This month HBO is airing a program that it promotes as a documentary, called Questioning Darwin. Somewhat predictably, the program paints the picture that Ken Ham and his museum for Young Earth Creationism should be considered the only viable and true alternative philosophy to Darwinism, completely ignoring brilliant thinkers such as John Lennox, Francis Collins, Connor Cunningham, Stephen C. Meyer and Frank Turek, as well as competing ideas such as Intelligent Design and Old Earth Creationism. The documentary dredges up the old, tired creationism versus evolution debate once more, reinforcing many of the known, misleading stereotypes and repeating the same mistaken assumptions that have pretty much been hashed to death already. The narrator begins by claiming that Christians who insist the Bible must be accepted as the literal Word of God are creationists who consider Darwin the antichrist. This was news to me. Based on my limited knowledge mostly gleaned from biographies of his personal life, I was sort of under the impression that Darwin was sort of a spoiled, petulant rich guy who married his cousin and never really had to work for a living. Curiously, the documentary described creationism as a growing branch of Christianity, as if "Creationist" was comparable to Baptist, Lutheran, and Catholic. On the whole, the documentary depicted creationists as stubborn, ignorant and silly deniers of science, while the scientists were portrayed as calm, soft-spoken, rational people. There simply wasn't an option offered that didn't fit those two somewhat … [Read more...]
Out of touch
As a general rule I try to avoid celebrity bashing, mostly because I don't want to sound jealous. Fortunately, after reading Gwyneth Paltrow's outrageous, whining remarks complaining that "it's much harder for [Paltrow]" than a working mother, I happened to read another article that made me realize there wasn't much left to say. Ms. Paltrow explained: I think it's different when you have an office job, because it's routine and, you know, you can do all the stuff in the morning and then you come home in the evening. When you're shooting a movie, they're like, 'We need you to go to Wisconsin for two weeks,' and then you work 14 hours a day and that part of it is very difficult. I think to have a regular job and be a mom is not as, of course there are challenges, but it's not like being on set. Oh, boohoo. Cry me a river, Ms. Paltrow. Two weeks spent playing make-believe in Wisconsin constitutes a serious hardship in your mind? Suffice it to say that no one is forcing Gwyneth to earn millions of dollars for a few weeks of "hard" work pretending to be a real person. But don't just take my word for it. Check out the hilarious open letter working mom Mackenzie Dawson penned in response to Ms. Paltrow, recently published in the New York Post. Ms. Dawson hit the proverbial nail on the head right off the bat when she began, "Thank God I don’t make millions filming one movie per year” is what I say to myself pretty much every morning as I wait on a windy Metro-North platform, about to begin my 45-minute commute into the city. Sarcasm practically dripped from Ms. … [Read more...]