How to be a "scientific creationist" in oil-rich Texas.

And as I'm sure you're aware, Commander Chimpy has been making the news lately, extolling the virtues of "Intelligent Design" or, as we here at CC HQ like to call it, "moronic fundamentalist horseshit."

While the proponents of ID are adamant that they're not strict literal, Biblical creationists, it's obvious to anyone with the intellect of a pet rock that ID is really a stealth vehicle to get creationism into the public school system, so it behooves us to ask -- how exactly does one embrace a strict, 6000-year-old Earth, Noachian deluge, Biblical interpretation of history while living in a state whose economy is based on oil? You know, the stuff that took millions and millions of years to form. That stuff.

You'd think that trying to reconcile those two belief systems would cause no end of cognitive dissonance, but you'd be wrong. There is, in fact, quite a simple way to deal with this. You become an outrageous hypocrite.

Take the case of one Dr. Andrew Snelling, once (and perhaps still, I haven't bothered to check since, well, I really don't care enough to keep up with him) a member of the Creation Science Foundation of Australia (CSF) and (here's the good part) a holder of a BSc (Hons) and PhD, both in areas related to (oh, you knew this was coming, didn't you?) geology.

In fact, Snelling's Ph.D. is in the area of uranium mineralization, which kind of suggests you have to accept basic things like, oh, radiometric dating techniques. And yet, despite his academic credentials, Snelling was simultaneously a prominent member of the CSF, arguing on behalf of a very, very, very young Earth. You know -- Biblically young. And however did Snelling manage that? Apparently, he simply severed the two halves of his brain, as one Dr. Alex Ritchie explains here.

As Ritchie so clearly explains, while Snelling adhered faithfully to his organization's fundamentalist, creationist doctrine, this didn't stop him from accepting geology consulting gigs, where he got to write stuff like:

"The Archaean basement consists of domes of granitoids and granitic gneisses (the Nanambu Complex), the nearest outcrop being 5 km to the north. Some of the lowermost overlying Proterozoic metasediments were accreted to these domes during amphibolite grade regional metamorphism (5 to 8 kb and 550° to 630° C) at 1870 to 1800 Myr. Multiple isoclinal recumbent folding accompanied metamorphism."

For the non-geologist, "Myr." means millions of years. Yes, Snelling really is the prototypical creationist hypocrite, spreading the fundamentalist gospel to the gullible masses, but lapsing back into mainstream geology when he has to make a buck.

Now, you'd think that someone who's been busted so thoroughly would at least have the common decency to be, you know, embarrassed. Ah, but not Snelling, who defends his hypocrisy here (emphasis added):

When I came to write the paper on the Koongarra uranium deposit, it was at the request of the mining company who knew exactly where I stood. The paper was for a book on Australian ore deposits with an editor who had strict guidelines as to how the papers should be written. When I wrote the paper I had no option but to take the standard conventional terminology, and what all the critics have overlooked is that I fully reference all the comments that they are slamming me with. In other words, as far as I was concerned I was making it perfectly clear that this is what everyone else believes, and what is the standard wisdom about this ore deposit and its geological setting.

Translation: "I didn't believe a word of what I was writing, but I took money for writing it anyway." Oh, my. What would Jesus do?

Anyway, you get the idea. When it comes to strict, Biblical creationism, it might be entertaining to ask those Texans where they think the oil came from. Better yet, it might be fun to check into what they do for a living.