Tenebris

Christian dinosaur hunters dig for signs of Biblical dragons

In my mind the scariest thing happening in America today is the acceleration of the cultural movement that includes these people: Christian dinosaur hunters dig for signs of Biblical dragons.

Lecturing to a rapt audience of 20 like-minded Christians after a hard day in the field, Russ McGlenn, a self-styled amateur archaeologist and palaeontologist and head of Adventure Safaris, said: "Heavenly Father, we thank You for the evidence of a catastrophic flood event. We thank You for the time to study Your creation. Heavenly Father, we thank You for the evidence of a catastrophic flood event."

This movement represents a virulent strain of anti-science that, counter-intuitively, is also shared by the extreme left in the US and Europe. For evidence of beliefs every bit as preposterous and unprovable as the creationists', you need only drop by your nearest Whole Foods grocery store and peruse the headlines visible on the magazine rack at the checkout.

Does science fiction breed scientists?

A NYT article profiles Donna Shirley, a former NASA engineer who in her retirement is acting as curator of Paul Allen's new Science Fiction museum. She makes an interesting point:

Ms. Shirley hopes the museum will not only excite science fiction nostalgia, but also excite people about science. "People think, science fiction, that's kind of kooky," she said, "but actually science fiction is how a lot of people like me got into the engineering business or the space business or science."

Anecdotal evidence suggests to me that this is true. I was a science fiction and fantasy buff as an adolescent, moving from C.S. Lewis to Anne McCaffrey to Robert Heinlein and Frank Herbert. Not that I became a scientist or an engineer, of course. Perhaps the fantasy side won out in the end.