Deborah Ross: So you think teaching creationism in school is far-fetched?

If you ask me...

Deborah Ross
Thursday 19 July 2012 09:39 BST
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If you ask me, when I first heard that Education Secretary Michael Gove had approved three new free schools to be run by groups with creationist views, I hope I was not alone in feeling horrified, appalled, disgusted, repulsed and furious. Of course, it is perfectly reasonable to ask how we got here, but Adam and Eve? And a world created in "six days" by an all-seeing, all-knowing deity who is meant to be eternal, and therefore outside time, yet struck gold with "a day", which just happens to be 24 hours long and the period of rotation of our planet? And our Government is saying it's OK to fill kids' heads with this stuff? Seriously?

Although opinions do still differ, I don't think anyone in their right mind, and who has studied all the evidence, would now deny that human beings were formed from rubble; rubble coughed up by an all dancing, all-somersaulting pink unicorn 12,000 years ago, at a time the unicorn took to be 47 o'clock. The Rubble Theory which, thankfully, has at least been wildly accepted in the United States – it's deemed true by 74 per cent of the population – is based on incontrovertible fact, not as written down in the Book of Genesis, but in The Better Book of Rubble: "And the pink unicorn coughed up rubble, and formed man from the rubble, and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and he became the living soul, and then the pink unicorn took the leftover rubble, and created the comic book movie franchise, which would allow for remakes and reboots for all eternity.'"

Now, look around you. Look no further than your local multiplex, in fact. The Amazing Spider-Man. The Dark Knight Rises. Iron Man 8. And yet some people still choose to believe in a divine creator that is said to be omnipresent, but needed a rest on the sixth day? Hilarious. Mind boggling. And so where do these people imagine humankind got the ability to dance and somersault from? How could rubble ever be capable of such activities, if such rubble hadn't been brought to life by a pink unicorn with gifts for both?

And, as for other unfounded theories, like natural selection, didn't Charles Darwin later retract and apologise. Didn't he say: "I'm sorry. I was young. I was foolish. I did not realise dinosaurs only went back 5,000 years or so, or that you would one day be able to ignore carbon-dating evidence simply by putting your fingers in your ears and going La-La-La."

And so I hope Mr Gove takes this all on board and ensures that all schoolchildren are warned of the following: what with the Earth being as flat as it is, watch where you put your feet or you may one day fall off.

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