Libby Anne did a “Why I am an atheist” post a little while ago, and in it she mentioned how she’d been brought up to believe Ken Ham and his creationist nonsense, but when she actually started looking beyond the inbred, incestuous creationist literature, she discovered that the evidence actually rested with evolution. Ken Ham noticed that post, and complained about it. Libby Anne wasn’t a True Christian™, he said; if she’d been exposed to more AiG propaganda she wouldn’t have left the fold; she was lost when she went to an evil secular college. And, of course, the standard defense:

It’s not that “we know the Bible is true because young earth creationism is true,” but rather because the Bible is true we can believe what God said in Genesis about the time frame in which He created.

The evidence doesn’t matter. The bible says it, therefore they believe it.

Libby Anne does a fine job defending her position, and she sees right through the dogmatists at Answers in Genesis:

And the solution Ken Ham and Dr. Purdom make? Double down. That’s pretty much it. Teach the same things, just more. Oh, and isolate yourself and your children from other points of view – oh the dangers of the state college or “compromised” Christian college! Interestingly, I see the same thing happening with all too many homeschool families. They say their goal is to “teach god’s truth” and “shelter” their children from bad influences, but what they really mean is indoctrinate and isolate. And that, quite simply, is what Ken Ham and Dr. Purdom are advocating. The funny thing is, I don’t plan to do any such thing with my daughter. I’m not afraid of her hearing other perspectives or arguments or evidence. I’m not afraid of her hearing and digesting different viewpoints. My goal is not to teach her to believe one specific thing, but to open her mind and teach her to think critically and come to her own conclusions. Ken Ham and Dr. Purdom, though, refuse to do that. Because, apparently, exposing children to a variety of viewpoints and teaching them to think critically and make their own decisions is dangerous.

That’s exactly right. How you educate your kids isn’t a matter of hiding them away from everything in the world you don’t like, because eventually they’ll grow up and look around (unless you’ve done a really good job of stunting their minds) and discover it all anyway. Expose them to it all, fearlessly. Teach them how to think, not what to think. And then what happens?

They discover that creationism is a lie, and science opens doors to the whole wide universe.