You have mentioned "KBW" at least twice now, and it just occurred to me that I don't know what it means. Were you waiting for me to ask, or have you already told me and I forgot?
I just remembered that we had an experience with some pollsters once. It was the Nielsen people, the ones who make up the ratings for the TV shows. First we got something in the mail, decided that we weren't interested, and threw it away. Then we got a phone call, they wanted to ask us a few questions to determine if we were eligible to participate. My hypothetical wife told them that we weren't going to participate, so there was no point in us answering their questions. The Nielsen lady didn't seem to understand what the word "no" meant, because she just kept going on with her spiel until my hypothetical wife hung up on her. Then we got something else in the mail, it was this TV log that we were supposed to keep for a week and send it in when we were done. Enclosed were five brand new one dollar bills which, I suppose were intended to make us feel obligated or something. We kept they money and threw the papers away, which is what my hypothetical wife told them the next time they called. They didn't contact us any more after that.
The reason that I remember all this stuff, but don't remember where and when I read or heard it, is because I didn't know there was going to be a test on it some day, so I never wrote any of it down. This is just stuff that I found interesting at the time, I wasn't planning to argue about it on the internet. Now, when you say something that reminds me of it, I try to dredge it up as best I can. I suppose I could check it our on Wiki, but that would take time away from our discussions. Anyway, like I said, I don't necessarily believe all of it, I just think it might add something to the discussion, so I throw it out for whatever it's worth.
Like that Noah's Ark movie I told you about. The TV Guide said that it was about somebody who had allegedly found the remains of the actual ark up on Mt. Ararat in Turkey, which is where the Bible says that it grounded as the flood waters receded. I wanted to see exactly what it was they had found, and why they thought it must be the remains of Noah's Ark. It turned out that there had been several different eyewitness accounts of finding the ark over the years, each in a slightly different location, and that none of the finders were able to find it again when they came back later with other people. The show said that this was because the wreckage was encased in glacial ice, which moves a little each year, and that drifting snow may have periodically covered and uncovered it. Wait, it gets better!
The Bible says that, in the beginning, God separated the waters upon the Earth, the waters beneath the Earth, and the waters above the Earth from each other. To the casual reader, this might be interpreted as referring to surface water, underground water that can be tapped with wells, and atmospheric water vapor, or clouds. To the fundamentalist, however, if the Bible says that there were waters above the Earth, it means liquid water, not water vapor. If the Bible had meant water vapor, it would have said water vapor. This led some people to formulate the Canopy of Water Theory. See, there was this canopy of liquid water that was somehow suspended above the Earth, and it was the collapse of this canopy that caused the Great Flood. In referring to this flood, the Bible says that "the floodgates of Heaven opened". A lot of guys would think this was just a poetic way of saying that it rained a lot but, to the fundamentalist, it means that there were literal floodgates in Heaven, which opened up and dumped the Canopy of Water upon the Earth. The Bible also says that "the wellsprings of the deep burst forth". According to the movie, this means the weight of all that Heavenly water hitting the Earth at once pushed down so hard on the land that it caused the underground water table to come gushing up to the surface. All this water sloshing around caused massive mud flows that imprisoned prehistoric plants and animals, which is where all those fossils came from. Those species would have all became extinct anyway, because the Canopy of Water had a greenhouse effect on the climate and, now that it was gone, there was this global cooling that the dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures could never have tolerated.
I know that you think this is all bull shit, and I agree, but it's logical bull shit. If you believe that every word of the Bible is literally true, then this whole spiel makes perfect sense. It has to, otherwise one might be drawn to the conclusion that every word in the Bible is not literally true, and we certainly can't have that. Many sincerely religious people believe that the Bible is a collection of history, mythology, poetry, and creative story telling. While they believe in the general principles that the Bible teaches, they are pretty sure that God did not create the world in six days, and that the world is much more than six thousand years old. Then again, there are people who believe that the Bible is just bull shit. Of course they haven't actually read it, they don't have to because they just know it's bull shit, not unlike the people who have never read anything about the Theory of Evolution and just know that it's bull shit.
P.S. Added 4/27/14: Okay, I get it, KBW stands for Ken's Better World. Right? Also, in case I didn't make myself clear, the point of the Noah's Ark story was that people can rationalize almost anything if they set their minds to it.
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