Are You Too Dumb to Understand Evolution?

Well just in case you have not figured it out Ha Ha Not Very Logical, the topic here is not all fields ‘of science’, its evolution.

I give you a 4.5 out of a 10.0 on your strawman creation though.

Keep weighing in with all of your ‘heavy science’. Heavy like Barack Obama heavy.

http://scienceblogs.com/authority/

More on the California creationist lawsuit

In a post earlier today, I noted that a group of creationists are suing the University of California system in order to force UC to accept several of their classes that are currently not considered adequate. One of the courses in question is biology. As I already pointed out, UC is not discriminating against Christians by refusing to accept the class; it is simply living up to its responsibility to ensure that applicants are adequately prepared for university study. Nevertheless, I was curious as to what about these particular biology classes was so poor as to attract attention.

The LA Times reported that:

According to the lawsuit, UC's board of admissions also advised the school that it would not approve biology and science courses that relied primarily on textbooks published by Bob Jones University Press and A Beka Books, two Christian publishers.

Now, given what I've heard about Bob Jones University, I figured that any biology text that they produce would be unlike any I'd read before. So I trotted on over to the Bob Jones University Press website to see what I could find. Looking over their list of books for "conventional schools", I found a textbook for a 10th grade biology class. The price is a bit high for me, given the quality, so I didn't order it. However, the website has a nice "see the inside of this book" feature that gives access to the frontmatter, preface, introduction, and a sample chapter. After looking at it, I think I understand why UC has problems with it.

From the Introduction:

Biology for Christian Schools is a textbook for Bible-believing high-school students. Those who do not believe that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant Word of God will find many points in this book puzzling. This book was not written for them.

That's funny. There I was thinking that science is a universal concept, open to anyone who is willing to study the natural world. I had no idea that there are things in science that can only be understood if you believe what these folks do.

The people who prepared this book have tried consistently to put the Word of God first and science second...If...at any point God's Word is not put first, the authors apologize.

Let's see. What we have here is a "science" textbook, written by people who have made a conscious effort to put science second. Wow. What possible reason could the University of California have for being concerned about the quality of classes using this book?

The same encyclopedia article may state that the grasshopper evolved 300 million years ago. You may find a description of some insect that the grasshopper supposedly evolved from and a description of the insects that scientists say evolved from the grasshopper. You may even find a "scientific" explanation of the biblical locust (grasshopper) plague in Egypt. These statements are conclusions based on "supposed science." If the conclusions contradict the Word of God, the conclusions are wrong, no matter how many scientific facts may appear to back them.

It's nice to see how willing they are to keep an open mind about things.

Believe it or not, the book actually seems to get worse. The sample chapter provided on the website is Chapter One: The Science of Life and the God of Life. Page nine is a box that is labeled as one of the book's "Facets of Biology". The title of this particular facet is: "How God Communicates with Man". In it, we find:

Was Joseph Smith's [founder of the Mormons -tqa] revalation from God? Based on Scripture, one must say no! The apostle Paul says that if anyone (including Paul himself or even an angel) comes and preaches any other gospel, he is to be accursed (Gal 1:8).

If you want to know what this has to do with science, or why it appears in a science book, you'll have to ask someone else, because I've got no clue. It must be one of those aspects of science that perplexes those who lack the BJU-approved beliefs.

There's another Facet later in the chapter, dealing with spontaneous generation. It spans three pages, and concludes with this creationist gem:

After Pasteur's swan-necked flask experiment and thousands of other experiments supporting biogenesis, do people today still believe in spontaneous generation? Yes. Anyone who believes in evolution believes that spontaneous generation has occurred. ... If they can create life, they think they can support their belief in life's beginning without God.

This chapter of the text also has some material that discusses evolution:

The idea that life comes from similar life is important. God created humans and all of the other kinds of organisms with the ability to reproduce after their own kind (Gen. 1:12, 21, 25, 28); therefore, humans reproduce humans, oak trees reproduce oak trees, and cats reproduce cats. The idea of all life forms descending from a common ancestor cell that originated from non-living chemicals is absurd.

Right. It's completely absurd to believe that humans have descended from chemicals through a long line of ancestors. It's much more reasonable to believe that humans came directly from dirt which is made from...

Looking at just the available samples from this text, I'm not surprised that UC declines to accept courses using it as the primary material as valid. I am surprised that there are apparently some schools that do.

By the way, the examples that I've quoted are by no means a comprehensive listing of everything that's wrong with the material I read. They are simply a few of the more egregious examples illustrating the comprehensively unscientific nature of this book. A thorough examination would have taken far more time than I have, and would simply have depressed me further.

It certainly isn’t about the science

That seems to be a matter of opinion. It seems there's one bunch that says science is a religion, and another that says their religion is a science. All they seem to know for sure is that the "evolutionists" are wrong. They can't seem to agree on exactly what it is they're wrong about, or what the "right" answers are, they just know they're wrong.

They don't really have any answers of their own, but they're upset that somebody else says they might.

the minority godless

Can't get much more ephemeral than that.

Ummmm, last I checked I wasn’t defending the side of censorship...

Oh, but you are! The religious texts censor real science in their textbooks and put out religious false statements (lies). From my earlier post some excerpts from the science texts:

The people who prepared this book have tried consistently to put the Word of God first and science second...If...at any point God's Word is not put first, the authors apologize.

The same encyclopedia article may state that the grasshopper evolved 300 million years ago. You may find a description of some insect that the grasshopper supposedly evolved from and a description of the insects that scientists say evolved from the grasshopper. You may even find a "scientific" explanation of the biblical locust (grasshopper) plague in Egypt. These statements are conclusions based on "supposed science." If the conclusions contradict the Word of God, the conclusions are wrong, no matter how many scientific facts may appear to back them. It's nice to see how willing they are to keep an open mind about things.

Was Joseph Smith's [founder of the Mormons -tqa] revalation from God? Based on Scripture, one must say no! The apostle Paul says that if anyone (including Paul himself or even an angel) comes and preaches any other gospel, he is to be accursed (Gal 1:8).

After Pasteur's swan-necked flask experiment and thousands of other experiments supporting biogenesis, do people today still believe in spontaneous generation? Yes. Anyone who believes in evolution believes that spontaneous generation has occurred. ... If they can create life, they think they can support their belief in life's beginning without God. This chapter of the text also has some material that discusses evolution:

The idea that life comes from similar life is important. God created humans and all of the other kinds of organisms with the ability to reproduce after their own kind (Gen. 1:12, 21, 25, 28); therefore, humans reproduce humans, oak trees reproduce oak trees, and cats reproduce cats. The idea of all life forms descending from a common ancestor cell that originated from non-living chemicals is absurd.

Well just in case you have not figured it out Ha Ha Not Very Logical, the topic here is not all fields ‘of science’, its evolution.

Just like the evos extrapolate variation within species to arrive at evolution from one species to another they exaggerate in almost everything.

They are masters at hyperbole.

Accepting the Genesis creation account as factual and true = demanding that everyone take the whole Bible literally.

Rejecting the current interpretation of the fossil record as support of evolution = rejecting science as a whole.

Wanting to see creation taught in public schools as it used to be for well nigh 200 years = trying to establish a theocracy and sending our country back into the Dark Ages.

The level of hysteria and fear mongering in trying to get their point across and discredit the Christian/creationist side of the debate shows that they're not interested in honest debate. If they were, they wouldn't try so hard to discredit us by making us look like backwards, ignorant, knuckle dragging, rednecks. They would debate the issues instead of expending so much energy misrepresenting the other side.

But I guess that they don't have much to go on to do it honestly. Otherwise they would also not be expending so much energy and resources suing the non-evo position into silence. It's pretty pathetic that the only way you can get your viewpoint across and to insist upon a monopoly in the public school where there's a captive audience.

The good news it, it's not working anyway. They can sue all they want. They can deny high school credit for those whose belief system differs from theirs (nobody has yet shown me that the issue is that the ToE is not being taught correctly in those textbooks, the whole point seems to hinge on the statements made in the preface about not accepting it as true). People know better than to buy it.

For all the time and money and lawsuits and hijacking the public school system as a platform to push their world view, nothing has changed much in the statistics of people who accept creation/ID or who want them to be represented in the schools as they used to be.

People know better than to be sucked in to the *If you really knew the ToE, of course you'd believe it. If you were really smart, you'd *know* that it were true.* Backhandedly insulting people is NOT a good way to win them over.

They claim it's about science and are so proud of using science properly to *prove* something and then resort to rather unscientific techniques to coerce the acceptance of their theory.

So only atheist scientists can believe a match can burn a finger?

That is a dumb statement for you to believe. Of course, even a religious guy can believe a match can burn a finger but NO one can explain how the matter in the match is converted to energy. We have a model that allows us to understand and use the chemical reaction and even calculate the change in mass but it is ONLY a model.

why do you need a judge

Are you forgetting the creationist's lawsuit to force the UofC system to accept students that are taught from science textbooks that openly state that much of science is incorrect?

Hey, I’m not the one who claims that science is not about truth nor that anything in science can even ever be proved.

Re: the evo list of made up definitions that evos insist are accurate...
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Truth: This is a word best avoided entirely in physics [and science] except when placed in quotes, or with careful qualification. Its colloquial use has so many shades of meaning from ‘it seems to be correct’ to the absolute truths claimed by religion, that it’s use causes nothing but misunderstanding. Someone once said “Science seeks proximate (approximate) truths.” Others speak of provisional or tentative truths. Certainly science claims no final or absolute truths. Source.*
**********************************************************
Proof. A term from logic and mathematics describing an argument from premise to conclusion using strictly logical principles. In mathematics, theorems or propositions are established by logical arguments from a set of axioms, the process of establishing a theorem being called a proof.

The colloquial meaning of ‘proof’ causes lots of problems in physics discussion and is best avoided. Since mathematics is such an important part of physics, the mathematician’s meaning of proof should be the only one we use. Also, we often ask students in upper level courses to do proofs of certain theorems of mathematical physics, and we are not asking for experimental demonstration!

So, in a laboratory report, we should not say “We proved Newton’s law.” Rather say, “Today we demonstrated (or verified) the validity of Newton’s law in the particular case of…”
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* source being:Cal Tech http://spider.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/jarrett/LiU/resource/misused_glossary.html

If science isn’t about truth, then what is it about? Opinion? Consensus? Peer review? Lies?

That is a dumb statement

Atheists believe in evolution. You believe in evolution, so you must be an athiest. Evolutionists disagree with creationists. You believe a match can burn your finger, so you must disagree with them about that.

Creation science at work.

If science isn’t about truth, then what is it about? Opinion? Consensus? Peer review? Lies?

I notice that word "evidence" is conspicuously absent.

Are You Too Dumb to Understand Evolution?

Most people are not. Unfortunately, for the Conservative Movement and this website, there is a minority that are.

**See Tagline**

to getting Christianity back in the classroom, the less success you're likely to have in court. It's a losing strategy.

That's why they invented ID. But I still can't figure out why a creationist would support ID when ID says that man came from a chemical soup and evolved over millions of years from organism to great ape to man and their primary expert even said that the great designer may be dead!

“If we’re descended from monkeys and apes, how come there are still monkeys and apes?”

If we evolved from lower animals, why do they still exist?

I'm no Darwinist, but this is a really, really dumb question.

I'm no Darwinist, but this is a really, really dumb question.

Yes it is, and that is from a bible thumping creationist.

I understand the religion of evolution, I just don’t believe in it anymore.

Accepting the Genesis creation account as factual and true = demanding that everyone take the whole Bible literally.

That is what a lot of creationists actually say on these boards.

Wanting to see creation taught in public schools as it used to be for well nigh 200 years = trying to establish a theocracy and sending our country back into the Dark Ages.

Close.

You’re shooting at the balloons above the castle instead of sapping at the foundation.

In other words, you’re arguing with someone about a SYMPTOM of their problem, instead of the root of their problem.

The root is their rejection of a Creator God, because accepting that reality has far too many consequences for them.

This evo stuff is just a justification for a decision based not on rationality, but on selfish hedonistic lifestyle choices.

This evo stuff is just a justification for a decision based not on rationality, but on selfish hedonistic lifestyle choices.

I would bet that my lifestle is less hedonistic than your lifestyle.