Thanks to Todd Akin’s views on rape-based immaculate contraception, it has sometimes felt this week as if the papers and blogs were covering an 18th-century science fair—literally, as Gail Collins explained in a wonderful column yesterday about the colonial-era view that conception requires the uterus to be “in a state of delight.” (Wow, imagine the levels of performance anxiety the Founding Fathers had to deal with.)
In that spirit, and with NASA this week taking its new Mars rover Curiosity out for its first test-drive across whatever monochromatic plain or crater it landed on, I thought it would be interesting and—I’ll not feign journalistic or anthropological objectivity—fun to take a look at how Creationists view the possibility that Curiosity may dig up evidence of life on Mars, past or present. The human gift for discerning meaning in a void is always fascinating, as is our ability to construct ever-more jerry-rigged supports when evidence conflicts with our most passionate beliefs. You could even argue that forcing ancient creation myths to dovetail with modern scientific insights, or not, might be among the most human things we do—a Super Bowl of pretzel logic.
I should warn you that I am neither an exobiologist nor a theologian nor a member of a Kansas or Texas school board, so I am not an expert on this subject. But where the relevant texts are concerned, I do know how to read at an eighth-grade level, so here goes.
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