September 17, 2013

Teaching Creationism in Public Schools

By tygerx

About 200 years ago modern geology was invented. At that time geologists went out into the field to prove  what everyone knew as fact. The stories in the Bible. That is all they knew. They wanted to prove what God had told them in their most sacred book. What they found was something completely different. They thought they would find proof of Noah’s flood. They found nothing of the sort. They instead found layers and layers of rock that had been laid down over millions of years. Nothing that they found corroborated the bible stories they knew so well. Modern science started out to prove the bible, but something else happened. The observable universe stood in stark contrast to what the Word of God said. This of course brings up the question. Why would God create a universe that did not match up with the Bible?

At first the Christian Church tried to deny the advances of science. The church permanently silenced those who spoke out against the doctrine of faith. Biblical Scripture said that the world was solid and did not move. Therefore it could NOT revolve around the Sun. (See: Chronicles 16:30; Psalms 93:1, 96:10, 104:5; Ecclesiastes).1 The terrible idea of the earth orbiting the sun got Galileo in big trouble with the Church. The Inquisition commission delivered a report on the subject by stating that the Sun is stationary is “foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture…“; Finally the order was given to Galileo that he had to:

“to abstain completely from teaching or defending this doctrine and opinion or from discussing it… to abandon completely… the opinion that the sun stands still at the center of the world and the earth moves, and henceforth not to hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatever, either orally or in writing.”

This is the type of “science” Answers in Genesis founder Ken Ham would like to see come back to humanity. This order was given at a time when the Christian Church held absolute sway over science. Do you really think they would act any different if the Ken Ham’s of the world got their way again? Imagine what would happen if science came into direct conflict with Christianity again?

In an article titled “Should Christians Be Pushing to Have Creation Taught in Government Schools?” at Answers in Genesis, Ken Ham writes:

“That’s why at AiG, we spend so much energy to equip the Church to restore biblical authority beginning with Genesis. Then, and only then, will the secular worldview of society be successfully challenged. More important, recognize that spreading the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ is the ultimate goal.”2

Think about it. Ken Ham is actively using his money and resources to try and turn back the clock to the good old days of 1616. His group has advice and tactics to use against your local school board to try and push supernatural creation as a science into your children’s classrooms. Humanity has finally thrown off the harsh chains Christianity had latched onto our thinking. Ken Ham and his kind hate it.

In the same article Ken Ham goes on to write:

“The public schools, by and large, now teach that everything a student learns about science, history, etc., has nothing to do with God it can all be explained without any supernatural reference. This is a religious view—an anti-Christian view with which students are being indoctrinated. Humanists know that naturalistic evolution is foundational to their religion—their worldview that everything can be explained without God.”2

This is a new tactic that the crazy fundies have decided to try. Call the teaching of evolution a “humanist religion”. I do not know what the end game of this line of thinking is but I hazard a guess that this has to do with the separation of church and state. If Ken can get a good portion of the population to believe that this is a religion, he can then try to get it thrown out of public schools. I know it sounds crazy, but I wouldn’t put it past them. I do not see how this would work. There are no evolution or humanist churches out there. There is no one worshiping the gods of natural selection. It seems that they are up to something with this looney type of thinking.

Bible loving Ken Ham absolutely loves to talk about evolution. So when I read this steaming piece of crap at AIG I got to laughing:

“AiG does not lobby any government agencies to include the teaching of biblical creation in the public schools. As we have stated many times, we do not believe that creation should be mandated in public school science classrooms. If teaching creation were mandated, it would likely be taught poorly (and possibly mockingly) by a teacher who does not understand what the Bible teaches and who believes in evolution.”2

Dumb-ass preachers like Ken Ham can stand up there and lie cheat and misrepresent evolution till they are blue in the face.(Doesn’t GOD have a problem with lying?) But when the idea of someone else teaching creation they throw a fit. I find this to be too characteristic of the fundamental mind. They feel free to distort evolution to their followers to their hearts content but there is no way that a secular teacher should ever try and teach biblical creation. Too fucking funny.

1: Bible Scripture, King James Version 1769

“Fear before him, all the earth: the world also shall be stable, that it be not moved.” – Ch 16:30
“The LORD reigneth, he is clothed with majesty; the LORD is clothed with strength, wherewith he hath girded himself: the world also is stablished, that it cannot be moved” – Psa 93:1
Say among the heathen that the LORD reigneth: the world also shall be established that it shall not be moved: he shall judge the people righteously. – Psa 96:10
“Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for ever.” – Psa 104:5
“The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.” Ecc 1:5

2: Answers in Genesis article:  “Should Christians Be Pushing to Have Creation Taught in Government Schools?”

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September 11, 2013

Creationism and The Theory of Evolution

By tygerx

The Theory of Evolution has been collecting facts for over 150 years now. Ever since it was introduced religious groups have been trying to knock it down and devalue it. But it hasn’t worked. Evolution has been modified and continually refined as new facts emerge. This has strengthened evolution to the point where real science no longer questions its validity. Other branches of science have added to the evolutionary theory. Astronomy, Geology and Biology all point to the same conclusion, earth is 4.5 billion years old, the sun was the first object in the solar system and life continually evolves through natural selection. Science may be messy at times, points of detail may be argued but it will always self correct and become stronger. The theory of evolution is now considered the cornerstone of biology. Biology cannot be studied without knowledge of evolution. It is here to stay.

Just about every pro creation website I run across I end up seeing the misrepresentation of evolution. It can be counted on that the define evolution as random chance. Random chance has no relationship with Evolution. Evolution uses something called natural selection. An organism evolves according to elements in its environment. The change is deliberate. There is no chance in natural selection. Often times creationists will cite scientists who question some aspect of evolution in the regular process of scientific review and call this dissent in the science and promote it as growing evidence against the theory. When in fact what they are commenting on is the day to day working of science.

Another claim I often read about is Nebraska Man and Piltdown man were nothing but a hoax. Science has gotten it wrong before, why believe anything now. How these hoaxes came to light is the wonderful way science works. Hoax’s are sniffed out and disregarded eventually. Sometimes science may travel down road and find out it is wrong and retract whatever is faulty. Creationist look at this and call claim that science lies. It is just the way science works, not lying. This is just the process of science sorting out the available information given at the time and gives the best answer. As more evidence is provided the answer changes to best fit the facts. It may be messy but that is one of the strengths of science. It self corrects. Faith on the other hand tells you the “fact” and you have to believe it no matter what. Which is happening now. Faith and religion are stuck with one story that no longer fits the facts and it is causing problems. Creation Science was thought up to try and shore up the obvious fact that the scientific facts are leading humanity away from biblical creation stories.

Now, Creation “Science” is hardly science at all. When I think of Creation Science I see a team of scientists in lab costs standing around a table waiting for an animal to pop suddenly into existence. Maybe they are praying for God to create an animal. Creation Science adds nothing to humanity. It’s only purpose of existence is a negative argument against evolution. All creation scientists can do is pick at the gaps in understanding that science has yet to figure out. Honestly, there is no way to scientifically way prove an intelligent designer. There are no teams of scientists studying the instantaneous appearance of an animal. If there are then they are wasting their time. Do you ever wonder why creation scientists never write scientific papers? If they do write anything they are “published” in private Christan only websites and christian only papers. Never in the academic world. The only time you may see a creation scientist write a peer reviewed paper is on philosophy or some related field. When they do cite real science, all they do is cherry pick quotes out of real scientists work. These quotes usually say what they want out of context. Then they claim victory. These people misrepresent real science. It is intellectual fraud and dishonest. Most of the claims on the websites Answers in Genesis and Creation Ministries are ridiculous. Dinosaurs and humans together, preposterous.

Creationists love to try and break evolution into micro and macro, little and big evolution. They want to agree that little evolution exists but deny that a species can evolve into a different species, or as the creationist like to call groups of animals ‘kinds’. Evolution is micro, that is small changes due to natural selection over the period of billions of years. Ring species such as the song sparrow have split into different types of sparrows that eventually cannot interbreed. Eventually after millions of years the sparrows continue to evolve to the point where they cannot even be considered the same species. I am really not doing justice to this concept in such a small space as this post. There is no difference between micro and macro evolution. No matter how creationist try to break it into two separate concepts. Macro evolution is simply micro evolution spread out over billions of years.

Evolution is only a theory! Many will argue. It has not been proven as true. The complete lack of understanding on what a theory is should not be the basis of an argument. In the scientific world a theory is as good as an idea gets. There is no other step above a theory. Some mistakenly believe that a theory will eventually grow up to become a law. That is not the case. Laws are very few, reason being is that every idea can be added to, or replaced with a better version of it. In science nothing absolute. Wikipedia defines it as “a theory is a ‘proven’ hypothesis, that, in other words, has never been disproved through experiment, and has a basis in fact.” There is a theory of gravity, but I don’t hear anyone shouting that gravity is just a theory and should countered with the flat earth theory. It would be ludicrous.

In 1987 the Supreme Court ruled in Edwards v. Aguillard that teaching creationism in public school was unconstitutional. This decision was made under the establishment clause in the 1st amendment to the Constitution. This still has not stopped proponents of creation from pushing religion on the children of America. The last attempt to put religion into public school was a rewording creationism and calling it Intelligent Design. A school board in Pennsylvania tried to get Intelligent Design into the classroom. The federal courts stopped them. Now, the Texas State Board of Education is trying to get textbooks to include creationism. They are not even trying to hide it under a new or different name. I guess the good folks down in Texas do not care that putting creationism in public school is unconstitutional.

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