(A letter addressed to the Creation Science Foundation, June 1983. This transcription was taken from a carbon copy; it is unknown if the original was sent or published.)
Dear scoundrels of the Creation 'Science' Foundation,
I am writing in regards to the spurious material that you are currently disseminating and to set you straight on a few matters regarding the creation of the universe. I was made aware of your fatuous organisation by some of my younger associates who were passing around your pamphlets for a lark; giggling at your childish inaccuracies. I, on the other hand, find nothing even remotely funny about scientific illiteracy.
Your asinine claims of a 'young earth' are so readily dispelled, I am not going rebut them in a letter – do your own damned research! But if you want to persist with this vacuous notion, I challenge you to invest the bulk of your life savings in a mining venture which must be helmed by a 'young-earth' geologist, mapping the rocks using only the scriptures as his guide. Mining in Australia is a multi-billion dollar industry (and that’s just through the utility of geological assumptions which you claim are wrong by many orders of magnitude), one can only assume that your new creationist company will make more money than any geological enterprise in history! Any hesitance on your part to do exactly as I've just outlined will be interpreted as intellectual cowardice of the highest order.
I was almost unable to believe that your organisation is apparently unaware that the tale of old Noah and his boat is a trifle concocted for the amusement of children and not a serious biological text. As you are neither zoologist nor shipwright I can’t fathom as to how you feel qualified to have an opinion on the matter at all. And how are we even supposed to incorporate this hogwash into serious scientific research? Should we relocate the universities' zoology departments into the shipyards? A boat is merely a boat, and scrawling 'SCIENCE' on the hull does not transmute it into a coherent, logical hypothesis.You're jejune approximation of scholarship is embarrassing to the onlooker and you should be made aware of this in no uncertain terms.
You have been indulged by well-meaning, misguided peers for far too long. At the risk of shattering your clearly tenuous grasp on reality I nonetheless feel obliged to point out to you that Jack and the Beanstalk is not a treatise on botany and that Star Wars should not be consulted for matters astronomical.
I was vaguely aware that these anti-evolutionary ideas had become worryingly established amongst our American cousins, but I always thought that the Australian race were naturally selected (ha!) for a strain of common sense that inoculates us against this sort of nonsense.
Hang your head in shame sirs, your buffoonery is an affront to us all.
Yours in anger,
Felix Ookean
E. J. Banfield Marine Research Fellow
James Cook University of North Queensland, Townsville
Dear scoundrels of the Creation 'Science' Foundation,
I am writing in regards to the spurious material that you are currently disseminating and to set you straight on a few matters regarding the creation of the universe. I was made aware of your fatuous organisation by some of my younger associates who were passing around your pamphlets for a lark; giggling at your childish inaccuracies. I, on the other hand, find nothing even remotely funny about scientific illiteracy.
Your asinine claims of a 'young earth' are so readily dispelled, I am not going rebut them in a letter – do your own damned research! But if you want to persist with this vacuous notion, I challenge you to invest the bulk of your life savings in a mining venture which must be helmed by a 'young-earth' geologist, mapping the rocks using only the scriptures as his guide. Mining in Australia is a multi-billion dollar industry (and that’s just through the utility of geological assumptions which you claim are wrong by many orders of magnitude), one can only assume that your new creationist company will make more money than any geological enterprise in history! Any hesitance on your part to do exactly as I've just outlined will be interpreted as intellectual cowardice of the highest order.
I was almost unable to believe that your organisation is apparently unaware that the tale of old Noah and his boat is a trifle concocted for the amusement of children and not a serious biological text. As you are neither zoologist nor shipwright I can’t fathom as to how you feel qualified to have an opinion on the matter at all. And how are we even supposed to incorporate this hogwash into serious scientific research? Should we relocate the universities' zoology departments into the shipyards? A boat is merely a boat, and scrawling 'SCIENCE' on the hull does not transmute it into a coherent, logical hypothesis.You're jejune approximation of scholarship is embarrassing to the onlooker and you should be made aware of this in no uncertain terms.
You have been indulged by well-meaning, misguided peers for far too long. At the risk of shattering your clearly tenuous grasp on reality I nonetheless feel obliged to point out to you that Jack and the Beanstalk is not a treatise on botany and that Star Wars should not be consulted for matters astronomical.
I was vaguely aware that these anti-evolutionary ideas had become worryingly established amongst our American cousins, but I always thought that the Australian race were naturally selected (ha!) for a strain of common sense that inoculates us against this sort of nonsense.
Hang your head in shame sirs, your buffoonery is an affront to us all.
Yours in anger,
Felix Ookean
E. J. Banfield Marine Research Fellow
James Cook University of North Queensland, Townsville
