A Challenge To Darwin?

[Pete]

I know that the evoluntionary tree is more seen as evoluntionary mesh nowadays, with sideways movement as well as growth along branches, but Darwin did try to base his work in science and evidence he could find.

I hear there is an Evangelical school in the US that is teaching children that Darwin was wrong because they can prove that Dinosaurs lived at the same time as man.

They are using the mythical loch Ness monster "Nessy" from Scotland to prove it. Now there is no scientific proof that Nessy ever existed and there are a number of photos which have been declared as a hoaxes but to all it is seen as just a good local joke. Nessy has been good for the Scottish tourist industry and has sold a lot of post cards but little else.

 

see:- http://www.parentdish.co.uk/2012/06/25/loch-ness-monster-american-school-children-told-is-real/?icid=maing-grid7|uk|dl6|sec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D114614

 

All I can say is how desperate must they be to use Nessy as evidence to back their theory of creation and I question how reliable such teaching at the school can be.

[soma]

As a Christian I feel it is necessary to have laws to keep the Christian bullies away from our schools and children. We want our children to have open minds and hearts so they may learn. It is our duty to guard this so they will learn that faith is not acceptance of a doctrine, but faith in the idea that there is enough light within to believe in silence and respect for others.

 

The Bible is not a science book so why do these idiots try to pit religion against science they can live and support each other. Evolution is fantastic it inspirors me. The theory is on the right path, but not complete so scientist are working on it. We need our students to be open to look at it with an open mind and fill in the gaps. The Christian Evangelicals are misleding their followers and our children.

 

The Bible is a collection of sacred stories, analogies and parables that explain how things came to be and ideas about the relationship between God and humanity. I feel it is myth so as to explain the supernatural. The Biblical record indicates that the Cosmos was created in six days only a few thousand years ago. In opposition to that view is the current age of the Universe, which can be set at roughly 8-12 billion years, and the Earth is almost 5 billion years old. If the Bible is a science book then it is wrong.

[glintofpewter]

When my daughter taught biology to home schooled students she did not use the E-word. Change over time she called it. She hoped they would learn the scientic method.

 

I was told the leviathan in Jonah was a dinosaur. More proof ))

 

CRI has tours down the Grand Canyon explaining how all the layers were shaped by the flood.

 

Dutch

[PaulS]

I agree with you Pete, it is desperate, but desperate times calls for desperate measures.

 

In the face of scientific proof to the contrary, biblical literalists are struggling to hold together their traditional stories because for them, that's where their security lies. Although they might not recognise it, I think they are scared that if the creation story as they literally know it should fall over, then their whole worldview is at jeopardy, and that's a fear they do not want to face. If you hold the view that the entire Bible is like a dictated memo from God, then for one part of it to be proved wrong would threaten the entire memo. That is a very scary thought for some. To some, it threatens their whole way of living. Incidentally, I think it is an unneccessary fear, but I doubt literalist fundys would feel the same.

 

I think as Soma mentions, there are gaps in the evolutionary timeline, but simply because we don't have all the answers yet is no excuse for ignoring the evidence that does exist. If we all thought like that then we'd still believe the earth was flat like they did in OT days.

[Realspiritik]

Hi Pete!

 

Don't have much to add except to say I agree.

 

Biblical literalists already have so much on their plates, what with all the bibilical contradictions and discrepancies and multiple Covenants they have to explain away, so maybe they just don't have the time to learn about biology and history and geology and stuff.

 

Jen

[PaulS]

Pete,

 

I just had to mention that I just came across this article in one of our State newspapers in Western Australia, today. Clearly the 'desperation' is not limited to the US & UK.

 

 

 

 

SCOTLAND'S Loch Ness monster exists. She's a plesiosaur, a living dinosaur, and her existence shows God created the Earth and evolution is bunkum.

That’s what Australian homeschool kids can learn from a US curriculum being distributed here.

 

Families are using the Accelerated Christian Education curriculum, which has sparked controversy worldwide for using magical imaginary beasts like Nessie to argue that God created the world quite recently and that the Darwinian theory of evolution is wrong.

 

In Australia homeschooling families have to agree to complete the basic curriculum, but are free to use any other curricula as well. Regulation is up to the individual states.

[NORM]

All I can say is how desperate must they be to use Nessy as evidence to back their theory of creation and I question how reliable such teaching at the school can be.

 

I think the desperation has continued since the Scopes "Monkey Trial."

 

As a child, I was taken to a Baptist Church. Once, I approached my Sunday School teacher with a How and Why Wonder Book on dinosaurs and I asked the teacher why the dinosaurs were not mentioned in the Bible.

 

He pulled me aside and, as if sharing a profound secret, told me that the Devil deposited the dinosaur bones in the desert in order to lead mankind astray.

 

I'm not kidding!!

 

This would be hilarious if it weren't so...sad.

 

NORM

[Stanley]

I still scratch my head at Creationism. People in my wife’s church tell me not to get hung up on that because it isn’t a salvation issue. I tell them it is a credibility issue. If you can believe something that is obviously not true then I really am not going to listen to you about salvation because you are most like just as misguided about that.

[romansh]

one of the best 117 minutes I have spent

 

[Adekis]

Man, my conservative ex-girlfriend used to argue with me about this stuff all the time. It drove me nuts,

We'd be watching Fantasia and the scene with the dinosaurs would come on, and she'd be like "You know this is all bogus, right? Dinosaurs were alive at the same time as humans."

 

So I'm thinking that yes, there are some scientific problems with Fantasia. But that's not one of them. "What," I said, "like the Flintstones? You're joking, right?"

 

Nope. We never really stopped fighting over it, just learned to ignore the issue. She legitimately believed that Earth was only about one-million years old, and she could quote enough fundamentalist pseudoscience to back herself up that she probably could have taught a class on it. Like a study that claimed because a faulty dating had rendered a newly-formed volcanic rock to be millions of years old, all scientific dating is faulty. Or how the world is slowly moving further from the sun every year and if the world was really billions of years old, we'd be far enough a way that Earth would be dead. I don't think she knew how little of a difference it really makes, or if she does she doesn't care.

 

She was totally ridiculous and unreasonable. Wonderful girl. Totally broke my heart when she dumped me.

 

Oh well!

[PaulS]

Adekis,

 

I remember also hearing often about how if the earth was really billions of years old then the dust on the moon should be metres deep, not just inches.

 

Once I was with a Christian youth group (not a scientist amongst them) who ridiculed a cave guide showing us stalagmites and stalagtites where he said they were hundreds of thousands of years old. However these pseudo-scientists seemed to think that because you could see water dripping and some tites and mites had formed a bit faster, that therefore everything was only a few thousand years old.

 

I cringe when I remember myself giving a presentation at school when I was 16 about creationism vs evolution, and the killer fact that I presented in conclusion was how all of the fossil evidence to support evolution could actually fit into one coffin!

 

How times change!

 

Cheers

Paul

[glintofpewter]

It seems that science and evolution are the underdog if the govt has to order that evolution be in textbooks. At least a plurality believe in evolution,

 

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=science-and-archaeopteryx-win-over-creationism-south-korea&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_EVO_20120910

 

Dutch

[Stanley]

Yesterday I arranged for this very knowledgeable man to lead my cub scout den on a nature hike. He pointed out tons of plants, gave their scientific names, told what they were used for, what the Indians used them for. It was a fascinating hike with a wealth of knowledge from an intelligent person. The kids loved it.

 

But I had to bit my tongue and keep my cool when he told them he believed the Earth was only about 10,000 old. I knew he was a devout Christian and figured he was fundamentalist but how can a person that obviously loves nature, studies nature, has such a deep knowledge of nature reject what nature is telling him?

[glintofpewter]

but how can a person that obviously loves nature, studies nature, has such a deep knowledge of nature reject what nature is telling him?

 

He is only rejecting some of the data. I saw part of a conservative "See how science reveals God's providence" type video. They were reviewing 14 billion years since the big bang exclaiming in wonder about God's handiwork. Just not human evolution. That still leaves a lot of room for fundy scientists to play with.

 

Dutch

[murmsk]

I currently am of the opinion that there is very little if any room for the word BELIEF in a thinking persons vocabulary.

 

steve

[Neon Genesis]

I can understand why young earth creationists reject evolution. What I don't understand are those Christians who accept the old age of the Earth and they accept that the six days in Genesis is allegorical but for some unknown reason, they can't accept evolution is true and they can't accept that the rest of the Genesis myth is an allegory.

[glintofpewter]

I currently am of the opinion that there is very little if any room for the word BELIEF in a thinking persons vocabulary.

-------------------

 

I am not sure what definition you are using but the issue is too complex to hinge on a word and the word too rich to be abandoned. If all that we are is pictured as a rider on an elephant, the rider representing reason, rationality,and the mind, it is said that rider SERVES the elephant, that irrational part of us. We may not want to use the word but I think we all operate out of beliefs about the world that cannot be verified. We don't get all our knowledge rationally.

 

The scientific method is neutral as far as beliefs are concerned. Even scientists have failed to recognize results of the scientific method because of their beliefs about the known world.

 

Beliefs are fundamental to our construct of the known world. We couldn't do it without them. Certainly Lao Tze and the Tao point us in the direction of living without beliefs, I think. Jesus, in his encounters with people and flowers, shows us a life lived without expectations (which follow beliefs) but we find the road difficult.

 

Dutch