Visit the Devil's Creationist Museum

[boutons_]

http://web.mit.edu/gjordan/www/creation/slides/_DSC2310.html

[LaMarcus Bryant]

hmmm too bad hegamboa is smart enough to scientifically validate every claim made by this exhibit...being so credentialed and all.

It's like he says, carbon dating does not disprove that Utahraptors lived 4,300 years ago.

And I just LOVE how creationism = original man was white.


ROFLROFLROFL
"Biblical history is the key (original emphasis) to understanding dinosaurs."

roflrofl
how sad can humans seriously be in the year 2007.

[Wild Cobra]

Well, next year we won't have to worry any more if you believe the end of the Aztec calender is the end of time. From 4004 BC, next year is 2012! If the creation was actually 4004 BC, not 4000 BC, we are actually in 2011 now.

[exstatic]

Wait...I thought Dinosaurs were fake! Now, they're incorporated, co-habitated with man, and rode the ark? I guess if you can't explain it away, spin and incorporate.

That was some funny shit. :lol

[E20]

Well what if Noah just stole some Dino eggs and made sure one was male and other female. LMAO I could picture that him risking his ass digging in a T-Rex nest looking for eggs. Then after it all, God's like:

So.....yeah umm......I'm just gonna kill off all the dinosaurs so you can put those eggs back. (With Bill Lumbergh's voice from Office Space)

[Nbadan]

What are they putting in the water in Florida these days? check out this editorial...

Theory Ignores Fact


Before a decision as to whether or not evolution should be taught in Florida schools it is imperative that the proponents define precisely what the "Theory of Evolution" is. A recent editorial from a graduate student at USF indicates there is a great deal of ignorance on the subject.

The theory of evolution that claims all life forms evolved by time and chance is not a scientific fact. Scientific theories must either be observable or repeatable. Micro-evolution is an indisputable fact since it can be observed; as for example in the case of dogs where there are countless breeds, but a dog is still a dog.

Despite millions and millions of fossils that have been unearthed and studied there has yet to be one that was an intermediate form between species when there should have been thousands of examples. Every time an intermediate example has been brought forward it has later turned out to be a hoax. (So much for believing someone just because he has a science degree.)

Therefore, since the theory is not observable and not scientifically testable it must remain a theory and requires belief in its truth as much as belief in God and creation. Ordinarily, theories that defy established scientific laws (like the second law of thermodynamics) or are shown to be mathematically impossible are thrown out, but this has not been the case with evolution. Its adherents totally ignore any scientific evidence that conflicts with their beliefs.

Education should only teach factual information or evidence on both sides of debatable issues and how to discern the truth between disparate beliefs. To teach evolution as a scientific fact is not education, but indoctrination every bit as insidious as the rewriting of history by dictatorial regimes.

RUSSELL A. WAHLIG (http://www.theledger.com/article/20071118/NEWS/71118001/1037/Edit)

and...


It appears (to this average inquiring mind) that in order to believe in evolution the first requirement is to suspend one's innate human ability to reason. Pardon my ignorance, but this seems like "devolution" to me.

Please forgive me, but I am not yet so highly evolved that I am ready to swallow as scientific fact something that does not even pass the test of common sense. Perhaps in a few more years I will have devolved to the point of believing a theory that has been so obviously cut from whole-cloth.

The Ledger (http://www.theledger.com/article/20071118/NEWS/71118002/1037/Edit)

An Orlando school is not going to accept readily the teaching of evolution in their high schools.,,,,

Orlando School Debates Including "Intelligent Design" in Class


ORLANDO, FL (AP) -- Some parents and teachers at an Orlando school are asking officials to include the controversial concept of "intelligent design" in the classroom.

Jones High School officials held a public meeting last night to discuss proposed revisions to state science standards. Several speakers called for including intelligent design, which explains the origins of life on earth as derived from an "intelligent cause" rather than through natural selection and evolution. Teacher and parent Veronica Bryant said a lack of fossil evidence supports evolution, and the complexity of life defies it.

Parents and educators elsewhere in Florida have also contacted the state Board of Education about teaching intelligent design since the state made the proposed standards public last month. Critics call intelligent design a thinly veiled religious theory.

Link (http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/florida/news-article.aspx?storyid=95824)

And finally, Florida's plan to require evolution be taught in science class is being called "godless".


The downward spiral humanity is on is pathetically evolutionary, and is producing generations of godless adults.

It's certainly not true science. It is a lot of confusion along with
imagination and a wishful doctrine from confused people who cannot accept creationism.

I trust we have more competent leaders who will stop this nonsense being perpetrated on our students.

Link (http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/1625)

[101A]

As a Christian, and one who regularly studies the bible....damn.

AND you just KNOW there are some of the loons with a stash of old human bones in their basement just WAITING to come accross some old dinosaur nest, so they can drop those human bones in there.


SEE!

[DarkReign]

Its called the Theory of Evolution for a reason, no doubt.

But.....I am....surprised isnt the word, that this conversation still exists.

The basic tenants of evolution havent changed since Darwin. One organism adapts and adjusts to its enviroment to improve its genetic chances.

IDism seems to be evolving as we speak. It would seem these folks havent entirely thought out their position either. Lets assume for a moment that ID is taught in schools, whose version of ID do they teach?

The 6000 year old Earth people?
Catholics? Protestants?

The religious peeps are all united now, but if this battle is won for them, they'll be at each others throats in minutes after the decision making sure "their version" and their agenda is met.

What a strange, strange place America is. Being ignorant and without opinion is starting to become the norm....so much so that others expect you to be the same way. Close your eyes, dont have an opinion, the way we do it is the best there is.

We will quickly become a 2nd tier nation with idiots like these having any sort of influence on society. Some fringe school wants to teach that dinosaurs co-habitated with humans, fine, its a free country. Publicly funded schools (a travesty in itself) shouldnt be subject to this sort of scientificly adbsent pressure.

We are a nation of opinion polls. Whatever we think is right, becomes fact. ID sounds better and makes humans more important than we actually are. Therefore, it feels better...must be fact.

For fucks sake.....

[boutons_]

der "Christian" Reich, "Christian" Supremacists, hilarious phrases that perfectly peg these venal, scamming, fringe assholes.

[Phenomanul]

hmmm too bad hegamboa is smart enough to scientifically validate every claim made by this exhibit...being so credentialed and all.

It's like he says, carbon dating does not disprove that Utahraptors lived 4,300 years ago.

And I just LOVE how creationism = original man was white.


ROFLROFLROFL
"Biblical history is the key (original emphasis) to understanding dinosaurs."

roflrofl
how sad can humans seriously be in the year 2007.

I'm not a strict Creationist.... and since I don't share all of their stances I don't share their burden of proof. So yes, while I definitely believe that GOD created the Universe and everything therein, that is solely a matter of faith to me... Hence, no argument provided by me is ever going to convince you of anything.

But the burden of proof goes both ways... My point of contention has always been that adaptation is not synonymous with Evolution. That the processes we see at work today don't define or address what happened at point zero. It is you and those in your camp that when faced with that dilemma seek to win their argument by throwing in unrelated tangents. But if that didn't work for Sagan, or Dawkins it surely won't work for you.

I'm still waiting for someone to develop a repeatable experiment that can show once and for all how an immensely entropic genetic chain (the organic basis for life) formed from nothing but small chemical precursors. They would then need to show how the conditions that created said molecule, would not also automatically destroy it within microseconds. But let me just break it to you; this hurdle is insurmountable. The reducing conditions that favor the mechanisms that stabilize the biotic precursors to DNA, rNA or prions also destroy the products. The oxidizing mechanisms are even more destructive. Science cannot explain the origin of life. At least not yet. What is certain, is that random chance alone cannot explain the origin of life.

And frankly LMB, I don't care if my knowledgebase irks you the wrong way. I'm tired of your insults, and your baseless jabs. Either you bring a legitimate argument to the table, or shut it. Your personal attack on my beliefs only masquerades your inability to produce coherent arguments of your own.

Besides, I don't have the time to keep defending my position everytime someone brings up the topic from scratch. It is far too time consuming. My position has been stated many times before... [cue search feature].

Peace out.

[xrayzebra]

Its called the Theory of Evolution for a reason, no doubt.
...

You are so right. It is a theory, that as far as I know has
never been proven.

[DarkReign]

You are so right. It is a theory, that as far as I know has
never been proven.

True, but saying some being in the sky created life and the universe as we know it isnt exactly science, is it?

Thats no way to approach any problem in life, whether it be scientific or personal.

God, as it is commonly referred, is not the answer to anything. Laying the foundation of our existence at the feet of invisible men is the flight of fancy reserved for children and the mentally impaired.

At least science has evidence that evolution could possibly be the process by which we all stand here today.

God-folks have nothing but a 2000 year old book based on stories passed down since ancient Egypt and the story of Horas and all the parallels thereof.

Science actively seeks the beginning, whereas God-peeps have no curiosity on the matter because God did it.

Thats ignorant.

[Mr. Peabody]

You are so right. It is a theory, that as far as I know has
never been proven.

Gravity is just a theory, but I'd be willing to bet that you if you let go of something in your hand that is heavier than the surrounding atmosphere you would expect it to fall.

Reminds me of this article --

Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory
August 17, 2005 | Issue 41•33

KANSAS CITY, KS—As the debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools continues, a new controversy over the science curriculum arose Monday in this embattled Midwestern state. Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held "theory of gravity" is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling.

"Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, 'God' if you will, is pushing them down," said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts University.

.....

Link to remainder (http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39512)

[exstatic]

Gravity is just a theory, but I'd be willing to bet that you if you let go of something in your hand that is heavier than the surrounding atmosphere you would expect it to fall.

Reminds me of this article --

Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory
August 17, 2005 | Issue 41•33

KANSAS CITY, KS—As the debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools continues, a new controversy over the science curriculum arose Monday in this embattled Midwestern state. Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held "theory of gravity" is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling.

"Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, 'God' if you will, is pushing them down," said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts University.

.....

Link to remainder (http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39512)
:lmao

It's funny that a lot of science, to this point, is theory, including relativity, but his one little theory that runs counter to the book written by nomadic herdsmen thousands of years ago and thousands of miles away gets their knickers all in a twist.

[Yonivore]

The theory of evolution fails to address the irreducible complexity found in living organisms.

I think this guy makes a valid argument for intelligent design:

Irreducible Complexity: The Challenge to the Darwinian Evolutionary Explanations of many Biochemical Structures (http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/840)


"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."

[BradLohaus]

I've never understood why any of this is taught in high school anyway. You've got kids who can't find the US on a globe for goodness sake. I saw something not too long ago where they asked people (adults) where Iraq was on a world map, and a surprising number of people pointed to Australia, for some reason.

Remember the 3 R's? Kids were alot smarter in those days. Let's lock those things down again and put peripheral stuff like this on hold for a while.

I blame UNESCO and the Department of Education for the decline of public education in this country. We need to get rid of both of them.

[boutons_]

'UNESCO and the Department of Education"

public high schools are run by the states. Texas DoE fucks up Texas schoolbooks and curricula without any extra-state assistance. The fact that teachers are paid dirt, and mostly treated like dirt, keeps the best people from starting into and staying in teaching.

'UNESCO and the Department of Education" WTF?

Kids have a lot of distractions today that weren't around 20 years ago, but the key impediment is parents and family culture that guide/encourage the kids.

[Wild Cobra]

I've never understood why any of this is taught in high school anyway. You've got kids who can't find the US on a globe for goodness sake. I saw something not too long ago where they asked people (adults) where Iraq was on a world map, and a surprising number of people pointed to Australia, for some reason.

Remember the 3 R's? Kids were alot smarter in those days. Let's lock those things down again and put peripheral stuff like this on hold for a while.

I blame UNESCO and the Department of Education for the decline of public education in this country. We need to get rid of both of them.
This is true. Evolution isn't needed to be taught. We do need to make sure students learn the basics before such higher concepts.

[BradLohaus]

public high schools are run by the states. Texas DoE fucks up Texas schoolbooks and curricula without any extra-state assistance. The fact that teachers are paid dirt, and mostly treated like dirt, keeps the best people from starting into and staying in teaching.


Kids have a lot of distractions today that weren't around 20 years ago, but the key impediment is parents and family culture that guide/encourage the kids.

I guess I should have said "partly", but I wasn't being completely serious. I should have used one of these :) . I basically agree with what you said. I have a friend who deals with a teachers' union frequently. At the school district he works for it's almost impossible to fire a teacher - especially if they are a minority. One of many problems in the schools. If we want better teachers, we are going to have to raise their pay.

But does anybody think that the federal DoE and UNESCO have had a positive effect on education in this country? They clearly haven't; at best they are a waste of money.

[Mr. Peabody]

The theory of evolution fails to address the irreducible complexity found in living organisms.

I think this guy makes a valid argument for intelligent design:

Irreducible Complexity: The Challenge to the Darwinian Evolutionary Explanations of many Biochemical Structures (http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/840)

I thought biologists demonstrated that Behe's "irreducibility complexity" argument as applied to the bacterial flagellum was wrong because the flagellum has a function even without the complex structure that comprises the "motor" function.

Link (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_HVrjKcvrU)


In many ways, the "poster child" for irreducible complexity has been the bacterial flagellum. The well-matched parts of this ion-driven rotary engine pose, in the view of many critics, an insurmountable challenge to Darwinian evolution. Once again, however, a close examination of this remarkable biochemical machine tells a quite different story.

To begin with, there is more than one type of "bacterial flagellum." Flagella found in the archaebacteria are clearly not irreducibly complex. Recent research has shown that the flagellar proteins of these organisms are closely related to a group of cell surface proteins known as the Class IV pilins (Jarrel et al 1996) Since these proteins have a well-defined function that is not related to motility, the archael flagella fail the test of irreducible complexity.

Clearly, when he speaks of the bacterial flagellum, Behe refers to flagella found in the eubacteria. Representations of eubacterial flagella appear in Darwin's Black Box (Behe 1996a: 71) and have been used by Dr. Behe in a number of public presentations. Surely these structures must fit the test of irreducible complexity? Ironically, they don't.

In 1998 the flagella of eubacteria were discovered to be closely related to a non-motile cell membrane complex known as the Type III secretory apparatus (Heuck 1998) These complexes play a deadly role in the cytotoxic (cell-killing) activities of bacteria such as Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes bubonic plague. When these bacteria infect an organism, bacteria cells bind to host cells, and then pump toxins directly through the secretory apparatus into the host cytoplasm. Efforts to understand the deadly effects of these bacteria on their hosts led to molecular studies of the proteins in the Type III apparatus, and it quickly became apparent that at least 10 of them are homologous to proteins which form part of the base of the bacterial flagellum (Heuck 1998: 410).

This means that a portion of the whip-like bacterial flagellum functions as the "syringe" that makes up the Type III secretory apparatus. In other words, a subset of the proteins of the flagellum is fully-functional in a completely different context – not motility, but the deadly delivery of toxins to a host cell. This observation falsifies the central claim of the biochemical argument from design – namely, that a subset of the parts of an irreducibly complex structure must be, "by definition nonfunctional." Here are 10 proteins from the flagellum which are missing not just one part but more than 40, and yet they are fully-functional in the Type III apparatus.

[scott]

http://web.mit.edu/gjordan/www/creation/slides/_DSC2394.JPG

[scott]

http://web.mit.edu/gjordan/www/creation/slides/_DSC2400.JPG

[DarkReign]

Pictures are certainly worth 1000 words, in this case.

[Mr. Peabody]

Evidence that man and dinosaur existed at the same time....?

http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/files/videos/rights_purchased/puff/puff.jpg

http://www.emsb.qc.ca/laurenhill/science/badscience_files/image001.jpg

[FromWayDowntown]

Evidence that man and dinosaur existed at the same time....?

http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/files/videos/rights_purchased/puff/puff.jpg

http://www.emsb.qc.ca/laurenhill/science/badscience_files/image001.jpg

For crissakes, man and dinosaur still co-exist:

http://re3.mm-a2.yimg.com/image/2363915530

Duh.

[1369]

http://scalzi.com/logicwrong.jpg

[boutons_]

Creationists/IDer/Bible-thumpers think the Flintstones cartoons were a documentary series. :lol

[Extra Stout]

wow

shame on those parents for letting their children in there
if yew don't baleev that thar moozeyum yer gonna go to hell thar mister

[RuffnReadyOzStyle]

Mr Peabody is absolutely correct about the bacterial flagellum, a proven in a court of law.


The basic tenants of evolution havent changed since Darwin. One organism adapts and adjusts to its enviroment to improve its genetic chances.

Um, no. That is not the theory of evolution - that is called "Lamarckian Evolution" and is patently false. An organism cannot "adapt" it's genes, and evolution is a genetic process over hundreds-thousands-millions of generations.

The theory of evolution is based on the process of natural selection which operates within species at a population level thusly:

1. each organism within a population has a unique genotype, the totality of their genes, which is expressed in their phenotype or body (even asexual organisms due to random genetic mutation).
2. each of the phenotypes/bodies is slightly different, and some of these forms have a higher or lower chance of surviving and reproducing (ie. passing on their genes to the next generation) depending on the state of the environment (ie. nature).
3. those phenotypes/genotypes with a higher chance of surviving/reproducing make up a greater proportion of the next generation, and thus the genetic makeup of the population changes slowly, or sometimes quickly (see salt and pepper moth for classic example).
4. as the environment changes, different combinations of genes are favoured, changing the makeup of the population from generation to generation.
5. sometimes due to a number of factors such as geographical isolation, part of a population is split off, evolves under different environmental conditions, and X generations later is so different from the original population that it can no longer interbreed with it - this is called speciation - and more than that speciation HAS been observed in mosquitoes and other short-lived (and thus quickly evolving) animals.

It is a mass statistical process, not a decision by individual organisms to adapt. For example, the giraffe did not "decide" to adapt and lengthen it's neck - rather, those giraffes with long necks could reach higher leaves and thus survived better in droughts, so they made up a greater % of the next generation of giraffes, and the giraffe population's neck got slowly but progressively longer.



The theory of evolution that claims all life forms evolved by time and chance is not a scientific fact. Scientific theories must either be observable or repeatable. Micro-evolution is an indisputable fact since it can be observed; as for example in the case of dogs where there are countless breeds, but a dog is still a dog.

That is utter garbage since dog "breeds" are not different species (they can still interbreed), and furthermore that is an example of "artificial selection", driven by human choices, not natural selection which is a process driven by nature and changing ecological niches.

The evidence for evolution is overwhelming, and it would be nice if some of you had a clue what you were talking about before you spray your garbage all over the place. And that was not aimed at DarkReigns's misunderstanding of evolution either. it is a subtle concept misunderstood by most people who don't study it.

And that is my annual, first and last post in the political forum this year. :tu :lmao

[Wild Cobra]

If we want better teachers, we are going to have to raise their pay.

I think this is where we part. At least in Oregon, teachers are already paid real well. Now I'm for raising teachers pay, but not by senority or college credits they have. This is what the unions do for them. I'm fine with merit pay, that demands excellence for the top pay scale. Throwing more money at them does not make then do any better without demanding better for the money.

[boutons_]

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/misc/logoprinter.gif (http://www.nytimes.com/)
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/ads/spacer.gifhttp://graphics8.nytimes.com/ads/fox/printerfriendly.gifhttp://graphics8.nytimes.com/ads/fox/100107_tdl_88x31_2.gif (http://www.nytimes.com/adx/bin/adx_click.html?type=goto&page=www.nytimes.com/printer-friendly&pos=Position1&camp=foxsearch2007-emailtools02d-nyt5-511278&ad=100107_tdl_88x31_2.gif&goto=http://www.foxsearchlight.com/thedarjeelinglimited/)



November 25, 2007
Phenomenon

Rock of Ages, Ages of Rock

By HANNA ROSIN

On a muggy afternoon in July, a group of geologists from around the country put on some bug spray and fanned out along one of Ohio’s richest fossil beds. The rock walls were slippery and steep at points, and some people came in their dress shoes straight from the conference that brought them together. But no one seemed daunted; when let loose on the rocks they behaved like children with a piñata, filling their pockets with local specimens and cooing over their treasure. “Ahh, that’s a beautiful brachiopod!” or “A fine trilobite! Let me see that.”

A brightly painted sign in the state park explained that 450 million years ago these ancient creatures lived at the bottom of a warm, shallow sea during the Ordovician period. But none of these geologists believed it. As young-earth creationists, they think the earth is about 8,000 years old, give or take a few thousand years. That’s about the amount of time conventional geology says it can take to form one inch of limestone.

Creationist ideas about geology tend to appeal to overly zealous amateurs, but this was a gathering of elites, with an impressive wall of diplomas among them (Harvard (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/h/harvard_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org), U.C.L.A., the Universities of Virginia, Washington and Rhode Island). They had spent years studying the geologic timetable, but they remained nevertheless deeply committed to a different version of history. John Whitmore, a geologist from nearby Cedarville University who organized the field trip, stood in the middle of the fossil bed and summarized it for his son.

“Dad, how’d these fossils get here?” asked Jess, 7, looking up from his own Ziploc bag full of specimens.

Whitmore, who was wearing a suede cowboy hat, answered in a cowboy manner — laconic but certain.

“From the flood,” he said.

What was remarkable about the afternoon was not so much the fossils (the bed is well picked over) but the gathering itself, part of the First Conference on Creation Geology, held on the Cedarville campus. Creationist geologists are now numerous enough to fill a large meeting room and well educated enough to know that in rejecting the geologic timeline they are also essentially taking on the central tenets of the field. Any “evidence” presented at the conference pointing to a young earth would be no more convincing than voodoo or alchemy to mainstream geologists, who have used various radiometric-dating methods to establish that the earth is 4.6 billion years old. But the participants in the conference insist that their approach is scientifically valid. “We’re past the point of being critical of evolutionists,” Whitmore told me. “We’re trying to go out and make new discoveries and actually do science.”

Creationist geologists are thriving, paradoxically, at a moment when evangelicals are becoming more educated, more prosperous and more open to scientific progress. And though they are a lonely few among Christian academics, they have an influence far out of proportion to their numbers. They have just opened a state-of-the-art $27 million museum in Kentucky, and they dominate the Christian publishing industry, serving as the credentialed experts for the nearly half of Americans who believe in some version of a young earth. In a sense, they represent the fundamentalist avant-garde; unlike previous generations of conservative Christians, they don’t see the need to choose between mainstream science and Biblical literalism.

( the US is totally fucked, education really sucks, with 50% of Americans believe that Genesis is literally true. The US as laughing stock of the planet.)

This creationist approach to science is actually a relatively modern phenomenon, only about 50 years old. When the state of Tennessee put the biology teacher John Scopes on trial for teaching evolution in the 1920s, the creationists did not have a single credentialed supporter. Their main champions were an expert on penmanship, a dropout from homeopathic school and a Canadian surgeon who was billed on his travels as “the greatest scientist in all the world.” William Jennings Bryan, noted prosecutor in the Scopes trial, was not overly concerned with the age of the earth; he equated six-day creationism with the flat-earth theory.

Then in 1961, John Whitcomb, a theologian, and Henry Morris, a hydraulic engineer from Texas, published “The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and Its Scientific Explanations.” The book revived a relatively obscure, century-old theory of Noah’s flood as the most violent catastrophe in earth history. The flood, they argued, warped the normal geological processes and caused rapid transformations. Water from the skies and from within the earth (“the floodgates of heaven”) slammed into the oceans, killing the sea creatures and covering the “high mountains,” as it says in Genesis. For months afterward, the planet convulsed with earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes. After a brief ice age, the earth became the ecosystem we know today. Continents shifted; the water receded; the animals left the ark and spread over the earth.

Until then fundamentalists had mostly avoided any close study of geology, because a literal reading of the Bible was too difficult to reconcile with the accepted age of the earth. But “The Genesis Flood” served as their version of “The Feminine Mystique,” a generational manifesto that liberated them to explore. In the decades since, a small band of geologists, including Whitmore, have set to work improving on the Morris-Whitcomb model using the modern tools of their field: close examination of rocks and fossils combined with computer models.

Now the movement can count hundreds of scientists with master’s or Ph.D. degrees in the sciences from respectable universities. The change started in part when Christian colleges that used to resist mainstream science started premed programs, which meant they needed trained biologists and chemists. Eventually they added courses in physics, chemistry and geology. Most geologists teaching at Christian colleges in the United States today say they do not believe in a young earth; they typically argue that a “day” in Genesis does not necessarily mean a literal 24-hour day, or that there could have been long gaps between the days. But the young-earthers treat the words of Genesis as irrefutable fact.

( does "Christian chemistry" explain how Christ turned water into wine? http://spurstalk.com/forums/images/smilies/smilol.gif )

Their ideas are being showcased in the new Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., opened in May by a creationist group called Answers in Genesis, whose headquarters are nearby. With its wide-open spaces and interactive exhibits, the place feels like a slick museum of natural history, updated for the Hollywood age. Many of the exhibits were designed by Patrick Marsh, who helped create the “Jaws” and “King Kong” attractions at Universal Studios in Florida. Giant dinosaurs guard the courtyard entrance, promising fun and adventure. Inside, a replica of the ark leads you from seaboard to bottom deck, a rumbling theater replicates the flood, James Cameron (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/james_cameron/index.html?inline=nyt-per)-style. Lifelike models of Adam and Eve (who looks like the Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen) frolic in a lush garden among the animals, including several dinosaurs.

The museum expected about 250,000 visitors in the first year. Instead, despite its $20 entry fee, it has had that many in six months,
according to Michael Matthews, the museum’s content manager. Almost every day, minivans and buses from Christian schools fill the parking lot, sometimes after 10-hour road trips. The museum’s target group is the 45 percent of Americans who, for 25 years, have consistently agreed with the statement in a Gallup poll that “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.”

The museum sends the message that belief in a young earth is the only way to salvation. The failure to understand Genesis is literally “undermining the entire word of God,” Ken Ham, the founder of Answers in Genesis, says in a video. The collapse of Christianity believed to result from that failure is drawn out in a series of exhibits: school shootings, gay marriage, drugs, porn and pregnant teens. At the same time, it presents biblical literalism as perfectly defensible science. A fossil shows a perch eating a herring, evidence, they claim, of animals instantaneously trapped by catastrophic events after the flood. In a video, geologists use evidence from Mount St. Helens to show how a mud flow can cut a deep canyon in a single day. “This is what I see based on science,” said Andrew Snelling, one of the many creationist geologists at the conference in July who consulted with the museum.

At the conference, participants got together to tackle some difficult questions: How is radioisotope dating flawed? How was the Grand Canyon formed? If all those animals died in one cataclysmic event, why do their fossils appear in such distinct order? Their discussions recall a pre-Darwinian age, before science and faith became enemies. The old-earthers see their discipline as more pure than intelligent design; the intelligent-design people focus on a notion of a mystery “designer,” without specifying who that might be and what the mechanisms are. To the young-earth creationists, this is both unscientific and dubiously religious. “We don’t subscribe to this idea of the ‘God of gaps,’ meaning if you can’t explain something, then blame God,” Whitmore told me before describing a method that hardly seemed more scientific. “Instead, we think: ‘Here’s what the Bible says. Now let’s go to the rocks and see if we find the evidence for it.’ ”

( yes, have an open mind, no pre-judgements, and let the evidence lead you to testable hypothese, and, horrors, even "theories"1 ! http://spurstalk.com/forums/images/smilies/smilol.gif http://spurstalk.com/forums/images/smilies/smilol.gif )

The heads of all the leading scientific creationist institutes from several countries showed up for the Cedarville event, along with the movement’s other stars: John Baumgardner, a geophysicist who worked for 20 years at Los Alamos National Laboratory (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/l/los_alamos_national_laboratory/index.html?inline=nyt-org); Kurt Wise, who got his Ph.D. in paleontology from Harvard in the ’80s as a student of Stephen Jay Gould (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/stephen_jay_gould/index.html?inline=nyt-per), the nation’s most famous opponent of creationism; and Marcus Ross, 31, the latest inductee into the movement, who got his Ph.D. in environmental science from the University of Rhode Island (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/university_of_rhode_island/index.html?inline=nyt-org) last summer.

Like any group of elites, they were snobs about their superior degrees. During lunch breaks or car rides, they traded jokes about the “vulgar creationists” and the “uneducated masses,” and, in their least Christian moments, the “idiots on the Web.” One leader of a creationist institute complained about all the cranks who call on the phone claiming to have seen dinosaurs or to have had a vision of Noah’s ark. (How Noah fit the entire animal kingdom onto the ark is a perennial obsession.)

Because they have been exposed to so much standard science, the educated creationists like Kurt Wise try not to allow themselves the blind spots of their less sophisticated relations. Some years ago, for instance, fellow creationists claimed to have found fossils of human bones in Pennsylvania coal deposits, which scientists date to millions of years before humans appeared. After examining them, Wise concluded that they were “not fossil material at all” but “inorganically precipitated iron siderite nodules.” Wise later pushed to get himself appointed as scientific adviser to the new creationist museum so he could “keep out the scientific garbage.”

In a presentation at the conference, Wise showed a slide of a fossil sequence that moved from reptile to mammal, with some transitional fossils in between. He veered suddenly from his usual hyperactive mode to contemplative. “It’s a pain in the neck,” he said. http://spurstalk.com/forums/images/smilies/smilol.gif http://spurstalk.com/forums/images/smilies/smilol.gif “It fits the evolutionary prediction quite well.” Wise and others have come up with various theories explaining how the flood could have produced such perfect order. Wise is refining a theory, for example, that the order reflects how far the animals lived from the shore, so those living farthest from the water show up last in the record. But they haven’t settled on anything yet.

“We have nothing to fear from data,” Ross told me. “If we’re afraid, it means we don’t trust God’s word.” The older generation of creationists “would come up with an explanation or a model and say, ‘This solves it!’ I’m a bit more cautious and at the same time more rigorous. We have lines of possibility that we continue to advance but at the same time we recognize that this is science, so the explanations are subject to change with new discoveries.”

As the latest recruit into a small elite, and with his clipped dark hair and goatee, Ross was the novelty at the conference. He grew up in Rhode Island, was an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/university_of_pennsylvania/index.html?inline=nyt-org) and got his Ph.D. under David Fastovsky, a well-known expert in dinosaur extinction at the University of Rhode Island. Fastovsky knew Ross was a young-earth creationist; they’d talked about it after his application came in. “I guess I thought of it as a little bit like Jews playing Wagner,” Fastovsky told me. “The science stands or falls, just like the music, regardless of the disposition of the scientist.” Ross subsequently wrote a 197-page dissertation about a marine reptile called a mosasaur, whose disappearance he tracked through the Cretaceous period, about 65 million years ago. Fastovsky described the paper as “utterly sound,” and the committee recommended very minimal edits.

( but the disposition of the "creationist scientist" caueses the scientific data to fall in favor of infantile OT literalism )

At the conference I asked Ross whether he still believes what he wrote in his graduate thesis. His answer confirmed him as the product of the postmodern university, where truth is dependent on the framework: “Within the context of old age and evolutionary theory, yes. But if the parameter is different, portions of it could be completely in error.”

Outside school, Ross studied what he considered great breakthroughs in creation geology. In 1999, Ross came across John Baumgardner’s theory of catastrophic plate tectonics, which was proposed a few years earlier. The theory is the first attempt to describe the mechanism of the flood. It involves a fantastic “runaway” situation in which the ocean floor slides into the earth’s mantle in a matter of weeks and then hot rocks come to the surface of the ocean floor, causing ocean water to vaporize and rush out like a geyser (“the fountains of the great deep” described in Genesis). A computer model refining the theory purports to show an earth wobbling crazily on its axis as land masses come together and then break apart, forming the continents we have today.

“Until then, my options were pretty pathetic,” Ross said. Now he had something that “accounted for a large body of geological evidence,” proposed by a geophysicist trained at U.C.L.A. and supported by three other geology Ph.D.’s.

So which side did he choose?

“I have faith that the Bible is a true and accurate record of the earth,” he said. “I also entertain the possibility that I’m wrong. It would be cartoonish to say I don’t have doubts from time to time. Everybody has moments of doubt. But I can have those moments without my brain exploding.”

The new creationists are not likely to make much of a dent among secular scientists, who often just roll their eyes at the mention of flood geology. But they have become a burden to many geologists at Christian colleges around the country.

In recent years a number of Christian institutions have been undergoing what Alan Wolfe (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/w/alan_wolfe/index.html?inline=nyt-per), a sociologist, calls “the opening of the evangelical mind.” Instead of teaching a fundamentalist world-view that is always at odds with secular academia, many evangelical colleges are easing their students into the mainstream.

The statement of faith for Wheaton College in Illinois, Billy Graham (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/billy_graham/index.html?inline=nyt-per)’s alma mater, for example, says that Scripture is “inerrant in the original writing” and that “God directly created Adam and Eve,” but when it comes to pinning down the age of the earth, the school balks. Wheaton has a strong geology department. Its professors argue that the Bible makes no specific mention of the age of the earth. They belong to groups like the Geological Society of America and wring their hands about the “geo-literacy” of the church. “Geology at Wheaton is presented and practiced much the same way as at secular universities,” the department chairman, Stephen Moshier, said in a recent talk. Other professors have issued long tracts comparing the various methods of radiometric dating and showing that they all agree: The earth is over four billion years old.

Most members of the American Scientific Affiliation, a collection of Christians with degrees in the sciences, qualify as old-earthers, according to Moshier. But the young-earthers have “a lot more influence,” he told me. They have “tremendous clout” with Christian publishers and are “very, very successful at getting their word out,” he said. “I know so many Christians who have tried to write books from a different perspective and been rejected.”

Marcus Ross, meanwhile, is thriving in his teaching job at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., founded by Jerry Falwell (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/jerry_falwell/index.html?inline=nyt-per) in 1971. Like many Christian colleges, Liberty is expanding rapidly to keep up with growing demand; the school adds 800 students a year, and now has a total of 10,000 on campus and 18,000 more distance-learning students. Each semester, Ross teaches a huge, mandatory survey course called History of Life. Most kids in the class are creationists, but Ross finds gaps in their world-view. His aim is to make their creationist logic more consistent, and his surveys show that he succeeds. At the beginning of the class, only 54 percent of students say the age of the earth is less than 10,000 years. By the end, it’s 87 percent. The biggest shift? Did dinosaurs and man live at the same time? That one moves to 80 percent from 40.

These numbers make Moshier cringe. “It can get so frustrating,” he said. “Many of us at Christian colleges really grieve at what a problem this young-earth creationism makes for the Christian witness. It’s almost like they’re adding another thing you have to believe to become a Christian. It’s like saying, You have to believe the world is flat to be a Christian, and that’s absolutely unreasonable.”

Given the difficulty of their intellectual enterprise, the creationist geologists often have a story about the time they nearly gave it up. For Wise the crisis hit when he was a sophomore in high school. He was already an avid fossil collector who dreamed “an unattainable dream” of going to Harvard to study paleontology and then to teach at a big university. But as he told a friend, he couldn’t reconcile the geologic ages with what he read in his Bible. So he set about figuring this out: every night, for months, he cut out every verse of the Bible he’d have to reject to believe in evolution. “I dreaded the impending end,” he writes in a collection of essays called “In Six Days: Why 50 Scientists Choose to Believe in Creation.” “All that I loved to do was involved with some aspect of science.”

When he was done, he tried to pick up what was left. But he found it impossible to do that without the Bible being “rent in two,” he writes. “Either the Scripture was true and evolution was wrong or evolution was true and I must toss out the Bible.”

( what bullshit, binary, simplistic thinking, from a "Christian scientist". )

In the end, he kept his Bible and achieved his unattainable dream. But it left him in a strange, vulnerable place. “If all the evidence in the universe turned against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate. Here I must stand.”

In “The God Delusion,” Richard Dawkins (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/d/richard_dawkins/index.html?inline=nyt-per), the evolutionary biologist and author, presents Wise as an Othello figure, destroyed by his own convictions. “The wound, to his career,” Dawkins writes, “and his life’s happiness, was self-inflicted, so unnecessary, so easy to escape. All he had to do was toss out the Bible. Or interpret it symbolically, or allegorically, as the theologians do. Instead, he did the fundamentalist thing and tossed out science, evidence and reason, along with all his dreams and hopes.”

If Wise still has doubts, or unhappiness, he has learned to put them aside. When consulting for the Creation Museum, he considered his most important duty to be presenting a “coherent story line about the earth’s history,” he said. “Even if it’s wrong, it’s a starting point. We use coherence as a criteria. It ought to fit together not as a set of random processes but something coherent orchestrated by God. And not just coherent but spine-tingling. God is behind this story. I can know it as a single story, and the story can be understood, and the story can be spine tingling. There’s a Whoa! factor. And it’s there from the first verse: The Lord God is One.”

Hanna Rosin, a contributing editor for The Atlantic, is the author of “God’s Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save the Nation.”

[BradLohaus]

I'm fine with merit pay, that demands excellence for the top pay scale. Throwing more money at them does not make then do any better without demanding better for the money.

I agree about merit pay. I guess the thing about teachers is that they get hired, often do the same job year after year, and get raises based only on how long they've been doing that job. There's not alot of promotion-based raises like in other fields.

If somebody could figure out a good way to pay them based more on performance rather than seniority, that would be a good thing. And then it would be promptly and strongly attacked by the teachers' unions.

There's a reason why churches can run schools better than the government.

[scott]

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/05/another_christian_science_fair.php


Brian Benson, an eighth-grade student who won first place in the Life Science/Biology category for his project "Creation Wins!!!," says he disproved part of the theory of evolution. Using a rolled-up paper towel suspended between two glasses of water with Epsom Salts, the paper towel formed stalactites. He states that the theory that they take millions of years to develop is incorrect.

"Scientists say it takes millions of years to form stalactites," Benson said. "However, in only a couple of hours, I have formed stalactites just by using paper towel and Epsom Salts."

[BradLohaus]

If we start posting stuff from PZ Myers and Vox Day's blogs then we'll really rile people up. :lol

[Extra Stout]

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/05/another_christian_science_fair.php
Wow... those judges are really good at science.