Posted on 04/21/2005 4:34:42 AM PDT by gobucks
In the last year, Silicon Valley has been a center of a showdown over religious beliefs in public schools. Meet the other side. LYNN HOFLAND often talks faster than he thinks. For Hofland, it seems the circumstances demand it. A creationist, he happily espouses a point of view that mainstream culture considers ridiculous and unenlightened.
The earth, according to Hofland, is about 6,000 years old. God created it in six 24-hour days. And, of course, evolution is just a theory.
Most people around here will shake their heads and wonder how anyone could think that in this day and age. But for Hofland, it's a basic foundation of his belief system.
And his belief system came to the South Bay in a big way last fall when Stephen Williams, a fifth-grade teacher at Stevens Creek Elementary School in Cupertino, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Cupertino Union School District (and against Stevens Creek Elementary's principal), claiming he had been discriminated against because he was Christian. Williams, backed by the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal organization engaged in contesting cultural issues across the nation, said that his principal stopped him from handing out historical materials in class that referenced God. After an initial Drudge Report headline about the Declaration of Independence being "banned" at a California school, Williams' case was egged on by right-wing radio and blogs. Sean Hannity, of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, brought his show to the Flint Center in Cupertino for a special "Take Back America" broadcast.
Mark Thomas was one of the panelists for that broadcast. Thomas, the president of the Atheists of Silicon Valley (www.godlessgeeks.com), believes everything that Hofland does not. He believes men came from monkeys. He believes the animate sprung from the inanimate; the concept even has a scientific-sounding word for it: abiogenesis.
Thomas has met Hofland on more than one occasion; he even went so far as to give Hofland the floor during one of his atheist meetings held bimonthly in the community room of his townhouse complex in Mountain View. But the truth is, he thinks Hofland is a kook. Or, if Hofland's not a kook himself, that his ideas about the origins of life are definitely kooky.
"It's rather irritating to get into these conversations about the origins of life with him," says Thomas. "You keep coming back with God did this, God did that. The problem is for him there are no contradictions because he's right. In some ways you can't refute him. God could have created the world a hundred years ago with everything looking as though it were ancient. You can't disprove it. God could have created the universe a day ago with everything, including people's memories intact. You can't disprove that."
Evolution of an Anti-Evolutionist
Hofland may think the world was created in six days, but it took him a lot longer than that to arrive at that belief—30 years and then some, in fact. Born in Montana, near Missoula (he still mixes Montana wheat into homemade breads and waffles), Hofland, now 50, has always had a Midwestern sensibility. He graduated from high school (his mother was his eighth-grade biology teacher), but flunked out of college after a year and a half. Then, he did a six-year stint in the Navy, floating around the South Pacific on a nuclear submarine.
"My background," he admits, "did not lend itself to me being a creationist."
Of all things, it was a subsequent job at NASA, where he's still employed today, that led Hofland to discard the evolutionism he had grown up with. Watching NASA scientists taking lessons from the physiology of giraffes to develop gravity suits for astronauts (the thick-skinned giraffe boasts a unique blood pressure for mammals, which is especially helpful for outer-space modeling) eventually convinced Hofland to do his own research into the giraffe—an animal, as it turns out, that has been widely used in creationist arguments.
What he found, he says, converted him. The giraffe, he learned, has seven neck bones (the norm, for many mammals), even though, as far as he could tell, there's no reason why evolution wouldn't have demanded the number of the giraffe's neck bones increase with the size of its neck. Hofland was also amazed at the giraffe's capability to withstand extreme blood pressure (due to its height) in its legs, and to adjust the pressure when it bends its head down to drink water—without its reinforced artery walls, its collection of valves and a "web" of small blood vessels, intense pressure would reach the giraffe's brain every time it bends its head. Not to mention what Hofland considers the miraculous design of the giraffe's birthing process—the new calf, which drops into the world from a height of five feet, cannot fall neither head or feet first, as both positions would end up breaking its neck; instead, the giraffe maneuvers a "perfect" exit, hind feet first and supporting its flexible neck around its shoulders.
Before he learned all this, Hofland insists, he, always scientifically inclined, was very much an ardent evolutionist. But, after his study, he ended up penning an article which became the basis for a new creationist ministry he calls Stiffneck Ministries.
"I had to struggle with this, but when I did my homework, I was convinced the giraffe was created," he says. "And, if the giraffe was created, then I was created, and, if I was created, then I had some answering to do for my life."
Thomas, however, is hardly impressed by Hofland's conversion. "I'm very well aware of his Stiffneck Ministries and his giraffes," says Thomas, with an exasperated tone. "His arguments are false; they are completely false. Giraffes have evolved over a period of time, and it's not a very good system. Giraffes have a lot of problems, many babies die during birth because they have a long distance to fall, but it works well enough for them to survive."
Thomas has little patience for Hofland's logic. "What creationist and intelligent designers like to point out is, basically, 'Isn't X amazing? I don't understand how X could be. Therefore, there must be something else that designed X and that created X. I don't understand what this other thing is either, but it must exist, because I don't understand X. That's fallacious reasoning."
Tie For First: The way Lynn Hofland's neckwear pointedly quotes the opening of the Christian Bible leaves no doubt as to where he stands on the question of life's origin.
Putting God Into Schools
Hofland was in the audience for the Hannity special in Cupertino. For him, the hubbub was about nothing other than certain people—in this case, the elementary school's administrators and the concerned parents—being too "sensitive." The United States, Hofland likes to say, is largely a Christian nation, though Hofland's definition of what a "Christian" nation is seems to vary subtly with the context. Sometimes, as in the case of Cupertino's Williams, who Hofland argues was only distributing material that reflected the roots and realities of the United States, the nation's very Christian; sometimes it's not Christian enough.
Even the question of what "Christian" belief is in regard to creationism has shifted over time.
"The irony, of course, in all of this creation science stuff is that modern conservative Christians are not the equivalent of their 19th-century counterparts," says J. David Pleins, a professor of religion at Santa Clara University.
Pleins, who has written extensively about readings of Genesis, argues young earth creationism—Hofland's view of a 6,000-year-old history—wasn't always a traditional Christian perspective.
"In the 19th century, you people who we would today call fundamentalist or conservative Christians, who didn't think the earth was young. They were anti-evolution Christians; they were against Darwin, but they believed the earth was old because they believe that the science told us about all these ancient lost eras. And so you had conservative Christians who were committed to an old-earth creationism. That seems to be an option that's lost today, and it's lost not because of the Scopes trial."
Instead, Pleins contends that a book, The Genesis Flood, put young earth creationism on the map. "It argued that science, rewritten and interpreted differently, would validate a literal reading of the Bible, so with creation science, you get a commitment from all conservative Christians committed to a young earth reading of the text. That's new."
The reasons behind the shift in perspective are strikingly similar to the modern fundamentalist worries that Christianity would erode away if not somehow protected, which results in a defensive posture by the Christian right in the American culture wars. The book's authors, says Pleins, thought that "if you give away the literal reading of the Bible, you start giving up the biblical truth. Where would you stop?"
Similarly, Hofland wants to establish the Bible's authority in America's public schools.
"There's nothing wrong with the Bible being added as a reference text," he insists. "If the science classroom is asking questions about how old the earth is, then this"—Hofland pats a tiny blue Bible—"is as good of a reference as rocks in the ground."
Employing Hofland's logic, solutions for teaching evolution in public schools would, seemingly, become exercises in political correctness.
"Question number one," Hofland says, "could be according to the theory of evolution; question number two could be according to the theory of creation; question number three could be according to the Buddhism or whatever. Or something like that."
Hofland may seem to be far out of the mainstream, but his beliefs have made some inroads in popular culture, as seen in cases like that of the Atlanta school district that voted in 2002 to put stickers in biology textbooks which stated that evolution is "a theory not a fact." A federal judge ruled that the stickers had to be removed.
Others who criticize the way evolution is taught in public schools say they aren't necessarily creationists, but simply believe God has been pushed too far out of the debate over life's origins. In 1998, after receiving a letter co-signed by two widely respected religious scholars, Huston Smith and Alvin Plantinga, the National Association of Biology Teachers was forced to edit its definition of what to teach about evolution in schools. The association had described evolution as "unsupervised" and "impersonal"; Smith and Plantinga argued there was no scientific basis for those descriptors, and the association ended up agreeing, deleting the two words.
At NASA, Hofland often visits an artistic depiction of the origins of human life that has been put up in a building neighboring his workspace. The depiction, a colorful painting that, from left to right, shows the evolutionary stages of life through bold white lines. It begins with volcanoes exploding, moves on to micro-organisms in the oceans, to various kinds of mammals in the forests, to cave men, and finally to modern man driving along a highway.
"I did meet the artist, the original artist," he says of the painting. "At first, he told me they told him to paint all the volcanoes exploding. Then, they told him, Oh that was too much, that would cause a nuclear winter and shut everything down, so they only had two volcanoes that were exploding and the rest were dormant. And see, they keep changing their view of what happened."
Do they call the movie, "Evolver of the Black Lagoon??" :o)
Yeah.......that pesky law of gravity. Causes all kinds of problems, doesn't it?
Alert the media!
The lava flows came from the mantle, -- of course it's older than the basalt at the bottom of the canyon.
I just shuffled a deck of cards and turned them up:
4-Diamonds Ace-Diamonds Jack-Diamonds 5-Hearts
4-Hearts 10-Diamonds Ace-Hearts 9-Clubs
Jack-Clubs 8-Hearts 4-Spades 10-Spades
5-Spades Queen-Clubs King-Hearts 6-Diamonds
2-Diamonds 3-Diamonds Queen-Spades 3-Hearts
5-Diamonds 2-Spades 2-Hearts Queen-Diamonds
Jack-Hearts 4-Clubs 9-Spades 3-Clubs
10-Hearts 8-Clubs 6-Clubs 8-Diamonds
7-Diamonds 2-Clubs 7-Spades 7-Hearts
King-Clubs Jack-Spades King-Diamonds 9-Hearts
5-Clubs 7-Clubs Ace-Spades Queen-Hearts
Ace-Clubs 9-Diamonds 6-Hearts 6-Spades
3-Spades 8-Spades King-Spades 10-Clubs
What are the odds are of that happening? In less than 30 seconds?!?
Evolution still leaves a lot of questions unanswered.Their claim that life came from inert matter goes against their own teaching that life only comes from life.To claim that evolution is one hundred percent factual and it contains no guessing is a stretch at this point.
Who knows who will win. I'm just saying that should the tie between creationism and conservatisim be solid, that it will be an avenue of attack against us.
And being that creationism doesn't move any real conservative issue forward, the political capital expended to fight off the attack will be wasted. We don't need to spend such capital, if only we can prevent some conservatives from shooting their mouths off.
Sean Hannity for one, and Dennis Prager for another, have endorsed creationism to some degree. And even Ann Coulter made a positive mention of it once. The Republican "stupid party" even shows up in those folks on this issue.
Talking up creationism doesn't get us anywhere forward with decent Supreme Court justices, or school choice, or SocSec reform.
Talk about unanswered questions. I believe God created the universe, but I'm not going to lie to myself and say that Genesis has any real detail. There's only a few hundred words in the creation stories. How can there possibly be detail there?
Which is exactly my point. There is so little detail in Genesis, that there's plenty of room to drive trucks of evolution through it.
I'm continually amazed that creationists insist that "God did it" is enough detail, but anything discoverd by science must be bogus, simply because Genesis doesn't mention it.
Oh, yeah. I read all about that in Genesis......
Fester, I really don't believe a word you write. I think you're playing devils advocate just to stir things up.
When it rains, is that not a miracle of God? Everything in God's creation is a miracle, even evolution.
Where did this creationist thing come from that somehow if science describes it, then it can't be correct, because scientists are evil humanists intent on destroying faith?
If science wanted to argue against faith in God, then they're making mighty wierd arguments against Him. I would think they would argue many other issues first, such as attacking apparent inconsistencies in the Bible (I know, you will say there are none, but I'm talking "apparent" inconsistencies that the untrained can be confronted with).
There are much better ways to attack faith than evolution. Scientists are many things, but they're not stupid, and if that was their goal, they would pick another path.
No, I am a total nutcase who believes in a young earth based on the texts I've read. I am a bigger skeptic than most scientists, but willing to accept the testimony of Einstein et al. Ask any scientist what is the essence of time, and suddenly matters of faith spring up.
What we're dealing with in terms of experience is not as cut and dried as we'd like to think. There is infinitely more we do not know than we know, and it is past time to pretend, as we teach or children, that evolution (in the wide sense) is the singular, unquestionable explanation of history where time and ontology are concerned.
Shuffle the cards three more times and come up with the same result three more times, and we might get close to a fraction of the probability involved with life arising by virtue of chance.
Simply the fact that there is a lot more we don't know than what we do know, doesn't make what we do know incorrect.
I have no doubt that the science of evolution will change. But I don't think that the basic concept of evolution will be erased by future discoveries.
As Newton's work was not erased by Einstein, only refined.
There are several hard facts that support evolution that I doubt you would have the cajonies to deny. The fact that creatures get more complex and diverse over time. The fact that apparent modern creatures do not co-exist with older creatures.
Those facts alone point to evolution, whether Darwin's natural selection method holds up or not.
Please don't insert an objection to the origin of life here. We both know that that's an entirely different subject, with an entirely different discussion from evolution.
The IDers can certainly claim that God created these creatures in that sequence for some purpose of His. Maybe He was practicing, or something. But still, there is no affirmative evidence in favor of ID, only endless criticisms of evolution, quite obviously motivated by faith.
I believe that God made the rain fall. Which is a quite naturalistic thing. Humidity condensed the water, and gravity pulled it to earth. But still, God did that.
And I believe that God created evolution, probably through Darwin's natural selection, the the creatures we see are the result.
The religion firsters can object that this somehow denies the place of man in the creation. But I see no objection. God gave man a soul. The details of how God created the man, how long that took, and how many steps were along the way are irrelevant to the idea that man has a soul.
Do you have any data to backup your assertion?
The point is there is no valid probability when there is no particular outcome expected. Evolution doesn't have a goal, if the result helps survival then one outcome is as good as another.
To repeat the sequence of cards would be 1 in 8.066 x 1067 shuffles. If the sequence showed up again, that is no more evidence of a God than evidence of natural causes or tiny green fairies.
Do you think TOE should be required to meet the standards of a criminal trial?
TOE has survived 145 years of cross examination. During that time the best the opposition has been able to do is point out that we don't have witnesses, and a lot of evidence has been lost to time. No alternate theory capable of being tested has been presented.
No more than you do to back up yours. What's your point?
Fine and reasonable as a personal philosophy, but, just as with the philosophy of evolution, not worthy to arrogate itself as the only way to understand the world.
Evolutionists have an incredible amount of faith to believe that life progressed as they think it did.
It's actually impossible..........if you're just playing the odds, that is.
It's both hilarious and pathetic that any conservative would bemoan other conservatives' rights to free speech, and belief in the Bible as it is written. It's sad that you are so wrapped up in your evolutionary zealotry that it takes precedence over your belief in free speech.
What I want to know from you, if you can state it concisely and clearly.......evidence of which you have not revealed thus far....... is exactly how do you decide which parts of the Bible you want to believe, and which parts you want to discard. Do you believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God?
Do you throw out the whole book of Genesis? Do you believe in the flood?
Do you stop at Exodus? Do you believe the Israelites were held captive by the Egyptians and wandered in the wilderness, or is that myth too?
Do you believe Jonah was swallowed by a big fish? Do you believe he went to Ninevah to preach? Are they both allegories, or is one an allegory and another historical fact?
Do you believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ, or is that just allegory too? Do you believe in the Virgin birth?
Do you believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus? Do you believe in the Second Coming?
And what process do you use to eliminate the Scripture that you choose to eliminate? Your own logic? Someone else's logic? The same guesswork that scientists use to give us their 'facts' about evolution? Do you close your eyes and point to a passage of Scripture and say, "I believe this," and another and say "I don't believe this?" Is it as random as the evolution you choose to believe? How exactly do you make your determination as to what is true, and what should be ridiculed?
You clearly comfort yourself with the fact that the Bible has been misinterpreted in the past. That's the theme song of evolutionists. (What would you do without Galileo? He's your poster boy for the fallibility of the Church).
If you are capable of answering concisely, I'd like to know. Because I find your position absolutely untenable as a Christian. You use the words "God can do anything" to throw out the words He's actually revealed to us as to what He DID. It's distortion and rationalization at its worst, IMO. Better to throw it all out and say "I don't believe it at all" than to use it to rationalize and try to make a Godless philosophy more palatable.
I can turn your logic around and say, if evolution were actually scientific fact, there wouldn't be scientists, and thousands upon thousands of intelligent people who still say that it isn't scientifically possible for evolution to have occurred.......especially since its crammed down the throats of every student in America from elementary school on.
The fact that it's not univerally accepted by scientists (as is, for example the law of gravity, or any other true scientific fact), is evidence that it probably did not in actuality occur.
It's common to say that only religious fundamentalists claim that evolution is impossible, but the opposition to it is much more widespread and always has been. It just makes it convenient to dismiss all those who doubt its veracity to claim that all of us are just religious crackpots ( a familiar tactic of all leftists, btw).
Evolution can't be tested or proven because there are no testing methods. You keep pushing the goalposts back when your 'facts' are proven wrong (do you personally believe what the scientific 'facts' presented at the Scopes trial?).... back farther in time and even less testable. A very convenient ploy to save face, I might add.
Those of you who believe in evolution do so on faith. Period.
What you've just done is turn my critisism of Hannity on this issue into an accusation that I don't believe in free speech. What hyperdrive made you take that leap of logic?
I'm just pointing out that Hannity doesn't have the brains of Rush Limbaugh, who stays away from religious issues completly. He mentions just enough to let you know that he is a believer, but he doesn't get into the subject.
Like they say about dinner parties. You can't discuss religion or politics without getting into an argument. Rush staked his issue at politics, but has the brains that Hannity does not, to leave his religious beliefs at home.
is exactly how do you decide which parts of the Bible you want to believe, and which parts you want to discard. Do you believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God?
Exatly what part of the history of religious wars don't you understand? I'm sure everyone in your local church all believes alike. But that's not the case in Ireland with the Catholics and Protestants. It's perfectly normal for two groups of people to read the same Bible and honestly take completly different meanings. I'm not going to even attempt to explain to you how I "decide which parts of the Bible" I want to belive, because I'm sure we will disagree till our death.
But the fact is that I came by my religious viewpoint just as honestly as you did. I have a right to my faith, and you have a right to yours. Americans fought over this issue 300 years ago, and decided that the First Amendment was required so that we each can believe what we wish.
We have religious freedom in America, but the mistake you're making is that evolution is not a faith. There is no diety worshiped by science. There is no salvation claimed. Evolution and science makes no claim that God doesn't exist.
What's going on here are a few religious entities have discovered that they can get mileage by proping up evolution as a boogy man. Just like the left holds up loggers and oil drillers as boogy men they must fight, and they then reap millions of dollars in contributions in order to do so.
Wake up. Science is not your enemey. Liberalism is AND THEY ARE NOT THE SAME THING!
None are so blind as those who will not see.
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