Surviving the Creation Evidence Expo 2011

Here's a humorous post about the 7th annual "Creation Evidence Expo" in Indianapolis. It couldn't be more obvious that this isn't about science, and certainly not about evidence, but only a matter of the political and personal faith of the religious right - complete with black rubber fetuses and a replica of Noah's Ark.

I won't try to summarize it, but here's an excerpt (note that there are two separate writers here, Louise and Don):

The first speaker up was an 82 year old woman who they introduced as being up there because they realized they needed a woman speaker. She began her speech by telling us that she had no credentials and her speech was basically taken from some book. I can’t really tell you what her speech was about as they had the microphone too far from her and her mispronunciation of words became incredibly distracting. What I did gather was that the Creation Evidence Expo will help you become a “free thinker” and that you can’t have sex with other species and produce offspring.

Don says: This woman was truly baffling herself with bullshit. As Louise said, she admitted that her speech was drawn almost exclusively from some guy's book and boy did it show. She very clearly did not know the meanings of the words she was using. Large swaths of her speech were dedicated to homology and Jack Chick-style strawmen thereof ("Ignorant, evil evolutionist teachers use circular reasoning to prove homology!"), a concept with which I do not believe for a damn second she was remotely familiar. Especially since she consistently pronounced the word "homologous" as "homolojuss." She talked a lot about DNA using words that only few laypeople understand and appreciate and she, given her flat delivery (she was reading from some dude's book, remember) was not among that number. She said that being creationists made people "critical thinkers" against the "dogma" and "orthodoxy" of "Darwinism." This is an excellent example of how good the religious right is at coopting the language of the opposition and using it against them.

She talked about lifeways and world systems and oppression and freeing one's mind and overall reminded me a little bit of an idiot creationist version of bell hooks.

After she was finished the MC praised her as "Just a mother, not a scientist" who only wanted the best for our kids. Apparently being a mother confers intellectual authority over vaccinations and the origins and development of life.

In between speakers a choir sang for us. The good news is they had a nice sound; the bad news is they only knew one song and sang it twice in a row. Turns out the choir and their parents accounted for about half of the audience. After they sang they all left.

Note that the post isn't all humor (not that it's actually funny that people like this are still trying to get religion - their own, of course - taught in public schools). Louise did give credit where credit was due. These aren't evil people, just ignorant and entirely faith-based.