Cumberland Falls, rocks, and heads of stone.

Yesterday D was compelled to attend a meeting held at Cumberland Falls State Resort Park, which is located roughly 15 miles west of Corbin, Kentucky. Having never been, I decided to accompany her and share the driving time.

It was a gorgeous morning, and so I walked from the lodge to the falls and back. Near the visitors center, there was an explanation of how the falls came to be.

It isn't nuclear physics: Water meets rocks soft and hard, and erosion is the result. Of course, this process of forming rock and wearing it away has occurred over millions of years, hence the irony.

The same state taken to erecting signs like this, which reflect science, awards charlatans like Ken Ham economic development funds to build a replica of Noah's ark -- which reflects superstition.

Stop the presses: Pat Robertson enticingly close to reasonable in rejecting Ken Ham's 6,000-year-old planet.

There's something almost epochal about Robertson, who has been batshit goofy in so many bizarre pronouncements for so very long, waxing quite near coherence on the topic of dinosaur bones and rock formations.

Of course, it all remains rooted in the doctrine of necessary mover, linked by theists with unverifiable notions of a supreme being. At least Robertson accepts scientific tenets of evolution. The net effect is to render Ken Ham and his drone followers more laughable than before ... and how is that possible?

Pat Robertson implores creationist Ken Ham to shut up: ‘Let’s not make a joke of ourselves’, by Scott Kaufman (The Raw Story)

Pat Robertson responded to the recent debate between Young Earth creationist Ken Ham and Bill Nye, a.k.a. “The Science Guy,” by reiterating his disagreement with Ham’s form of creationism.

“Let’s face it,” Robertson said, “there was a Bishop [Ussher] who added up the dates listed in Genesis and he came up with the world had been around for 6,000 years.”

“There ain’t no way that’s possible,” he continued. “To say that it all came about in 6,000 years is just nonsense and I think it’s time we come off of that stuff and say this isn’t possible.”

It's another Secular Sunday: Localism, creationism and the Ark Encounter.

Digressions like this one are perfect grist for quiet Sunday mornings at home, with coffee and kippers, far from the churchgoing population.

I suppose it's true that any reference to localism in the context of our region, in one or the other well-intentioned efforts to locate the components rendering us distinct and different, must be inclusive and recognize the self-defeating prevalence of superstitious nutjobbery.

What makes it even harder is that we cannot blame it entirely on Kentucky, or else Rhonda Rhoads would not be an Indiana office holder. Does it get any more representative than a Creation Museum?

Creationism, its museum, and Idiot America.

While founder and chief cartoonist Ken Ham is little more than a caricature, albeit it influential among the numerous delusionists, Bill Nye says quite sensible things, like this:

"We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future."

Meanwhile, LEO reports that Ham's next great revenue stream is in trouble. As an atheist and secular humanist, I can only hope that my psychic energy has played a part in depleting Ham's investment coffers.

Ken Ham: Ark Encounter close to failure because of “atheists,” “secular” media and possibly the devil himself, by Joe Sonka (LEO Weekly)

... How dare the Enemy — capitalized — trick people into not giving millions of their dollars to a man who makes his living getting rich by telling people that humans used to ride through the desert on saddled dinosaurs?

Photo credit

Creationism, its museum, and Idiot America.

You may have heard the news.

Bill Nye “The Science Guy” will debate founder of Creation Museum in Kentucky, by Irving DeJohn (New York Daily News)

Nye will argue merits of evolution with Ken Ham, museum’s founder. Ham argued once in a YouTube video that Nye ‘really doesn’t understand science.’

Coincidentally, many thanks to my pen pal DE, who has chimed in at precisely the right moment with a link to a snippet from the righteous and inimitable Charles P. Pierce's book, Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free.

I've discovered a book which purports to define the American mind (there's only one?) or mindset, whatever.

In this excerpt, a visit to the Creation Museum is described.

These were impolite questions. Nobody asked them here by the cool pond tucked into the gentle hillside. Increasingly, amazingly, nobody asked them outside the gates, either. It was impolite to wonder why our parents had sent us all to college, and why generations of immigrants had sweated and bled so that their children could be educated, if not so that one day we would feel confident enough to look at a museum full of dinosaurs rigged to run six furlongs at Aqueduct and make the not unreasonable point that it was batshit crazy, and that anyone who believed this righteous hooey should be kept away from sharp objects and their own money. Instead, people go to court over this kind of thing.