Over at Pharyngula PZ is providing a forum for Bible literalists to expose their ignorance. It’s a hoot. I’ve droned on and on about so-called intelligent design, which is a fancy word for creationism. I haven’t really beaten up on the Bible literalists because it is so fucking crazy that it isn’t really worthy of mention. Yet, here I go mentioning it.

To say the earth is 6000 years old is completely nuts and ignornant and stupid and crazy and idiotic. There are about a dozen entire branches of science that a 6000 year old earth is at odds with. These include geology, biology, astrophysics and archeology.

The thing that PZ sums up really well is the following:

You know, creationists who have almost no education in the relevant fields…are perfectly comfortable with accusing virtually every biologist in the world of being incompetent, of knowing nothing, of fraud, of practicing a religion rather than science, etc., etc., etc. It’s kind of appalling, actually; most of us would be embarrassed if we were caught lecturing crazily on some subject of which we know nothing by someone who had dedicated years of their life to studying that subject. But not creationists.

To all the creationists I would say, go get a PhD in evolutionary biology and then tell us about your crazy theory. For those that think the earth is 6000 years old, go get a PhD in geology and then tell us about your crazy theory. If you are not an expert on these subjects you have no business coming up with crazy theories.

As an astronomer of sorts, I can tell you that we would not see all the things we see in the sky if the universe was 6000 years old. Certainly we wouldn’t see the Andromeda Galaxy, which is no less than 2,000,000 light-years away, not to mention the kazillion of galaxies we see in the Hubble Deep Field.

The Bible is not a science book. That should be obvious to everyone.