"Dr. Dino," Capital Crimes, and Catholic Pizza
 

March 15 2006
Counterbias.com
MEL SEESHOLTZ
 

“Dr. Dino” is Kent Hovind, whose claim to the “Dr.” and academic credentials is questionable, at best. Appropriately, he’s the founder of Florida-based Creation Science Evangelism which, among its other quaint novelties, offers “Dinosaur Adventure Land”:

Since 2001 Dinosaur Adventure Land has been a place where families can come to learn about God’s Creation through science and the Bible. DAL is comprised of a 3 story Science Center, Creation Museum, and Theme Park, making it fun for all ages, and one of the lost amazing Creation Parks in the world. Our goal is to win souls to Christ, by giving everyone another choice. You can believe that you came from a rock, or you can believe that a loving God created you for a purpose. Plan your next family vacation, to come to DAL. …

But if you can’t make it to DAL, their website offers “what really happened” cartoons featuring Danny the Dinosaur who tells kids that their boring science teacher is wrong: the earth is only 6000 years old and “God” created dinosaurs on the same day he created human beings (in their present form, of course). Danny offers as proof a photo of his “grandpa David” posing with Noah whose ark saved all the creatures of the earth including the dinosaurs: biblical literalism and young earth creationism at their most ludicrous and most insidious.

“Dr. Dino” has a three-part plan to overthrow science and revert to the Dark Ages. Three-part: could that have anything to do with the “the Doctrine of the Trinity” fabricated by Athanasius and the Council of Nicea in 325 C.E. to get themselves and their “monotheistic” religion out of the bind of having multiple gods, “Father” and “Son” and the “Holy Ghost”? The consubstantial-transubstantial debate was akin to how many angels could dance on the head of a pin and whether or not Adam’s procreative erection was a result of sinful lust for Eve. (See the appended Nota Bene for how the church resolved that dilemma.)

“Jesus lived in the Roman Empire and did not spend any time trying to change the Roman Empire. He just changed people, one at a time,” Hovind points out. “And I think the grassroots approach of changing people is bulletproof – I mean, there’s nothing you can do to stop that.”

 

He continues, saying the “second level of attack” would involve changing teachers. “Get the teachers converted or at least knowledgeable on the topic, where they know what the truth is,” he suggests. “Then it doesn’t matter what the textbook says, because the teacher’s not going to teach it anyway – or the teacher’s going to teach it and expose the error.”

 

Hovind says a third and more difficult plan of attack would be to change existing textbook requirements at the state level. …

Part I: grassroots. In other words, if “Dr. Dino” and Young Earth Creationists can convince enough people that Genesis is literal history, that should negate science. It’s a neat idea. Next time your medical doctor gives you a diagnosis you don’t like, take a vote among your friends. If they say the doctor was wrong, then he was, and the disease will magically disappear.

The let’s-vote-on-what’s-science “thinking” was also the subject of another amusing – and alarming – article by Rusty Benson posted by Agape Press, the Christian news service, on March 8, 2006. Mr. Benson began his comments with “Today three distinct theories of origins compete for public affirmation. Darwinian Evolution remains entrenched as the orthodox position of the cultural ruling class. Once challenged by Creationism, Evolution’s latest contender is a theory known as Intelligent Design (ID)” [italics added].

Like “Dr. Dino,” Mr. Benson apparently believes science should be a popularity contest akin to “American Idol.” That’s the amusing part. The alarming part came with his quoting Nancy Pearcey who mouths the same old Creationist-ID platitudes and argues that “Whatever a culture adopts as its creation story shapes everything else.” According to Ms. Pearcey’s “thinking,” if Creationism dressed up as Intelligent Design replaces science, Old Testament edicts should shape civil law. Everyone would do well to read Leviticus and Deuteronomy to see what a disaster that would be.

Leviticus 24:10 clearly commands, “Bring forth him that hath cursed without the camp; and let all that heard him lay their hands upon his head, and let all the congregation stone him.” Leviticus 20:14 sanctions burning sinners to death, while Leviticus 24:11-16 call for a community gathering in order to stone to death those who plant two different crops in the same field or wear garments made of two different kinds of threads.

Leviticus 15:19 commands that, during her menstrual cycle, a woman must be “put apart seven days: and whosoever toucheth her shall be unclean” and, of course, needs to be punished. Biblical law also decrees the death penalty for those who work on the Sabbath. Does that included medical professionals, police officers and fire fighters? What about “religious leaders” who work the Sabbath for power and profit?

Deuteronomy provides a veritable litany of capital crimes. Chapter 22 verse 21 states that unless the parents of a bride can provide proof of her virginity, “then they shall bring the young woman out to the entrance of her father’s house and the men of her town shall stone her to death.” There go second marriages, which “born again” Christians are good at.

On September 8, 2004 the Christian marketing-research Barna Group issued a report entitled “Born Again Christians Just As Likely to Divorce As Are Non-Christians.” It documented that “among married born again Christians, 35% have experienced a divorce. That figure is identical to the outcome among married adults who are not born again: 35%.” Barna also documented that “nearly one-quarter of the married ‘born agains’ (23%) get divorced two or more times.” No doubt more than a few of those multiple divorces among born-again Christians reported by the Barna Group involved adultery, also a capital crime according to the Bible.

One of Mr. Beson’s final “thoughts” clearly demonstrates the hypocrisy and irrational theocratic “thinking” of Creationists and IDers:

If evolution continues as our culture’s official orthodoxy, Christians can only expect the complete secularization in all areas from education to entertainment, from philosophy to politics. And with the natural implications that human beings are neither accountable nor responsible, the future is likely to be one in which raw power rules. [italics added]

Public education, philosophy and politics are inherently and must remain “secular,” unless America is a theocracy. And the idea that secularists cannot be “accountable nor responsible” is prima facie ludicrous, not to mention insulting.

Benson’s faulty assumption is that personal morality stems solely from the (man-made) dogma of organized religion. Gresham Riley, former president of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and president emeritus of Colorado College, addressed the subject in an OpEd in The Philadelphia Inquirer, December 4, 2003:

Religion is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for morality. …

 

It is not a necessary condition as evidenced by the existence of moral systems that do not depend on religious belief at all. Utilitarianism (one ought to do what produces the greatest good for the greatest number) is one example, and the Platonic belief that moral principles are as objective and true as mathematical and scientific knowledge is another. Parenthetically, Platonic thought was the basis for many of the Enlightenment ideas of our Founding fathers, including the self-evident (to them) moral precept that all men are created equal.

 

Neither is religion a sufficient condition for moral behavior. If it were, we would not encounter so many examples of devoutly religious individuals – and of prominent religious groups – engaged in acts most people believe to be immoral. As for individuals, we have the distressing case of pedophilic Catholic priests and the suicide bombings by followers of Islam who think that killing innocents is justified on religious grounds. As for religious groups, we had evangelical Protestants who provided biblical justifications for a segregated South, and closer in time we have a Catholic hierarchy who created and sustained a culture of protection in which people were sacrificed for institutional image.

As for Benson’s last point – “the [secularist] future is likely to be one in which raw power rules” – the Christian Right already relies on and is a master of using “raw power” – in the form of powerful lobbying groups such as Focus on the Family, the Traditional Values Coalition, the American Family Association, and the Family Research Council – to maintain its drive for theocratic rule. Is this the place to reiterate the old cliché about the “pot calling the kettle black”?

Part II: convert the teachers. In other words, encourage teachers to ignore their academic discipline and professional responsibilities, and teach their personal religious beliefs instead. No doubt David Horowitz would support that idea and call it “academic freedom.” Mr. Horowitz’s version of “academic freedom” is very much like Danny the Dinosaur’s lessons in the DAL cartoons and “Dr. Dino’s” view of textbooks.

Having had some success bullying teachers and redefining “knowledge,” “science” and “education” in the public schools, college and university professors are now Horowitz’s targets. Examine the FrontPageMag.com website, especially the “I’d rather hunt with Dick than ride with Ted” ad for CafePress.com’s “RightWing Stuff.

Horowitz’s “Students for Academic Freedom” campaign says its goal is to “end the political abuse of the university and to restore integrity to the academic mission as a disinterested pursuit of knowledge.” But what Mr. Horowitz is really doing is perverting “diversity” and “academic freedom” in order to destroy knowledge and education by encouraging Christian fundamentalists and ultra-conservative students to strike out – legally and with impunity – at anyone who disagrees with or challenges their dogmatic views.

Part III: change the textbooks. Who needs facts in textbook anyway? Kansas showed us the way: “Kansas has become a world capital of redefinition. In November [2005], the state school board redefined “science” to make Kansas schools safe for intelligent design and allow (or coerce?) teachers to teach ID. Science, in Kansas at least, no longer is limited to the study of natural phenomena” [links added]. Not surprisingly, “Kansas ranks last in science.”

Alabama is a close second in returning education to medieval levels. The state has a “warning label” about evolution in the science textbooks used in its public schools:

Science textbooks in Alabama public schools will continue to warn students that controversy surrounds the theory of evolution. The Alabama Board of Education recently agreed unanimously to retain an evolution disclaimer that has been in state biology textbooks for four years. The insert refers to evolution as a “controversial theory” on the origins of life. [link added]

Alabama is also the home of state Rep. Gerald Allen who’s crusaded to censor – as in remove from schools and public libraries – “gay literature” and other literature that includes gay or lesbian characters, or any gay content no matter how small. When asked what he’d do with all the works by gay and lesbian authors, and all the other works that refer to homosexuals and homosexuality, Rep. Allen said, “I guess we dig a big hole and dump them in and bury them.” Does that include dictionaries? They also mention “gay,” “homosexual,” and “lesbian.”

The March 6, 2006 Agape Press article about “Dr. Dino” concluded with a notice: “Later this month, Hovind will be holding a two-day seminar at the Pennsylvania high school a federal judge recently barred from mentioning intelligent design in biology class.” That seminar is being brought to the Dover High School by Michael Marcavage’s Repent America: “The two-day seminar will be held in the auditorium of the Dover Area High School on Friday, March 17 at 6:30 p.m. and Saturday, March 18 at 10:30 a.m. The event is open to the public and admission is free.”

According to Doron Taussig’s City Paper cover story about the Repent America leader, “Marcavage’s full-time job is running Repent America (his income, he says, comes from ‘donations from individuals and churches’).” Given the wide variety of Repent America’s activities and sponsored events, “donations” must be good these days.

Despite his artfully worded rejoinder to the City Paper article –

Response from Mr. Marcavage…

 

Serving the King

 

A recent statement published in City Paper, in a tabloid-like fashion, quoted me in suggesting that my desire is to have homosexuals and other sinners put to death. In regards to the accuracy of the quotation, it is clear that it was not published in its entirety and was my response to a theological question, which was off the record. Sadly, this has led others to promote the quotation in a false light. So, on the record, I want to make it clear, as it was even included in that printed quotation, that I do not desire that homosexuals be put to death but rather proclaim what the Scripture says in Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

 

I believe that homosexual behavior is sin and cannot force any person to accept this message, but can only warn. I confessed in the City Paper quotation, as I do so now, that I am guilty of violating God’s law but have repented and accepted the payment for sin, Jesus Christ. Furthermore, I do not act in hatred toward any person, including the homosexual, but I go to those willing to listen with the same love that was extended to me. If I did not love, I would stay in a church building.

 

Michael Marcavage

Director, Repent America

 

Ed: City Paper stands by the veracity of Taussig’s article and reporting.

– some of Mr. Marcavage’s theologically-phrased “beliefs” about homosexuality found more forthright expression in those of a “Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Ohio [who] wants to make homosexual behavior a capital crime punishable by the death penalty.” The World Net Daily article went on to describe the political agenda of Merrill Keiser Jr.:

“Just like we have laws against murder, we have laws against stealing, we have laws against taking drugs – we should have laws against immoral conduct,” Keiser told WTOL-TV in Toledo. …

 

“I believe that the United States has been moved in a Godless direction by the courts,” he told the Sandusky Register. …

 

Keiser told the Register the United States should make conversion to Christianity part of the war on terror to teach Muslims the error of their choice in religion.

 

The candidate also decries evolution, saying it is contrary to the Declaration of Independence.

 

“The teaching of evolution works against the liberties we have in the United States,” he told the paper. If a person believe[s] in evolution, he or she “has no rights,” he’s quoted saying.

No doubt Mr. Keiser was displeased with the Ohio Board of Education that voted 11 to 4 on February 14, 2006

to toss out a mandate that 10th-grade biology classes include critical analysis of evolution and an accompanying model lesson plan, dealing the intelligent design movement its second serious defeat in two months.

 

The board, which became the first in the nation to single out evolution for special scrutiny under the academic standards it adopted in 2002, stripped the language from the curriculum partly out of fear of a lawsuit in the wake of a December ruling by a federal judge that teaching intelligent design in the Dover, Pa., public schools was unconstitutional. [link added]

But the Ohio candidate can rest assured. His state amended its constitution to legalize discrimination against gay and lesbian citizens, and is generally quite mean-spirited when it comes to homosexuals and their well-being: “An Ohio legislator is asking a court to declare Miami University is violating the state Constitution by providing benefits to the same-sex partners of faculty and staff.”

And George W. Bush’s home state is doing its part: “The murders of two gay men in the past week has left the city’s [Dallas, TX] gay community concerned about safety. In the past two years at least eight other gay men have been slain with only two arrests.” It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that all the anti-gay rhetoric coming from the Christian Right and ultra-conservatives plays a role in this violence. As American Public University professor of health sciences and psychology John D. Moore noted in a March 8, 2004 Advocate.com article,

When President George W. Bush decided to publicly embrace a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, cloaking his remarks in the guise of religion, he psychologically violated millions upon millions of gay and lesbian youth around the nation as well as the many millions more who are their parents and relatives. In short, Mr. Bush has made it fashionable to declare “open season” on a segment of our society. Make no mistake – his intolerant message was quite clear: “You and your family are not part of the American family.” …

 

Consider what one 20-year-old student wrote in an essay about this topic in a class I instruct on gender psychology: “I have beaten up faggots before, and I used to feel guilty—not anymore! Bush says fags don’t count, so I guess it’s cool to do it.” …

“Dr. Dino” wants people to stop thinking and believe the Earth is 6000 years old and dinosaurs went on a cruise with Noah. Merrill Keiser Jr. wants gay and lesbian Americans sentenced to death ad majorem gloriam Dei. Ignorance, religion and politics are indeed a familiar trinity, and they sell pizzas too:

Notoriously-homophobic Domino’s Pizza founder Thomas S. Monaghan is making plans to build his own city [Ave Maria] in central Florida, basing his government on the principles of the Roman Catholic Church. …

 

No adult bookstores will be allowed, pharmacies will not carry condoms or birth control pills, and cable television will have no X-rated channels, to create a better living environment for people. If Monaghan wants to help people live a better life, we suggest he stop selling people his boxed heart-attack kits which he refers to as “pizza,” and instead sell people actual food. Actual pizza would even be acceptable. [italics added]

Monaghan has backtracked a bit – “I would say I just misspoke” – but is also having his lawyers review “legal issues surrounding his original ideas” that included banning gays and lesbians from his city.

And speaking of the “principles” of the Roman Catholic Church upon which Monaghan wants to base his city’s government,

The Roman Catholic archdiocese of Dublin published a report Wednesday that says 102 of its priests – more than 3.5 percent of the total – are suspected of sexually or physically abusing at least 350 children since 1940, the biggest such admission to date in Ireland.

 

The office of Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said it was publishing its findings ahead of the expected formation later this month of a government-appointed commission to investigate the history and handling of such abuse throughout Ireland. This predominantly Catholic nation has been rocked by waves of church sex-abuse scandals since 1994.

The Boston archdioceses was among the worst in America for covering-up child abuse perpetrated by priests, yet Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney – who’s got designs on the White House – is determined to find a way to exempt Catholic Charities from the state’s anti-discrimination law that requires children be placed with qualified adoptive parents regardless of those parents’ sexual orientation.

The exemption was requested by the state’s Catholic bishops. Their “reasoning” was that the law violated their “religious freedom” and was contrary to Catholic principles. One has to wonder where those principles were when Catholic bishops in Massachusetts and across the country were illegally covering-up decades of child abuse and pedophilia perpetrated by priests the bishops kept shifting from diocese to diocese enabling them to continue their abuses.

Instead of eyeing the White House, Mitt Romney should set his sights on becoming mayor of Monaghan’s city. Merrill Keiser Jr. would be an excellent Attorney General for the city. And “Dr. Dino” could serve as its Secretary of Education, with Horowitz as Under Secretary to make sure none of that “liberal” logic or rationality creeps in to pervert Ave Marie’s “principles.”

NB: The early Catholic Church solved the Adam-erection-lust-sin problem by decreeing that only-recently-fallen Adam’s penis was akin to his leg. All he had to do was will it “up” and it went up: no lust or eroticism required, hence no “sin.”
 

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