Just WHO Are Atheists Blaspheming?

Offensive to God?  Or just to you?

Comedian Stephen Fry is under investigation by Irish Police for Blasphemy following a member of the public complaining about some comments he made on RTE television show The Meaning of Life in February 2015.

The show host, Gay Byrne, asked Fry what he might say to God at the gates of Heaven, to which he replied "How dare you create a world in which there is such misery? It's not our fault? It's not right. It's utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid god who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?"

Speaking of the Greek Gods (Stephen Fry is also a classical scholar), Fry added that they did not "present themselves as being all seeing, all wise, all beneficent... ...the god who created this universe, if it was created by god, is quite clearly a maniac, an utter maniac, totally selfish".

The Irish Independent reported that a member of the public made a complaint to police in Ennis the same month the programme was broadcast, which he claimed breached the Irish Defamation Act. He has more recently been contacted by the Garda to say they are now investigating his complaint. It is claimed that the complainant says he was not personally offended by the comments, but felt that Stephen Fry's comments qualified as Blasphemy under the 2009 law.

The Defamation Act entered Irish statute books in 2009. It was introduced to extend existing blasphemy laws in Ireland to all faiths, as the Irish Constitution of 1937 only gave Christians and the Christian faith protection under law. Breach of the Defamation Act carries a 25,000 Euro (UK £22,000) fine.

Stephen Fry in 2015 pointed out that he had not singled out any one religion in his comments.

Scotland also has a Blasphemy Law still on the statute books of Scots Law, although it was last enforced in 1843, when Edinburgh bookseller Thomas Paterson was jailed for 15 months for selling "blasphemous literature".

So, under risk of prosecution, if the Bible were to be believed, let me tell readers exactly what I think of the God of Judeo/Christian/Islamic tradition.

By the very admission of the Bible, this is a petty-minded, childish, cruel god, with all the loving kindness of a sadistic psychopath.

From the very beginning, our "loving father" placed the first humans in the Garden of Eden, and forbade them eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. But hold on, if they did not know what good and evil were, then it therefore logically follows they had never been taught right from wrong. Therefore, when they did eat from the tree, they were wholly innocent in their actions, not knowing any better.

That's the same actions of the arsehole who puts paint thinner in a milk bottle and leaves it within reach of a toddler. Our 'loving father' is one helluva shitty parent it seems

It was inevitable that Adam and Eve would eat from the tree, for it is human nature to be curious. That's why in 2010: Odyssey Two, Arthur C Clarke had the aliens tell humanity "All these worlds are yours to explore except Europa. Attempt no landings there."; because they knew the temptation would be too great for mankind to resist.  It is also why you get kids climbing over walls and fences into 'forbidden' areas, and even why if you put up a "Wet Paint" sign, some daft bugger will inevitably always touch the paint to check.

So, with Adam and Eve innocently breaching God's rules, which he never explained fully why, what was God's reaction? Not only did he punish the first humans but he condemned all mankind to come for all time to be punished for all eternity, for a minor infraction by the first two who could not have known any better.

This is a god who in a fit of pique, wiped out every species of flora and fauna on the face of the planet, save for a few on a ruddy great boat, because mankind had become "wicked".

A god who commanded his "chosen people" to kill every man, woman and boy child, right down to babies, but that they could keep all the young unmarried virgin girls for themselves. Thereby sanctioning not only mass murder but also rape and sexual slavery.

A god who loved his chosen people so much that he deliberately hardened the heart of Pharaoh, ensuring he would not accede to the pleas of Moses to let his people go. A god who then proceeded to rain down hail, affecting everyone, poison the water, affecting everyone, spread disease and lice, affecting everyone, destroy the crops, affecting everyone, and kill the cattle, affecting everyone. A god who rounded off this particularly nasty set of parlour tricks by killing every first born son of every Egyptian, right down to the babies.

A god who laid down his book of rules, in which he freely admits to being jealous, and goes on to tell his people to kill adulterers, gay men and women - whom he allegedly created yet calls them an "abomination", and even unruly and cheeky children.

A god who was so angered by the sexual licentiousness of two cities that he destroyed them, leaving only one man and his two daughters surviving. Yet when the daughters got their father drunk and had sex with him (because obviously there was loads of wine lying around in a cave, and Lot somehow magically did not suffer from 'brewer's droop'), the same god who frowned so much on the sexual practises of Sodom and Gomorrah apparently had no problem with their incest.

A god who laid down rules for slaves, telling them to be loyal and faithful to their masters.

A god who punished some children who were cheeky to a bald man by having a bear tear them to shreds.

A god who is allegedly omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, yet somehow had to impregnate a woman with himself, then have himself sacrificed and brought back to life, to 'save' mankind from the eternal punishment which only the same god alone could have created.

A god who told his followers to leave their families and follow him only.

If any human being told you that they watched your every move, they knew everything you do, everywhere you go, everyone you met and what you did with them, and that same person told you that you had better love them and them alone above all others, or they would punish you in the cruellest ways without mercy, you would be more than a little alarmed. You may seek an exclusion order against that person. You would more than likely contact the police, and if their investigation proved that the said person had indeed said all of the above, they would be charged, convicted, and imprisoned for your safety and that of the public in general.

Yet that is exactly what the Christian faith is based upon; that an all-seeing God is following you all the time, and if you don't accept him, love him above all others, and do his bidding, then you will be thrown into Hell and punished mercilessly for all eternity.

The 'love' of God is no love at all; it has all the love of the dangerously obsessed psychopathic stalker who needs locked up for their own good as well as that of society.

If the God of the Bible was proven to exist, then I would have no reason but to accept that, but there is no way I could ever bring myself to follow the evil fuck. And what would I say? I would tell him to his face all of the above and condemn him that if anyone truly deserved to be burning in Hell, it would be him.

If anyone is offended by all I have written above, as I said, Scotland has blasphemy laws, so go ahead, make my day – bring a complaint against me. I would relish my day in court, I would plead Not Guilty, and for my testimony I would use no other documents than the King James Bible. Referring to it, I would prove that not one word I say in any way blasphemes the Christian faith. Indeed, much of it actually is central to the faith and thereby upholds it.

I would call God as a witness, but I think he may unavailable to comment.

Moreover I would make the point as I do not believe in the Judeo/Christian/Islamic God, or any other gods for that matter, then I cannot possibly be guilty of blaspheming the Christian faith, or any other faith.

When Sir William Wallace was dragged before King Edward I of England for his show-trial in 1305, he admitted many charges. But when the charge of Treason was read out he defiantly cried out that he could not be guilty of Treason, as he had never sworn allegiance to King Edward. It did him no good, but it was a sound legal point. Similarly, neither the God of Abraham nor Jesus are my kings; I don't believe in the former and the jury is still out on the very existence of the latter. Therefore, I am no more guilty of blasphemy against the Judeo/Christian God than I am of blasphemy against the Elfin Queen, unicorns, Father Christmas, the Green Man, or the Loch Ness Monster.

And exactly the same can be said of Stephen Fry. Indeed, more so for Fry, as unlike me, he did not single out any particular religion.

Many would find a great deal of what I have said above offensive, but it is by no means blasphemous. If it is offending, then it is not my belief that it is offending God, because I don't believe he/she/it/they exist. So just who then is being offended? Only the believers, and herein lies the problem.

The brilliant You Tube atheist cartoonist who goes under the name DarkMatter2525 once posted an absolutely brilliant video, "The Real God; An Epiphany", in which he argued that when theists are offended by atheists, it is not because the atheist is rejecting God, but rather it is the believer who feels rejected. Likening belief to an attraction to another person, he pointed out that when someone approaches another, only to find their attraction is not reciprocated, that person has their feelings hurt, they feel rejected, and may lash out in anger as a result. DarkMatter2525 went on to claim that this is because that the 'relationship' that believers feel with their god is in fact a deep relationship with their own ego. The god they 'worship' will often share their own views on social, moral, and even political issues, and that is because the 'relationship with god' is in fact a deeply-set relationship with the subconscious self. In reality, the believer IS the very god they claim to worship.

And of course, among all this, there actually has been no rejection at all. If any one of us is approached by another who is attracted to us, but are not interested, we may let them down lightly, we may agree to be friends but not more than friends, but are we rejecting them? No, we are not. We may already be married or in a relationship, we may be of a different sexual persuasion, the time may not be right for us, or we may simply not be interested. There are hundreds of reasons why we do not enter into relationships with others, none of which can be defined as rejection. So it is if we do not believe in the existence of god(s), and/or we consider the writings of 'holy' books to be nothing more than mythology, we are not rejecting those beliefs. If you think that we are, then consider whether you likewise have rejected Maebh, Queen of Faerie.

Yet the believer will react angrily, often even violently, to the non-believer for this 'rejection'. History is replete with instances of atrocities carried out in the name of religion, where countless millions, possibly billions, have been killed for "blasphemy", "heresy" and "apostasy". Here in Edinburgh alone, we have the Witches Well; a memorial on the site where hundreds of innocents, mostly women and girls, were once burned at the stake for Witchcraft (over 500 alone during the reign of King James VI, who was paranoid about witches, and whose youngest victim was a little girl of 4 years old). The Holy Inquisitions killed thousands, all based on idle superstition and dogma which has since been proven to be wholly mistaken.

We have all seen or heard about the atrocities committed by Daesh, and there are Islamic countries where questioning or denying the Qur'an can earn sentences ranging from fines, to imprisonment, to lashes, or even to hanging or beheading. Saudi Arabia has recently passed laws which define atheism as terrorist activity.

But do not be too quick to point the finger at the dark ages ideas of fundamentalist Islamic states, Christians, because although you may claim that Christian atrocities are part of a sad and mistaken history, your faith does not have clean hands to this day. In Kenya it is not uncommon for fanatical Christian mobs to hunt down, attack, and even massacre people they suspect of witchcraft. In Uganda faith-based laws see gay men arrested, beaten up in cells, and even 'disappeared' in some cases. Nor can you put this down to the idle superstition of some uneducated African peoples. Chechnya is quite openly rounding up gay men and placing them in concentration camps, with full sanction of the Islamic authorities, and the Orthodox Church. And of course the homophobic views of Russian President Vladimir Putin are more than well known, and gay men in Russia are often arrested and/or beaten up, which the authorities either turn a blind eye to, or are actually involved in. This again again has the sanction of the Orthodox church.

Believers reacting to what they perceive as blasphemy, be it through law, by violence, or both, actually suggests a distinct shallowness of faith. For surely if you believe your god is omnipotent, that is all-powerful, then it is down to that god and that god alone to deal with the blasphemer. Or do you believe your god to be so weak and powerless that he needs his earthly minions to do his fighting for him?

This is actually a very important message for the Christian faith, which indeed tells believers not to be judge, unless they too should be judged. In Deuteronomy 32:35, God allegedly states "To me belongeth vengeance and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste." This is repeated in Romans 12:19 "Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord." In other words, by the very rules laid out in the Bible, it is not the place of Christians to seek revenge for imagined slights, but they are actually meant to leave it to God to deal with the 'sinner'.

Gandhi, although not a Christian, was a very devout man who believed there was truth in all faiths and who greatly admired the story of Jesus. He once stated "Violence implies atheism", again working on this idea that if you turn to violence, then you are denying the power of your god.

If any believers are offended by my writings, they therefore have to ask themselves just who have I offended? Have I really offended their god? No, because I don't believe their god exists, and if they did, then it is that god's place to deal with me, not the believers.

Have I offended the believer? No, I have severely questioned the Judeo/Christian faith, which I consider to be utter nonsense, and the Bible - already proven to be unreliable and inaccurate - to be little more than a bunch of Bronze Age goatherders campfire tales. Believers, whichever faith they follow, really need to get over the idea that their 'holy books' are somehow not open to scrutiny. If they do not, then they are little different from the Taliban. As Maajid Nawaz, a former Islamist fundamentalist who now campaigns against Islamist indoctrination says "No idea is beyond questioning. No human being is beyond dignity."

Have I as much as suggested suppressing the right to freedom of religion? Not by the slightest iota. I am in fact extremely passionate about human rights, including the right of freedom of religion, thought and conscience. I may consider religion to be absolutely barmy, but if anyone chooses to believe, then not only is it their right to do so, but I would be the first to defend that right. I may not be a parent, but I believe every child has the right to a good education. You do not have to be part of something to defend it. I only wish that more theists would likewise defend my right NOT to believe in god(s); freedom of religion also means freedom from religion.

So, believer, if you are indeed offended by my writings, and think they are blasphemous, here is my open invitation; go ahead, bring a complaint against me. I do believe that the statute in Scots Law against Blasphemous Libel would cover it. I think I have already clearly illustrated however that I am innocent of any such charges, and I will more than happily stand up and repeat those arguments in a court of law.

Then before you bring any such action, consider that if you do so, not only would you be trying to do your God's work for him, but in doing so you would also be bearing false witness against me.

Would both of these actions not in fact be, ermm, blasphemy?

Religion continues to prevent this Scots Nat from joining the SNP

In June 2016, the United Nations published a report upon Religious Observance (RO) within publicly funded Scottish Schools, calling for the Scottish Government to recognise the right of senior pupils to opt themselves out.  The Scottish Government have responded by completely disregarding the wishes of the body representing the global community.

RO is any ritual act of religious practice, whether that be group prayer, religious-based assemblies with pupils singing from the Church of Scotland Hymnary, enforced visits to the local church, visits from the local minister, or even saying grace before school dinners, all of which take place in some Scottish schools, with some of them being quite common. Parents do have the right to opt their children out of these practices, yet few are aware of that right, which usually appears in school handbooks, and is barely mentioned. Even when pupils are opted-out, they can tend to be treated like pariahs, and given practices to do which are more akin to punishments than any scholastic alternative. In one case I am aware of one opted-out pupil was forced to sharpen pencils while the rest of her class attended RO. It is also quite common for opted-out pupils to be told to stand in a corridor while RO takes place.

The Scottish Secular Society, of which I am a member, once petitioned the Scottish Government to change the opt out of RO to an “opt in”, where schools would have to contact parents and seek signed permission for their children to attend RO. The Scottish Government completely dismissed this very popular request.

In their report on RO, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child states “The Committee recommends that the State party repeal legal provisions for compulsory attendance at collective worship in publicly funded schools and ensure that children can independently exercise the right to withdraw from religious worship at school.” The Scottish Government have likewise dismissed this report, from no less an austere body than the UN, completely out of hand. In a letter to the Humanist Society of Scotland, the Scottish Government stated “There is no […] statutory right to withdraw afforded to children and young people.”

For a government which can be so progressive, and one of whose key policies is Getting It Right For Every Child, that sounds very much to me like “Ye'll dae as yir tellt.”

I admire the great many things the SNP administration in the Scottish Government have achieved and are achieving for all who live here in Scotland. I support most aims and goals of the SNP, I believe them to have policies based solidly within social conscience and responsibility, I have always found SNP representatives to listen to the Scottish people and act accordingly in their best interests. I consistently vote SNP. I have admired Nicola Sturgeon for a very long time (to the point she may be disturbed at the number of photos I have of her at public events), and in her I believe Scotland could not ask for a better First Minister. With her intelligence, experience, diplomacy, compassion, and toughness where required, I honestly think Nicola Sturgeon is the best First Minister Scotland has had since we achieved devolution in 1999.

However, for me there are some things which are a line in the sand. And where the SNP are concerned, it is this continual pandering to religion.

For a political party, I have come to notice that the SNP appears to have a high number of practising Christians among their membership, from ordinary members, right up to Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSP). Although I am an atheist myself, I am the first to champion the right of all to freedom of religion, thought and conscience, a right which is enshrined by both the UN and the European Union. When political representatives have an abiding faith however, that can and does often throw up problems. Where they have to choose between those who elected them, their country, or their god, then there is always the danger that they will choose the latter. One need only look to the many religious zealots in public office in the USA to see the reality of that fact.

And you may think that cannot happen in Scotland. No? Think again. In 2013 a scandal broke at Kirtonholme Primary School in South Lanarkshire, when it was discovered that primary schoolchildren were being given creationist literature by a US-based evangelical Christian club. In the wake of this the Scottish Secular Society petitioned the Scottish Government to be given clear guidance on the teaching of Biblical creationism – the literal belief that the earth was created in six day, 6000 years ago – in publicly funded Scottish schools. While this petition was going through the Scottish Parliament, John Mason, SNP MSP for Glasgow Shettleston, lodged a motion that evolution cannot be “proved or disproved by science” and calling for children to be made aware of “differing belief systems”. Yes, you did read that right; John Mason did indeed call for science to 'disprove' – effectively prove a negative, which science does not do because it is an exercise in futility (disproving is not falsifying, which is a valid and solid part of the scientific method). In the event, John Mason's facile motion was thrown out, and the Scottish Secular Society petition was passed, effectively outlawing the teaching of creationism in Scottish schools.

But it need not be the political representatives of a party that can cause me to question them. It is disturbing in the extreme that the SNP continue to accept funding from Brian Souter, co-owner of the Stagecoach bus group. Brian Souter is deeply religious, and once headed up a campaign to retain some extremely homophobic legislation visited upon schools across the UK. Clause 28 (Section 2A in Scotland) was introduced by the Conservative government of then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1988 and enforced that schools "shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality" or "promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.” Not only did this odious piece of legislation make it effectively illegal to even mention homosexuality in schools, it also prevented gay and lesbian pupils from coming out, and made pariahs out of those children and young people with same-sex parents. Tony Blair's Labour government sought to repeal Clause 28 / Section 2A in 1999, and the “Keep the Clause” campaign got going to try and fight this repeal.

Brian Souter supported a poll by Keep the Clause to the tune of £1 million, a postal ballot asking members of the public whether it should be repealed or retained. In the event, only 31.8% of valid votes were returned, with 86.8% showing in favour of retention, to 13.2% in favour of repeal. While Souter tried to claim victory however, a mere 31.8% of valid votes had been returned, the poll was a private affair (the Electoral Reform Society refused to touch it), and much of the information given was out of date.

More disturbing is the way that the Keep the Clause campaign influenced the Ayr by-election of 2000. In the first Scottish Parliamentary Election in 1999, the Ayr seat had been won by Labour by a mere 25 votes above the Conservative opponent. The following year sitting MSP Ian Welsh resigned to spend more time with his family, triggering the first Scottish Parliamentary by-election. In the run-up to the by-election, Keep the Clause campaigned heavily in the area, and bought up billboard space. In the event the Ayr seat fell to the pro-clause Conservative candidate John Scott by a landslide, with the SNP in second place, and Labour beaten into third place. Brian Souter, again much of the bankrolling of this, later boasted that he had influenced the by-election. Some SNP / independence that; crowing that he had helped get a Tory into power. But then, that's what happens when the religious seek to influence politics; they don't care of the other politics of whoever supports their bigotry, so long as someone supports it.

However, for Brian Souter and his Keep the Clause cronies, it was a hollow victory. Section 2A was repealed by the Scottish Government in June 2000, and Westminster repealed Clause 28 in 2003.  Jack McConnell and Tony Blair did have some uses after all.

The issue of RO in Scottish schools and the SNP position upon it is not only a disgrace, it is a constitutional enigma, and one which could ultimately come back to smack the SNP firmly in the face. For a start, when we say RO, let's be clear here, we are speaking Christian worship, no other faith, for the simple fact that Christianity is the majority faith in Scotland. And even then, when I say Christian, I mean mostly Church of Scotland (with the Roman Catholic Church coming second in Scotland's publicly-funded RC schools). It just so happens however that the Church of Scotland was disestabalished in 1929, and as a result Scotland has no established state church. By comparison, the Church of England is the established state church of England, and yet senior pupils in publicly-funded English schools have been able to opt themselves out of RO since 2006.

There is of course no written constitution in the UK, but what the future holds could very well change matters in Scotland. The very raison detre of the SNP is of course independence for Scotland. Within that goal, the SNP have stated their vision of an independent Scotland which is a member of the European Union (and the people of Scotland have strongly stated their wish to stay within the EU, which the First Minister is negotiating at time of writing), and with a written constitution, based upon the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Interestingly enough, as I previously said, the ECHR enshrines the human right to freedom of thought, religion, and conscience. Therefore, if the end goal is as the SNP state, then enforced RO in Scottish Schools would contravene the ECHR, and presumably the secular constitution of an independent Scotland, thereby making it illegal to enforce RO upon children against their wishes.

Religion is a very contentious issue in Scotland, and has been for over a thousand years. This is the country which Saint Margaret shook up from being “loose Christians” to strictly adherent to Rome for 500 years, to the point that Scotland was known as “The Pope's special daughter”. Then in a short space of time the Reformation made this the most Presbyterian country in the world (as our brand of Protestantism remains the most fierce in the world), which became the government for the next 300 years. However, the last vestiges of Scotland's theocratic past are passing away with time. We are now a multicultural country, which means we are also very much a multi-faith country, while the 2011 census showed that 37% of Scots now consider themselves to be of “No Religion”; an increase of nine percent upon the 2001 census, second only to Christianity, and showing that atheism is firmly upon the increase in Scotland.

Yet this is not just an atheist issue. As Scotland is a multi-faith country, this can only mean that there are children of other faiths being forced into Christian RO. Now, some may not have a problem with that, but as I said before, just how many of the parents are aware of their children having RO forced upon them? How many of them are aware that it is heavily Christian-based? I've no doubt many Christian parents may dismiss this. Okay, then would they be happy were their children forced to worship under another faith? Bloody right they would not be. Only a couple of years back many parents in Dalkeith, Midlothian, withdrew their children from a school visit to Edinburgh Central Mosque (this visit was purely educational to learn what Islam teaches – not enforcing it). Why then should they expect any different for children of other faiths, and no faiths?  This is one place where the SNP administration in Holyrood is most certainly not "Getting It Right For Every Child".

Likewise, I am not asking for, nor ever would ask for, RO to be removed from schools against the wishes of parents who wish it for their children, or for that matter school pupils who wish it for themselves.  Enforced secularism is every bit as unjust and odious as enforced RO.  France, which is taking too heavy a line upon secularism within schools, in places banning anything which could be construed as religious, is the proof of this.  But enforcing one religion upon all against their wishes, and effectively punishing those who are opted out, is an outdated remnant of the days of Presbyterian theocracy, which should have no place in our multi-faith and increasingly atheist and secularist modern Scotland, which has no established kirk.

I will continue to vote SNP, I will continue to support them, and our wonderful First Minister, for I believe that they and they alone are the only party which truly represents Scotland and has the interests of all her peoples at heart. Likewise, with the prospects of a second independence referendum now very firmly on the cards, I shall campaign for Yes Scotland, just as I did before the 2014 referendum. But as long as the SNP continue to cow-tow to the Kirk, to accept money from a homophobe, to ignore the guidance of no less than the United Nations, and their Holy Wullie MSPs put their faith before their constituents and their country, they shall never have me as a member.

Nicola Sturgeon may wish to take note that I am not the only pro-independence atheist and secularist who feels that strongly on this issue, and the SNP are doing themselves no favours by refusing to take a more secular stance.

Ark Encounters of the Absurd Kind

With the opening of Ark Encounter, the so-called life-sized replica of Noah's Ark, opening in Williamston, Kentucky, USA, I have been made privy to a few photographs from an unnamed source, which I have the pleasure in sharing with you here.

Right off, let me begin by saying that Ark Encounter is not a replica of Noah's Ark. It is in fact a building mocked-up to look like a boat on one side. Ark Encounter are very fond to show off the side which looks like a boat in their publicity shots. They are more than just a wee bit shy of showing the other side, which is a prefabricated concrete building, consisting of three towers, which the attraction is 'leaning' against and which houses all the facilities (restrooms, elevators, air conditioning, ventilation ducts, emergency exits, etc) for the 'Ark'. They are not too fond either of stating that the entire thing is embedded in solid concrete to keep it upright. Oh, or that there are no actual live animals in the Ark, as animal welfare legislation forbade it. The only live animals are in fact in a petting zoo, on the other side of a hill from the Ark.

Ark Encounter is headed up by Ken Ham, founder of the Creationist Museum and Answers in Genesis (AiG), who are behind the tourist attraction. Ham, an Australian immigrant to the USA, is a Biblical literalist and Young Earth Creationist (YEC) who honestly believes that the account of the creation of the Earth as laid down in the Bible is literally true, and holds by Archbishop Ussher's calculations, that the Earth was created in six days, approximately 6000 years ago. As such, I expected the worst from Ark Encounter, and I am only too sad to say I have not been disappointed. The attraction defies most if not all of peer-reviewed accepted science, as well as history, without a shred of solid evidence to back up it's claims.

The first photograph shows the Earth as imagined before the flood, with what I presume are supposed to be Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden – looking over towards very poor representations of apatosaurs and what I take to be pteradons. Pteradons were of course carnivorous, but notice that Ark Encounter have chosen herbivore land-based dinosaurs in this illustration. Perhaps the presence of carnivorous dinosaurs such as tyrannosaurus rex would raise too many questions from visitors. Whatever, unfortunately for Ham et al, not only did both species die out millennia before the rise of mankind, they did not even live together; the apatosaurs lived 152-151 million years ago, while pteradons lived 86-80 million years ago.

Bringing in the “wickedness” of mankind, there is mention of the Tower of Babel, which the Bible has rising “to Heaven”, and the next photograph shows “Towers from around the world”, asking if various ancient structures from around the world give a clue to what the Tower of Babel may have looked like. The Tower of Babel myth in fact completely throws creationists timescales, as well as their exaggerations about it reaching heaven. Scholars have identified it with the Great Ziggurat of Babylon or “Etemenanki”, a tower dedicated to the Mesopotamian god Marduk by Nabopolassar, king of Babylonia. The Etemenanki was 300 feet (91 metres) high, and rather embarrassingly for Ark Encounter, was built c.610 BCE. So, not only not old enough, but not nearly high enough, and much shorter than many older structures; notably the Great Pyramid of Giza, which was completed 2580 BCE, originally stood 481 feet (146.5 metres) high, and which the Bible makes absolutely no mention of.

I also don't think the Irish are going to be too happy about an illustration of the Newgrange pyramid being pointed to the south-west of England.

The next photograph is of a panel arguing that mankind had the technology to work wood, stone and metal at the alleged time of Noah, approximately 4400 years ago. “Many people believe that ancient man was not intelligent enough to design and build something as large and complex as the ark”, states the panel. Nope. Never once claimed that. In fact, our ancestors, having the same brain capacity as we have, had the potential to design and build fantastic structures, as ancient wonders such as the pyramids at Giza are monument to. They merely lacked knowledge, and of course the sharing of knowledge made our species more intelligent.

The Ark however is no Egyptian pyramid, and given the description in the Bible, it is actually not a very good design. For a start, a wooden vessel of that size, despite the claims of Ken Ham, would not float for any length of time before either turning turtle, breaking her back, or both. The longest wooden ship ever built was the Wyoming, a six-masted schooner which measured 450 feet (140 metres) and which was launched in 1909. Due to her length she buckled and timbers warped at sea, and had to have pumps working constantly to keep her hold relatively free of water. She foundered in heavy seas in 1924 with the loss of all hands. Compare the Wyoming to the supposed length of the Ark; 520 feet 8 inches, and you soon see that there is no way she could be seaworthy. Some will argue that with plenty of cross-bracing, it may be possible. I would immediately counter yes, but if you add cross-bracing, you are going to lose room for storage, and add to the overall weight of the vessel. So, less room for animals and their feed, and more weight before you even bring elephants, mastodons, larger dinosaurs, etc, aboard. If it ever existed, then no wonder nobody else got on the Ark apart from Noah's family; nobody else would be insane enough to set foot on that ruddy death trap.

But even assuming it could float, there is the time it would take to build the Ark. Answers in Genesis gives an estimate of 20 years, and goes on to say that this is a “tentative” figure. Fair enough, but that would have Noah, already an old man, and his three sons working on it alone (in Jewish patriarchal society, the wives of Noah and his son would not work upon it), with no prior experience, with primitive tools, materials, and building methods. It has taken Ark Encounter over 5½ years, with highly-trained and experienced construction teams (exact number employed unknown – can anyone help?), using modern building techniques and machinery, as well as modern materials, to build half a replica Ark. If construction experts could not build a whole one with modern means in one quarter of the time AiG claims, then what are the chances of four novices, one of whom was an old man, building the original in the 20 years allotted, using primitive tools, techniques and materials?

Another amusing claim of this is the metal-working which the panel mentions. Only one problem with that; the Bible makes absolutely no mention of the use of metals upon the Ark. More of which later.

Probably the most contentious of all the photographs is the one on race difference. In the panel photographed, Ark Encounter claim that all mankind are descended from the three sons of Noah; Shem, Japeth and Ham, and furthermore goes on to claim that if Noah and his wife were dark-skinned, then all skin colours, and races of Homo Sapiens, could be descended from them. Oh, and based upon only two genes.

Utter bunkum and unscientific, unintelligent gobbledegook. Skin colour is determined by “polygenic” traits, meaning that multiple genetic loci are involved in it's development. “At last count is has been determined that there are a total of 378 genetic loci involved in determining skin colour in human and mice. Among them, only 171 have been cloned and though the other 207 loci have been mapped out, the true gene identities have yet to be determined.” (International Federation of Pigment Cell Society). Slightly more than the two Ark Encounter are claiming, methinks.

In the simplest of terms, the driver of skin colour is of course melanin, which is much more prominent in dark-skinned people than in those of lighter skin. As our ancient ancestors moved out of Africa, relocating in areas with less sunlight, over time – like millennia – people in these areas required less and less melanin, and thus became lighter skinned (and giving caucasians a Vitamin D deficiency), and of those who settled in Australasia, exposed to much greater amounts of sunlight, their skin became much darker. As an Australian, one would have thought Ken Ham realised this. It is certainly possible for a black child to be born to a white couple, or vice versa, and there are recorded incidents of this happening, where there has historically been breeding between ethnic races. What cannot happen is the line of one ethnic race suddenly spawning another ethnic race, no matter what Ark Encounter's frankly racist “colour card” explanation claims.

So, we have a pic of what appears to be two velociraptors in a cage. And I have to congratulate Ark Encounter on getting this one right. Far from the fantasy of Jurassic Park, velociraptors were in fact small creatures. Their small size was in fact one of the factors which made them swift-moving hunters, hence the name they were dubbed with. I have no doubt that Ark Encounter are doing this to demonstrate that many dinosaurs, far from the huge monster lizards we imagine, were in fact pretty small, and they would be correct in this. However, I'd love to see the cages for even two young T-Rex, Apatosaurus, or the largest dinosaur of them all, Argentinosaurus, which grew up to 115 feet long, and weighed approximately 110 tons. Oh, don't tell me - Noah took eggs.  Yeah, and kept them on the Ark for a year, when they would be bound to hatch, and while they were indeed small when hatched, Argentionosuars apparently grew very rapidly.

Moreover, here we have an example of the metal-working which was mentioned earlier. That's quite a nice piece of metalwork actually, and if it were in any way representative of reality, it would mean that Noah or one of his sons was so adept in working metal that he had developed making wire. No easy trick when you're stuck in the middle of the desert. Of all the materials mentioned in the Bible which Noah was told to make the Ark with, there is absolutely no mention of metal; “Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.” (Genesis 6:14, KJV). To have us believe that Noah and his sons worked metal so skilfully, we would have to accept that first they managed to locate iron ore, mine it, smelt it, and work it into wire, when all the time they should have been busy building the ark. Even if we accept that one of them did all that, that reduces those actually shipbuilding to three, which of course can only increase the time dedicated to building the Ark.

But this wirework is the least of the contradictions, for the superstructure of Ken's Ark has in fact been given metal strengthening beams in places. And given there is no mention of metal in the Biblical account, Ark Encounter are not only misleading the public, they are in fact going against the very scriptures which they hold to be the inerrant word of God. What are the two words for that again? Oh yes, that's them; blasphemy and hypocrisy.

The next picture appears to be a food store, and plants growing (AiG maintain that all creatures were herbivores before the flood), one would imagine by some form of hydroponics. Well, a food store would have to take up a vast area of the Ark, much larger than that. And I'm afraid for Noah and his family, and all the creatures on the Ark, what we see in this photograph would not feed them for a day. Thereby there would not be sufficient time for more plants to grow. Not that they could grow anyway. It's very convenient for Ark Encounter to have all that modern electric lighting, but let us not forget that according to the Bible, the Ark was built with only one small window. Therefore, lit only by oil lamps and / or candles, the Ark would have been an extremely dark place, and it may have escaped Ken Ham's notice, but plants need sunlight to thrive. But even if there had been more windows, given that the Bible says it rained for forty days and forty nights, the plants would still get no sunlight, and a “nuclear winter” scenario would have ensued, killing the plants through lack of warmth and light.

And so onto the last photograph, and the alleged aftermath of the flood, which Ark Encounter claim laid down the sedimentary layers, creating fossils, and that it plunged Earth into “the ice age”, and they claim these changes lasted “decades”. Strangely enough, and somewhat inconvenient for Ark Encounter and other creationists, palaeontology has never, not once, ever, found the fossils or remains of ancient creatures alongside those of ancient creatures. There have certainly never been any human fossils found alongside dinosaurs. Sorry (not sorry) to disappoint Ark Encounter and Ken Ham, but The Flintstones is not a documentary. What palaeontology has found are transitional fossils of creatures through the sedimentary layers, which clearly illustrate evolution to be a clear fact. Oh but I forgot, creationists claim there are no transitional fossils. Well not unless you count the thousands upon thousands already discovered, and those which are continuing to be found on an almost daily basis.

As to “the ice age”, I take it that Ark Encounter are referring to the last glacial maximum. The fact is that Earth is still in the last 'ice age'; that's why the planet has polar ice caps. There have in fact been many glacial maximums in the history of the Earth, but I assume that Ark Encounter are referring to the last one, when ice sheets covered much of North America, Asia and Europe (Finchley Underground Station, London, in the UK – I kid you not; solid rock one side, clay the other, indicating the limit of the glacial maximum). And I suppose it did last for “decades”; if that is the way one wishes to divide up the vast millennia involved in it's formation, reaching the maximum, then deglaciation, which of course happened long before the 6000 years creationists claim the Earth has been around for. The last glacial period began some 110,000 years ago, the permafrost of the ice caps slowly increased for millennia, reaching the glacial maximum some 24, 500 years ago, before beginning to retreat 22,000 years ago to around 12,000 years ago. It was this encroaching and retreating ice which caused many changes to our ever-changing Earth. Rocks were polished, huge rocks carried from one place to another, and entire valleys were carved. Even in the southern hemisphere, where the ice never retreated onto the land, the climate change was severe enough to cause deseritification and drought. As the ice retreated, the sea levels rose quite substantially, and in many places land previously above sea level was submerged; the British Isles were cut off from the European continent, and the land bridge which previously connected Siberia to Alaska became what we today know as the Beiring Strait.

So, apart from changing the topography of a great deal of the Earth, what did the end of the last glacial maximum cause? Widespread and massive flooding, that's what. And here we may have the root of the flood myths.

The Biblical account of the Noahchian Flood almost certainly comes from the Epic of Gilgamesh, an ancient epic Mesopotamian poem, written in the Ur Dynasty, c.2100 BCE. Denying this, creationists are quick to point out that many ancient cultures have flood myths, which they claim backs up the Biblical account of a global flood. They'll probably be cock-a-hoop when I wholeheartedly agree with them. Stand by for their sad little bubble to be burst.

I am fascinated by folklore and in researching it, I have found that many myths have a basis in fact, which have been convoluted over time. And the older these myths, the greater the chance they were handed down from generation to generation in oral tradition, long before anyone started writing them down. So here's my hypothesis. Our species, Homo Sapiens Sapiens, has been on this planet for 200,000 years, and during that time we have had the ability to communicate. Our early ancestors were certainly around during, survived, and witnessed last glacial the encroaching ice leading to the last glacial maximum, and the deglaciation and flooding left in it's aftermath. The widespread flooding which the melting ice and rising seas created must have been devastating to these early inhabitants of the Earth, and as creatures and crops they relied upon for food were destroyed, along with the extreme cold, leading to a great many deaths, it must have appeared to them that “the Gods were angry” and the Earth was indeed coming to an end. Therefore, it is not outwith the bounds of possibility that those who witnessed these events handed down stories of them to younger generations, who in turn passed them onto the next generation, and so on, and so on. Like 'Chinese Whispers', with every one of these oral retellings, the stories became much and much more elaborated, until gods were worked into the picture, destroying mankind for their wickedness, until by the time it became a written account, that was the standard version.

Of course, I have absolutely no proof for that and I merely put it forward as one possible explanation for almost every ancient culture having flood myths. I would argue however, given what we know of palaeontology, geology, history - and shipbuilding, it is far, far more likely an explanation than a 6000 year old Earth being created in six days, which was formed as it is 4400 years ago.

Ark Encounter is a $73 million lie, full of laughable downright impossibilities. If I lived in the area, I would certainly visit it, for exactly the same reason I would visit Ken Ham's Creation Museum; for a bloody good laugh, because that it is all it is fit for. That should not detract one iota however from the fact that this 'attraction' is downright dangerous. Just like the Creation Museum, just like Answers in Genesis, Ark Encounter throws out all the peer-reviewed, accepted, and in the vast majority of cases, proven science of the origins of the Earth and all species upon it, and instead seeks to indoctrinate minds, particularly those of children, with a load of disproven, complete absurdities, and in places outright lies (amazing how many Christians think they can break the Ninth Commandment, “Thou shalt not bear false witness” if they think the end justifies the means). And they do all this with not the tiniest shred of empirical evidence, but instead base their entire claim upon a bronze age book of goat herder's campfire tales, which they claim to be the inerrant word of their god, and which has long since been proven to be incorrect in a great many places.

I am willing to give Ark Encounter their due, that contrary to some claims the tax incentive they have been granted will not take taxpayers money away from other things. In fact, the incentive is a 25% reduction on sales tax from tickets and merchandise. So, if the funds aren't coming in, the less of a tax incentive they receive. How they came about this tax break however is indeed odious. Having been passed in 2009, it was subsequently removed when it was discovered that Ark Encounter will only employ Christians, and one would imagine Christians who share their YEC fantasies. AiG took the matter to court, and actually won, so the tax incentive was reapplied. Remember people that this is not a church, it is a tourist attraction, and yet Ark Encounter are being allowed to openly discriminate against people of other faiths and none in their employment policy. And that should make every Kentuckian, every US citizen, who believes in equality for all and the wall very, very angry.

But has Ark Encounter benefited from taxpayers money in any way, shape, or form? Yes, they have, and AiG are being very circumspect about this. A brand new intersection was opened off US Interstate 75 to facilitate access to the tourist attraction, at the cost to the taxpayer of a cool $11 million. Given that there is very little else on that turnoff in the back of beyond, had Ark Encounter never been built in Williamston, I am sure there are a great deal of better things Kentucky could have spent that money on.  And that should make Kentuckians and other US citizens who hold by the wall between church and state bloody livid.

Apparently the visitor numbers upon opening have been somewhat disappointing for Ark Encounter, and the “millions” of visitors they predicted in January have so far failed to appear. Part of me says bloody good job too. I would more than happily watch Ark Encounter, Answers in Genesis, and Ken Ham go bankrupt. They are doing untold harm to gullible, impressionable minds, and never more so when it is children being indoctrinated with their lies. I make no bones about this; feeding children the lies of creationist propaganda can only lead to them being ridiculed, it certainly harms their intellectual development, and it has the potential to harm future employment prospects, and that is nothing short of child abuse. As to adults who believe this guff, part of me feels downright sorry for anyone who could be that gullible, and the other part wants to slap the stupid out of them, preferably with a fossil.

But even if Ark Encounter, AiG and Ken Ham do start facing financial troubles, they need only go begging, as they have in the past, and sadly there are those who are so blinded by the poisonous filth which is creationism that they will happily donate to save Ken Ham's worthless hide. And that perhaps is the saddest fact of all.

An A to Z of Creationist Fallacies: E is for Eugenics and Racism

Eugenics clinic, USA, 1920s

If creationists cannot convince people with spurious claims about a 6000 year old earth, designed and created by their god in six days, they will often attempt an emotional response. Amongst these are the claims that the Theory of Evolution leads to eugenics, that those who accept evolution support eugenics, and that Charles Darwin and all other “evolutionists” (their word, not mine) have been and are racists.

This claim appears to be based yet again, whether it be mistaken or are intentional lie, a complete misunderstanding of Darwin's explanation of biological evolution. A common creationist misconception about evolution is that it is an ever-upwards struggle towards 'better', when it most certainly is not, and that 'natural selection' means that only the strongest survive. The picture of evolution as an upwards spiral actually has more in common with Lamarckism, which sees evolution as a progression. Charles Darwin, whose understanding of evolution fits the standard accepted – and proven – model never said any such thing, but rather explained that with all life evolving from common ancestors, it branched out into varying species. Darwin's own drawing of his 'tree of life' in his notes, when he himself was struggling to understand this process, illustrates this beautifully, it does not show evolution as a progression, and Darwin never once claimed that.

Some creationists will quote a common phrase used in reference to evolution, “survival of the fittest”, and will even go as far as to claim that it was Charles Darwin who first said this. He did not in fact, it was stated by the naturalist, philosopher, and economist, Herbert Spencer. What is more, Spencer, who had indeed read On the Origin of Species, stated that when trying to apply Darwin's ideas to economics. Like the creationists, Spencer had completely misunderstood Darwin, and came out with the phrase to suggest a 'weakest to the wall' economic philosophy. However, 'survival of the fittest' in reference to biological evolution may not mean that only the strongest survive, but merely those best adapted.

When Patrick Matthew was hybridising and growing trees on his land in the Carse of Gowrie in Scotland, he noticed how some species would thrive in a given environment, but perish in another. Yet the same species which perished would thrive in an environment better suited to them, which would be unsuited to the flourishing trees. When he wrote these observations down in his 1829 paper On Naval Timber and Arboriculture, he had unwittingly stumbled upon and explained the process of natural selection, which many today recognise him as the father of. Patrick Matthew later read On the Origin of Species and wrote to Charles Darwin, accusing him of plagiarism. In fact, Darwin had never read Matthew's paper, but once he did he was fascinated and started a correspondence with Matthew in which both men realised they had too much in common for personal rivalries to get in the way of. Two men had observed natural selection in nature, and their observations both matched exactly; that species only thrive in environments suitable to them. That is what 'survival of the fittest' truly means; nothing more.

There are liars, there are damned liars, and then there is John Morris Pendleton. John Morris Pendleton is a car mechanic and a creationist lecturer, who because he managed to gain a minor degree in chemistry, claims to be a scientist. In one of his “Hello I'm a Scientist” lectures, working on subtitle for Darwin's seminal work, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, Pendleton openly states “Darwin's book was actually a justification, a thesis, trying to support racism.” So, John Morris Pendleton got all that purely from the book's subtitle. I would assume that he worked only from the title and has not actually read the actual book. If he had, he would have noticed that nowhere, not once, in On the Origin of Species does Charles Darwin make any reference to human evolution. The term “favoured races” in the title refers only to those species best able to adapt to their environments by natural selection, and has nothing to do with human racial ethnicity. Sorry (not sorry) to burst your little Darwin-hating bubble John, and all other creationists who make this claim, but On the Origin of Species deals only with the biological evolution of flora and fauna and at no point makes any reference to the human race. If any creationist doubts this, or wants to refute me upon it, I challenge them right here and now to provide the proof that On the Origin of Species was a thesis supporting human racism.

Nonetheless, the crazier creationists (and the most dishonest ones – not always the same people) will insist that Charles Darwin supported Eugenics, and that his Theory of Evolution led to all sorts of racial discrimination, experiments, and even the Nazi holocaust. Some even claim that Darwin invented eugenics. Unfortunately for these liars and shysters, their claims not only do not hold up to the slightest scrutiny, but throw up some very inconvenient truths about just who it was who supported Eugenics and other theories of racial superiority.

Eugenics is a philosophy of race based upon 'superior' and 'inferior' genetics, which seeks to improve the human race by selective breeding. Taking it's name from the Greek,Eugene, meaning "well-born", the idea has been around ever since the philosopher Plato suggested suggested selective breeding to produce and protect a superior Guardian Class. It was not until the 19^th century however that such notions started to be taken seriously. Gynaecologist William Goodell (1829-1894) suggested the castration and spaying of the insane to prevent them breeding. Of course, this idea was taken up to include the sterilisation of the mentally disabled and special needs adults, which alarmingly was still a common practice in many countries until relatively recently, certainly within the lifetimes of most reading this. Although officially banned in the UK, it is suspected and there have been claims that many such sterilisations were carried out on special needs people right up to the 1980s. In an alarming move in February 2015, a judge in England ruled that health authorities could forcibly enter the home of a mother of six who has severe learning difficulties, and carry out a compulsory sterilisation upon her, as they believe a further pregnancy could kill her.

The first person to properly promote eugenics and coin the word in modern parlance however was Francis Galton (1822-1911). Galton was in fact a half-cousin of Charles Darwin, and his reading of On the Origin of Species led him to conclude that there were desirable hereditary traits which could be achieved by selective breeding. It is due to Galton's misreading of Darwin's work that some creationists blame Darwin for eugenics, and some go even further and claim that Darwin was personally responsible for Galton's twisted ideas. It seems that some Christians think we are nor merely our brother's keepers, but our half-cousin's. Charles Darwin in fact strongly disagreed with his half-cousin, and in fact it was not until 1883, one year after Darwin's death, that Francis Galton officially gave his ideas the name Eugenics, and published his work Inquiries into Human Faculty and Development.

Eugenics as an idea took off from there, and had a good few notable followers, including psychologist Sigmund Freud, writer and philosopher George Bernard Shaw, writer and socialist H.G. Wells, and family planning pioneer Marie Stopes. Again, because these people were advocates of eugenics and swayed from the dictates of the Bible, creationists today are very quick to point to them and the 'evil' which they spread. Edinburgh lass Marie Stopes comes in for considerable criticism from some creationists, not least because the family planning clinics which carry her name today advise and offer abortions, and some even claim that she was a supporter of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. In fact, when Marie Stopes set up her first clinics they were to educate people, particularly the poor, about contraception, sparing them the expense of extra mouths to feed, and she also was a pioneer in teaching women that there was no guilt in them enjoying sex. In her time, not only was abortion still illegal in the UK, but Stopes was firmly against it. As for the Nazi accusation, Marie Stopes in 1933 sent a collection of poems to Adolf Hitler, long before the world was to learn of his true nature. Do not forget this was at the same time that Winston Churchill was praising Hitler.

As eugenics grew as an idea it grew as an academic discipline in many universities, and there were eugenics societies, notably in the UK and the USA. Whilst the USA is officially a secular country, we all know that it is culturally very religious. So how could this state of affairs occurred in what were then the two strongest countries in the world, where the Christian churches held so much sway and dictated much of people's lives? Quite simply because it was actually Christians and many church leaders supporting eugenics. Galton himself stated that eugenics needed to emphasise “the religious significance of the doctrine of evolution”. One enthusiastic contributor to the Eugenics Review, journal of the Eugenics Educational Society, was Reverend W.R. Inge DD, Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London, and Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. Championing eugenics as a spiritual quest, Inge once wrote;

"It is the paradox of the spiritual life that if we could take to ourselves ‘the wings of a dove’ and escape from this world of mingled good and evil, we should not reach the rest which we desire. For one at least of the Divine values, Goodness, cannot be realised by flight, but only by struggle."

Another leading Church of England clergyman, Reverend J. H. F. Peile, was also a contributor to the Eugenics Review, who stated that eugenics and church endorsement of it was “a principle to which the Church is already committed”.

Meanwhile, in the USA, the American Eugenics Society had sought, and won endorsement from at least one leading clergyman, and a Roman Catholic one to boot, Archbishop Hayes of the Diocese of New York. And although the UK had been the birthplace of eugenics, it was actually in the United States it was to become a “science”, endorsed in law, where the first experiments would be carried out, and from whence the Nazis would take their ideas.

David Starr Jordan came from a strict Baptist family. He gained his PhD at Northwestern Christian University (later Butler University), in Indianapolis, Indiana, where he also was Professor of Natural History. A Unitarian, although he stood aloof from organised religion, he once said “Religion, like love, can be suppressed and perverted, but religion is the foundation upon which all rest," Founder of Stanford University, he is to this day lauded by many Christians in the USA, including the Christian Scientists. He was also the man who in 1902 published his work on race, Blood of a Nation, in which he theorised that qualities such as talent and poverty were passed on through blood.

Eugenics movements in the USA won funding from some charitable organisations, who were at the least based in the best of Christian motives, no matter how misguided their ideas. The Carnegie Institution and the Rockefeller Foundation poured money into 'betterment' programmes. In 1908, John Harvey Kellogg MD, a fervent Seventh Day Adventist who declared a “War on passion” and who in his invention of corn flakes hoped such a bland food would prevent masturbation (I kid you not), funded the Race Betterment Foundation in Battle Creek, Michigan. Biologist Charles B Davenport founded the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) in Spring Harbor, New York, in 1911 with funding from the Carnegie Institution and the Harriman Railroad Fortune. The ERO went on to research and keep records upon thousands of US families, concluding that those who were unfit came from economically and socially poor backgrounds, and favoured immigration restrictions and sterilisation. Some members of the ERO, such as Madison Grant, favoured extermination. Davenport, himself a home-schooled puritan Protestant, also founded the American Breeders Association, dedicated to purity in marriage, of which David Starr Jordan and Madison Grant were also members.

Michigan attempted to introduce a sterilisation bill in 1897, which failed to gain support from sufficient legislators. Pennsylvania passed such a bill eight years later, which was vetoed by the Governor of the state. In Indiana in 1907 a bill was passed and the first compulsory sterilisation of individuals for “imbecilism”, “feeble mindedness” and epilepsy proceeded. Washington and California followed suit in 1909, and while levels remained low, California was the exception which was to be the vanguard of sterilisations under the teachings of eugenics, performing some 20,000 enforced sterilisations from 1909 up to the 1960s. Of the 32 US states which adopted sterilisation under eugenics programmes, North Carolina was the most aggressive. It was in NC that an IQ of 70 or lower was deemed suitable for enforced sterilisation. The North Carolina Eugenics Board almost always approved proposals brought before them by local welfare boards, and NC social workers were allowed to propose individuals for sterilisation. "Here, at last, was a method of preventing unwanted pregnancies by an acceptable, practical, and inexpensive method," wrote Wallace Kuralt in the March 1967 journal of the N.C. Board of Public Welfare. "The poor readily adopted the new techniques for birth control." This deeply religious state, some of whose boundary signs claim “When Jesus returns, he's coming here” ran a eugenics-based sterilisation programme from 1933 to as late as 1977.

Where compulsory sterilisation was carried out in the USA, those it was carried out upon were not always told, most came from the poorest backgrounds, many more women were sterilised than men and as they were seen as inferior, many more people of colour were sterilised than men. Native Americans and African Americans, again mostly women, were the main targets for compulsory sterilisation, sometimes without their knowledge but otherwise bullied into it, or not properly informed. The Native American women's organisation, Woman of All Red Nations (WARN), publicised the fact that Native American women were being threatened with removal of benefits if they had large families and did not agree to sterilisation, while the Indian Health Service (IHS) repeatedly refused to deliver the children of Native American women unless they agreed to sterilisation whilst in labour. In many cases the women had not had the circumstances correctly explained, or because they were given in English rather than the women's languages, they did not understand what was happening. The US General Accounting Office was later to estimate that the IHS had carried out 3,406 sterilisations under these circumstances.

It was the US eugenics programmes which attracted the attention of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, and it was the eugenicists in California who were responsible for drawing their attention to it. Californian eugenicists sent literature to German scientists and medical professionals. The newly-elected Nazi government were all too interested and embarked upon their own compulsory sterilisation programme, the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, based largely upon a proposed 'model American law' by Californian eugenicist, and superintendent of the US Eugenics Records Office, Harry H Laughlin. Californian eugenicists were invited to Germany, and one of them, C.M. Goethe, told a colleague upon his return;

“You will be interested to know that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler in this epoch-making program. Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been tremendously stimulated by American thought... ...I want you, my dear friend, to carry this thought with you for the rest of your life, that you have really jolted into action a great government of 60 million people.”

The Rockefeller Foundation went on to fund German eugenics programmes, including one overseen by Nazi scientist Joseph Mengele, before he was transferred to Auschwitz, where he carried out genetic experiments on concentration camp inmates.

Of particular note among these US geneticists for their influence over Nazi ideology was Madison Grant (1876-1937). Grant was a conservationist, a lawyer and a writer. He is best remembered for his 1916 work The Passing of the Great Race, in which he became the greatest promoter or 'Nordic Theory', under which Grant postulated that tall, white, blonde-haired, blue-eyed northern Europeans were racially superior to all others;

“The Nordics are, all over the world, a race of soldiers, sailors, adventurers, and explorers, but above all, of rulers, organizers, and aristocrats in sharp contrast to the essentially peasant character of the Alpines. Chivalry and knighthood, and their still surviving but greatly impaired counterparts, are peculiarly Nordic traits, and feudalism, class distinctions, and race pride among Europeans are traceable for the most part to the north.”

Were this not enough, it was Grant who suggested the rounding-up, separation, and ultimately the elimination of all other races;

“A rigid system of selection through the elimination of those who are weak or unfit—in other words social failures—would solve the whole question in one hundred years, as well as enable us to get rid of the undesirables who crowd our jails, hospitals, and insane asylums. The individual himself can be nourished, educated and protected by the community during his lifetime, but the state through sterilization must see to it that his line stops with him, or else future generations will be cursed with an ever increasing load of misguided sentimentalism. This is a practical, merciful, and inevitable solution of the whole problem, and can be applied to an ever widening circle of social discards, beginning always with the criminal, the diseased, and the insane, and extending gradually to types which may be called weaklings rather than defectives, and perhaps ultimately to worthless race types.”

Madison Grant was undoubtedly barking mad, as well as an out-and-out xenophobe. He considered the white peoples of the Mediterranean to be the same 'Negroid' race as Africans, and his views of the Scots was completely loony. In his 1933 work, The Conquest of a Continent, Grant stated,

“The aborigines were called Picts in Scotland. These Mediterranean Picts spoke a language related to Hamitic or Egyptian, and many place names of this origin are still to be found... ...Curiously enough these Mediterraneans [Scottish Picts] contributed their dark eyes and hair color, but not their short stature. The population of West Scotland has the greatest height of all the people's of Europe.”

Firstly, Grant was alluding to an ancient Scots legend, that the Scots were descended from Scota, daughter of an Egyptian Pharaoh, and Gaythelus, a Greek slave who was her lover, and they fled to Spain, then their descendants invaded Ireland, then their descendants invaded Caledonia, founding Scotland. Secondly, the Picts and the Scots were genetically different peoples. Thirdly, west coast Scots are not renowned for their height even today, and in 1933 when this work was written, poverty was rife as was disease, particularly rickets, and west coast Scots, particularly Glaswegians, had stunted height as a result.

Madison Grant was also a staunch Christian, and showed contempt for all other religions and their followers, whom he included among his 'unworthy' races. Also from Conquest of a Continent;

“The settlers of New England may be regarded as essentially rebels against established religion and established authority when the religion and authority were not of their own choosing. This non-conformist spirit persisted in the successive new frontiers as they were settlers of western New York and the old Northwest Territory gave birth to an astonishing number of new sects, religions, 'isms,' and communities, ranging all the way from Mormonism to Shakers and the Oneida Community.

“...the South has remained characteristically American...One of the strange results of the Civil War has been that while the victorious North sold its birthright of culture, religion, and racial purity for a mess of industrial pottage, the South, thought defeated, retained its racial inheritance unimpaired.

“...With its two million Jews, its million and a half Italians, its million Germans, and its three quarters of a million each of Poles and Irish, together with substantial contingencies from almost every other country on the map, the Empire State is scarcely able to meet the requirements of the Founders of the Republic, who, like Thomas Jefferson, feared above everything else the formation of an alien, urban proletariat as creating a condition under which a democratic form of government could not function successfully.”

As barmy as he was an out-and-out liar concerning European and American history and migration, Madison Grant's works were nonetheless extremely popular. The Passing of the Great Race was particularly popular, so much so that by 1937 it had sold 16,000 copies in the USA alone. Consider that was at a time when a great many Americans were still fully or semi illiterate. It was also published in many other languages, notably German in 1925. With it's fantasies about a superior white-skinned, blonde-haired, blue-eyed race of warriors, soldiers, scientists, nobles and knights (yep, Grant originated that silly notion too), and his arguments for the separation and elimination of 'inferior' races, we need not look too far for where Adolf Hitler and the Nazis got both their ideology – and their inspiration for the death camps from. It was the first non-German book to be ordered reprinted and distributed by the Nazis, and Adolf Hitler actually wrote to Madison Grant in which he stated “This book is my bible”.

We therefore see that far from eugenics, ideas of racial purity, and the inspiration for the Nazi holocaust coming from Charles Darwin and the proponents of the Theory of Evolution, they came instead from the USA, pioneered and spread by mostly Christian people, who carried out a 'holocaust' of their own, and who were responsible for promulgating ideas of racial purity and the eradication of other 'inferior' races.

Today of course we look upon these things with 21^st century eyes, where most decent people are absolutely horrified by the bigotry and prejudice of the past. When Charles Darwin was alive, it was in fact quite a common belief among white, Christian, Europeans that were superior to all other races, who ranged from “murderous savages” to “painted heathens”; the entire British Empire, which was to colour one quarter of the globe pink, was based deeply in such ideas. You would be hard pushed to find one white person in those days who did not consider those of other races, even of other religions, to be at the most inferior, and at the least, beneath them.

Thankfully there were a few exceptions who did indeed believe all races were equal. One was a man in Victorian England, who as a Methodist Christian had been a strong campaigner for the abolition of slavery. He went on to study at the University of Edinburgh, he learned taxidermy from a man employed to carry out such, a freed slave named John Edmonstone. The two became firm friends and would speak for hours about animal specimens. So who was this fine fellow who not only hated slavery but treated a black man as his equal and his friend? Charles Darwin, that's who.

Racism and proponents of eugenics still persist to this day, both among some theists. Whilst researching this article, I came across some truly odious 'Christian' websites, from Roman Catholic anti-abortionists continuing to pour their bile upon Marie Stopes, to hardline Protestant white supremacists championing the lies and utter fantasies of Madison Grant. I am sure there are equally some twisted atheists who also support eugenics. Those who promote eugenics today however, are roundly condemned and disregarded by the majority of both communities; it is one thing both the faithful and atheists can agree upon. Yes, all of those 'good Christians' who backed the US eugenics programmes were all in the wrong, every bit as much as the atheists among them. The vast majority of Christians today are good, well-meaning people, and I'm sure there will be some reading this will be as equally horrified at the shameful eugenics record of the USA as atheists are. Please, such Christians, I am not for one moment trying to lay the blame for those programmes at your door, nor would I ever try to suggest that all Christians support eugenics. I merely use the example to hammer home just how much creationists lie (which decent Christians should be very concerned about), or are mistaken, on this matter. By equal measure, to accuse those atheists who accept the fact of evolution of supporting eugenics and racism is an outright slur upon a great many decent human beings.

At the end of the day however, even if Charles Darwin had been a racist, even if he had supported eugenics, even if the USA had not embarked upon eugenics programmes, even if all those who did had all been atheists, it matters not one jot to the truth of biological evolution. What the creationists are attempting in making such claims is an appeal to the heart, not the head. Well, even if that appeal were in any way attractive, and because it is based in lies, it is not, it cannot change the truth one iota. Biological evolution is a fact, and has been roundly proven to be so on it's own merit, and by several other sciences which support it, and it in turn supports. It is often very beautiful, and by equal merit, it can appear extremely cruel. Again, neither of these positions matter to it's ultimate truth. John Keats once wrote “Truth is beauty, beauty truth”, but in life we often have to suck up the fact that not all which is true is beautiful, and that which is beautiful is all too often not true.