[Thanks to JS for PACE materials.]

Ken Ham is right again.  I’m no creationist, much less a young-earth type, but Mr. Ham’s Answers In Genesis organization has done it again.  As they did with their museum, AIG has managed to overcome the traditional stylistic weirdnesses of creationist outreach.

Weird science, but good-looking graphics…

Ham has bragged recently about the high-class materials his group has cranked out.  In answer to the new version of Cosmos, Answers In Genesis has produced classroom materials to rebut the claims of the popular science show.  As Ham put it,

The AiG graphics department and publications team did a great job designing Questioning Cosmos. Its full-color glossy pages are packed with illustrations, questions for discussion, and detailed answers and explanations to help parents, teachers, and youth group leaders teach young people (and adults!) how to discern what observational science is presented in the Cosmos series and what material is best described as an evolutionary infomercial.

Even those of us who want more evolution taught in public schools must admit that Mr. Ham is right.  The anti-Cosmos materials don’t look any different than mainstream school texts.  Just as Answers In Genesis has done with its museum, this outreach effort has erased some of the obvious outward signs of the non-mainstream nature of creationist science.

It used to be easy.  Creationists used to produce school materials that looked hokey, weird, old-fashioned.  Consider just a few samples from Accelerated Christian Education.  As these pictures show, not only is the science much different from mainstream science, but the workbooks themselves seem obviously out of date.  The graphics are weird, the comics are jerky, and the lettering looks homemade.

Creation science used to look as if it were created in six days…

Gee whillikers!

That’s just not the case with AIG’s anti-Cosmos materials.  The graphic design is very similar to the production values we’d expect from mainstream school materials.  And that matters more than we might think.  Parents, school administrators, and, most important, children tend to judge books by their covers.  The shoddy production values of cheap creationist pamphlets used to make them less attractive.

In the case of Answers In Genesis, mainstream science-ed materials can no longer count on such weak and ugly competition.