Pam Platt Reveals Kentucky's "Whirlwind Of [ABJECT] IGNORANCE". IT Is A MUST Read.

(Y'all don't forget, the Scopes trial, depicted above, took place, across our border, in Tennessee!)

Pam Platt | A whirlwind of ignorance
Creationism park a step backward

Several years ago, on my first trip to Mammoth Cave, my fellow tourists noticed a sign on the side of the two-lane road leading to the national park. The reaction of one of them was so severe I thought I was going to have to stop and do CPR. As he clapped his hands over his mouth and flopped around in his seat, I swung the car back around to get a better look at what did this to him.

There it was:

Golgotha Fun Park.

As I recall, it was a simple sign, perhaps even hand-painted. Since we were there, we got out to take a look around and to let my friend get some air. Crickets. Golgotha looked closed for business.

No, my friend did not find anything funny about crucifixion. But he did find the idea of a putt-putt “fun park” borrowing the name of the place of Jesus' horrendous suffering and death one of the oddest things he'd seen in a lifetime dedicated to noticing the world's oddities — heck, he'd even been to Roswell — but this literally took his breath away. (I found an online review of the park, as it was in flush times www.roadsideamerica.com/story/3342.)

Having seen what was left of Golgotha and having read about its glory days, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised at the news last week that Kentucky could be the home of a real E-ticket creationism theme park, this big-budget one built around Noah, the ark and the great flood. And why not? The almost-new Creation Museum in Northern Kentucky has been a huge hit, outperforming visitor projections, never mind how much of its information flies in the face of established science and the history of the world. (Which is changing as we speak. See NASA's breaking news from last Thursday — in which the agency announced the discovery of a microbe which “changes the fundamental knowledge about what comprises all known life on Earth,” and added potential for discoveries of extraterrestrial life. Wonder how creation museums and parks and the fundamentalists who support them will deal with that?)

With Golgotha in the rearview, the Bluegrass State would seem to be fertile ground for this grander proposal. Indeed, the perfect storm of election-year pandering, hinky political wind shears and a jittery economy seems to have snatched the cloak of dignity from our governor, who banged the drum, shouted to the heavens and rolled out the welcome wagon, all spangled with tax incentives, for the project and its investors — which is pretty much the biggest problem I have with this particular project.

This is America, which means people can believe whatever they want to believe. If they want to believe that Adam rode Western on a brontosaurus and Eve rode side-saddle on a stegosaurus (hey, those pesky plates), despite the eons that science tells us separate the 'saurs from the human folk, and spend good money on going to a place that peddles this fairy tale, that's their business. Don't go if you don't like.

But using taxpayer money to support a park that might also support these same themes, well, that's a whole other story and one that surely will be taken up with lawyers representing different points of view. I say let the investors homosapien up with their own cash if that's what they're selling.

But I also have a bigger problem with what this project represents, and that problem goes beyond Kentucky and the inevitable jokes that are being made about us because of this proposed park.

As I said earlier, this is America, which is becoming fertile ground, too. When people talk about American exceptionalism, I'm sure they don't mean this:

Did you know that only 39 percent of Americans believe in the theory of evolution? That 36 percent have no opinion either way? That 25 percent don't believe in it? That 40 percent of people who go to church every week don't believe in evolution? That people with more education are more likely to believe in Darwin's theory, and those with high school educations or less are more likely to have no opinion or don't believe in it? (Gallup)

Did you know that the U.S. ranked 18th of 36 nations whose high school students graduate on time? South Korea is No. 1 with 93 percent; the U.S. is in the middle of the studied pack with 75 percent. (Source: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development)

Did you know that, according to 2007 figures, with the half a trillion dollars spent thus far on the Iraq war, the U.S. could have provided 21.5 million full four-year scholarships to public universities, 7.6 million new public school teachers and 58.7 million chances for children to attend Head-Start? (education-portal.com)

Did you know that the American Library Association and other groups are seeing a rise in complaints about and challenges to literature used in advanced, honors or college-level courses, and that they have noticed an increase in organized, rather than solo, efforts, and that these challenges occur across the U.S.? (USA Today)

Did you know that a book that says the Grand Canyon was formed by Noah's flood and is only a few thousand years old is still on sale at Grand Canyon National Park, despite geological consensus that the canyon contains rock formations that are 2 billion years old and despite concerns raised by park staff, members of the public, scientists and geologists that the book defies the mission of the National Park Service to present accurate and scholarly information based on science? Did you know that the sale of the book at the park has been under review by the U.S. Department of Interior for the past six years? (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility)

Did you know that a conservative majority of members of the Texas State Board of Education changed or amended school social studies textbooks in hundreds of ways, including: to question the American separation of church and state and whether the founders were committed to a secular society, to remove Thomas Jefferson as an influential political philosopher (he came up with “separation of church and state”) for St. Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin, to study the “unintended consequences” of Affirmative Action and Title IX, to replace “capitalism” with “free-enterprise system” and to describe the U.S. government as a “constitutional republic” rather than “democratic”? Did you know these changes could spread far beyond Texas, because of the number of school textbooks published in that state? (The Associated Press; The New York Times; PBS)

So let us not consider Kentucky, and its real and perceived backwardness, apart and separate from our 49 fellow states and from the whole of the country. Yes, the proposed creationism park reinforces unfortunate stereotypes about Kentucky and Kentuckians, some of them true, but the points I assembled about the United States ought to be provoking a lot of questions about who Americans are and where, exactly, we're heading.

All of which produced the occasion to re-watch the DVD I own of a movie classic, “Inherit the Wind,” which basically tells the story of the trial of John Scopes, a public high school teacher who was accused of violating a Tennessee state law that forbade the teaching of evolution. The trial took place in 1925, the movie was released in 1960, and it — like its subject matter — stands the test of time as an elegant and eloquent examination of the friction between closed and open minds. It also brings great humanity to the subject, which would be welcome in today's conversation about all manner of topics. (It contains the loveliest expression I've encountered of how “God” and “evolution” or “science” do not have to be oxymoronic entities: “Man wasn't just planted here like a geranium. Life came from a long miracle … it didn't just take seven days.”)

My take-away point of this movie — and all the points I assembled in pursuit of the bigger problem I have with what the creationism park represents — comes in several lines of dialogue spoken by Spencer Tracy in the Clarence Darrow role:

“Can't you understand? If you take a law like evolution and you make it a crime to teach it in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools? And tomorrow you may make it a crime to read about it. And soon you may ban books and newspapers. And then you may turn Catholic against Protestant, and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the mind of man. If you can do one, you can do the other. Because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding. And soon, your Honor, with banners flying and with drums beating we'll be marching backward, BACKWARD, through the glorious ages of that Sixteenth Century when bigots burned the man who dared bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind.”

That backward march may not be the outcome we expect from underfunding education, disregarding science, shaping textbooks to reflect specific political philosophy or providing tax incentives to creationism theme parks. But we must at least consider the results we live with now.

I may be getting my gusts confused, but I believe we're sowing the wind and we will reap the whirlwind, if we aren't already.

Pam Platt is an editorial writer and columnist for the Courier-Journal. Her column appears in the Sunday Forum. Call her at (502) 582-4578