Recently I ran across a site called Flash Earth. You can choose from a number of maps. I was happily surprised to discover that one of the maps includes fairly recent data of 3ABN and the surrounding area — the only one that I’ve ever seen with such detail. You can view that here. If you click that click, and click again on the dark area in the middle to dismiss it, you will see a cross-hair in the middle, centered on 3ABN’s Production Center. The Call Center, Sound Center, Worship Center, and school are also visible. You can even see my apartment, but I’m not going to point it out. (Who knows who’s reading this?) If any of my friends are interested, they are welcome to e-mail me, and I’ll show you where it is. In the upper right corner is the little hick town of Thompsonville.

In April they ran this interesting map:

Where (and How) Evolution Is Taught In the US

The map is followed by a very long and emotional string of rants, remarks, rebuttals, insults, and statements regarding the various merits of evolution, intelligent design, creationism, and so forth. The comments are a little bit interesting to read, but they pretty much follow the usual formula.

The one thing about this map that most intrigued me is how many states the map maker designated as failing to meet pro-evolution educational standards. It was more than I would have expected.

What would be even more interesting to me would be a map superimposed on this one, showing the success of graduates from each of the respective states, in the various biology-related fields. This is because I believe that not only is creationism correct and evolution wrong, but also that those in biology-related fields who see the world from a creationist worldview have an edge in their fields. They know that living things are getting worse, not better; that, apart from disease and degeneration, natural foods are perfectly designed for consumption and nutrition, and not just coincidentally so; that life cannot be created in the lab (non-derivatively); and that the natural world is a complex, interrelated order, one whose checks and balances stem from divine purpose and not from random factors. All of these views align more naturally with divine creation (and subsequent sin and the Fall) than with a philosophy of naturalistic, materialistic evolutionary ascendancy.

The counter-view of the pro-evolution pundits, that creationists have a disadvantage in the scientific world, is sheer nonsense. This is particularly true in regards to anything that can be observed and reproduced. Creationists are just as capable of understanding and predicting outcomes of such things as bacterial mutation or the radioactive decay in rocks. It is true, naturally, that creationists have very different views of the conjectural or philosophical aspects of “science” (why we are here, how we got here, whether observable nature tells the full story of nature, etc.), but it is undeniably true that these aspects of science are just as irrelevant to a scientist’s success in the lab as they are untestable in the lab. In conclusion, it is crystal clear that the current battle in the American educational system between Darwinism and its own brand of heretics, is not about professionalism or intellectual power, but about philosophy and religious belief.

My own state, Illinois, apparently has a GDP comparable to Mexico.

The page also contains a number of spin-off maps, including one comparing life expectancies of states to those of other countries. Hmmm. Illnois is comparable to … Kuwait.