You might remember this little biology quiz that made the rounds of the interwebs earlier this year; we used it back in April with a Sundays With The Christianists post on a Christian biology textbook. As we mentioned at the time, the quiz is really real, and it originated from a private Christian school in South Carolina, Blue Ridge Christian Academy, which was using a DVD from creationist entrepreneur Ken Ham, the cheerful liar behind Kentucky's "Creation Museum" and "Ark Encounter."
And now, here's your Nice Time: Due to insufficient fundraising, Blue Ridge Christian Academy will not be opening for the current school year. The publicity surrounding the quiz helped them raise some money, but God did not inspire enough donors to raise the $200,000 they needed.
Nice Time? Zoom, You might ask, how can you be so cynical and jaded and living up the ass of the establishment? Haha, yes, we are all of those things! But we are also more than a little bit happy that, for now at least, children in one town won't be given a quiz with this second page:
We're especially in love with that last question and answer:
The next time someone says the earth is billions (or millions) of years old, what can you say?Were you there?
This is a cornerstone of Ken Ham's argument against evolution, which is kind of weird considering that the Book of Genesis isn't exactly a verifiable first-person account, either (but God says it's true, so yadda yadda arglebargle). As Hemant Mehta points out, now there is at least a chance that the students from Blue Ridge Christian Academy will
find a way to get an education -- a real education -- from people who understand and respect how science really works instead of from those who get their knowledge from Ken Ham’s video series. Or, more likely, they’ll be homeschooled… but could it really get much worse?
And who knows, maybe, just maybe, some of the kids who would otherwise be taking this test at Blue Ridge Christian Academy may go on the interwebs and find P.Z. Myers' brilliant essay answering that idiotic "were you there?" question with Real Science.
That would truly be some Nice Time.
