New Creationism Law Flaws Diamond Markets

Johannesburg, April 9, 2011 -- Following the recent successful passage of the controversial Creation Law bill in the United States, an unexpected scientific wrinkle emerged as a consequence that has sent international diamond markets into a dramatic tailspin.

Shiny object formerly known as natural diamond

The Creation Law, signed by President Bill Frist last Tuesday to rapturous acclaim from the Christian Right, effectively overturned the Scopes Monkey Trial appeal decision of 1925 by once again rendering the teaching of evolutionary theory a crime. Creation Law, which effectively turns the 1968 Epperson vs. Arkansas US Supreme Court ruling on its head, instead mandates the teaching of biblical creationism, which was also briefly known as "intelligent design" during the early years of this century, in all public venues.

Creation Law, by declaring that biblical doctrine is the only legal means by which to explain the origins of the universe and all the species that inhabit it, effectively revalues the earth from the widely accepted age of about 4.55 billion years down to a mere 6,000 or so, depending on which branch of Christianity and version of the Bible one consults.

Natural diamonds, which are known to form under heat and pressure extremes that only occur hundreds of kilometers beneath the earth's crust, were previously known to require over a billion years to work their way closer to the surface where they could become available for mining and extraction.

Based on the new legal age of the universe and the earth, scientists now recognize that such a process is patently impossible within the allowable time frame. Therefore, all so-called "natural" diamonds must, in the words of Sigmund Demitasse, an internationally renowned diamond expert and amateur necromancer, be "cleverly constructed fakes", and therefore virtually valueless outside of industrial applications.

This realization, when voiced publicly for the first time yesterday and confirmed by Bill Frist's White House, resulted in the immediate plummeting of stock prices in DeBeers, the world's largest diamond mining and distribution company, by nearly 25%. Based on advance order trends, the stock may drop another 15-20% today, according to industry analysts.

"DeBeers has nearly 60% of its world market in the United States," said Mr. Demitasse, "so obviously the impact of having their products legally declared worthless in that locality is going to be significant. They'll have to regroup and refocus their marketing efforts on enlightened European, South American, Asian, African and other markets that still follow scientific methods of inquiry, but that's going to take some time. Meantime, there will be a major hit on profitability."

Pingu Bubbletop, a spokesman for the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, a powerful quasi-scientific lobbying organization that has been credited as the prime mover behind the successful passage of the Creation Law, is unfazed by the development.

"Truth has consequences," said Mr. Bubbletop, "and this is just one of the many consequences of the acceptance, at last, of our particular Christian American flavor of universal truth by what has for years been nothing more than a boatload of secular Congressmen bobbing along the river of blasphemy with Satan's hand firmly on the tiller."

"So diamonds are suddenly legally worthless," Mr. Bubbletop continued. "So what? Former diamond-buyers can spend their extra money on other things instead, things that are less material and worldly and more spiritual and possessing of a higher morality, such as contributions to the Discovery Institute."

By Ion Zwitter, Avant News Editor