Normally, people try to at least learn a little bit about a given subject (say, science) before they start piping up about it.

Not so Illinois Review editor Fran Eaton.

I’m all for the Big Guy Upstairs, but I don’t think he literally created Adam out of mud just because that’s what folks talked about around the campfire a few millenia ago. These were folks who likely had no knowledge of medicine, let alone the Hippocratic Oath … which hadn’t yet been invented.

Not so Fran Eaton. As Arch explains she apparently lacks a junior high level understanding of biology. And because she doesn’t understand, she exclaims that she must be right. In other words, she does not think, therefore she’s adamant that the Biblical allegory is fact and that she was made from mud and one of Adam’s ribs.

Again, turning to Arch, even the Pope — conservative as his German self is — claims that such creationist, evolution-denying folks are pagans. My own pastor growing up (I’m one of the frozen chosen, so Lutheran it’s pronounced Lute’rhin) always put the ars scientifica in laymen’s terms like this: God is omnipotent, yet He laid out knowledge for mankind to discover, each bit of understanding coming in its own time.

Thus, God knew the Americas were there before the Aleutian ice bridge allowed man to travel into early Alaska, the Vikings crossed the north Atlantic and Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492. God knew that vitamin C fought off colds and rickets before Limeys took to those same seas with their stocks of citrus. His hand was there guiding Galileo, Newton, Salk, Einstein, Darwin and even Watson as they made their “discoveries”.

In my pastor’s view, the Lord left the knowledge there to be discovered by mankind. Because of mankind’s loss of innocence (see: snake + apple), we would then be faced with a choice — use those discoveries for good or ill. I could go on. They were fascinating discussion for a nerd in a parochial school.

And yet, for all those discoveries and the scientific reasoning backing up those theories, they are all dismissed by those who refuse to spend a few minutes actually reading and trying to learn something…

And those of us who do have a junior high level of biology understanding, well of course we get called “elitists” by the likes of those whom the Pope calls pagans. Whole lotta name-calling there.

(This whole sad tale of Ms. Eaton’s failed education started as a squabble between generally reasonable conservative Dan at Move On and Shut Up when he called out conserv-o-partisan Ms. Eaton’s vacuous railing about how racism proves evolution doesn’t exist … or something. Dan called her a “shrill beast” and her “Who Me?” response ended up proving his point, and digging her own hole of evident ineptitude deeper.)