American evangelicals are odd creatures. In Kentucky there's a skillful huckster committed creationist called Ken Ham, he's made a name for himself spreading the mythology of the Biblical creation story in Genesis as fact and science, or as the rest of us call it, lying to children via their gullible parents. By all accounts he's trousered a fair bit of wonga doing this over the years and has added a new attraction to his ever growing "Biblical theme-park" empire. This time he's built a "replica" of Noah's ark!
Of course Ham, being a Biblical literalist, asserts (without any actual evidence whatsoever) that the story of Noah and the flood really happened, exactly the way it says in the King James Bible, and to prove it he claims he's built an ark in Kentucky just like the one Noah did around 2 thousand years before the Roman Empire (who never managed to build a boat anywhere near this big). There are a "couple" of issues with this claim of course, the kinds of issues that people like Ham prefer to gloss over, small things like where did Noah get the lifting gear to hoist the preformed laminated composites and steel braces into place that give such a large structure enough strength not to collapse under it's own weight? Issues like, how did a wooden structure this large not flex and twist in water, like wood does, without leaking or even breaking? Dinosaurs? Where did all the water come from? How did Noah feed 400,000 separate species of beetles? Kangaroos? How the heck did Noah find the time to visit every Pacific island and populate it with so many unique species of flora and fauna after the flood? Anyway, questions, questions, one thing is certain among the evangelical crowd, you don't need to ask questions when you have faith and gullibility... oh and don't bother turning up unless you have a pocket full of cash to spend, apparently Jesus loves you and forgives you but is hopeless with money.
Of course Ham, being a Biblical literalist, asserts (without any actual evidence whatsoever) that the story of Noah and the flood really happened, exactly the way it says in the King James Bible, and to prove it he claims he's built an ark in Kentucky just like the one Noah did around 2 thousand years before the Roman Empire (who never managed to build a boat anywhere near this big). There are a "couple" of issues with this claim of course, the kinds of issues that people like Ham prefer to gloss over, small things like where did Noah get the lifting gear to hoist the preformed laminated composites and steel braces into place that give such a large structure enough strength not to collapse under it's own weight? Issues like, how did a wooden structure this large not flex and twist in water, like wood does, without leaking or even breaking? Dinosaurs? Where did all the water come from? How did Noah feed 400,000 separate species of beetles? Kangaroos? How the heck did Noah find the time to visit every Pacific island and populate it with so many unique species of flora and fauna after the flood? Anyway, questions, questions, one thing is certain among the evangelical crowd, you don't need to ask questions when you have faith and gullibility... oh and don't bother turning up unless you have a pocket full of cash to spend, apparently Jesus loves you and forgives you but is hopeless with money.
No comments:
Post a Comment