Posts Tagged creationism

Louisiana School Board Considers Adding Creationism to Science Class

creationismWhat is it about the South and teaching creationism in school? Here comes another one:

The Livingston Parish School Board will begin exploring the possibility of incorporating the teaching of “creationism” in the public school system’s science classes.

During the board’s meeting Thursday, several board members expressed an interest in the teaching of creationism, an alternative to the study of the theory of evolution, in Livingston Parish public school classrooms.

Benton said that under provisions of the Science Education Act enacted last year by the Louisiana Legislature, schools can present what she termed “critical thinking and creationism” in science classes.

Board Member David Tate quickly responded: “We let them teach evolution to our children, but I think all of us sitting up here on this School Board believe in creationism. Why can’t we get someone with religious beliefs to teach creationism?”

Fellow board member Clint Mitchell responded, “I agree … you don’t have to be afraid to point out some of the fallacies with the theory of evolution. Teachers should have the freedom to look at creationism and find a way to get it into the classroom.”

(source)

This “Science Education Act” is basically a way to legalize a rape of the scientific process to get creationism into schools under the guise of “critical thinking”…  My ass. Basically, it’s a shortcut to give religious mythology a way into the classroom without requiring any evidence, testable theories, peer-reviewed research, or any science at all, actually.

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Creationism in the Classroom

This is what it’s like when you teach that believing an illogical and impossible myth by faith is better than observing the real world and not making shit up.

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Something Out of Nothing?

Orion Nebula: The Hubble View Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Robberto (STScI/ESA) and The Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team.

I need some clarification. My understanding is fuzzy on a point of philosophy and science.

Apologist Ray Comfort asks “How do I know God exists?” His own answer stems from the argument from design: that anything that appears to have a purpose or orderly manner must have a beginning and a creator. Comfort  says:

Keep in mind that we can’t create anything from nothing. We don’t know how to begin. If you disagree, then make me a seed—-from nothing. Make it living, so that it grows into a plant that produces an edible fruit, and make it with the ability to create more seeds within the fruit, so that you can plant them and make more plants and more fruit. So if we can’t even make one seed, how intellectually deceitful is it for any rational human being to believe that nothing created everything?

I see that he most likely has a problem with the Inflation/Expansion of the universe (aka “Big Bang”) because it comes across like the universe popped into existence without a cause or source.

What I don’t understand, though, is why he and other creationists don’t have a problem with matter appearing instantaneously in the form of minerals, animals, humans, energy, and so forth when God says “Duuuude… Bear! Kneecap! Mitosis! Compact Discs! AIDS!”

I strongly doubt that speaking something into existence is very cohesive with the laws of this universe. How is that explanation the least bit satisfying? In what way is it less puzzling than a natural origin? Is this not the same as “something out of nothing”?

Am I missing something here?

Bonus: the known universe… in video!

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Fundy Friday: Tower of Babel Edition

Tower-of-Babel
How could I forget to honor the fantastically fallacious Fundies? Check out these snippets from what I consider an award-winning representation of monumentally stupid anti-evolution hogwash.

If, as evolutionists claim, all of mankind evolved from the SAME primitive life-source, then how did we end up with 7,000 different languages? The Bible teaches that God created all the different languages at Babel… “Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech … Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth” [see Genesis 11:1-9 [show] Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly." And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth." And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. And the LORD said, "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech." So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth. And from there the LORD dispersed them over the face of all the earth. (ESV)
This text is from the ESV Bible. Visit www.esv.org to learn about the ESV.
]. It is far more reasonable to accept the Biblical claim that God created all of mankind’s different languages; than it is to believe that some space-dust from a massive chaotic explosion somehow became life, and then took on intelligence, and then from the same evolutionary process ended up with 7,000 different languages. That makes no sense at all.

Oh stop it! You’re making my sides hurt! Please tell me again how reasonable it is that every human being on earth had a powwow in a valley somewhere, decided to build a really tall brick building so they could go up to heaven,  be famous, and to stay neighbors.

Explain to me how sensible it is that a spirit-man in the sky literally visited to check on their work and got really pissed off that they showed some bricklaying skills. He then decided to keep them from being successful and unified, so he used telekinesis to lift them up, plop them down in other parts of the earth, and then magically changed their languages so they wouldn’t be able to understand one another (or themselves, I imagine). Talk about anti-progress, a bitchy boss, and a serious case of “go sit in the corner and be quiet”.

Oh yeah, that makes a whole lot more sense than gradual change over time.

Read more wtf-i-tude at jesus-is-savior.com.

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