Via Pharyngula I learned about an internal fight amongst the so-called Young Earth Christians that resulted in Ken Ham (The head of Answers in Genesis and the person behind the creationist museum in Kentucky) being disinvited from a conference on home schooling. What struck me was how the other creationists decided that Ham should be kicked out. In their letter to him, they said, “The Board believes this to be the Lord’s will for our convention and searched the Scriptures for the mind of the Lord and the leadership of the Holy Spirit before arriving at this decision.” (My italics)

I became curious about how they did this. What exactly were they looking for? Where in the Bible would you find something about your god’s policy on home schooling conventions? What keywords would you use? Or do you randomly pick verses from the Bible, like a lottery, and then try to divine its meaning, like you would the entrails of a chicken in former times?

I suspect that although such Christians routinely use the language of ‘searching for the mind of god’, they arrive at their policy decisions based on more mundane considerations just the way other people do and throw in god as an afterthought to give them added weight.