Rant on.

I had hoped that for a little while the whole “separation of church and state” thing was understood.  Christine O’Donnell’s demonstration of her lack of understanding of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution set tongues wagging enough that I held some hope that people understood what the phrase “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” means.  Apparently, however, their is still some lack of comprehension in the state of Kentucky.

Basically what’s going on is there is a religious group building a Creationism Theme Park.  This is fine and dandy and, conveniently, also covered by the First Amendment, which (in addition to the above quote) allows people to express their opinion and have whatever religious beliefs they want to have.  However, the folks building this Museum of Misinformation want funding from the state to help build it.  That is a no-no.

Let’s be perfectly clear about this:  The concept that a Creator called our world and everything on it into existence is a religious belief.  There is no scientific basis for this thought.  None whatsoever.  Zip.  Zero.  Zilch.  For that matter, any concept which requires a supernatural being–a god–is, by definition, religious in nature.  Whether it’s the idea that God created Earth or some worldwide flood story or the Earth is flat because my holy book says so, it’s a religious belief.

Creationism is probably the penultimate religious belief involving Earth.  The Christian concept–the one being touted by this theme park–suggests the world is six thousand years old.  There is plenty of evidence of entire civilizations coming and going longer ago than this, but the Christian Creationists deny this proof and say it all started a mere six thousand years ago.  Dinosaurs and humans existed side-by-side–another thing the evidence says isn’t so–and so forth.

So this theme park is, without a doubt, a Religious Thing.  This means no state funding.  In spite of this, the governor of Kentucky–a Democrat, I might note, for those who think I am anti-Republican–supports the idea of funding this place.  He should be glad I don’t live in Kentucky.  I would be organizing a campaign for his removal from office.  Promoting something unconstitutional which will dip into taxpayer money is an extremely bad idea.  Sure, it might generate a little revenue for the state, but that doesn’t make it right and it certainly doesn’t justify promoting the idea.

Now, some might suggest this would be okay so long as Kentucky also funded an Evolution museum or something like that.  This doesn’t work, because Evolution is a Scientific concept, not (as many seem to think) a Religious one.  Evolution has been proven over and over again, and (also contrary to many people’s thinking) is not the opposite of Creationism.  Yes, the idea of Evolution runs counter to part of Creationism, but not the entire concept.  Also, there is no Holy Book of Evolution.  Darwin’s Origin of the Species is the first book of thousands and thousands of books and articles offering proof the Scientific Theory of Evolution.  Creationism articles and books invariably point to a holy book like the Bible.  So funding an Evolution museum, which has a scientific and not a religious basis, is not the same thing as funding a creationism theme park.

If this park is funded, it will be a sad day for the constitution.  The first amendment is clear about this.  Funding such a project is promotion of a religious establishment, plain and simple.  I hope Kentucky and in particular its governor sees the light on this.

Rant off.