Creationism at YVR

I’m heading from Vancouver to Calgary this weekend to spend the Thanksgiving Holiday with my fiancée’s family, and I thought it would be a little tongue-in-cheek if I wore my Royal Tyrrell Museum Evolve t-shirt (with the classic misguided evolution picture):

But I’m not even in Calgary yet and I’ve already been confronted over my t-shirt.

Walking through security the guard who waved me through the scanner said she liked my shirt, then the guy scanning my bags looked at me and asked where I got it.

I replied the Tyrrell Museum and then he asked if I “believed” it.

Now, the average creationist is annoying enough to deal with, but you tend not to want to argue with people with guns who have the ability to order full cavity searches on anyone randomly.

But he felt like continuing, blathering something about the comparative anatomy of human skin cells being more like cats then monkeys and that disproved evolution (wouldn’t that really just demonstrate we’re more related to cats then monkeys and not disprove anything?). He finally finished scanning my stuff, which I grabbed and walked off as he said that I could even “ask any doctor” or pre-med about what they study (I imagine comparative anatomy is done more on cats and smaller mammals because of numerous reasons which boil down to we value them less than the “higher” apes – including valuable reasons like growth rates, etc.)

I can’t find any references to his absurd claims on TalkOrgins.org, but that’s more likely that he’s mixing numerous stories and I wasn’t willing to sit around and be preached at by a security guard.

Beyond the annoyance of being preached at in one of the most awkward situations possible, I think we ought to have a few concerns here:

1. A creationist is using his position to push his beliefs – atheists wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) be allowed to mock people who walk through wearing crosses or other religious symbols. (Note I’m not calling evolution a religious position, but it’s not something we need to debate when you’re trying to determine if I’m a threat to air travel).
2. Someone anti-science is running x-ray machines and granting access to airplanes – two of physics crowning achievements of the 20th century.
3. If you like conspiracies, perhaps you could ask how many creationists are running airport security (and other government jobs) since Harper became prime minister? I doubt it’s higher than the general public.