These people are Fundamentalists, but they claim to speak for the whole Christian tribe. They are irrational, dangerous Authoritarians, but they claim to speak for the whole American tribe.

If they take over, we will need to find a new place to pitch our tents.

...have big, pointed teeth? If so, what does a vegetarian need with teeth like that? If they don't have big teeth, then they're not really grizzly bears, are they?

I would also love to know if Adam and Eve are shown with belly buttons or not. If they have them, then why is God shown as a liar? They weren't born, so when did they get their belly buttons?

If they don't have belly buttons, then let's look at their feet: do their feet ahve calluses or not? If not, how can they walk? Without calluses, your feet will just bleed. If they do have calluses, then how and when did that happen? Calluses imply a past history, just like belly buttons.

In fact, all parts of a body imply a past history. Bodies have to grow and develop and toughen before they can be used. All living beings depend on their past history and can't function without it. Hence if Adam and Eve are just shown as standing, then it has to be asked: when did they learn to stand?

There's also a glaring contradiction in the article:

"We are going to answer the questions Bryan wasn't prepared to, and show that belief in every word of the Bible can be defended by modern science."

and then later:

As Ham later tells me, the conclusions of modern science are not to be trusted, as they are biased by the fickle reasoning of man and a modern antagonism toward faith.

So how can they defend the word of the Bible with modern science, if they don't even believe in it?

The most amazing thing about this story is how much money is being put into pure stupidity.

There are two main problems with the Creationists:

(1) They are trying to refute science that they don’t understand; and

(2) They display incredible hypocrisy by assiduously applying the label of ‘dogma’ to evolutionary science, while categorically refusing to apply any skepticism to their own dogma.

The science of ‘evolution’ goes far beyond Darwin, who published his seminal work almost 150 years ago. Unlike then, we now understand countless molecular mechanisms including the structure of DNA and how it encodes for genes, how mutations occur, and how entire genomes of different species compare with each other. The ‘theory’ of evolution encompasses hundreds of thousands of individual pieces of datum, elegantly converging from molecular biology, genetics, biochemistry, archeology, and physics. All of the data are consistent with the theory; none are inconsistent with it.

Next time you encounter one of these people, please remind them of these facts.

Zealotry when combined with religous based certainty opens to some very unpleasant outcomes for those who wish to sample/impose intolerance,bigotry,persecution,hatred,torture and death dealing. One need only research,read about and compile the results of historical European religous based intolerance,hatreds and warmaking to know this is a bad place for humanity to go.

A trouble causing upward trend over the past 25 years in American political-social excluding/proscribing activity centers around an increasingly dangerous,reckless proclivity to mix religion with the politics of governance,education and foreign affairs. This truly is a dangerous direction to seek and desire on the parts of some Americans who then would proceed to impose it upon all Americans. It is a dubious form of misplaced missionary zeal being heedlessly mixed with politics.

For those who wish to impose the dogmas of their relgion into the forums of science,politics and foreign affairs it should be fully understood that this may easily become a very slippery slope for the proponents of doing so with terrible unforseen opposition backlash and blowback outcomes lurking in the dark corners of that pursuit. Push to push-back. Shove to shove-back. Intolerance to no-tolerance. Hate held to hate-back. Such levels of malevolence are easily triggered when those who would toy with the darker side of human existence become heedless and hatefully senseless.

The creationists are entitled to their views and beliefs as are the rest of us. However trying to impose creationist views and beliefs in ways that undermine reasoned public discourse and the multiple tracks of historical knowledge based enlightenment and secular humanism is simply regressive---not progressive.

Seeking out and nurturing the better instincts of humanity for diverse cultural,intellectual,racial,sexual and gender ascents is surely the better way sought and taken.

I've kind off agreed with Stev(ph?)en J. Goulds idea of non-overlapping magesteria. Simply put, the mind of man can deduce that "how" of the universe. That is to say we can figure out "how" stars are born, "how" life changes over time, "how" radio active decay occurs. But when it comes to "why", we turn to the spiritual side of things and try to understand that which, IMHO, can't be known.

The problem here is that there are a large number of people that prefer to not do the labor of understanding "how" because it diminishes their place in the universe.

Think about it. What would you rather be told? Would you like to hear that you are merely the current manifestation of a natural process that has been going on for billions of years and will continue for billions of years after you're gone? Or would you rather be told that you are the lord's special creation, created in his image, with a divine purpose to your existence (sp?)?

If you look at the history of rational thought, the ideas that have caused the most angst are the one's that tell us we are not the, um, crown of creation. Remember that the church locked up Galileo for the last few years of his life because he could prove the earth (and by extension, man) was not the center of the universe.

There is a certain mind set that just can't accept our insignificance in the grand scheme of things. Why that mind set is so prevelant in MY country is beyond me. But it saddens and disappoints me.