Amish Cosmos Pushes Limits of Whittling Technology

Lancaster, PA - Hoping to take advantage of the popularity of science-based programming, such as the 2014 documentary series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, the update of Carl Sagan's groundbreaking 1980 original, Amish community leaders in Lancaster have announced plans to produce a plain people-friendly take on the origins of the universe.

Levi King, a whittling consultant on Amish Cosmos: 6 Days of Creation shown here working on a depiction of God creating fish-like vertebrates on the 5th day of creation

"Let it not be said that the Amish are afraid of the challenge of a hard and full day's work," Town Elder Amos Zook explained. "Our ways strictly prohibit the use of most technologies that might further connect us with the outside world or lead us into temptation. But as they say, big ships might only be launched where the water is deepest."

Amish Cosmos: 6 Days of Creation, which is the working title for the project, will showcase recent advances in whittling technology and significantly improve upon the last Amish-produced educational program. According to Zook, that program involved Jedediah Stoltzfus sitting in an old rocking chair while telling his great-great-grandchildren about the passing of the seasons. "This time our technology has finally caught up to the majesty of the natural world. Many of the key moments in the new program will involve the real-time whittling of important events in history, such as the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise and that time Fannnie Yoder got herself trapped in her outhouse."

As in the non-Amish versions of Cosmos, the new presentation will incorporate the now famous Cosmic Calendar in an effort to help viewers visualize the chronology of the Universe. Zook believes that this powerful tool will open a lot of minds. "Just imagine, you have set off on the buggy of the imagination and see a large wooden clock that condenses the entirety of the age of the universe down to a single year. God did it all right there in the first instant and then nothing much happened over the almost 6,000 years leading right up to this very moment. You don't put a question mark where God put a period."