From PZ Myers at Pharyngula:
The NY Times has an article on Ken Ham’s Ark. It always bugs me how the NYT blurs everything down to a bland grey smear (except for the conservatives on the op-ed page, who are encouraged to be stupid), but it’s got a few choice bits served up in their usual neutral, flavorless sauce.
You have to remember that Young Earth Creationism is a freakishly bizarre and recent sect of Christianity — it goes against the grain of the broader beliefs of most Christian denominations, but has grown into de facto popularity because its proponents are really good at claiming that they are the True Bible Believers. Their great trick was to subvert the naive proposition held by most Christian groups that the Bible is a good book, true in every word, by actually pointing to what’s written and saying that you have to believe this sentence fragment literally in order to be Christian. Those of us who actually think about what it says and compare it to the real world become atheists; those who don’t think much at all about science shrug their shoulders and decide they must believe the Earth is only 6000 years old, and no way was my grandpa an ape.