It was a terrible mistake. They bumped the character limits from 140 to 280 for most people, and I have no idea what the limits are for the suckers who paid for their blue checks, but now we’re getting these long rambling rants from all the weirdos.

Ken Ham bought his precious blue check mark, of course.

He doesn’t like public schools. Take a deep breath.

Well, I realize this post may “stir the pot” somewhat, and I’ll brace for the responses! Should Christians send their kids to public schools? Now firstly I want to say it’s the parent’s decision as to where they send their kids to be educated. And I do recognize in a fallen world there are all sorts of family issues (eg: single parent families) for varied reasons.

However, at the very minimum, each Christian should build their thinking on God’s Word in regard to the training of children, and do the best they possible can, with much prayer & God’s help and hopefully the help of God’s people in the church, to attain to what God instructs as much as we are able.

From God’s Word we do get answers to: Who owns children? Parents & ultimately God. Who is responsible for the education of children? Parents, & in particular Fathers as the spiritual head. What is the priority of education? Spiritual/biblical worldview. What should we understand about children? They are not miniature adults & they have a sin nature. What warnings are there? Bad company corrupts bad character.

Many people in the church have told me their kids should be in the public school to witness to other kids. But what’s the biblical basis for this? When I ask, I’m usually told, “we are to be light and salt in this world.” Yes, true, but one can only shine light if one has it to shine. Yes, Matthew 5:13 states “you are the salt of the earth,” but Mark 9:50 also states, “Have salt in yourselves.”

Your kids can’t be salt till they have salt. And by salt it means they are to be filled with biblical truth, but also prepared with answers (1 Peter 3:15) to be able to withstand the attacks of the devil in the world they live in. That’s why @AiG provides all sorts of curricula for churches & homes to help raise generations filled with biblical truth & equipped to defend the Christian faith against the attacks of our day.

Now Scripture also warns in Matthew 5:13, that “But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.” In other words, contamination destroys.

Before our kids can be a witness to the world, they need to be filled with salt, as uncontaminated as possible, to know what they believe and why and be equipped to defend their faith.

Let’s face it, most of the public school system indoctrinates kids for 6 or so hours a day in the secular worldview of evolutionary naturalism & sexual humanism. Most churched kids have not survived the public education system and have walked away from the church. Very few exceptional kids from church homes survive and are able to be salt and light. Most become severely contaminated. This is reflected in the fact there’s been a massive generational loss from the church.

Bottom line, are you putting your own kids at risk from contamination because you want them in the system to witness to others? But how much have parents & the church really made sure such kids are truly filled with salt to be able to do this? Most churches have not taught apologetics and most have compromised God’s Word in Genesis, opening the door for that contamination to take hold. Most father’s have not been the spiritual head of their house as they should. Look at the evidence, most of the younger generations have walked away from the church. Generation Z is the first post-Christian generation & very atheistic in worldview.

Remember, when your kids are born, they don’t know about the bible, or Adam and Eve, or sin, or the promise of the Savior, or the Flood, or Babel, or the cross, or resurrection, or the saving gospel, or how to answer the attacks of our day. Our job as parents is make sure they are taught and equipped so they can impact the world for the Lord Jesus Christ. Where are your kids spiritually? What legacy are you leaving in the younger generations? Who really has the greatest educational impact on your kids and grandkids?

I can answer that last question. If you’re talking about educational impact, it wasn’t my parents. I loved my parents, I thought they were great role models, they taught me to love knowledge, but I had to attend a public school to learn algebra, and grammar, and spelling, and basic chemistry, and home ec, and to read Melville and Dickens and Austen and Baldwin, and the framework of history. They weren’t educated as teachers and had work to do, and when they had free time, they wanted to enjoy being with their family.

Mr Ham’s problem is that he was never educated at all, and thinks learning about the bible, or Adam and Eve, or sin, or the promise of the Savior, or the Flood, or Babel, or the cross, or resurrection, or the saving gospel is an education. It wasn’t. He was fed lies.

Oh, but wait. To prove his point, Ham gives us some helpful illustrations.

Don’t go to college!

If you go to college, you’ll fill up with corruption that will make non-Christians happy.

But church will fill you with salt.

And the salt will poison all the non-Christians, because they’re like slugs or something.

Well, now I’m convinced. He’s an idiot, but he has some cheap-ass graphic illustrators working for him who can churn out appallingly bad images.

There’s more from the loquacious Mr Ham! Wait until you see his rant about science.

Want to learn about true science? Are your kids being indoctrinated by secularists in our secular institutions who don’t teach kids correctly about what science is and isn’t? Tired of the secular science programs that brainwash generations of kids in the anti-God religion of evolution/millions of years?

Real science confirms the Bible! But, sadly, many science programs don’t glorify God as the Creator. Instead, they teach humanism and atheistic evolutionary ideas to children. Because of this, many parents find it challenging to find engaging science programs that glorify God—but not anymore!

[cut short because it’s a lot of boring lies]

Real science is honest inquiry in which you can question and test your assumptions, and aren’t required to distort your answers to fit the Bible, which is not a science text. But Ken Ham has lots of money to fund his propaganda.

We seem to have succeeded in driving Kent Hovind underground. He still has a Twitter account, but as we all know, every Nazi on the planet can get a Twitter account. His Facebook page is almost dead, only sporadically updated. He set up a Dinosaur Adventure Land page on Facebook in 2016, in which he announces that Dinosaur Adventure Land is the funnest soul winning Christian theme park on the face of the planet, but nothing has ever been posted there. He has been banned from Facebook. I suspect he has accounts on the usual right-wing places, like Telegram and Gab, but I’m not going to bother checking on those.

As a grifter who relies on drawing in suckers to give him money for his pedophile-friendly cheesy little camp, all the pressure has hurt him. Even Matt Powell drifted away. I really wonder what his revenues are right now, and I would guess there’s been a bit of a financial crash for him.

However, Kent Hovind is low-hanging fruit. He’s a small time yokel with a following of even more ignorant yokels. He was broken when he spent 9 years in jail for tax evasion, and he’s never going to regain his former popularity.

The real threat is Ken Ham. Ham’s doctrine is virtually indistinguishable from Hovind’s (I’m sure they would argue about fine points of their theology), believing in a host of anti-scientific nonsense like that the Earth is less than ten thousand years old and that humans coexisted with dinosaurs, but the difference is that Ham is a politically savvy con artist who has successfully cheated Kentucky out of millions of dollars, and runs a multi-million dollar, elaborate Christian theme park where it costs over $70 just to park. It’s a redneck swimmin’ hole vs. expensive park for separating fools from their money.

Dinosaur Adventure Land

Ark Park

Ken Ham is a polished version of Kent Hovind who went straight for the big money — tax breaks from the state government, grand but pointless projects to lure in donations, national advertising to draw in tourists, and a slick and superficial theology to persuade the gullible that he’s presenting the truth of the Bible. If we’re going to rhetorically beat up creationists, Ham and Answers in Genesis are far more significant targets. They are the more powerful grifters.

At least we’ve got Dan Phelps, who is probably the most persistent and consistent opponent of AiG. He’s been hammering on AiG, and also on Kentucky’s complicity with the idiot’s version of Christianity that Ham peddles.

In late 2022, I began receiving, almost daily, “sponsored posts” in my Facebook feed for the Ark Encounter that were sponsored by the Northern Kentucky Convention and Visitor’s Bureau (NKCVB). The NKCVB is partly funded by a tax charge when hotel rooms are rented in Northern Kentucky. Since the Ark Encounter and Creation Museum are Kentucky tourist sites, the mere advertising of these sites is not objectionable. However, the wording describing the Ark Encounter is objectionable. The “sponsored ad” (see Figure 1 below) and working on the the NKCVB website https://www.meetnky.com/about-us/ is troublesome. The advertisement states that the Ark Encounter is “a full-sized replica” of Noah’s Ark, indicating that the NKCVB agrees with Answers in Genesis that the Ark actually existed. Obviously, one cannot have a “replica” of something that never existed.

Kentucky, you’re embarrassing yourself.

AiG, though, is really, really good at promoting itself. They can sell anything to anyone. Would you believe they’ve coopted the state’s DEI policies and an international LGBTQ+ organization?

I was about to ignore this as just another inane thing that Answers in Genesis (AiG) has received from a taxpayer supported government entity. However, I noticed that the NKCVB has the imprimatur of Destination Marketing’s Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion Accreditation Program and The International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association (actually the IGLBTQ+ Travel Association). This seemed very odd, given AiG’s stances on diversity and sexuality.

That’s impressive. They’ve got the LGBTQ community, or at least a few blind-sided organizations, to promote a company with these claims in their statement of faith.

• “The concepts of ‘social justice,’ ‘intersectionality,’ and ‘critical race theory’ as defined in modern terminology are anti-biblical and destructive to human flourishing (Ezekiel 1:1-20; James 2:8-9).”
• “The only legitimate marriage, based on the creation ordinance in Genesis 1 and 2, sanctioned by God is the joining of one naturally born man and 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 sexual activity be engaged in outside of a marriage between a man and a woman. Any form of sexual immorality, such as adultery, fornication, prostitution, homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexual conduct, bestiality, incest, pornography, abuse, or any attempt to change one’s gender, or disagreement with one’s biological gender, is sinful and offensive to God (Genesis 1:27-28, 2:24; Matthew 5:27-30; 19:4-5; Mark 10: 2-9; 1 Corinthians 6:9-11; 1 Thessalonians 4:3-7; Hebrews 13:4).”
• “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).”

Amazing. You think AiG will be sponsoring something like Disney’s Gay Days anytime soon?

Also, as Dan Points out, none of those Bible verses actually support any of their claims. That’s a common tactic of the Christian grifter, spewing out lists of Bible verses to confer false authority, while avoiding actually reading any of them.

But that’s not all. AiG has a hard-line stance on abortion — they advocate the death penalty for women who get abortions.

On January 25 the Creation Museum hosted a political event designed to fire up support for anti-abortion legislation in Kentucky. The event featured Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis (AiG) and Jeff Durbin of Apologia Church, Mesa, Arizona.

Durbin sees abortion as analogous to the Nazi slaughter of the Jews, although he thinks such a comparison “is a bit of an insult to Hitler,” given that, “if you take a body count of Hitler’s Germany to what we’ve had since Roe v. Wade, we beat him by the metric ton.” In response, Durbin argues that women who have abortions – and this includes instances of incest or rape – must be punished:

Whether it’s a mother who kills her child in the womb or a mother who kills her five-year-old twins by drowning them in the bathtub, we would want it to be treated as a murder charge, and for that to be applied consistently under the law. I believe that a just answer to murder is the death penalty. Historically that’s the standard we held to for a long time, and ultimately when God has spoken to the issue of justice for murder, he says it’s a life for a life.

Would you believe that AiG then claims that they are apolitical? Sure you would. But then readers here all know that Ken Ham is a big-time liar and fraud.

Shut ’em down. Choke off their revenue stream. Remember what the Bible tells us: “And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers.” (Ezekiel 25:17)*.

*Totally fake quote from Pulp Fiction, but who cares?

The perfect abbreviation doesn’t exis…

Betty Bowers: To save time, I call Nationalist Christians “Nat C’s”

Also, sorry everyone — I’ve been swamped lately. This was supposed to be my semester with a slightly lighter teaching load, but now it’s been increased by about 50% (just for this term, fortunately), and I’m going slightly insane. Add to that that the spiders are suddenly impressively fecund, and I have to do a lot of lab maintenance. Quickies are all I can manage.

It’s the Mormon church. They just got fined $5 million dollars for hiding $32 billion (!!!) in assets behind various shell companies.

I have nothing to add other than my immense mathematical skills: $5 million is 0.016% of $32 billion. That’s not even a slap on the wrist, more of a tickle.

Oh, and that we should tax the fuck out of all churches.

There’s a hugely well-funded ad campaign going on right now, that will include one of those ridiculously expensive SuperBowl ads, that aims to clean up Jesus’ image. He’s about love, and tolerance, and all that sweetness and light stuff.

You might be wondering who is paying for this message. Americans United has you covered. They’ve been digging deep into the people funding these ads.

The Servant Foundation, also known as The Signatry, is behind the ad blitz. Over the next three years, the Servant Foundation plans to spend “about a billion dollars” toward this public relations campaign. They’ve hired a PR firm to address, in the firm’s words, the problem of “How did the world’s greatest love story in Jesus become known as a hate group?”

I know, I know! Because modern conservative Christianity is a hate group, and they’ve been relying on buddy Jesus as a front man for hatred and intolerance. Instead of false advertising, maybe they should be using that money to clean up their act.

Once you get past the tolerant veneer, you discover the Servant Foundation is washing dirty money from some of the worst, most horrible Christian cults.

Of course, they’re the cause of their own problem – not only has the Servant Foundation funded hate groups, but the PR firm, Haven, has represented them. Key Shadow Network members Focus on the Family and Alliance Defending Freedom are in their portfolio.

Look who else they’re forking cash over to:

Other recipients of the Servant Foundation’s billion dollars in assets include:

• Nearly $8 million went to Answers in Genesis, creationist Ken Ham’s fundamentalist ministry behind the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter.
• Over $1 million was designated for the anti-LGBTQ Campus Crusade for Christ (rebranded as “Cru” since 2011).
• $374,800 went to Al Hayat Ministries, an organization that seeks to “respectfully yet fearlessly unveil the deception of Islam,” and runs an Arabic-language Christian satellite TV station with the goal of converting Muslims to Christianity.

In 2020 alone, we found donations to prominent Shadow Network members American Center for Law and Justice, First Liberty Institute, and Liberty Counsel.

Also helping to fund the Super Bowl ads are the Greens, the billionaire family behind the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., and the Hobby Lobby craft store chain that got the Supreme Court to grant corporations a religious exemption to deny workers access to birth control.

Jesus isn’t political, if you don’t think right-wing Xianity is political. Jesus is for all people, except the gay ones or the trans ones. And they’re giving lots of bucks to creationism!

Good thing I won’t be watching the SuperBowl, and in particular won’t be watching the half-time ad glut, or I’d be puking into my nachos when that lying abomination came on.

And if you’re still wondering how Jesus became known as a front for hatred, just look at who is lying in his name.

We’re always getting accused of being steeped in sex and godless hedonism, but then…have you seen the New Glow Baptist Church?

The New Glow Baptist Church has taken a bold step in advertising their services in a way that is unique and controversial. Their Instagram page is filled with images of women dressed in revealing outfits, with captions that invite newcomers to “Come As You Are” and “There Are No Dress Codes Here.” The bio section of their page also makes it clear that there is no dress code at the church.

You don’t need to check out their instagram page, I can summarize it with a safe-for-work image.

I strongly suspect this is not a real church and lacks any formal affiliation with any Baptist denomination, but is instead a scam. They want you to join their patreon account for $11.99 a month. Also I definitely believe this: the women they use are AI-generated.

According to information obtained by MandyNewsm.com, some the photos that have been circulating on social media are not real but are in fact generated by an AI.

I wonder if the combination of fetish porn and religion can really be that profitable?

George Pell died 3 weeks ago, and the Australians are just now having the funeral? The casket has just arrived? I had no idea that transit times from Hell were so slow.

Aww, they’re decorating the church with colored ribbons. How festive!

That’s a lot of ribbons. There’s one for each molested child, so I guess they needed to clean out the local fabric store rather thoroughly. It’s nice when people can come together and celebrate the death of an old child rapist like that.

Sometimes, I too can swaddle myself in cherished delusions and believe for a time that the world might get better. Look! The “nones” are gradually increasing in number, and less than half the American population denies evolution! The trends are going the right way! Then, unfortunately, I have to read some uncomfortable facts.

Pentecostalism, broadly speaking, now has as many as 600 million adherents worldwide, or more than a quarter of all Christians. It has a huge presence in Brazil, where it played a decisive role in the rise of the populist demagogue Jair Bolsonaro; in Hungary, where it helped elevate the explicitly illiberal Viktor Orbán; and in Guatemala, where Pentecostal evangelicalism was exported from the United States to counter the influence of the Second Vatican Council and the rise of liberation theology. It is surging among migrant workers in Gulf states, where some Pentecostal networks provide key services to the disempowered, and also in Nigeria, where human trafficking organizations have infiltrated certain Pentecostal networks. From the perspective of some global leaders of the movement, the United States looks like an aging and corrupt capital—the kind of place where missionaries must go as much as the place where they come from.

The evidence suggests that their timing is good. “Pentecostalism represents a rare feat in American religion—a tradition that is growing,” according to Ryan Burge, assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University. “The Assemblies of God, which stands as the largest Pentecostal denomination, has seen a 50 percent increase in membership over the last three decades, while every other prominent Protestant denomination has seen their membership decline precipitously.”

Katherine Stewart calls them “Spirit Warrior Christians”, and we’ve all seen them in action. They’re the wackaloons who go into hysterics about the gays and the trans, who serve as prayer leaders and spiritual consultants to Republican politicians, and regard deep ignorance as a good qualification to serve in government. They are best defined by who they hate.

The demons that merit the emphasis of reactionary Pentecostals and neo-charismatics today often have to do with the belief that the secular liberal world is infested with “the LGBT agenda” and, in particular, “transgender ideology.” Whatever one makes of the policy details, considered abstractly, the relentless focus on this single issue is an expression of hostility toward a perceived liberal establishment. If evil has a face, it is that of the “expert,” the professor, and perhaps above all the liberal nonbeliever who urges everybody to pursue their own ideas of good and base their moral code on the principles of empathy and rationalism, rather than biblical truth.

You talkin’ about me?

It’s way past time we started doing something about the root causes of this lunacy, and it’s not about evangelizing atheism at people. It’s about correcting the inequalities in society.

The most fruitful line of investigation and response has to focus on the root causes of the religious transformation. Religion in America is starting to look more like religion in Brazil and Guatemala because America, in some aspects, is starting to resemble Brazil and Guatemala: increasingly unequal, bitterly divided, corrupt, rife with disinformation, and unstable. If we want people to choose different gods, we might think about tackling the conditions that lead them to prefer one kind over another.

The oligarchs have plowed the land of America, and found it fertile.

Robert Garcia, a newly-elected Democratic representative, has chosen the book upon which he will swear the oath of office, and it is not a Bible.

Like any other lawmaker, Rep.-elect Robert Garcia will swear his oath of office on a foundational text. He chose the US Constitution over the Bible or another religious book, and when the time comes, he’ll also take his oath with three sentimental items, including the first edition comic of Superman.

“I’ve read almost all genres, but Superman is always the character that stood out and spoke to me the most,” Garcia, a Democrat from California, told BuzzFeed News on Wednesday.

Reporters on Tuesday spotted the vintage comic book among the items laid out in the House of Representatives in preparation of the swearing-in of newly elected members. In a tweet, Garcia, who describes himself as a comic book nerd in his Twitter bio, acknowledged it was for him. He said he will be sworn in to Congress with the Constitution as well as a photograph of his parents, who both died during the pandemic; his naturalization paperwork from when he became a US citizen; and the first edition of Superman, which he borrowed from the Library of Congress.

I’m happy to see that someone chose something wholesome, rather than that archaic book of misogyny, racism, and violence. Immigrants have to stick together, too.