The Tower of Babel is a gimmick to make money

Ken Ham wants to expand his Ark Park with a Tower of Babel.

A Bible-themed attraction in Kentucky that features a 510-foot-long wooden Noah’s ark is planning to begin fundraising for an expansion.

The Ark Encounter said Wednesday that it would take about three years to research, plan and build a “Tower of Babel” attraction on the park’s grounds in Northern Kentucky.

A release from the Ark Encounter park said the new attraction will “tackle the racism issue” by helping visitors “understand how genetics research and the Bible confirm the origin of all people groups around the world.” No other details were given on the Babel attraction or what it might look like.

No. Genetics research confirms that human beings are far older than 6,000 years, and that we are not all descended from a single family of 8 people 4500 years ago. If you’re going to pretend to have the authority of modern genetics, you have to accept that genetics refutes the fundamental young earth claims of the Bible literalists (as does physics, geology, archaeology, history, etc., etc., etc.).

The important part of that story is the “three years to research” nonsense. It won’t take that long, because there’s nothing to research. Here’s the whole of the Babel story from Genesis 11 — literally. I’m quoting the entire goddamn thing.

Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

There. Research done. They made a tower of unknown dimensions out of brick, with tar for mortar. Ham and company will just make up some dimensions, and I guarantee you it won’t be made of brick and tar, and it won’t be tall enough to reach the heavens. They could save themselves a lot of work and just paint a pretty poster or a diorama, like most of what they have in their ark.

Oh. They’ve already got one.

It’s not very impressive for a structure that enraged a god, but OK, the research is done. There’s the scale model, just make it bigger. Think that will appeal to the rubes?

They aren’t going to do Bible scholarship, or serious archaeological research, or anything legitimately worthwhile. They’re going to be “researching” theme park organizations, and most importantly, they’re going to be fundraising. This Babel thing is all about keeping the grift going, fueling their money-raising efforts, and nothing more.

Rob Boston has them pegged.

During a recent interview with a Grant County newspaper, Ham talked about his plans to add a Tower of Babel to the park. This attraction, based on a story that appears in Genesis 11:1-9, will explain Ham’s view of how we ended up with so many languages. Bottom line: Look for more bad science. (Remember, folks, creationism is about more than just claims that the Earth is only 6,000 years old, humans and dinosaurs existed at the same time, the Grand Canyon is the result of the massive flood described in the Bible, etc. It’s a comprehensive, unscientific worldview that addresses, well, everything.)

I recently received a press release from a PR agency Ham hired to blast the media with happy stories about his big boat. In the release, Ham carped that he’s had to work hard to respond to “the rumor that state money was used to build and open the Ark Encounter.”

That’s not a rumor, it’s a fact. Journalists, bloggers and Americans United have compiled entire lists of the forms of taxpayer support Ark Encounter received. But wait, there’s more! Ark Encounter received between $1 million and $2 million in federal aid under the original COVID-19 relief bill’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). Blogger Hemant Mehta noted that even as Ham was pulling in a hefty PPP loan – which is really a grant because the federal government plans to forgive most of it – he was sending emails to supporters begging for contributions to save the Ark Park.

To recap: Ham built the Ark Park on the backs of Kentucky taxpayers. He denied jobs to anyone who failed to agree with him on religion. He stuck it to a small town that had been wowed by Ham’s tales of an economic turnaround. These are inconvenient facts he continually denies.

That’s another component of their three year plan: it’s going to take time to tease so much more money out of the state legislature and local civic groups. It’s not about truth, or affirming the faith, or educating the citizenry, or reconciling science and religion — it’s about Mammon.

Don’t you know that denying evolution is the main purpose of Christianity?

In a classic example of confusing belief with historical fact, Kylee Zempel at The Federalist is outraged at the very idea that Christians could be racist. She is so mad that she is going to defend her beliefs by misinterpreting Scientific American.

The Left Wants You To Believe The Bible Is White Supremacist So They Can Force Evolution Down Your Throat
It’s a no-holds-barred attack on Christianity to advance the opposing worldview, and if that means smearing as racist a — *checks notes* — time-tested historical account in which a divine Middle Eastern man is the central figure, so be it.

Can we right away clear up some misconceptions?

  • The Bible itself is a document written by diverse people over a long complex history. In itself it is not “white supremacist” — although you could argue that it promotes a belief in a kind of tribal supremacy.
  • That tribe was not white Europeans.
  • However, while the Bible is not a white supremacist document, your interpretation of the Bible can be.
  • Forcing evolution down people’s throats is not and has never been good pedagogical technique.
  • Your religion, Christianity, is not necessarily opposed to evolution, so teaching evolution is not teaching that Christianity is wrong.

Most importantly, I would point out that waving broadly at a Middle Eastern Jesus does not protect you from accusations of racism, especially when there’s such a long history of your peculiar, particular branch of the Christian religion portraying Jesus as a light-skinned Northern European man. But Zempel’s main point is that her narrow clade of fundamentalist, evolution-denying religion is the entirety of Biblical belief, and therefore supporting evolution is a direct attack on the whole of Christianity, which isn’t true.

“Denial of Evolution Is a Form of White Supremacy” is Scientific American’s not-so-subtle way of saying this synonymous phrase: “The Bible is racist.”

Oh, that’s a synonymous phrase? Break it down. “Denial of evolution” is a synonym for the Bible? I don’t think so. The Bible contains a half a page of poetry about a creation week that is then denied in the next chapter by a completely different creation story. There is clearly some latitude of interpretation permitted in Genesis. Furthermore, I think most Christians, other than this narrow sect of fundamentalist literalist creeps, would be horrified that you can equate all the complex moral and ethical and historical lessons of their very messy holy book with “denial of evolution”.

Of course, I’d fully agree with the other half of her equation: white supremacy is a synonym for racism.

She rages on a little more.

It would be easy to dismiss the whole article as record-setting idiocy or editorial catfishing. After all, what editor at a magazine with “scientific” in the name green-lights an article arguing that the religion that worships a man born between Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq is “white supremacist”? There’s something more nefarious under the brainlessness, however, and we shouldn’t breeze past it.

This headline is just the latest in the left’s crusade not only to brand everything that challenges their worldview as racist, but also to grant scientific legitimacy to their race-baiting. This time, however, they’re aiming their fire straight at the heart of the scriptures on which Christians base their beliefs — and they aren’t trying to hide the reason why.

So the heart of the scriptures is evolution denial? What did Christians do in the 1800 years before Darwin published The Origin? Let’s take a look at the SciAm article.

I want to unmask the lie that evolution denial is about religion…

Wait, stop right there. So one of the arguments is that evolution denial is NOT about religion, and Zempel has distorted this into her view that evolution denial IS her religion? OK.

…and recognize that at its core, it is a form of white supremacy that perpetuates segregation and violence against Black bodies. Under the guise of “religious freedom,” the legalistic wing of creationists loudly insists that their point of view deserves equal time in the classroom. Science education in the U.S. is constantly on the defensive against antievolution activists who want biblical stories to be taught as fact. In fact, the first wave of legal fights against evolution was supported by the Klan in the 1920s. Ever since then, entrenched racism and the ban on teaching evolution in the schools have gone hand in hand. In his piece, What We Get Wrong About the Evolution Debate, Adam Shapiro argues that “the history of American controversies over evolution has long been entangled with the history of American educational racism.”

The major point of the article is that the scientific view encompasses the totality of human history, and that humans aren’t always light-skinned, and even modern light-skinned people had darker-skinned ancestors, so what’s with this idea that humans are only 6,000 years old and the different races were established at the time of Noah’s Ark? It doesn’t argue against Christianity at all, but only that one bad idea that creationists strive to get into our educational curriculum, and that historically, creationism has used racial divisions in America to promote itself.

The KKK was and is a white Christian organization. Pointing that out is not the same as saying Christianity and the KKK are synonymous.

Zempel continues on in her naive lumper ways and makes another point that I agree with, but that also undermines her argument.

The complete title of Charles Darwin’s seminal book was “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.” In his book “The Descent of Man,” Darwin recorded, “The Western nations of Europe … now so immeasurably surpass their former savage progenitors [that they] stand at the summit of civilization,” and said, “The civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races through the world.” In other words, Darwin’s white supremacy was underpinned by his evolutionary theory, the same theory Hopper champions.

Darwin’s white supremacist musings weren’t confined to the page. As Phil Moore noted, Darwin’s evolutionary theory influenced racism and genocide the world over. In America, it was used to justify the killing of Native Americans. In Germany, the Holocaust. In the Soviet Union, the murder of non-Russian people. The Serbs used it to rationalize the genocide against Kosovans and Croatians.

Yes! Darwin held racist views, as did many of the promoters of evolution in the 19th and 20th century. The theory has been greatly abused as an endorsement of genocide and oppression. That is entirely true.

But I can also say, in an accurately synonymous way, that Christianity has been greatly abused as an endorsement of genocide and oppression.

That does not imply that the theory or Christianity are necessarily false, or that opposing genocide and oppression are therefore directly opposing the science or the religion. You won’t see many scientists or Christians saying that we can’t condemn King Leopold II’s brutal and inhuman treatment of his African colony, or the slave trade, or the Holocaust, because that would be anti-evolutionary, or anti-Christian. We can oppose the false interpretation of science or religion without being anti-science or anti-faith.

But that’s what the goons at the Federalist want you to believe: by opposing their racism and misogyny and ignorance, we are opposing God himself.

Sometimes, fire is the appropriate response

The churches are burning in Canada.

I oppose the idea of atheists setting churches on fire. That you are offended by the absurdity of their dogma is not sufficient justification for property damage. I grew up next door to a Catholic church, and they never did me any harm, so I certainly don’t have any grounds for seeking vengeance.

Of course, I was just a white boy occupying the lands of the Coast Salish, so it wasn’t my place to get angry. Some people, on the other hand, do have justification.

If the people and government of Canada won’t impose severe sanctions on the Catholic church, and if they won’t pay reparations to the First Nations people who suffered so much and so long…

Let ’em burn.

Catholicism is sick

Really sick. I’m surprised it’s not terminal already. Behold, the Church Militant, and its spokesperson, Michael Voris, all sucking up to … Milo Yiannopoulos? Are you kidding me?

I’m simultaneously revolted and impressed by the fact that Milo has found another niche full of gullible fools. I’m sure he’s having a grand time with his new act.

Meanwhile, as Milo is fêted by Catholic fanatics, hundreds of more graves have been found at the Catholic Marieval Indian Residential school in Saskatchewan. But hey, let’s praise the repentant homosexual!

10 Rules of Sex For Wives

This is some “fifty shades of gray” bullshit. Would you believe what being a good Christian demands of women? It’s sick.

Obedience means complete obedience.…
Your main pleasure from sex comes from you pleasing your husband.…
Sometimes your husband is going to demand sex at an inconvenient time, or when you are tired. Remember that he probably needs a physical release to help him get through a hard day. …
Sometimes you are going to feel that what your husband demands of you is degrading or humiliating. Your obligation is to submit to him…
He is going to train you to please him the way he wants and you need to work your hardest to learn what he likes…
Men are visual creatures and you need to keep your body in shape and always look your best. Work out and eat right to keep slim and sexy.…
You are your husband’s prize. …
The Bible is very clear that your husband is your master and that God expects you to always respect his absolute authority over you…
Sometimes your husband will need to punish you when you fall short of his expectations.…
Be your husband’s sexual pet, always cheerful and humbly grateful for being the woman that he has chosen to please him. …

I wouldn’t want to be a Christian man or woman. They are so messed up.

Love the Bride of Christ, or else

That’s a great title: Heckle Christ’s bride at your eternal peril! I knew I had to read it to find out how to heckle Christ’s bride, so it was successful clickbait (Christ’s bride, by the way, is the whole dang Christian church, so now you know…lots of target out there.) And then the article starts with such good news!

For the first time since the Gallup organization started to track the data, fewer than 50 percent of Americans now belong to a church, synagogue or mosque. Behind these numbers are, among other factors, the trendiness of not only leaving church, but announcing it on social media with a bit of shaming and blaming thrown in for good measure.

Many are not only leaving a particular house of worship but joining a growing demographic known as the “nones,” rejecting all religious affiliation. The Christian version of those who grew up in the Church but have become “nones” often go by another label: “exvangelicals.”

As you might guess, the article is all about agonizing over why people are abandoning the faith. It sets up a dichotomy: are they leaving the church because it fails to live up to their moral standards, or are they leaving because they’re already depraved sinners who don’t like a church that has high moral standards?

Go ahead, guess. Which answer do they think is the true one?

[Read more…]

Answers in Genesis’s Statement of Faith Becomes More Strident

(Guest post by Dan Phelps)

Many of you are aware that Answers in Genesis (AiG) has a very strict Statement of Faith (SOF). Until early this year the SOF was in this form. This original version was retrieved via an internet “Wayback Machine” search. On March 5, 2021 this updated and expanded version of the SOF was posted to the AiG website without fanfare. This newer SOF is even more strident than the old one and actually adds several requirements that previously were not mentioned. One has to wonder if there was some internal conflict in AiG’s ranks that led to the additional dogmatic statements.

The original version of the SOF was problematic to most thinking people for a number of reasons. Scientifically, it required signers to believe in a young earth and universe as well as ascribe most of earth’s geologic record to Noah’s Flood. Even more damming is the statement:

“By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record. Of primary importance is the fact that evidence is always subject to interpretation by fallible people who do not possess all information.”

This statement is a very clear science stopper. How could science be done when the results are already known dogmatically? Furthermore, the SOF has specific statements concerning non-scientific subjects that exclude non-Fundamentalist Christians and anyone who is pro-choice or partakes in sexual activity that AiG finds offensive or belongs to groups AiG finds offensive. Here is a sample:

“The only legitimate marriage sanctioned by God is the joining of one naturally born man and one naturally born woman in a single, exclusive union, as delineated in Scripture. God intends sexual intimacy to only occur between a man and a woman who are married to each other, and has commanded that no intimate sexual activity be engaged in outside of a marriage between a man and a woman. Any form of sexual immorality, such as adultery, fornication, homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexual conduct, bestiality, incest, pornography, or any attempt to change one’s gender, or disagreement with one’s biological gender, is sinful and offensive to God.“

Making questions of sexual orientation equivalent to bestiality and incest is particularly hateful. However odd and bigoted as these tenants are, AiG has every right to require the above tenets of their SOF when hiring staff for the AiG ministry itself or the Creation Museum (which is officially part of AiG’s ministry). However, these strict faith-based requirements almost lost the for-profit Ark Encounter $18.25 million in Kentucky Tourism tax incentives in 2014. The Ark Encounter’s for-profit corporation (officially called Crosswater Canyon) repeatedly and publicly told the state of Kentucky that they would not discriminate in hiring or require workers to sign the SOF when the project was announced in late 2010. The entire project was promoted to government entities as a way to bring “JOB JOBS JOBS!!!” to a financially troubled area. Simultaneously, Ken Ham and AiG’s spokespeople would slyly tell religious audiences that the project was about religious proselytizing. Rick Skinner, Mayor of Williamstown, Kentucky, home of the Ark Encounter, posted this statement to Facebook in March 2014 (since removed) when defending the creation of $62 million in junk bonds for Ark Encounter:

In July 2014, in the midst of the controversy over the Ark Encounter receiving the $18.25 million in tax incentives from Kentucky Tourism, AiG posted a help wanted advertisement for the Ark Encounter requiring that potential employees sign the SOF (and adhere to numerous other religious based requirements). This was a major mistake on their part. I discovered this and wrote an op-ed for the Lexington Herald-Leader. This op-ed led to closer scrutiny and Kentucky revoked the incentives. In late 2014, AiG sued in Federal Court for the right to simultaneously receive the incentives and discriminate against anyone who would not sign the SOF. Surprisingly, a Federal Judge agreed with AiG in an early 2015 decision. By this time, Kentucky had a new, religiously conservative Governor, Matt Bevin, who would not appeal the decision. Governor Bevin also appointed new members of the Tourism Cabinet. These appointees were all supportive of the Ark project. Thus, the Ark Encounter was legally allowed to discriminate in hiring and only hire workers that will sign the SOF. Ark Encounter continues to receive $1.825 million dollars every year in tax incentives from the state and will continue to do so until 2026.

On March 5, 2021, AiG posted a new version of their SOF. This is somewhat more lengthy, detailed, and (remarkably!) strident than the original version. The new SOF is also more detailed on various sundry theological requirements. Especially disturbing are new tenets that attack social justice, transsexuals, and other non-gender conforming individuals. The SOF states:

“The concepts of “social justice,” “intersectionality,” and “critical race theory” are anti-biblical and destructive to human flourishing (Ezekiel 18:1–20; James 2:8–9).”

And also:

“Gender and biological sex are equivalent and cannot be separated. A person’s gender is determined at conception (fertilization), coded in the DNA, and cannot be changed by drugs, hormones, or surgery. Rejection of one’s biological sex (gender) or identifying oneself by the opposite sex is a sinful rejection of the way God made that person. These truths must be communicated with compassion, love, kindness, and respect, pointing everyone to the truth that God offers redemption and restoration to all who confess and forsake their sin, seeking his mercy and forgiveness through Jesus Christ (Genesis 1:26–28, 5:1–2; Psalm 51:5, 139:13–16; Jeremiah 1:5; Matthew 1:20–21, 19:4–6; Mark 10:6; Luke 1:31; Acts 3:19–21; Romans 10:9–10; 1 Corinthians 6:9–11; Galatians 3:28).”

Another bizarre addition is that one must believe that hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis are caused by human sin:

“Human death (both physical and spiritual) as well as all animal death, disease, bloodshed, suffering, extinction, thorns and thistles, and all other natural evils (e.g., earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, etc.) entered this world subsequent to, and as a direct consequence of, man’s sin (Genesis 2:16–17, 3:8, 3:19, 4:4–8; Romans 5:12, 8:20–22; 1 Corinthians 15:21–22).”

I recently learned that Answers in Genesis (AiG) has rented Northern Kentucky University’s (NKU) Grant County facility to use for job fairs to interview perspective employees for positions at the Ark Encounter. These job fairs are scheduled for April 22, May 6 and 20, June 2 and 17, July 15 and 29, and August 12. I am not a lawyer and cannot comment on the legality of NKU allowing AiG/Ark Encounter to use the Grant County property. In fact Northern Kentucky University could actually be legally obligated to provide the site to AiG. I informed NKU of the contents of the SOF and made them aware that they have a reputation to protect and should be aware that AiG and the Ark Encounter have a history of bigotry, hatred, and discrimination against numerous protected groups. I also mentioned that the Creation Museum had accepted the donation of a dinosaur skeleton valued at $1 million from a white supremacist and former board member of the neo-Confederate League of the South. The reply I received only indicated that NKU’s attorneys had already reviewed their rules for room rental, but I was not provided the actual policy.

It remains to be seen if AiG will continue to use government entities for their benefit. AiG has been particularly talented at using Kentucky, Grant County, and Williamstown to their advantage with relation to the Ark Encounter. One suspects that this behavior will continue in spite of their discrimination and bigotry.

Teaching in Kansas sure must be different

The pedagogical methods of Mark Samsel wouldn’t fly here. In fact, they weren’t even successful in Kansas.

Kansas state Rep. Mark Samsel was arrested on charges of misdemeanor battery on Thursday after getting into a physical altercation with a student while substitute teaching in Wellsville.

Samsel, 36, was booked into the Franklin County Adult Detention Center after 3:30 p.m. Thursday. He has since been released on $1,000 bond, Sheriff Jeff Richards said.

Superintendent Ryan Bradbury said that Samsel will no longer be allowed to work for the district.

Yeah, he’s a Republican state representative, and he works as a substitute teacher. He’s screwing over the citizens of the state in two ways!

I can’t quite figure out what courses he was supposed to be teaching. It sounds like he thought he was in Sunday school, and was wandering about moralizing and wagging his finger at everyone and giving incoherent advice.

On Wednesday, Samsel, R-Wellsville, was substitute teaching at the Wellsville school district’s secondary school. Throughout the day, high school students began recording videos of the lawmaker talking about suicide, sex, masturbation, God and the Bible.

In one video shared with The Star, Samsel tells students about “a sophomore who’s tried killing himself three times,” adding that it was because “he has two parents and they’re both females.”

“He’s a foster kid. His alternatives in life were having no parents or foster care parents who are gay,” Samsel tells students. “How do you think I’m going to feel if he commits suicide? Awful.”

In another video, Samsel is recorded telling students, “make babies. Who likes making babies? That feels good, doesn’t it? Procreate … You haven’t masturbated? Don’t answer that question….God already knows.”

He seems to have been harassing one student in particular.

At one point, Samsel tells the student, “You’re about ready to anger me and get the wrath of God. Do you believe me when I tell you that God has been speaking to me?” He then pushes him, and the student runs to the other side of the classroom.

“You should run and scream.”

In another video, he tells students, “Class, you have permission to kick him in the balls.”

Parents told The Star that Samsel “put hands on the student” and allegedly kneed him in the crotch. In a video apparently taken immediately after the incident, the student is shown on the ground. Samsel is standing over him and says, “did it hurt?”

He then asks him why he is about to start crying, pats him on the shoulder and apologizes, and then says he can “go to the nurse, she can check it for you.”

Samsel addresses another student and says, “do you want to check his nuts for him, please?”

Now he’s out, and he’s claiming that he meant to do that. He was “sending a message”.

In a Snapchat post shared with The Star, Samsel wrote that “it was all planned.”

“Every little bit of it. That’s right. The kids and I planned ALL this to SEND A MESSAGE about art, mental health, teenage suicide, how we treat our educators and one another. To who? Parents. And grandparents. And all of Wellsville,” he posted.

He wrote that he gave one particular student “hope.”

“I went to jail for battery. Does that really make me a criminal? Time will tell.”

He said that the incident happened during fifth period, and that the classes before that hour went as planned, and he shared the same lesson in each one. He said what happened was “exactly what God planned. The kids were in on it. Not all of them. But most.”

I have no idea what message he was sending. I do know that kicking your students in the crotch does make you a criminal, and I don’t believe for a moment that he was implementing a god’s plan. He was just an incompetent jerk who ought not to be allowed anywhere near a school. Or a statehouse.

Videos here. His classroom seems to have been nothing but self-indulgent chaos and Christian abuse. At least he has “apologized”. Sort of.

The Church Militant tries humor…badly

I’m weirded out here. This is a video put out by fanatical, old-school Catholics to tell their followers to obey Canon Law 1251. What is that, you ask?

Can. 1251 Abstinence from meat, or from some other food as determined by the Episcopal Conference, is to be observed on all Fridays, unless a solemnity should fall on a Friday. Abstinence and fasting are to be observed on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.

That’s still a thing?

Anyway, in this video a caterer named Karen shows up at a church event with piles of meat. Lots of unappetizing grey, slimy meat and burgers that look like flattened hockey pucks and hot dogs on paper plates…you know, church food. She also, for some reason has a plush koala toy she uses to hypnotize people to eat her food, and also as an excuse to use a “koala-tee” pun, twice. She is defeated by a guy wearing a fish mask. I present it here as your Sunday morning venture into surreality.

What stuck with me is how dreadful the food looks. Photographing meat, and food in general, is hard, and these guys fail spectacularly at it. That’s just not the vegetarian in me speaking, either — the food is even worse than the humor, which is saying a lot.