Speaking of Answers in Genesis ...

Whilst spending the afternoon catching up on the 1,000+ unread posts in nearly 200 blogs in my reader, I happened onto a two week old post on Exploring our Matrix pointing to a post by Fred Clark at Slacktivist on the Patheos Progressive Christian channel titled Answers in Genesis teaches how not to read a story. An excerpt to whet your appetite:

The beginnings of the Clovis culture date back to around 13,500 years ago. The newer findings suggest people had arrived in North America even earlier – as early as 14,300 years ago. Allow me to translate those figures for my young-earth creationist, illiteralist fundamentalist friends. The godless scientists used to believe that the first humans arrived in North America 7,484 years before you think the Bible says the universe was created, but now the godless scientists have found evidence that humans were here at least 8,284 years before the creation of the universe.

I know, I know, picking on the young-earth creationists is too easy. Fish in a barrel and all that.

But they invite it. They’re not just wrong, but audaciously wrong. The weirdness of their conclusions becomes all the more horrifying when you try to trace the arcane routes they traveled to arrive at them.

Don’t miss the dig at a freethought billboard for taking the creationists’ literalist Biblical exegesis (semi-)seriously by calculating rainfall rates for Da Flood.