Creationism: The Back To School Edition

"This is a great set of resources to prepare to for the School year. Complete with Dr. Hovind's award-winning seminar video number 4 (Lies in the Textbooks), this package will teach you how to defend your faith, and do so effectively. Also included "Are you being Brainwashed?" - a book designed to help students quickly and effectively defend Science from the attacks of evolutionism in their public school classrooms. The Gap Theory is also included, which will debunk the compromising idea of a gap between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2 allowing for millions of years to be inserted. And finally, Claws Jaws and Dinosaurs will be included in this limited-time offer. This insightful book covers many interesting stories of cryptozoology and other fascinating stories!"

This extensive "Back to School Preparation Package" is now available from Creation Science Evangelism, a website I found when I went to Rapture Ready's Blog on Yahoo 360. Rapture Ready says, "The Bible is the only truth in this corrupt world. And the Bible tells us the age of the earth quite plainly, about 6000 years old. Man wants to make the Bible fit into his own flawed thinking, so he interprets and believes what other men have told him."

Why would anyone take a document that was written by people who did not know that the Earth was round and consisted continents far beyond the Mediterranean? A thinking Christain would interpret the bible as documents that are limited by what men knew and believed at the time they were written. These documents were written for contemporary, pre-literate humanity in terms they could understand with the intent to grow a religion. These documents can be interpreted differently based on various translations of the original texts. This particular man, Rapture Ready, chooses to believe men who believe that everything in the bible is to be interpreted literally even if it contradicts a huge body of evidence and common sense. You can be a follower of Christ and believe in evolution and in science that is evidence-based rather than belief-based.

It is disturbing that there will be a generation of kids that will be learning to reject evidence-based science for belief-based science. This will certainly add to the trend of America falling behind in science globally. This ignorance education serves to undermine real science being done in global warming, stem-cell research, safety standards of our food, water, drugs, and other products we come in contact with. Planting doubt in the scientific method and the scientific research allows for the acceptance of propaganda that there is faux controversies about global warming, second-hand smoking causes cancer, mercury in our fish, etc.

Supernatural History Museum

Now creationists have an "educational" place where they can take their kids and not have to worry about pesky facts, evidence, or even common sense. Dick and Jane know that the beginning of the earth 6000 years ago has far more in common with the Flintstones than once thought by those darned scientists.



From their website:

"We’ll begin the Museum experience by showing that “facts” don’t speak for themselves (click here for a proposed drawing of this exhibit). There aren’t separate sets of “evidences” for evolution and creation—we all deal with the same evidence (we all live on the same earth, have the same fossils, observe the same animals, etc.). The difference lies in how we interpret what we study. We’ll then explore why the Bible—the “history book of the universe”—provides a reliable, eye-witness account of the beginning of all things."

From the brain of Kirk Cameron actor from Growing Pains and from the Left Behind movies, Intelligent Design vs. Evolution Board Game counters "the brainwashing of an entire generation" with more brainwashing via the blessed three E's: Evangelistic, educational, entertaining.



From their website:



"Intelligent Design vs Evolution" is unique in that the playing pieces are small rubber brains and each team plays for "brain" cards. Each player uses his or her brains to get more brains, and the team with the most brains wins. It has been designed to make people think . . . and that's exactly what it does."

Sounds like Zombies...BRAINS!

Crazy Talk In Place Of Science Education?

Imagine this...

You have a child in high school and your hope is that he learns enough to prepare him/her to do well in a good college. You trust that he/she is being taught the essentials in English, Math, History, Languages, and Science. Your son or daughter goes to their biology class and the teacher spends the time reading bible passages and showing a powerpoint presentation linking evolution, Nazi Germany, and Planned Parenthood. Parents in Sisters, Oregon didn't have to imagine it because it happend in their high school. Kris Helphinstine, the offending "teacher" has fortunately been fired.

Helphinstine had the nerve to suggest teaching that there are links between evolution, Nazi Germany, and Planned Parenthood was simply, "Critical thinking is vital to scientific inquiry My whole purpose was to give accurate information and to get them thinking." His powerpoint presentation and use of the bible in the science classroom was no way near critical thinking, but more like crazy Art Bell Coast to Coast (the show that has people calling in claiming to be aliens or the Zodiac killer living on another planet) thinking.

I believe that the main duty of a teacher is to prepare students for college even if they decide to do something else with their lives, because it gives them a good foundation if they change their minds and do go to college. What Helphinstine was teaching will not prepare students for any college, except Bob Jones University. Biology teachers should be teaching about evolution, scientific method, cell structure, skeletal, reproductive, muscle, respiratory, nervous systems, among other topics that are fundamental knowledge in the Scientific community. Science education is about giving our kids the opportunity to someday have science careers if they choose to do so.

Personally, I do not care if a person chooses to believe that the earth was created 6000 years ago and that man and dinosaur co-existed. As an American, you have the right to believe all kinds of crazy and improbable things. When you are intrusted with educating our students, you have the obligation to put aside your possibly hairbrained beliefs to teach the curriculum to get our darlings into college. If you are not doing this you are wasting our time and need to be fired and your ability to teach science revoked.

Creationist Fairy-Dust Files

I have mentioned before that when you enter "liberal" into the 360 search, you end up finding a lot of 360 sites that are very, very anti-liberal. You enter "evolution" and you can find rabid creationists! Up is down in this crazy world we live in. Some of these blogs and 360 pages I wish I was allowed to quick comment, "Whaaa?", "Huh?", or have the smiley face that makes the hand gesture of craziness. "Hmmmmm" is too non-committal and can be interpreted as a positive interest to use for some of these sites.



I was zooming around some 360 profiles and ran across McDave's site where he had a shocking article, "Fossil radioactivity shortens geologic "ages" to a few years." This would be a huge discovery if the article was backed up by more than three people. The bulk of the source material for this article is from Robert V. Gentry, who has a Masters in Physics, but only has a honorary Doctorate of Science from Columbia Union College. Columbia Union College is an Adventist College that is recognized as a fundamentalist creationist college that only gives Bachelor of Science in the Sciences. They do not even offer masters degrees in any of the sciences. Other authors McDave cites are Andrew A. Snelling and Mark H. Armitage, both creation scientists. I have run across critiques of Snelling who is actually a PhD in Geology and has a legitimate work in mainstream science. Then only thing is that his legitimate and mainstream work undermines his creationist work. He has written articles that refer to late Miocene, Early Pleistocene, and late Pliocene, time periods that do not exist in the creationist/young earth world.

Snelling explains the doubletalk by saying that he was forced to use those terms by mainstream science in his work and that he still sticks to the creation "science" way. A lot of young world defenders spend a lot of time accusing mainstream science of censoring them or blacklisting them. In their world, they are afraid to let the truth be known that will undermine evolution once and for all.

This particular article deals with the subject of radiohalos. Gentry feels that these radiohalos decay at such a rate that suggest rocks are formed more instantaneously and bolsters the claim that the earth was created as stated in Genesis.

Creationism or Young Earth Creationism states that the earth was created 6k to 10k years ago. The most hard core fundamentalist YEC's like Snelling place it at 6k-7k. years.

Why should we care? We should care because there are whole bunch of creationism colleges in this country who actually have science teaching programs. They are unleashing science teachers that can try to pass off this psuedo-science as "proof" that mainstream acceptence of evolution is not valid. They undermine science education and are more concerned with proving that the earth is 6k years old than doing solid science. They instill in their students a disdain and distrust for mainstream science that goes beyond healthy skeptism everyone should have when confronted with any claim.

McDave's post could plant a seed of doubt in those who are not paying attention. People rarely check the citations and look up the authors and who are behind their research. It looks like a scientific paper and it sounds authorative, but if you dig deeply its merely creationist fairy dust.

That evolution occurs is fact. What science is still trying to flesh out is the mechanisms of evolution. They flesh this out by scientific inquiry and disproving various theories of how evolution works. Creationists point out the natural controversies that happen in peer review and legitimate scientific inquiry as proof that evolution is in question.







Below are some interesting reading:

Gentry's Halos Refuted

Gentry's Published Papers

Radiohaloes at Wikipedia

Opposition to Mark Armitage's scientific work

Examining Radiohalos

Re-Education Friday, Comrade!

http://www.conservapedia.com

Did you know that Wikipedia hates Jesus and America? Did you know if you use or read spellings of the British Isles, you are anti-American? Not using A.D. is a rejection of Christ? You would think that the defenders of Christ and America would not have such a slow server. How else are we to get all these truthy-like morsels?



http://www.intelligentdesignnetwork.org/



Language alert! Intelligent design is morphing to Origins Science. Take note, comrades!



http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13206572/



The FDA approves of a vaccine to protect young girls from getting the virus that causes cervical cancer. Focus on the Family argues against blanket availability to girls because they believe that abstinence is the best way to avoid the HPV and STDs. Who cares if studies show that abstinence education at best delays sexual behavior by 18 months and then when those kids do have sex they have unprotected sex.



http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/02/23/ap/tech/mainD8NF8JTG0.shtml

If you read The Austrailian article on this story, they appear to speculate from this incident that early women may have invented weapons. Of course, you would have to be anti-God and believe that we evolved from primates to even go there. Me, I think the chimps just watch too much violent teevee.

Anna Nicole Smith -- isn't it just time to let the poor girl rest in peace? We turn on FoxNews for my dad and it is wall-to-wall Anna Nicole. Gee, there are people dying in Iraq and Afghanistan, global warming, Nuclear proliferation issues, and all sorts of really pressing issues -- so glad FoxNews has its priorities straight.