The Penguin

pretension 1 [pri- ten -sh uh  n] noun the laying of a claim to something. a claim or title to something. Often pretensions. a claim made, especially indirectly or by implication, to some quality, merit, or the like: They laughed at my pretensions to superior judgment. a claim to dignity, importance, or merit. pretentiousness . the act of pretending or alleging. an allegation of doubtful veracity. a pretext. pretentious [pri- ten -sh uh  s] See more synonyms for pretentious on Thesaurus.com adjective characterized by assumption of dignity or importance, especially when exaggerated or undeserved: a pretentious, self-important waiter. making an exaggerated outward show; ostentatious. full of pretense or pretension ; having no factual basis; false.    (From dictionary.com ) As you know, I've struggled with comics as my medium of choice - mostly due to their perception (yeah yeah, I know...blame sokeyity ).

Creationism is a funny thing. Even more than Flat Earthism, it personifies Karl Popper's definition of pseudoscience , in which all evidence is bent to accommodate a presupposition (true science, meanwhile, crafts a hypothesis and then tries like hell to disprove that hypothesis). I grew up a Creationist, reading Creationist dinosaur books by the venerable Duane Gish ; though I now reject Creationism as not even remotely connected to reality, I still have a bit of a soft spot for its loopy tenacity. Creationism comes in as many flavors as American Christianity, but I'll attempt to provide a broad-brush definition of the Young-Earth Creationism I grew up with: in the modern American sense, this is an attempt to conform scientific understanding of life to a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis. It amounts to a wholesale rejection of mainstream evolutionary theory; Big Bang theory and the age of the universe (and by extension the age of the earth); and places the Chri