Hambo Reports Bible Vandalism

This is shocking news from Ken Ham (ol’ Hambo) — the ayatollah of Appalachia, the world’s holiest man who knows more about religion and science than everyone else. He just posted this at the website of Answers in Genesis (AIG), his creationist ministry: “Terry the Trilobite” Appears in NKY Hotel Bibles. (NKY presumably means Northern Kentucky, the location of Hambo’s creationist empire.) Here are some excerpts, with bold font added by us for emphasis, and occasional Curmudgeonly interjections that look [like this]:

I recently met a gentleman named Nathan Elliot, who works at a ministry called the Knight Lights, at our Answers for Pastors and Christian Leaders conference. He showed me a picture he’d taken of a Bible from a hotel in the vicinity of the Creation Museum.

A picture of a hotel room bible? That’s odd. Hambo says:

As you can see in the picture below, someone had glued a picture of a trilobite (an extinct marine creature) into the early pages of the Gideon’s Bible found in the hotel room drawer. [Gasp!] Along with the picture were the words,

This is Terry, he is a trilobite. He is 400 million years old, he predates your religion, your God, and all humanity. Pick up another book.

You can see the bible insert if you click over to Hambo’s post. Good graphics, but whoever left it in a bible is rather childish. It’s low-grade behavior — like an internet troll. Hambo tells us:

This was the second time Nathan had seen this particular image pasted inside Bibles in a local hotel. [Egad!] It’s interesting that whoever glued this snarky image did so over the page of the Bible that had verse references for “help in time of need.”

Why is that interesting? Hambo explains:

Whoever left this picture there has no positive message, just one that attacks Christians, God, and the Bible, but seemed to have felt the need to cover over verses that might actually provide help to someone struggling (thankfully though they didn’t actually cover over the pages of Scripture).

It’s more likely that the troll just slipped the insert in at a random page. Hambo continues:

Sadly, many secularists are intolerant of Christians and the Bible. They hate God, and are vehemently opposed to him, his Word, and his people. This shouldn’t surprise us. Men love darkness rather than light (John 3:19) and Jesus warned us that the world would hate him and us (John 15:18). It’s interesting that many secularists will exhibit intolerance, often in an aggressive way, towards Christians, but they will demand tolerance of all their beliefs!

We won’t defend the idiot who’s inserting those things into bibles, but Hambo’s reaction seems a wee bit excessive. Oh wait — now he tosses in some creationism:

Whoever left this trilobite image is scientifically wrong. [Huh?] Terry the trilobite died, was buried and fossilized just 4,350 years ago during the global flood of Noah’s day. These creatures — with their incredibly complex eyes — aren’t evidence of millions of years of evolution, but rather of God’s creative power and the destructive nature of the flood.

He ends by promoting one of his tourist attractions:

And you can come and see real trilobite fossils — and uncover the truth behind them — inside some excellent exhibits at the Creation Museum. [Link omitted.]

So there you are, dear reader. Someone is running around slipping Darwinist misinformation into bibles, but don’t be fooled. Hambo is telling you The Truth™.

Copyright © 2019. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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Ticket Sales for Hambo’s Ark — January 2019

The numbers are up again — but not by much.

Our clandestine operative in Kentucky, code-named “Blue Grass,” has given us the latest official ticket sales figures for people visiting Ark Encounter — the creationist tourist attraction built by Ken Ham (ol’ Hambo), the ayatollah of Appalachia.

As you know, Hambo has to pay a safety tax of $.50 (fifty cents) to the City of Williamstown for each ticket sold, and the results are available through the Kentucky Open Records Act (KORA). Our operative showed us a copy of the latest Monthly Safety Assessment Report. It reveals that Hambo’s Ark Encounter sold 14,885 tickets in January 2019, and the fee due to the city was $7,442.50.

Now the question is: What were the Ark’s ticket sales for the same month during the preceding year? As we reported in Hambo’s Ark — True Figures for the 2nd Year, in January of 2018 the Ark sold 13,250 tickets. In contrast, January of 2019 they sold 14,885 tickets — an increase of 1,635 tickets. That’s right. Hambo sold more tickets this January than last January. It’s not many more in absolute numbers, but it’s an increase nevertheless.

We don’t know the ways of Ark visitors, but January is a much slower month than December. Hambo sold 46,400 Ark tickets in December 2018, which was almost ten thousand more tickets than he did during the previous December — a 27% increase. January was a slower month for both years, and the ticket sales increase was less, but it was an increase — a tad over 12%. Make of it what you will.

As always, we are grateful to our clandestine operative for his excellent work. And we look forward to Hambo’s discussion of the figures.

Copyright © 2019. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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Florida’s Second Creationism Bill for 2019

It’s happening again in Florida. We discussed that state’s first creationism bill this year in Florida Creationism Bill for 2019. But that wasn’t enough madness for the Sunshine State.

Now the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) posted this news: A second antiscience bill in Florida. Here are some excerpts from NCSE’s post, with bold font added by us for emphasis, and occasional Curmudgeonly interjections that look [like this]:

Florida’s House Bill 855, filed on February 15, 2019, would, if enacted, revise the state’s laws concerning public school instructional materials — and possibly affect science education.

We looked at the bill. Egad, the thing is 24 pages long! It doesn’t specifically mention evolution, so it’s one of those stealth jobs we’ve been seeing lately. If this mess becomes law, every school board in the state will need a few new bureaucrats on the payroll just to keep up with this thing. NCSE says:

The bill would revise a statute that presently requires instructional materials to be “accurate, objective, balanced, noninflammatory, current, [and] free of pornography” to require such materials to be “accurate and factual; provide objective, balanced, and noninflammatory viewpoints on controversial issues; [and] free of pornography.”

We’ve seen bills like that before. It can be assumed that evolution is regarded as controversial by the bill’s author. NCSE continues:

No definition of “controversial” is provided. But as Brandon Haught of Florida Citizens for Science observed in a February 17, 2019 blog post, the bill’s sponsor, Walter Bryan “Mike” Hill (R-District 1) “refused to acknowledge that global warming is a very real threat being caused by humans” when interviewed by Bill Nye for a 2016 documentary.

Brandon Haught is a knowledgeable source of information. We looked up the legislature’s web page for Walter Bryan “Mike” Hill, the bill’s sponsor. It says: “Elected to the Florida House of Representatives in 2018,” so we assume this is his first legislative session. His occupation is Insurance Agent. Also, they say he graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in 1980. That is absolutely admirable. But they also say: “Pensacola Christian Academy, Honorary Doctorate, 2015,” and his religious affiliation is “Evangelical Christian.” We’re speculating, but he just might be a creationist.

NCSE then tells us:

Also of concern, as Haught notes, are provisions that expand the ability of Floridians to challenge instructional materials to which they take exception. In 2017, as NCSE previously reported, Florida enacted a law that empowered Floridians to challenge instructional materials, and climate change and evolution were clearly among the targets of the new law.

In other words, this new bill is bad news. Here’s a link where you can track the progress of House Bill 855. Nothing has happened since it was filed on 15 February. That’s not surprising. The legislature won’t convene until 05 March, and they’re scheduled to adjourn on 03 May.

We won’t be seeing much news on this for a while — unless Mike Hill gives the press an entertaining interview or something. We’ll be watching.

Copyright © 2019. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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AIG: The Origin of The Universe

Yesterday we wrote AIG Says We’re Alone in the Universe. It was about an article by Danny Faulkner, one of the creation scientists who work for Answers in Genesis (AIG), the creationist ministry of Ken Ham (ol’ Hambo) — the ayatollah of Appalachia, the world’s holiest man who knows more about religion and science than everyone else.

Today there’s another by Danny at the AIG website, titled The First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics and the Origin of the Universe. We’ll give you some excerpts, with bold font added by us for emphasis, and occasional Curmudgeonly interjections that look [like this].

After devoting a few paragraphs to describing the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics, which you can read about in Wikipedia’s article, Danny says:

The first and second laws of thermodynamics are well-established, and they appear universally to apply. Of course, there is no problem with the two operating simultaneously today, but a startling conclusion results if we extrapolate them into the past.

What’s the “startling conclusion”? He announces:

If the first law of thermodynamics has always been true, then the universe must have always existed [Okay, no problem.] Otherwise, sometime in the past energy must have spontaneously appeared when none had previously existed. But this would violate the first law of thermodynamics. Hence, the first law of thermodynamics requires that the universe be eternal.

*Groan* All that’s necessary is that there has always been mass-energy. After that he tells us:

But what if we extrapolate the second law of thermodynamics into the past? If the universe was eternal, there would have been more than ample time for the universe to have already reached its maximum state of entropy, with no useful energy remaining. The fact that today we can use heat engines and that biological systems operate today reveals that the universe is far from the maximum entropic state. Therefore, the universe cannot be eternal, and hence the universe must have had a beginning in the finite past.

*Groan* There’s no problem if the universe has been oscillating between expansion and contraction phases. That was the consensus view until about 20 years ago when it was discovered that the expansion of the universe is accelerating — but that doesn’t mean the universe hasn’t been oscillating in the past; and it may continue to do so. Danny can’t let himself even even think about that. It’s time for him to bring in the creationism. Here it comes:

But this produces a contradiction: the first law of thermodynamics demands that the universe be eternal, while the second law of thermodynamics demands that the universe cannot be eternal. [No, it doesn’t.] Both laws appear to be fundamental and inviolate, so there is no way one law can be made subordinate to the other.

Having set up a false problem, he continues:

One could hypothesize that in the past one of the two laws did not apply, but that would be a departure from the way in which the natural world is known to operate.

So what? Danny’s a creationist. Let’s read on:

The physical world today follows these two laws (and others), so any past departure from how the world now works would have amounted to a non-physical operation. Another word for non-physical is metaphysical. There is no physical mechanism whereby physical processes would suddenly change.

Jeepers, where do you think he’s going? Another excerpt:

Thus, if physical processes changed at some time, it must have had a cause outside of the physical. [Gasp!] That is, the origin of the universe requires a radical departure from how the physical world operates Hence, the origin of the world is beyond the realm of science, as science is the study of the physical, or natural, world, not the metaphysical or the spiritual.

Ooooooooooooh! The origin of the universe must have been a supernatural event. And now we come to the end:

Since science can’t tell us where the universe came from, the only consistent way to study the origin of the universe is to realize that the Creator God exists and that he is not part of the physical universe. He is transcendent. The God who made all was not himself created. This is exactly what the Bible says: ”All things were made through him; and without him was not anything made that was made” (John 1:3). One ought to begin the study of the origin of the universe with God.

So there you are. The First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics lead you inevitably to Oogity Boogity!

Copyright © 2019. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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