Creationist Bingo; a game for all scientists

When I first came across Creationism I simply laughed my head off and thought it must be a joke. I was working as an exploration geologists at the time in the fascinating Precambrian of the Richtersveld in NW Cape Province in South Africa. I read a review of The Genesis Flood in The Christian Graduate by A. N. Triton, who was in fact the late Oliver Barclay. “Olly” was far too gentle but I soon realised here was a supposedly serious book trying to prove the earth is only 6000 years old. as the youngest rocks I was mapping were only 600,000, 000 years old I found it absurd.

 

I didn’t think anymore about it until I went to L’abri in Switzerland the next year to study under Dr Francis Schaeffer, a founder of the Religious Right. His son-in-law suggested I should study the book along with other creationist books. I dismissed them as rubbish which did not go down and went off in a moody  with the books.

I found The Genesis flood very unsettling as it was presented as a scientific book, with photos, cross-sections and references. I ploughed getting more angry until I twigged what was wrong. The authors had cleverly and subtly misquoted so many scientific authorities so to undermine the whole of geological science. I realised the authors were a pair of Pinnochios

I read the other books I was recommended and found the same thing. Since then I have read more creationism than is good for my soul and found the same thing. Each book contained a selection of the same fallacious arguments repeated ad nauseam. Several decades some of those arguments have been dropped due to persistent criticism.

Yet today, what do we find? Creationist books/articles/blog/websites carry a similar set of creationist memes which appear at a distressing regularity. So much so you can play bingo with them as the game of creationist bingo shows;

all you need to do is to take a piece of creationist writing an tick off the argument in a box as it appears. You can shout out when you get a full horizontal or vertical line filled and shout even more when you get a “full House”.

O r else you can print it off and go to Facebook page dealing with creationism and see how long it takes to get a full house.

You could also put out a large pile of jellybeans or similar sweets and consume one every time you are called an atheist, compromiser, liberal or similar epithet. Your pile of sweets will soon disappear.

You can alos play a similar bingo with any form of pseudoscience whether it is anti-GMO, Anti-vaccers, anti-fracker, food freakos etc.

 

ENJOY and then do something sensible!