The Bacon-Eating Atheist Jew has a provocative article entitled The Internet will be the Death of Young-Earth Creationism. He contends that this craziest of crazy ideas will shrivel and die.

His premise is that the only way extremely ludicrous ideas, like the concept of a young Earth, can survive is if their proponents keep their victims in complete ignorance. But anybody with internet access can’t help but stumble across real data that refutes it.

Furthermore, the young-Earth creationists have only themselves to blame. They insist on getting into online debates about their silly ideas and get roundly trounced from all directions. That just makes them look foolish, which is hardly a way to win converts.

He makes a good point. Good information will always win out over bad information, if you have enough of it and give it enough time. Facts are like sunlight. Misinformation is like mold.

I guess my only dispute with his premise is his use of the phrase “death of young-Earth creationism”. There are still people who believe in the ether theory or a flat Earth. Neither theory has many followers, though. Practically dead, hopefully. Actually dead, sadly, no.

He has a few good questions that he likes to bring out in a debate with these people:

1. There is no contemporary historical evidence Jesus ever existed. (Josephus was not contemporary) Can I have your best piece of evidence?

2. There is no historical evidence the Exodus happened. Forget the Hyksos, I’m talking about what the OT states.

3. Find me one scientific study that refutes or contradicts evolution. If evolution were false, there would be many, but you can’t find one piece for me.

4. There is no evidence that there was a worldwide Great Flood. Local floods, yes, but not a worldwide one. Oh yeah, the idea of the Ark story is embarrassing to believe.

5. If the Earth was young, why can’t a fundie scientist come up with a way to prove it?

Those are good ones. The next time you find yourself arguing with a young-Earth creationist, whip those out. Don’t let them weasel out of an answer.

I’m currently researching Chick Tracts. They’re so much fun, you’ll probably see more about them on this site in the future. (I also have a very brief section about them on my seldom-updated Kook Watch page.)

I came across a fun website that is pro-Chick, but from a detached perspective—that of art criticism. The Jack Chick Museum of Fine Art has extensive information about this under-rated American original.

There are so many great Chick Tracts, I wouldn’t know where to begin. One of the more notorious is “Dark Dungeons”, a baseless attack on the harmless but insipid game of Dungeons and Dragons.

“Hey, Sailor, I’ve Got a Dungeon for You to Master!”

Unless you’ve been living in a dungeon for the last 30 years, you’ve probably heard of Dungeons and Dragons. Since I like to make fun of things, I’ll pretend that you don’t know anything about it.

D&D is probably best described by Cecil Adams over at The Straight Dope. His article is a hoot; go check it out. For you lazy bastards who can’t even exert the energy required to click a link, I’ll excerpt some of the highlights. Cecil says:

I have some reservations about bestowing further publicity on this demented pastime, but a devotion to the noble principles of journalism demands that the facts be exposed, come what may.

D&D was invented in 1974 by one Gary Gygax, whose father was a violinist for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. (This strikes me as significant, somehow.) Gary moved at an early age to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, where he founded TSR Hobbies, the maker of D&D.

My devotion to the noble principles of journalism (and a long-standing grudge against Mr. Gygax that I harbor to this day) demands that I correct the above statement. Gary Gygax was merely the co-inventor of D&D. Dave Arneson was the other half of the team.

I managed to get my hands on a couple of those sacred rule books, and let me tell you, […] this game is weird.

The basic idea in your run-of-the-mill Go Fish-type game is to get all your opponent’s cards or all his checkers or some other readily grasped commodity. Not so with D&D.
[…]
To play D&D you need at least two acolytes, who play under the guidance of a vaguely Mansonesque personage called the Dungeon Master (DM).

By means of various murky protocols involving the use of charts and dice, each player establishes the persona of the “character” he or she will manipulate in the game, who typically ends up (if male) being an antisocial cutthroat of some sort, or (if female) possessed of large, grapefruit-like breasts.

There are two main problems: (1) there are one billion rules, and (2) the game requires nonstop mathematical finagling that would constipate Einstein.
[…]
The rule book is laden with such mystifying pronouncements as the following: “An ancient spell-using red dragon of huge size with 88 hit points has a BXPV of 1300, XP/HP total of 1408, SAXPB of 2800 (armor class plus special defense plus high intelligence plus saving throw bonus due to h.p./die), and an EAXPA of 2550 (major breath weapon plus spell use plus attack damage of 3-30/bite)—totaling 7758 h.p.”

Here we have a game that combines the charm of a Pentagon briefing with the excitement of double-entry bookkeeping. I don’t get it.

So that’s all you really need to know about D&D. Back in the 1980s, when it was popular, a lot of fundies got in a tizzy about this game. I remember watching Pat Robertson devote an entire hour of his TV show to explaining how D&D would bring down Western Civilization. I would have been happy if it had merely succeeded in bringing down Pat Robertson. Sadly, the game had absolutely no power to do either (or to entertain).

Jack Chick to the Rescue!

Despite the lack of a threat, Jack Chick felt compelled to produce a tract to defeat this menace (D&D, that is, not Pat Robertson.). The basic idea is that D&D leads to satanism. It’s a fun read. You can read the whole thing over at Jack’s official website. To whet your appetite, here are just three thrilling panels:

I can’t say much for the content, but you’ve got to admit—the guy is a pretty good artist!

Happy 2007! 2006 was a mixed bag, but I guess it was better than the several years preceding it. The public at large finally woke up to the Iraq war. The mid-term election gives us some hope of things finally turning around. Remember, though, we need to watch the Democrats closely, too. They need to deliver on their promises of reform.

In the spirit of reform, there is a big change afoot here at the Bay of Fundie. Commenting has just gotten easier!

Until now, I have required that you register and log in before you could post comments. This was because the spammers are incredibly persistent. The problem is that most people consider registering at yet another website to be a royal pain. I’ve installed a spam filter, so let’s all find out how well it works.

Starting today, I have turned off the registration requirement. You can still register and log in if you want, but there is not really any benefit to doing so.

From now on (or until the spammers beat the system), in order to leave a comment, all you have to do is click on the comment link at the bottom of every post, fill in you name and email address, then add your comment.

Your email address will not be published. It’s just part of the security system. I will never use the address to spam you. I will never give it to anyone else.

I don’t believe that the spam filter has a high false-positive rate (i.e., flags normal posts as spam). As far as I know, the thing works fairly quickly. If your comment does not appear within one minute, maybe it got flagged.

If you have any problems posting a comment, use the contact link in the sidebar to send me a note.