re: #511 Spare O’Lake

I heard an interview with Richard Dawkins this morning on CBC’s The Current. He had a couple of really cool similes:
1. Believing that the earth is 6,000 years old is like believing that the Holocaust never happened.
2. Believing that the earth is 6,000 years old is like believing that the distance between NYC and LA is only 28 feet.

Dawkins appears to be conflating two distinct ideas, both of which appear in “The Greatest Show on Earth”, but in different places. In that book, he compares the plight of science teachers who are trying to teach evolution with a hypothetical situation where a history teacher is required to “teach the controversy” about the holocaust, i.e. the alternative theory that it never happened. Later on, he mentions the distance analogy. I did not get the impression at all that he is saying that creationists are equal to holocaust deniers.