Those who believe in creationism – children and adults – are being taught to challenge evolution’s tenets in an in-your-face way.
By Stephanie Simon, Times Staff Writer
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.</p>
<p>“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?”</p>
<p>The children roared their assent.</p>
<p>"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…</p>
<p>Teaching children to think is always a good thing.</p>
<p>A rational teacher could use the opportunity to ask the child if he was there when the Bible was written; if he is certain that God wrote it; if he realizes that it is men, not God, who tell him that God wrote it. If he realizes that the Bible was changed over time by men. If he realizes that it is men, not God, who interpret the Bible. </p>
<p>No, I don’t think it’s a good thing - as a scientist, I’m appalled. I wonder why no one has explained that the best scientists have a lot of faith; that they see the wonder of everything around them and want to know more. I also question why no one has ever encouraged science within the Church: it does not undermine God’s power to understand the intricacies of his creation. Staring at a Monet up close and visiting his garden in France does not undermine the beauty of his work - the same is true of scientific principles.</p>
<p>Here’s the story I use: When your young child asks where he or she came from, you think carefully about your answer. You want to tell the truth, but the truth as they can handle it. There’s no way they could understand all of the experiences in your life that led to that: meeting your spouse, the tentative first dates, the first kiss, the first of many experiences and emotions that led to that child being in front of you. So you tell the truth: “Mommy and Daddy fell in love, got married, and had a baby, and that baby was you.”</p>
<p>Now let me ask the question, “How wide is the gulf between your mind and experiences and your child’s mind and experiences?” And now the question, “How much greater would that gulf be between your mind and the ‘mind’ and experiences of God?” The answer to that question must be: “Infinitely greater.”</p>
<p>Genesis teaches us that God created the universe and our world and us. It’s a little fuzzy on the exact mechanisms of this, but you can accept it as the truth and also know that the details can be far, far - infinitely far - beyond our knowledge. To say that there is nothing more than the words written is like your child growing up and denying all of the subtle details that go into creating a baby because it wasn’t part of the story that he or she could understand at that moment.</p>
<p>To limit the ‘mind’ and experiences of God to only what we humans can possibly understand is to blaspheme God, stripping away the infinite powers that would necessarily underlie the creation. As your child grows up and begins to understand the complexity of their “creation,” cannot the human race grow up and begin to get just a glimpse into the complexity of The Creation?</p>
<p>So when people insist that the Genesis story is complete and there are no further details - only those pieces that are given there… I tell them that they are belittling the Creator.</p>
<p>digmedia - beautiful. I think John Wesley said it is easier for a worm to understand a man, than it is for a man to understand God. And to think that God loves us, who are so small? Now, that’s big!</p>
<p>That article gave me the creeps–chanting, propaganda, etc. all directed at kids (at least in the first part of the article) who just soak it all up. To me, it all kind of reeks of brain washing.</p>
<p>a couple things bother me about the article
teaching students to disrespect their teachers- seems wrong
encouraging students to parrot replies without giving them the tools to think through for themselves seems dangerous
when we have scientific evidence that crows make tools and prarie dogs use language, how can we as a scientific culture claim that evolution is false?</p>
<p>The bible is a relatively new document not written by Jesus or God but by their followers, it was written appox. 1,600 or so years ago… think about how long humans have been on this earth and how long other religious texts have been around (Old Testament or the Vedas)</p>
<p>To say that the bible is written by the divine pen of god is just ignorant. Thats not to say I don’t believe that there is a lot of valid, valuable life and moral advice within the pages of the Bible.</p>
<p>“So when people insist that the Genesis story is complete and there are no further details - only those pieces that are given there… I tell them that they are belittling the Creator.”</p>
<p>Which Genesis story? - in the Old Testament there are two, complete with two different Gods (or names for God), and they are contradictory.</p>
<p>Aries, as a scientist, you should be careful about making sweeping statements like, “…I also question why no one has ever encouraged science within the Church.” There are many sources that would dispute your statement. It’s usually best to say something that qualifies such a statement as your personal opinion. I do like your comment about scientists having faith – the more my kids explain to me about quantum mechanics and string theory, the closer it seems to the mystical.</p>
<p>“I do like your comment about scientists having faith – the more my kids explain to me about quantum mechanics and string theory, the closer it seems to the mystical.”</p>
<p>Ain’t that the truth?! I think that’s one aspect of physics that caused my D to major in it.</p>
<p>My apologies, Sjmom. I’ll be sure to (oops, I mean try to) qualify all (I mean most, sorry again) statements (or assertions - or should it be sentences? or questions? or anything involving some sort of assumption? or deductive reasoning?) that I make, if at all possible, if I realize that I’m making a statement that could be interpreted as too broad, sweeping, not substantiated by at least seven reputable and peer-reviewed sources, read as being mere opinion by a native English speaker, is not quantifiable, may or may not be contradicted by any variety of sources, rumour, opinion of others, the Onion, messsages seen on the folds of a shower curtain or in the frost on a window and are later auctioned on Ebay, or anything else that some soul could use as a source of disagreement.</p>
<p>If you want to disagree with me, fine. Correct me if you would like. But don’t condescend to me - you certainly don’t hold everyone else to this standard:
Really - this is the first time I’ve seen any post of yours that has implied that other posters need to qualify their statements as being mere opinion.</p>
<p>Aries, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. Your posts are typically well thought out and have an interesting point of view. And I’m sorry if I didn’t phrase this in a more gentle way – I’ve never bothered to learn how to do the smiley face thing, else I would have included one. In any case, I apologize. But I hope you can see that your sentence was pretty broad – no one has ever encouraged science in the Church?</p>
<p>P.S. I have 2 sister who have MSEE, so I have a fondness for female engineers!</p>