This cartoon from Answers in Genesis, shared on Facebook by Ken Ham and drawn to my attention by a friend, gets things precisely backwards in an important sense.

While it is true that what one thinks and considers outside of church will impact what happens inside it, that is neither surprising nor to be avoided.

But when it comes to wrapping someone in tentacles that keep them from seeing and hearing the truth when they encounter it, that is precisely what Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis do!

Any educator will tell you just how resistant students in classes can be if they have been indoctrinated with the falsehoods that Ham and others like him peddle about the Bible and the natural world.

And so I would love for a cartoonist to take the image and reverse it, to get it closer to reality. The tentacles of young-earth creationism reach into classrooms. Sometimes the attempt is made to do that quite directly despite the illegality of doing so. But even when there is no formal mention of young-earth creationism, its tentacles may be firmly wrapped around a student, keeping many (but not all, thankfully) from realizing that they have been lied to, even when they are presented with the overwhelming amount of evidence against the claims with which they have been indoctrinated.

I would also add (since it appears in the cartoon) that the idea of “millions of years” does not interfere with one's Christianity any more than heliocentrism does, unless it has been made a point of dogma, and someone has been told they have to choose between that and the Bible. And so this too is a reason why young-earth creationism deserves to be depicted as a scary monster with tentacles. It tells people that they must choose between conclusions to which evidence overwhelmingly points, and their Christian faith. And then when people choose between the two, young-earth creationists blame science or education rather than themselves. But they are the guilty ones, for having set up the false antithesis to begin with.