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... of even modest intelligence and decency do something like this?
WAYNE, N.J. — Evangelist Ken Ham smiled at the 2,300 elementary students packed into pews, their faces rapt. With dinosaur puppets and silly cartoons, he was training them to reject much of geology, paleontology and evolutionary biology as a sinister tangle of lies.
"Boys and girls," Ham said. If a teacher so much as mentions evolution, or the Big Bang, or an era when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, "you put your hand up and you say, 'Excuse me, were you there?' Can you remember that?"
The children roared their assent.
"Sometimes people will answer, 'No, but you weren't there either,' " Ham told them. "Then you say, 'No, I wasn't, but I know someone who was, and I have his book about the history of the world.' " He waved his Bible in the air.
"Who's the only one who's always been there?" Ham asked.
"God!" the boys and girls shouted.
"Who's the only one who knows everything?"
"God!"
"So who should you always trust, God or the scientists?"
The children answered with a thundering: "God!"
A former high-school biology teacher, Ham travels the nation training children as young as 5 to challenge science orthodoxy. He doesn't engage in the political and legal fights that have erupted over the teaching of evolution. His strategy is more subtle: He aims to give people who trust the biblical account of creation the confidence to defend their views — aggressively.
This is no less than the deliberate destruction of human minds, the innate anti-intellectualism of fundamentalism at its worst.
It is true — so far — that our domestic fundamentalists are less violent than the Middle East's, but that's really the only difference. Both are characterized by an abiding hatred, and probably fear, of modernism, a deep-running and irremediable incompetence for living in an inherently uncertain world. And they will doubtless grow more frantic and prone to violence as they are pushed, as they must inevitably be, toward the margins of civic life.
Claiming that people who do not follow your religion of Evolution are somehow less intelligent, is a fairly transparent argument. You failed to address even one thing Ken Ham actually says, choosing rather to call him an "evangelist" when he is a scientist. But then that's typical of the religion of Evolution, avoid facts at all cost, just call people names.
Sorry, but you can't call Ham a scientist when he doesn't follow scientific method. Same as I can't call myself a Christian because I do not follow the Christian Bible.
Scientific method requires that things are predictable and repeatable. Science cannot rely on specific events such as "being revealed facts by God on a mountain", as there is no way to verify the particulars.
I agree that the original poster did not address Ham's claims. I'm not going to argue whether science or Christianity is right - only that Ham is not a scientist. And that the idea of intelligent design is also not science for the same reason - it explains things but doesn't predict them and so is not verifiable.
The original post wasn't about Ham's claims; they are ridiculous on their face.
The problem is adults who deliberately connive at undermining science education. The story is about elementary school children being trained to reject science and reason as instruments of evil, and who must inevitably grow up to be cripples of a sort in an increasingly technological world.
>>Scientific method requires that things are predictable and repeatable.
So which part of Evolution is actually predictable or repeatable?
And I'm not talking about showing a horse evolving into another horse. I'm talking reptiles to birds, etc. Or even the big bang and abiogenesis.
I'm not saying to not believe in Evolution, but understand that a lot of things in Evolution are not repeatable, nor are they predictable. Furthermore, there are difficulties in Evolution, and ignoring that is just ignorance.
4 Comments:
Claiming that people who do not follow your religion of Evolution are somehow less intelligent, is a fairly transparent argument. You failed to address even one thing Ken Ham actually says, choosing rather to call him an "evangelist" when he is a scientist. But then that's typical of the religion of Evolution, avoid facts at all cost, just call people names.
Sorry, but you can't call Ham a scientist when he doesn't follow scientific method. Same as I can't call myself a Christian because I do not follow the Christian Bible.
Scientific method requires that things are predictable and repeatable. Science cannot rely on specific events such as "being revealed facts by God on a mountain", as there is no way to verify the particulars.
I agree that the original poster did not address Ham's claims. I'm not going to argue whether science or Christianity is right - only that Ham is not a scientist. And that the idea of intelligent design is also not science for the same reason - it explains things but doesn't predict them and so is not verifiable.
The original post wasn't about Ham's claims; they are ridiculous on their face.
The problem is adults who deliberately connive at undermining science education. The story is about elementary school children being trained to reject science and reason as instruments of evil, and who must inevitably grow up to be cripples of a sort in an increasingly technological world.
>>Scientific method requires that things are predictable and repeatable.
So which part of Evolution is actually predictable or repeatable?
And I'm not talking about showing a horse evolving into another horse. I'm talking reptiles to birds, etc. Or even the big bang and abiogenesis.
I'm not saying to not believe in Evolution, but understand that a lot of things in Evolution are not repeatable, nor are they predictable. Furthermore, there are difficulties in Evolution, and ignoring that is just ignorance.
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