6,000 year old earth? Palin is deluded.

A recent story in the Los Angeles Times on September, 29^th by reporter Stephen Braun, a music teacher from Wasilla, Alaska recounted a conversation he had once had with Sarah Palin. The teacher, Philip Munger, was startled to hear the young mayor say that men and dinosaurs walked the earth together some (gulp!) 6,000 years ago.

This may seem shocking to people who have never been exposed to such garbage belief systems as evangelical Christianity. Although I was not raised among such mopes who speak in tongues or shout drivel when seized with religious mania I too was taught the same thing. The Wisconsin Synod Lutherans* were dead set against evolution, and if the medieval theologian, Bishop Usher, had reckoned the earth as being only 6,000 years old that was good enough for them. As for fossils, one teacher said that they were just pieces of wood polished to look like bones. I took their word for it, right up to the age of twelve, when I found an encyclopedia with pictures of prehistoric creatures. There was just too much information available to be a fraud. Polished wood as fossils? Yeah, right. A subsequent visit to the Milwaukee museum where I saw hundreds of fossils, some of them millions of years old according to the labels, solidified my disbelief in a young world. There was deception going on alright, but it was being practiced by my teachers.

Delusional belief systems, which is what this is, don’t matter much if you drive a cab, push shopping carts or rout out clogged drains for a living. But it means a lot if you want to be just one heart-beat away from being President of the United States.

Why does it matter? It matters because a person who believes in 6,000 year old world crap is believing an obvious falsehood. It matters because that person has no critical insight, it matters because that person lacks discernment and finally it matters because such a person views the world though the distorted, coke-bottle thick glasses of willful ignorance.

* Normally I would bring up the subject of Lutefisk at this point but since I am already talking about weird subject I will take a pass this time.