Why Creationism Fails at the Polls
By Callimachus | Related entries in Bad Decisions, Education, Religion, ScienceHaving watched the creationism insurgency flare up in half a dozen different school boards since the mid-1980s, I’ve noticed a pattern. It helps me reconcile some aspects of this issue that don’t seem to fit. Most Americans, according to polls, lean toward religious explanations of the origin of life, and most favor some discussion of that in science classes (a false, but understandable, position for a people committed to fairness and “equal time” who don’t appreciate that in the scientific method, facts and consistency rule with ruthlessly authority and democracy has no place).
Yet school boards that push creationism (or “intelligent design,” to call the emperor’s new clothes by their new name) routinely get voted out, as they were last night in Dover, just across the river from here.
In the ’80s, the Christian Coalition was pushing such candidates onto school boards. Here in Pennsylvania, and perhaps elsewhere, they were advised to run “stealth” campaigns, not talking about their religious attitudes and intentions. The goal was to open a new front in the culture wars by using the power of the school board to undercut secular humanism and pop psychology in public schools. Yet often the candidates ran on a broad platform that emphasized reining in the upward spiral of school construction costs and teacher salaries — always a popular topic.
Frankly they couldn’t run openly as zealots. Most people, at least around here, want schools that do reasonably well in SATs and football, and taxes that don’t drive them out of their homes. That’s about it.
Once enough such candidates take seats on the board, however, (often through appointments as well as elections) they began pushing a social conservative agenda. Creationism in the classroom is part of it.
What turned the voters against them was not so much the agenda, but the way it was pursued. Stealth leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths. Especially when, as was revealed in the Dover trial, the scope of it was much bigger than anyone knew, and the deception crossed into outright perjury.
And then the people start to see their school district name become a standing joke on late-night talk shows. Suddenly, instead of football or academics, they’re famous for being yokels.
At the same time, the pro-creationism board members reveal that they’re willing to push their crusade through expensive court battles, down to the last taxpayer dollar. That seriously undercuts their original base.
As long as the same pattern prevails, creationism school boards will rise and fall in a regular cycle. No matter if you call it creationism or intelligent design or “Free Beer.”
This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 9th, 2005 and is filed under Bad Decisions, Education, Religion, Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
November 10th, 2005 at 3:56 pm
Nice article.
April 30th, 2007 at 6:34 pm
why does everyone hate christians?
April 30th, 2007 at 11:08 pm
I don’t hate Christians, but I’m not too fond of their politics.
May 1st, 2007 at 2:40 pm
[...] Why Creationism Fails at the Polls Having watched the creationism insurgency flare up in half a dozen different school boards since the mid-1980s, I’ve noticed a pattern. It helps me reconcile some aspects of this issue that don’t seem to fit. Most Americans, according to polls, lean toward religious explanations of the origin of life, and most favor some discussion of that in science classes (a false, but understandable, position for a people committed to fairness and “equal time� who don’t appreciate that in the scientific method, facts and consistency rule with ruthlessly authority and democracy has no place). [...]
May 1st, 2007 at 4:31 pm
Here’s the best quote: “(…Christian) people committed to fairness and “equal timeâ€Â? who don’t appreciate that in the scientific method, facts and consistency rule with ruthlessly (sic) authority and democracy has no place).”
That quote just perfectly sums up the fallacy of the evolutionists’ politics and their highly political curricula for America’s kids.
In the first place, science and scientists are totally owned by the government, and believe whatever will get them a grant, like this ‘global warming’ idiocy. The ’scientific method’ is a bigger myth than “journalistic objectivity” or even “judicial impartiality”, to name just a few of the big sticks that the establishment uses to propagandize the minds of ordinary people.
In the second place, the Christians caused their own grief by gullibly swallowing the hucksterism “fairness and equal time” when it was used a generation ago, and even still in this article, to move them off their solid majority conviction that indeed, “facts and consistency rule with ruthless authority and democracy has no place” in the interpretation of Christian doctrine as set forth in the HOLY BIBLE.
IMHO, the reason Creationist school boards don’t get the desired results is because they always try to play by the opposition’s rules, defining the problems by the opposition’s terms, and end up sounding like fakes. Better they should stand up with a Bible, and shout, “This is God’s Word. Read it and weep.” That would derserve respect AND maybe some help from the Creator.
May 1st, 2007 at 7:18 pm
And here’s an even better quote:
“In the first place, science and scientists are totally owned by the government, and believe whatever will get them a grant, like this ‘global warming’ idiocy.”
There really is no way to adequately respond to this. Ms. Wyper appears to believe things that are completely at odds with physical reality, rather like the people who will pour money into perpetual motion machines or will cling to the idea that the Earth is flat or that there is a giant face on Mars.
The fact is there is no “highly political curricula” about science in general, or evolution (or global climate change, for that matter) in particular. Evolution is accepted by knowledgeable people across both religious and political spectra. It is only a few cranks who have an extremist (generally theocratic) agenda and their breathtakingly gullible followers like Ms. Wyper who try to argue against it.
The reason creationists sound like fakes, Ms. Wyper, is because they are. Period. You can choose to actually learn about the topic from serious people, or you can leave your head in the sand (or worse!), in which case not even God can help you.
May 2nd, 2007 at 4:21 pm
Guest Article: Evolution vs. the Observations of Moses
The dictionary gives the following definitions for biological evolution:
1. Change in the genetic composition of a population during successive
generations, as a result of natural selection acting on the genetic
variation among individuals, and resulting in the development of
new species.
2. The historical development of a related group of organisms; phylogeny.
The definition for phylogeny is as follows:
The sequence of events involved in the evolutionary development of a
species or taxonomic group of organisms
Evolution is a fundamental concept in modern biology. Biology is defined
as being:
The science of life and of living organisms, including their structure,
function, growth, origin, evolution, and distribution. It includes botany
and zoology. The life processes or characteristic phenomena of a
group or category of living organisms.
Now, we reach the point of discussing the history of living organisms. When
biology is taught to our students in public schools, what are they required to
learn? It is the theory of evolution, and any and all other explanations are
excluded. Secular science is dogmatic about trying to establish evolution
as an undeniable fact, and is not interested in accepting or exploring other
possibilities, no matter how plausible they may be.
Lets look deeper into evolution. The theory does not take the responsibility
of stating how life originated. It delegates that to the theory of the “Big
Bang�, which states that all matter in the universe was somehow contained
In a very small dense hot atom, molecule, or singularity, which exploded
into all the elements and celestial bodies of the universe, about 16 billion
years ago. Never mind what caused that to happen, the origin of the
dense entity, or what was in existence thirty trillion Earth years ago.
Somehow, that explosion of inorganic matter is to have produced organic
attributes somewhere in outer space that would later find its way to
planet Earth and begin to grow.
But before we talk about the growth of life forms, we have to accept the
theory that our solar system was formed from a previous exploded star,
which condensed and re-exploded, much like the Big Bang theory.
However, this was on a relatively small scale. This is called the Nebular
Hypothesis, which has the cloud of gas and dust to start spinning and
flattening out to form the shape of a rotating pancake, with a bulge in
the middle. As the nebula collapses further, instabilities in the collapsing,
rotating cloud cause local regions to begin to contract gravitationally.
These local regions of condensation become the Sun (which was the
bulge in the center) and the planets, as well as their moons and other
debris in the Solar System. Never mind that the nebula was not uniform
and that the local regions had their own unique composition, and that
dust and gas somehow hardens to become gold, silver, copper, and
other metals. Also, never mind about the elliptical orbits.
Now, with supposition upon supposition, we have the Earth formed,
and many years passing by as it cools and becomes suitable for life.
I guess that the molecules of life had to remain in a holding pattern
around Earth until the conditions were “just right� to sustain life
and get the “primordial soup� ready. The Primordial Soup theory
suggests that life began in a pond or ocean as a result of the
combination of chemicals from Earth’s atmosphere and some form
of energy to make amino acids, the building blocks of proteins,
which would then supposedly evolve into all the species. It seems
that secular science is only interested in theories that are the best
sounding fantasies, as long as it does not address the reality of
the supernatural.
For decades, evolutionists have been claiming, that the first life
on Earth appeared in that “primordial soup” consisting of some
body of water loaded with chemicals necessary for the start of life.
This “warm little pond” was believed to have been struck by an
electrical discharge (the energy source) which caused the chemicals
to form complex protein molecules, which eventually brought forth
life. From this first life, evolutionists hypothesize, all other life on
Earth evolved. Never mind how water formed on Earth, we will
only unravel just so much in this article.
Now, we have finally reached solid evidence to examine, which is
the fossil record of past life forms, and the evidence of past geologic
ages on Earth. We have tangible data, but secular science has its
own conclusions concerning that data. Science concludes that since
the simplest organisms of life appear at what is considered to be the
earliest periods of time that Earth was inhabitable (maybe about 1
Billion BC), and the life forms found seems to become more complex
and abundant as time progresses, that this constitutes the “fact� of
evolution. Never mind that the theory allows for the fully formed
species to be much more abundant, and the expected transitional
forms are extremely hard to find, or are actually non-existent. If
there were transitional forms, they should be just as easy to find,
and abundant, as the other fossils.
Enough about evolution. What about the “Observations of Moses�?
Well, we have to clarify some things first. Those that try to compare
creationism with evolution do not understand the facts. Creationism
is the undisciplined doctrine that the Holy Bible (Genesis) teaches
how God created the Earth. That is false. There are no “creation
accounts� in Genesis, as stated by the “foremost terrestrial
authority� on the book. Genesis states that God created our universe,
but it does not give us details on the process. The Bible only gives
us the amount of time (144 hours) it took to complete. What we can
gather is that the supernatural realm, gave birth to our natural
existence in one week, about 4.6 billion years ago.
What Genesis does give us is what we will call the Observations
of Moses (OM). God showed Moses, on Mt. Sinai in 1598 BC, six
days from the ancient past which Moses would later write down (or
have written) in the book of Genesis. Theology mistakenly calls them
the “Six Days of Creation�, but that too is false, because bible
scholars, other creationists, and theologians do not understand the
text, and have misled mankind into thinking that early Genesis is
just “folklore�.
What mankind in general does not know is that God was defining
geologic time to Moses, but Moses did not understand. Centuries
before mankind discovered the fossil record (of death), and the
notion of the Geologic Time Scale, the only account of prehistoric
history was given to the chosen nation of Israel. God did not show
Moses how the sphere of outer space and our Earth were created,
but showed him one day from each of the different past geologic
ages of time, as defined by God, in biblical order…, not
chronological order.
Science teachers are required to learn and teach their students the
suppositions of biological and stellar evolution, and exclude what
is taught in Genesis. Why? Is it because there is no evidence?
They can’t say that, because Genesis reveals the previous living
existence of fossils of the life forms that mankind would later find
in the geologic strata, and also declares the existence of life forms
that have not yet been discovered, such as prehistoric mankind of
20+ million years ago.
The Observations of Moses tell us that God created different life
forms on Earth in each of seven different geologic ages in which He
defines. The Eternal Spirit allowed Moses to be the only modern
human to see those prehistoric animals, living as they were in the
geologic age in which they lived on Earth. This is why there are no
“transitional forms�, because when a total extinction occurred to
all surface life, God would created new life forms out of the ground
to replace them, after an interval of time.
Every state governor and their educational supervising
administrators were contacted in the fall of 2005 about this. Yet
none of them have taken any step to secure training for their
teachers. They continue to allow indoctrination of their students
in the prejudice of secular science, which refuses to investigate the
reality of our origins. A twelve hour course is available for science
teachers in order to help them to give a more balanced education to
their students.
If we learn nothing else, please be advised that there is no such
controversy between evolution and creationism. The correct
“match ups� are the combined theories of both the Big Bang and
Nebular Breakdown against Biblical Creation, and also evolution
against the Observations of Moses. With the discovery of extra-solar
planets, the Nebular theory has fallen out of favor. Perhaps with
future discoveries, other current unrealistic theories will be discarded
as well.
Herman Cummings
PO Box 1745
Fortson GA, 31808
Ephraim7@aol.com
(706) 662-2893
May 3rd, 2007 at 2:17 pm
“declares the existence of life forms that have not yet been discovered, such as prehistoric mankind of 20+ million years ago.”
…and in addition to the fakes and the gullible, there are the out-and-out loonies, too. My mistake for not including them previously.
May 3rd, 2007 at 8:57 pm
ya well, im gonna go ahead and attack evoulution right about now. i ddont know how many times ive typed this same thing over and over… here i go…sorry if this isnt the topic to do this in.
evoulution is flat out preposterous. im gonna use the string example again…
say you had a string, or rope,o.k? does this string become worn, weathered and diirty throughout a period of time or does it become cleaner, brighter and stronger? it goes from better to worse right? all things generally go towards a downward spiral through time, they dont become more advanced like a frog to a bird as evoulution would suggest. things dont become more complicated throughout time, the get worse. evoulution suggests differently. use common sense. this is not just chance and all that, there has to be a Creator!!! please comment Justin or anyone else.
Oh yeah, and did you guys get hacked?
May 4th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
>
>evoulution is flat out preposterous
>
As is spell check, apparently. jfi, if you really want to find out about the topic, try TalkOrigins. There are a large number of FAQ’s there that can explain quite clearly why your misunderstanding of order to disorder (essentially a thermodynamic argument) doesn’t present even a minor stumbling block to biological evolution.
That is, if you are curious and interested. If not, try your argument out at Panda’s Thumb, and spanked a few hundred ways from Sunday.
May 16th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
Jack: If you are worried about the whole “rising from disorder to order thing,” you can stop fretting. Sooner or later, our sun will go kaboom or just die out and all of the lovely order on Earth will descend once again into disorder, and entropy will be served …
Our entire history is one tiny little blip in the whole astronomical timeframe.
December 18th, 2007 at 8:37 am
God :-) this is one hell :-0 of a borring website !