Today we’re starting an exciting new series. The reason for this is obvious — it may seem that creationism is almost exclusively an American phenomenon, but we think it’s important to report on sightings and outbreaks elsewhere. Our concerns at this blog are not provincial, they’re galactic in scope.
Our first report is a bit of a hybrid. The creationist seems to be American, but he was doing his creationism in South America. The story appears at the Reuters website, where we read Porn photos of Amazon children get ex-missionary 58 yrs in prison. Here are some excerpts, with bold font added by us:
A former missionary who admitted taking pornographic photos of children while working with a tribe in the Amazon region of Brazil was sentenced on Tuesday to 58 years in a U.S. prison.
Warren Scott Kennell, 45, pleaded guilty in September to two charges of producing child pornography between 2008 and 2011.
Two charges, 58 years? Wow! Well, it’s understandable. This explains it:
Chief District Judge Anne Conway noted at the sentencing that Kennell had abused his position of trust as a missionary, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Tampa said in a statement.
Thus the severe penalty — he abused his missionary position. But hold on a minute. This missionary is obviously a bad guy, but how do we know he’s a creationist? Let’s read on:
Warren, who is from New Jersey, conceded that he had befriended children in the tribe and then sexually abused them while working on assignment for the New Tribes Mission of Sanford, Florida.
[…]
New Tribes Mission, located 30 miles north of Orlando, identifies itself on its website as an evangelical Christian ministry focused on planting new churches among indigenous tribes, which it describes as isolated from the Bible because of language and culture.
Here’s their website: New Tribes Mission. In the What We Believe section, item number one seems to be sufficient for our purposes. They say:
We believe: 1. In the word-by-word inspiration, sufficiency and final authority of the Holy Scriptures.
That’s good enough, but number 11 is the clincher:
We hold and teach the following positions: … 11. The historical-grammatical interpretation of the Bible.
We looked that up. Wikipedia says the historical-grammatical method is:
a Christian hermeneutical method that strives to discover the Biblical author’s original intended meaning in the text.
Still not convinced? Okay, here’s ol’ Hambo, in an essay he wrote back in December of 2012:
Of course, hermeneutics is the technical term for Bible interpretation. The hermeneutic we use at AiG is the historical-grammatical method, which really means we read the Bible “naturally,” according to the genre of the passage. For example, the creation account of Genesis is historical narrative, so we read it as history.
Sorry about that theological diversion, but it was necessary to demonstrate that we’re not criticizing religion in general. The target is creationism.
In conclusion, no matter where in the world you may be, if you’re approached by a creationist, your Curmudgeon advises you to get away — fast. Don’t respond to his conversation, don’t make eye contact, don’t accept one of his pamphlets, and don’t encourage him in any way. Just turn and run! And never look back.
See also: Creationism Around the World, #2.
Copyright © 2014. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
Sick bastard. Pity he wasn’t sentenced in Brazil, to a Brazilian jail.
Our SC cares for our souls…. mean’t our lives
“…he abused his missionary position” Well said, SC, well said!
One of my all-time favorite songs. Download now:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-music&field-keywords=syphilis%20and%20religion
The ever helpful SC advises, “Just turn and run! And never look back.”
To this sagacity I can only add: And hold onto your wallet with both hands.
Here is what missionaries actually thought and said about non-whites in 1899.
“The sterility and unprogressiveness of negro civilizations, negro states, are as much due to the paralyzing death grip of Islam as to nature’s foreclosure of his intellectual powers when she mortgages the growth of his brain after puberty. [p.71] …Africa is the home of the most man-like apes and the most ape-like men. [p.164]… The negro is unmoral… an overgrown child. [p.167] …Anarchy is the dominant chord of the Hamite.” [p.169]
[Frederick Perry Noble, The Redemption of Africa, Vol.1, 1899.]
Now let’s compare this to what ID proponent Richard Weikart wrote, in his book From Darwin to Hitler (where he blames “Darwinian” scientists for the racist crimes of Christian Nazis) to prove that because churches sent out missionaries, that proves No True Christian[TM] could be a racist or support the exploitation or slavery of non-whites:
[Richard Weikart, From Darwin to Hitler, p. 103]: Many social Darwinists and eugenicists consigned most of the world’s population to the realm of the “inferior.”
Oh, you mean like virtually every nineteenth and early twentieth century Christian did.
…Before the nineteenth century, the intellectual dominance of Christianity militated against some of the worst excesses of racism
Right– just like we saw in that quote from real nineteenth century missionaries above! You lying sack. Note that Christendom itself invented anti-black racism in the medieval period (in fact medieval illuminated manuscripts portray blacks as sinful and ugly KKK-style caricatures; see Deborah Stickland, Saracens, Demons, and Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art), but Weikart tells us no problem, the solution to the problems caused by Christianity is… more Christianity.
And, as your Wedge Document spells out clearly, you want the return of that “intellectual dominance of Christianity” over science and reason, and you have no concern regarding the scientific or historical accuracy of the “facts” you IDers falsified in your crusade to restore religion’s “dominance” over science and reason.
Christian theology taught the universal brotherhood of all races…
Yes: Ham, the brother of Shem and Japheth, got cursed by your God and had a son Canaan who, the Bible says, was the ancestor of non-white races, races that inherited your God’s curse which made these races “servant of servants” forever, and also morally inferior, evil, sinful, wicked races (according to Church fathers Irenaeus and Justin Martyr) and sexually depraved and degenerate (at least where blacks were concerned, according to all Christians writers from medieval times up to, uh, yesterday).
Most Christians believed that all humans, regardless of race, were created in the image of God and possessed eternal souls.
And since blacks possessed eternal souls, Christians did them a big favor by enslaving them, because some slaves might be saved from eternal torture by your God for not being Christian (see, e.g. Richard Furman, President of the Baptist State Convention, “Exposition of The Views of the Baptists, Relative to the Colored Population in the United States” (1823), esp. page 21).
This meant that all people are extremely valuable
No, Christians just believed their labor was extremely valuable, and their land, and their natural resources for the taking. What was most valuable was perpetuating the Faith, and if you had to kill people to protect the purity of the Faith, you killed people.
and it motivated Europeans to send missionaries to convert natives of other regions to Christianity.
Oh missionaries totally prove Christendom was not racist! Yeah, that’s the only reason missionaries were sent abroad. Not, you know, to scout out the territory, make a map and assist imperialism.
As contact with other races increased during the nineteenth century, the Protestant missionary movement blossomed, sending out multitudes of missionaries to convert non-European peoples
You mean non-white peoples, but continue.
to Christianity, just as the Catholic Church had earlier done in Spanish and Portuguese colonies.
With much the same result: syphilis and religion, imperialism, colonialism, genocide, and the destruction of non-white civilizations. Bye-bye Incas and Aztecs!
Even though some Christian groups, especially in lands with race-based slavery, developed theological justifications for racial inequality
No Weikart, that would be all Christian groups, except maybe Ethiopians! I wonder why?
most Christian churches believed that people of other races were valuable
Again: Christians believed their labor was extremely valuable, and their land, and their natural resources, free for the taking by Christian gun owners.
and capable of adopting European religion
at gunpoint.
So saith True Christian Richard Weikart in 2004.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu: “When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said ‘Let us pray.’ We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.“
Curm, when you’re free, I have a long comment in moderation.
First of all: great! I’ll keep an eye open for you on Dutch creationism, in the broadest meaning of the word. There is not much, but sometimes there is some fun stuff. In 2013 we had a small scandal. First some background info.
The VU University of Amsterdam
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VU_University_Amsterdam
is originally orthodox reformed. As you can see it’s quite respectable. It has a theological faculty and here is where the fun begins.
Joris van Rossum wrote a thesis that disrespectfully can summarized as: “evolution theory can’t explain sex hence god”.
http://dare.ubvu.vu.nl/bitstream/handle/1871/39335/dissertation.pdf?sequence=1
He defended this successfully:
http://www.vu.nl/nl/nieuws-agenda/agenda/2012/okt-dec/11-december-j-p-van-rossum.asp
and subsequently received scorn of almost all Dutch biologists.
OK, while your conclusion on the Amazon missionary is correct you’re unfair about hermeneutics. Never trust Ol’ Hambo! It’s a reading technique that’s not typically christian nor limited to the Bible.
http://www.livius.org/theory/hermeneutics/
The paragraph on Objections makes clear why Ol’ Hambo and co like the method so much.
Diogenes says: “Curm, when you’re free, I have a long comment in moderation.”
I’m free, and I have liberated your splendid comment.
My applause for your new series, please carry on.
Here in Louisiana, the argument that carries a lot of weight against evolution is that it leads to evil behavior. (Our head creationist agitator, retired Judge Darrell White, used to make a big thing out of a tee-shirt worn by one of the Columbine murderers.) It may help open some eyes if we can point to local and explicit examples of how evil behavior was not prevented by adopting the creationist creed. Please document these crimes here as you find them.
By the way, a further look at the New Tribes Mission website, (go to the page: http://usa.ntm.org/historical-reviews)
suggests that pedophilia is an old problem for missionaries.
“Sadly, there were times in our history when individuals took advantage of situations and the vulnerability of children to commit acts of abuse. During earlier years there was inconsistency in our membership and leadership in knowing how to recognize signs of abuse and respond correctly to it.
This has changed and since the 1990s NTM USA has placed an increasing focus on child protection. ”
If your time allows, this reader would enjoy your further research into the hidden (?) history of creationist criminals.
Which makes me wonder, has anyone ever investigated the lifestyle of Ken Ham and his cadre? Do they live a life of opulent luxury, funded by their ministry, or are the models of humble Christian poverty? If I were Bill Nye, I would want to know about this before the debate.
Warren Johnson says: “It may help open some eyes if we can point to local and explicit examples of how evil behavior was not prevented by adopting the creationist creed.”
There are well-known examples of disgraced clergy, but (as with other people) it’s often just a financial scam or marital infidelity. It’s difficult to find news stories of extreme abuse where the perpetrator can be explicitly identified as a creationist. The key is the belief that a literal reading of scripture supersedes the verifiable findings of science. When one is persuaded to shut down his mind in that way, the door is open to all kinds of exploitation. Reality denial, coupled with faith in an all-knowing guru, is an invitation for abuse. Jonestown is an extreme example of what happen.
Hey Diogenes, I’m guessing there’s a tie-in between your comments above I’ve inadvertently discovered on my own.
I was digging around looking for somewhere to check out the song you were recommending, Graham Parker “Syphilis and Religion,” and found one that wasn’t a live “official bootleg.” The live versions I found had the vocals so low you could hardly hear him and discern the lyrics. I can’t say the video is official, there is no description for the video on YouTube. Perhaps others can help out with the logo, sadly it appears there are subtitles under the English subtitles but you never really get a decent glimpse of them.
You mentioned the “Baptist State Convention” above (which should really be the “South Carolina Baptist Convention,” wiki has it that Richard Furman was the first president and wrote it to the SC governor leaving off the SC part) and this video over the song seems to be taken from some European news story or documentary concerning “The Southern Baptist Convention” recently during the Iraq war. The SBC being the “united conventions” of the southern slave holding states and created in 1845. Wiki says …
Let’s see what the SBC is up to these days !
March on Christian Crusaders !
Marvelous video, thanks for that.
Is the ability to embed videos here recent? You still can’t embed videos at Sandwalk SFAIK.
Diogenes asks: “Is the ability to embed videos here recent?”
It’s been available for at least a year or two.
For the record, I would have just enjoyed the song for myself without embedding it as Diogenes posted a link where the artist stands to make money from his work. It was just too intimately linked to D’s comment and the OP to pass up.
I try to be moderate in my use of embedding out of respect for Curmy and other “Ceiling Cats” and will gladly refrain if asked.
For informational purposes, you do not need the “embed code” (for YT videos) simply paste in the URL. IIRC to avoid embedding, strip the URL down to youtube.com=blah_yadda which Dr. Coyne asks you to do on his not-blog. He’s not a fan of embedding.*
* I had nothing to with it.
Curm: It’s difficult to find news stories of extreme abuse where the perpetrator can be explicitly identified as a creationist.
Nah, they’re common. To begin, there seems to be an accelerating trend lately of parents attacking or killing their children because they believe their kids to be demon-possessed– a brief recap of recent cases here.
Then there’s faith healing parents who let kids die, a whole other subject. In Idaho, where it is totally legal for parents to let their children die from easily curable diseases if they believe in faith-healing, there is a cemetery with the graves of about 100 children who were victims of the Followers of Christ” sect. The Facebook group trying to change the Idaho law is here. Likewise, in Philadelphia a couple of churches have killed about a dozen kids that way.
Admittedly, those cases are not necessarily creationist activists. So below, here are some known creationist activists.
Wikipedia on Stephen Green of Christian Voice (UK): “In January 2011, Green’s former wife, Caroline Green, accused him of repeatedly physically assaulting her and their children, including one incident where he allegedly beat her with a weapon until she bled, and another in which their son allegedly required hospital treatment after having been beaten with a piece of wood.[6] Fearing an increase in teenage sex, CV placed an advertisement in the New Statesman asserting that HPV vaccines would make young people sterile.” [Wikipedia on Stephen Green]
Then there’s Pastor Bob Enyart: “Bob Enyart is an American talk radio host, author, and pastor of Denver Bible Church. …Enyart also angered families of AIDS victims when he read the men’s obituaries on his television show calling the deceased “sodomite”s.[4] Enyart has also led residential protests against executives of a company which provided construction services for Planned Parenthood offices leading to similar neighbor complaints.[5] …Enyart is a proponent of corporal punishment of children saying that their “hearts are lifted” by spanking.[7] He was convicted for misdemeanor child abuse in 1994 after beating his girlfriend’s child with a belt so hard that the beating broke the skin.” [Wikiedia on Bob Enyart]
Pastor David Hyles (son of infamous sex scandal-plagued preacher Jack Hyles) was present at the mysterious death of the 15 month old son of his mistress.
Here’s Kent Hovind, aka “Dr. Dino” (fake Ph.D.), aka Federal Prison Inmate #06452-017 giving a first person account of creationist child abuse.
His son didn’t want to go to the dentist, so “I said, “Now son, I told you to sit still. You did not sit still. What happens when you disobey daddy?”
He said, “Sniff, sniff… I get a spanking?”
I said, “Correct, bend over.” Boy, did I give him a spanking, and it was a doozy. A few minutes later, smoke was rising off his hind end, tears were coming out of his eyes, and pearls were coming out of his nostrils — the whole thing.
I said, “Okay son, listen carefully. We are going to go back into the dentist office… If you wiggle one time… I’m going to give you two spankings just like the one you just received. Then, we are going to go back into the dentist office… If you wiggle… you are going to get three spankings just like the one you just got. Son, we are going to go back and forth all day long until I get tired, and I have played tennis for years. I have a wonderful forehand smash. I don’t believe I’ll get tired for a long time, son.”
[Kent Hovind, “Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution”, Chapter 3 – a transcript of Kent Hovind’s early sermons circa 1996. http://home1.gte.net/dmadh/hovind3.htm (no longer available); quoted here]
On a similar theme, here’s video of creationist Pastor Bryan Fischer on American Family Radio use an Intelligent Design argument to justify spanking:
Bryan Fischer, starting about 6:14: “So when you have these verses in …the Bible, we believe this is the inerrant Word of God, and so you have a number of explicit instructions… that there is a place for corporal punishment… Notice that the world says that spanking is a form of hatred, it’s a form of child abuse. But notice that the Scriptures say exactly the reverse. Not spanking a child who needs to be spanked is a form of child abuse. It’s a form of hatred! …the primary reason for it is so that our children learn to connect disobedience with pain. …This is the way life works: disobedience to God’s standards results in pain… And that’s something Debbie and I always did, with our children, we used a wooden spoon. …we had a wooden spoon in the bathroom, right there in the drawer, we [laughs] had a wooden spoon in the car, in the glovebox… We had a wooden spoon in the bag with all the kids stuff …And the Proverb says you wanna start ’em early in this. And so our rule was, it was on a bare bottom, number one, because the bottom is just designed by God for that. It’s designed to receive the ‘board of education’. “ [Bryan Fischer AFR video]
That’s funny. I was thinking Fischer’s face was designed for my fist.
Kevin Jackson, who as mayor of Rio Rancho, NM, tried to push creationism, had very tangled legal problems. New Mexicans for Science and Reason [pro-evolution] keep track of the creationist Jackson standing up for morality.
“Former Rio Rancho Mayor Kevin Jackson has landed in trouble again. Jackson is in a Pennsylvania prison charged with violating a protection from abuse order filed by his wife. The former mayor was being held Monday at the Erie County Prison, in lieu of a $20,000 cash only bond.
Charges against him include violating a protection from abuse order, burglary, criminal trespass and carrying a firearm without a license…
The police report says that on Jan. 13 Jackson went to his wife’s home, entered through a basement window and went to her bedroom, where she was asleep. It alleges he pointed a semiautomatic pistol at his wife’s face “in an attempt to communicate and reconcile the relationship.”
…Last spring, an Erie County Court of Common Pleas judge granted a request from Jackson’s wife, Katherine Jackson, for a protection from abuse order.
Court documents said Katherine Jackson claimed her husband had been verbally abusive toward her and the couple’s two daughters, threw objects and damaged property. The court order prohibited Kevin Jackson from having contact with his wife or children.
…Kevin violated the order by showing up at his wife’s home on the same day the order was issued. He was arrested and sentenced to serve up to six months in the Erie County Prison.
…Kevin Jackson was elected mayor of Rio Rancho in March 2006 and resigned in July 2007 amid allegations of check fraud and misuse of a city credit card.
In New Mexico, he is a defendant in a lawsuit with Family Lifeline Inc., a nonprofit for which he worked. The lawsuit alleges Jackson used federal grant money he secured for the nonprofit for his own purposes. [Former Rio Rancho Mayor in Jail Again. By Rosalie Rayburn. Albuquerque Journal. Monday, 19 January 2009.]
Urgh, Curm, I have a comment in moderation, and it appears garbled because I tried embedding a video. I tested the HTML first too.
The quote from Bryan Fischer was supposed to begin:
Bryan Fischer, starting about 6:14: “So when you have these verses in …the Bible, we believe this is the inerrant Word of God, and so you have a number of explicit instructions… that there is a place for corporal punishment… Notice that the world says that spanking is a form of hatred, it’s a form of child abuse. But notice that the Scriptures say exactly the reverse. Not spanking a child who needs to be spanked is a form of child abuse. It’s a form of hatred! …the primary reason for it is so that our children learn to connect disobedience with pain. …This is the way life works: disobedience to God’s standards results in pain… And that’s something Debbie and I always did, with our children, we used a wooden spoon. …we had a wooden spoon in the bathroom, right there in the drawer, we [laughs]
And then “had a wooden spoon” after that.
@SC:
Not to worry; New Tribes Missions is 100% creationist; I’m quite familiar with them, and holding to evolution would be sufficient to disqualify one from joining their mission.
By the bye, though you repeatedly state that you are only going after creationism, not religion in general, have you read Dr. Coyne’s paper “SCIENCE, RELIGION, AND SOCIETY:
THE PROBLEM OF EVOLUTION IN AMERICA”
Just google it; it’s a free download. First two sentences of the abstract:
“American resistance to accepting evolution is uniquely high among First World countries. This is due largely to the extreme
religiosity of the United States, which is much higher than that of comparably advanced nations, and to the resistance of many
religious people to the facts and supposed implications of evolution.”
The paper documents the point that religion is what causes creationism. Which is obvious to us–no one becomes a creationist based on the evidence–but it’s nice to have the statistics and reasoning all together in one handy package.
@Diogenes:
Good sir, I have greatly enjoyed perusing your detailed rebuttals of creationist idiocy, mendacity, and duplicity here, and at the Egnorance blog. Are these long, meticulously researched essays going to be collected into and published as a book anytime soon? That would be extremely convenient and useful.