rich, fecund mocking of creationists, who are, as you may have heard, the stupidest fucking people on the entire planet Earth. Today brings the broadside manifesto, and during the week we'll be looking at specific instances of stupid creationists doing what they do best: being stupid.

As we sink headfirst into the New Dark Ages, is it too much of me to ask that we of Blue America at least pick one thing to fight wholeheartedly? One line to draw and say to the Red that while you may be trying to regress everything else, we're gonna keep this one fucking chunk of progress? That chunk is evolution, and it is being grabbed at by the Idiot Hordes. Hold on tight.

It won't be easy. The resurgence of creationism is something more people should have been paying attention to. Because it's symptomatic of everything that's been going wrong. The reduction of facts to mere "subjects for debate". The rise of the religious right. The abandonment of science. And the triumph of sheer, rampant stupidity. Let's start by defining some terms we'll use all this week.

Creationism, as defined around these parts, is the completely wrong and retarded belief that the God of the Judeo-Christian Bible created the heavens and the earth about 6,000 years ago, literally planted Adam and Eve as the first fully-formed humans on that earth at around the same time, all of us are descended from two navel-free naked white people, and that everything else is the braying of liberal pagan witches under the thrall of Satan.

"Intelligent Design", as defined around these parts, is the completely wrong and retarded belief that the universe and biological systems on the Earth are so incredibly complex that they couldn't have arisen through chance, and thus, the God of the Judeo-Christian Bible must have created the heavens and the earth about 6,000 years ago, literally planted Adam and Eve as the first fully-formed humans on that earth at around the same time, all of us are descended from two navel-free naked white people,and that everything else is the braying of liberal pagan witches under the thrall of Satan.

Do not fall into the trap of people who stop speaking at "chance". Because if you watch their lips very carefully, they're mouthing the rest of it. They can proclaim otherwise until they're red-state in the face, but the truth is, every single person trying to push Intelligent Design on this nation's children believes in the six thousand year universe. They just hide it so as not to be laughed out of school board meetings (or elections) like the crazy people they are.

Here's where I let all you thinking godfolk in my audience off the hook, because I'm feeling nice. Enjoy this paragraph, because it's your only succor in this space for the next three and a half to four and a half days. You're free to believe all you want that science is just exploring God's great creation, and that your god created the universe and the systems and the whatnot billions of years ago. That's fine. Because that stays out of the way. Don't call it "Intelligent Design", though. That phrase got co-opted by the crazy people, and if you use it, you'll just sound like a crazy person when you're talking over wine and fondue or whatever it is you people do when you discuss Life's Great Mysteries.

But the 6,000 year universe people are WRONG, the anti-evolution people are WRONG, and we need to be standing up for that. Evolution is an observed, proven fact. What remains a "theory" is just the strict-Darwinian, one-celled organism all the way up to that record-setting Jeopardy guy progression over the millenia. And let's stop focusing on Darwin. He was a biggie, yes, but for fuck's sake, he was working in the 1800's. Back when light bulbs were a novelty. He didn't have all the answers, and the Six Thousand Year Universe People seize on that, with their tiny, tiny minds, to try to convince people that because Darwin wasn't 100% spot on, we've learned NOTHING in the intervening 150+ years, and obviously the Bible is just as good.

But it's not just as good. Try using it to fix your fuel injector sometime and see how far the Bible gets you. The rational people in this country, even the religious, Republican rational people*, need to stand up and realize that the idea that creationism should be taught in science class is roughly on par with the idea that history classes should teach that George Washington was a giant, fire-breathing turtle and friend to all children. And that "respecting their views" is in fact allowing our liberal, egalitarian sensibilities to give complete bullshit a veneer or legitimacy in a world where only the veneer of legitimacy matters anymore.

That is our line in the sand. That facts are more valid than beliefs, and if beliefs contradict facts, then it is the beliefs that need to change, because the facts won't, no matter how strong the belief. Every time a textbook presents "alternative viewpoints" to facts, every time a teacher, by will or by force, is compelled to use the phrase "intelligent design" in a biology class, every time a student leaves class thinking we don't REALLY know what's going on, that it's still up in the air, when it patently and demonstrably IS NOT, every time these things happen, we take one step backwards, towards Dayton, Tennessee, 1925, and one of the lowest, saddest points in American history. This shit needs to be stopped.

* All five of you.

The Forces Of Regression

Memo to the forces of regression: YOU ARE DUMB.

It's two thousand and four. I mean, I know you've noticed, because you're writing "'04" on your checks, but have you actually noticed? Three years AFTER 2001. Twenty years AFTER 1984. We're supposed to be better now. Wiser. Smarter. Flying around in jetpacks or something. But we're not. And I've become convinced it's because of forces of regression. A bunch of dumb sonsabitches who are dragging their feet on the march to THE FUTURE. And I'm callin' em out.

Michael Powell, chairman of the FCC: It is not 1962. You do not need to protect us from a tit. Or the F-bomb. We do not need a full-scale investigation into a Super Bowl halftime show while the administration is getting away with shit that makes Nixon weep for being born 30 years too soon. Go back to your office, try to keep the beaver shots on Teletubbies below, say, five a year, consider protecting the public airwaves by keeping them vaguely public, and GET OUT OF THE WAY.

Groundhog Day: Can we stop, now? We've got weather.com, we've got satellites. Right now, even as we speak, there are a couple of tiny, remote controlled buggies tooling around on the surface of Mars, sending us back three-dimensional stereoscopic pictures of another planet. Yet people are still wasting time and energy watching a rat in Pennsylvania for its meteorological insights. The people of Punxsutawney have ridden this freakish ancient superstitious gravy train for too long, now. They're cut off.

Georgia: And speaking of tradition ruining things for the rest of us. Georgia wants to stop using the word "evolution" in schools. Consider this a warning shot across the bow of creationists, who may be the dumbest people on earth: you're gonna show up here a lot.

Creationists are like vile, oozing, black-hearted little idiot savants, who can somehow manage to finagle school boards and politicians into doing their bidding, come up with cute names like "intelligent design theory", all while firmly believing that the earth is only six thousand years old and an invisible man in the sky put all the fossils under Arizona.

And they don't even have an ulterior motive. It's not like, say, certain monkeys in power denying global warming because if they do anything about it, it'll piss off all their friends and wipe out their bank accounts. No. The creationists do all this because, if they don't, a few thousand repeatedly translated words in a millenia-old book written by dozens of people back when writing stuff down was NEW AND TRENDY might not be 100% accurate.

I say we eat 'em. I know cannibalism is a big taboo these days. Thanks to Michael Powell's new scrutiny, they've had to scrap the big cannibalism performance from next year's Super Bowl. But creationists are like a giant, inbred roadblock between us and Utopia. And with all the groundhogs and boobfear holding us back too, we're gonna need a lot of energy to push forward. So let's eat all the creationists. They're probably even low-carb.