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Fundamentalist Schools Using "Nessie" To Disprove Evolution
The debate between creationists and proponents of evolution isn't ending any time soon, but now some creationists have a secret weapon, "Nessie!"
Certain fundamentalist schools in Louisiana plan to teach children that the Loch Ness monster is real in a bid to disprove Darwin's theory of evolution. From the article: "One ACE textbook – Biology 1099, Accelerated Christian Education Inc – reads: 'Are dinosaurs alive today? Scientists are becoming more convinced of their existence. Have you heard of the "Loch Ness Monster" in Scotland? "Nessie" for short has been recorded on sonar from a small submarine, described by eyewitnesses, and photographed by others. Nessie appears to be a plesiosaur.' Another claim taught is that a Japanese whaling boat once caught a dinosaur. It's unclear if the movie Godzilla was the inspiration for this lesson."
Just asking....
Finding a live dinosaur does not in any way disprove evolution. It would simply mean that some very few dinosaurs lived through the extinction event. These Christians really need to take a class in evolution. That way they would know what they need to disprove.
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I think the Lousiana schools are ignoring important documentary footage of the family of Nessie from the 80s, as described here.
OK seriously, if they are teaching that Nessie is real, why not the Flying Spaghetti Monster? And how about all the other urban legends, such as the Jersey Devil, Flying Saucers/Roswell, Bigfoot, Yeti, Dragons, Unicorns, Mermaids, Hobgoblins, and Trolls?
Yes, I know that Trolls are real, we feed them all the time on Slashdot.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
This reasoning fails in at least three fundamental ways.
First, the Loch Ness Monster simply doesn't exist. No reputable scientist would claim that it does, or even that it could exist in the way that it is commonly portrayed.
Second, it's not even necessary for dinosaurs to still exist to support their argument. There are already well-known animals alive today that have been virtually unchanged since the dinosaur times. Alligators and crocodiles are the best examples I can think of, off the top of my head.
Third, as the existence of alligators shows, even if dinosaurs did still exist, that doesn't in any possible way "disprove" the Theory of Evolution. I'm not entirely certain what reasoning would have to apply so that their existence would matter at all.
Really, this mostly just goes to show that any "debate" on the topic is fruitless when one side thinks that an argument like this completely invalidates proven scientific fact. How can you argue against that?
With his daughter.
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How about this from a quick search of wikipedia.
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We kind of are dumb, though. Especially some of us. I don't see how this is in any way impossible... we have a contingent of creationists who believe humans and dinosaurs coexisted. If anything, this is the logical conclusion of that line of thinking.
Don't let hominems blind you to the fact there really is a lot of stupidity running wild in this country.
Great Intellect...
I think their line of "reasoning" here is probably similar to the "argument" that "if humans evolved from chimps, why are there still chimps around?"
They're trying to go "Look, dinosaurs still exist! So how could anything new have evolved since them if they're still around, eh?"
It's a failure to realize that evolution is a branching of the tree of life, not the creep of one single vine of life or something.
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Hopefully some kid in one of those wing-nut schools (which are absolutely not representative of American education) will raise their hand and ask:
"Um...how can we find a static shipwreck on the floor of the vast North Atlantic, 12,000 ft underwater, but we can't find a huge moving sea monster in a lake with less than 2 cu mi volume, less than 450 ft average depth?"
And hopefully their teacher actually thinks about the question.
Lake Tahoe, which has 20 times the volume of Loch Ness, marketed a "Tessie" monster for a while. They had cute plush toys, stickers, buttons, a little museum, and all that. But it was just a joke, like Nessie.
The best lessons to teach kids with this, are in gullibility, and tourism marketing.
I'd agree with your "don't lump all christians in with this lot" statement. Most of my friends and family are Christians, and they are perfectly nice, well-adjusted people, and I don't make a habit of going around arguing with people.
However, please do not try to set up an equivalence between belief in the existence of God and belief in evolution. Christians cannot provide direct proof of the existence of God. They cannot even provide any compelling evidence, except maybe some philosophical thought experiments that pretty much break down when one simply asks, "are there any other alternatives that could explain this?". Evolution, on the other hand, has vast libraries of direct observations, repeatable experiments, and scientifically testable outcomes that support it. There's a huge difference.
Look, I don't have a problem with Christians. If I did, living in the Bible Belt South, I literally wouldn't be able to talk to hardly anyone. You believe things on faith, I get that, and honestly, as far as religions go, it's got some good parts to it that I respect. But please, just admit it and be at peace with it, don't try to either 1) build up your beliefs with misguided scientific "proof" of things that cannot be proven, or 2) tear down bodies of scientific proof for things that can.
From 2nd grade to 12th grade, my primary curriculum was based on the "PACE" system. The way PACE works is, each subject (math, science, etc) is broken down into individual sub-subjects called a "PACE." Each PACE has reading sections, exercises, and a final test, all of which cover a very specific topic. I clearly remember that my one of my PACE physics books (devoted to gases) used the second law of thermodynamics to "disprove" evolution. The "evidence against evolution" was even on the test at the end of the PACE. I also remember one of my early science PACE books covering the "hydrosphere" -- a sphere of frozen hydrogen which covered the Earth in ancient times -- which supposedly collapsed during Noah's flood. Despite some of these quirks, the PACE system was actually pretty solid. The explanations, questions, etc, were all very well structured. Honestly, looking at some of my niece's/nephew's course work in my local public school system, the PACE system was bread-and-butter by comparison.
"Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad." [Ecclesiastes 7:3]
All the current, known "living fossils" can be traced through fossils in multiple sediment layers. Logically, because they were alive during the years those sediment layers were laid down.
But that contradicts their "theory" that the sediment layers all formed during the same period (the "Flood").
So if they can find a single species that still exists but where the only fossils are in a specific sediment layer then it must "prove" that the Biblical account of Noah and The Flood is correct and evolution is wrong because "God did it".
That is because it would "disprove" the scientific theory (despite all supporting evidence) that the sediment layers formed over hundred of millions of years. Because they were all laid down within several weeks.
And , therefore, evolution is a lie. God did it.
To the editors - surely you can automate a spamcatcher for this type of spam, and automatically kill it?
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
In general, these groups rely upon the fact that most of their members won't bother checking citations. In my long-ago youth, I was a Jehovah's Witness (though I stopped disbelieving in evolution when I was about nine years old), and they had anti-evolution books chalked full of out of context quotes and various other dodgy references. They even claimed that Richard Dawkins thought evolution was science fiction (quote mining his introduction to Selfish Gene). They could do these sorts of things because they knew that virtually no JW was going to check those references. In fact, they were basically warned against doing so, lest Satan enter their hearts.
It was all pretty pathetic, and, as I said, by the time I was nine, I had already started to doubt it all, mainly by reading a book on human evolution in the school library. By the time I was sixteen and had read some literature on comparative religious studies and mythology, I was well on the road to atheism. When I made my break, I told them exactly why; their religion was nonsense, their Biblical interpretation was nonsensical by Augustine standards and that they were making their own holy book into a ridiculous mockery by their own dishonesty and ludicrous interpretations.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It's not bullshit.
Nearly half of the US population believes in Creationism. Every year, this study is done, and it's always the same - somewhere around 46-48 percent.
This nations is full of dumb twits. Look around you. Consider who you think is average. Half of everyone is dumber than that, by definition.
>Hands up if you went to a public, private or catholic school that taught you Nessie was real and the Ku Klux Klan is a great force for good.
Reductio ad absurdam.
Evangelical private schools teach that Man walked with dinosaurs and use "Of Pandas and People" as a text. That is a fact on the ground, and as seen in the Dover School Board scandal, they keep trying to bring ID/Creationism into public schools.
--
BMO
Because Genesis 1:21 says that God created the sea-monsters tannin, and everyone translator since Luther has tried to translate that word as whale/fish/dragon/waterspout/crocodile/greatSeaCreature or anything else other than the plain meaning of sea monster. Obviously now they have decided to embrace the sea monster and equate it with plesiosaur, instead of reading the text as it plainly is - a polemic against all foreign gods whether they are the sun, moon, stars, monsters, darkness, chaos, weather, fertility.
I saw this article was I was at work, and since I usually don't log in there, this comment will probably be lost in the sea of outrage, but...
Back when I was in high school, I took a semister of debate, and I forget the exact proposition, but it had to do with improving school systems. My partner and I ran a pretty air-tight voucher proposition, and since I actually believed in my proposition, I've tended to use similar points in meat-space discussions about the school systems that have come up since then. Of course, never ventured outside of my room back then except to go to school and my partner didn't have much ambition, either, so we never actually competed and I may never know how air tight or not it actually was, but I digress.
I think this article has shown me for the first time some solid evidence why a voucher system could fail. If I were doing negative against my old proposition, all I would have needed to do were jump forward in time to Slashdot in 2012 where I could read about how parents really, really want their kids to fail in the global marketplace just so that their kids won't get eaten by the devil.
Jeebus, the implications are frightening. I've seen how a few choice quotes from the Bible with some wiles (that I suppose this Satan guy might be impressed by) can turn an otherwise intelligent and rational man into a racist homophobe (my ex-father), but just holy shit. Claiming that the Loch Ness monster is real? Please say it ain't so and the article is doing some strawmanning of its own!
Although, I can see it. And that's the problem.
One thing that conservatives or at least "internet tough guys" like to rail against is the idea of relative values. Relative values is, on its surface, the idea that different cultures are all just as valid, which can degrade into arguing that opinions are just as real as facts.
However, it's become apparent to me that conservatives have their own notion of relative values, and they have their own opinions and facts. Except, unlike with its liberal counterpart, the conservative relative values argument starts with the axiom (yes, axiom, not assumption, because an assumption can be refuted) that god exists and that the Bible is fundamentally influenced by him and is intended to be his message to the world.
Therefore, if I conclude that the Loch Ness monster must exist based on some theological contortion, then my opinion has just as much privelege as the complete lack of evidence that Nessie exists. If I decide that blacks should be slaves because of part of Noah's story, then my opinion has just as much privelege as any argument that blacks are just as capable as whites. Q. E. D.
It's really mind-blowing. I work around a lot of people who do not have a basic grasp of maths, geography, reading, or writing. Therefore, to these people, science is just as much mysticism and hand-waving as religion. To these people, science is a religion. And from the temples of science come computers, which are sufficiently advanced technology. That's right! To these people, computers are indistinguishable from magic. Just a very kind of wonky and klunky magic, but I'm beginning to believe that they are serious when they call me a wizard. The fact that I'm obviously LGBT and obviously not a good ol' boy probably drives that superstition home.
It's sad and pathetic, and I don't know what the answer is. I have trouble understanding how I could possibly be the same species as what are essentially hairless apes that wear clothes and can talk. If there were an answer, I suppose that it could only be that perhaps people of all races and genders who really want to live in the real world instead of some medieval fairy story and want to progress their technology to the point where scarcity has been eliminated (at least for them) need to get together and stop contributing our taxes to this madness.
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No, its not.
Religions generally include mythology, but religions (dead or alive) are more than just the body of myth they include, in the same way that (for instance) a a nation's system of government is more than just it electoral system, even though the system of government includes the electoral system.
For instance, religions generally include moral precepts, which -- while they may be illustrated by elements of the mythology, aren't part of the mythology, and can be examined separately.
They also often include institutional authority structures, which again may be justified by reference to the mythology, but which are themselves not part of the body of myth.
So your search-and-replace of "religion" with "mythology" in a post talking about what can be learned by examining religion doesn't work as a substitution that doesn't change the meaning, as you claim. Instead, it radically changes the meaning.
Well, yeah. Mythology is often part of a religion (though it can be outside of a religion in the usual sense -- there is a lot of US national mythology that doesn't really have a religious context.)
That doesn't make mythology the same as religion.
Here's a "60 minutes" episode where they compare chickens with dinosaurs (stand, arms, and feet are similar). http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5658449n
As a young kid, I always wondered how people could NOT notice this. Look at dinosaur feet in cheesy old movies, and look at the feet of most birds. They're so ridiculously similar.
Of course, as a young kid, I kind of had it backwards and thought that the dinosaur puppet makers in the old movies were being lazy and using chicken (or other bird) feet for their puppets and that maybe dinosaurs had totally different feet. When someone explained to me the evolutionary link (and that of course, those old movies were basing the feet off known fossils), I basically just said, "Well yeah, that makes more sense then."
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