It's funny on the surface, but the more I think about it the scarier it gets.
I was taken to this place as a kid. I was shown the dinosaur and human foot prints near each other. Inside of the musuem I was shown an excavated human foot fossil "so large that the person who made it was at least ten feet tall, and *gasp* that was one of the petite women!"
I was told that all humans were ten feet tall 6,000 years ago because the ozone was different back then; it supposedly kept in molecules that made humans, plants, and beasts grow to gigantic sizes and live for hundreds of years. Outside of the musuem was a large, cylindrical metal tank. They told me that inside that tank they reproduced the atmosphere from early Earth and were growing gigantic tomatoes. They told me this was their proof that everything they said was true. Of course, I was never shown the tomatoes or anything remotely nearby the magical tank.
I was told the Earth is no more than six thousand years old and that scientific evidence everywhere backed this up. I was told that carbon dating is complete nonsense and full of mathematical errors.
I believed every word they told me. Much of the pseudo-science they fed me stuck with me through childhood and throughout much of high school. It felt smart to be going against the status-quo. I wasn't even sure what to think about radiocarbon dating until I took an Archaeology class in college, where I learned about various techniques used in various types of radiometric dating. Thank FSM for college and for excellent professors. I don't know where I, or the rest of the world, would be without such respectable people.
What scares me is that I might just be lucky for turning out alright after all of that. My mom still respects that place and thinks they preach a good, true message. She would probably like to take my little sister there some day. I can easily imagine the school districts in this part of Texas pulling the same kind of Intelligent Design scandal on our confused children. I'm surprised we didn't set the precedent for it.
This kind of bad information is all over the place. I almost had to bring a skeleton home to convince my sister that women and men have the same number of ribs. A college buddy of mine, who has gone through sixteen hours of college science courses but apparently still hasn't gotten the message, was willing to fight me to the death saying that men have more ribs than women. I couldn't believe it. He didn't care whether it was true or not; it was what he had been told to believe. After all of this I've started hand-writing letters to my sister, often emphasizing what science is and what it isn't. I've warned her to look out for people who claim that it proves universal facts and for people who claim that it's invalid for not proving universal facts. I wish someone had told me these things at a younger age. How much more valuable information would I have absorbed since then? Please, people, teach your kids how to reach their own conclusions!
Thank you, digitalgimpus, for remindming me about that creepy place.
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It's funny on the surface, but the more I think about it the scarier it gets.
I was taken to this place as a kid. I was shown the dinosaur and human foot prints near each other. Inside of the musuem I was shown an excavated human foot fossil "so large that the person who made it was at least ten feet tall, and *gasp* that was one of the petite women!"
I was told that all humans were ten feet tall 6,000 years ago because the ozone was different back then; it supposedly kept in molecules that made humans, plants, and beasts grow to gigantic sizes and live for hundreds of years. Outside of the musuem was a large, cylindrical metal tank. They told me that inside that tank they reproduced the atmosphere from early Earth and were growing gigantic tomatoes. They told me this was their proof that everything they said was true. Of course, I was never shown the tomatoes or anything remotely nearby the magical tank.
I was told the Earth is no more than six thousand years old and that scientific evidence everywhere backed this up. I was told that carbon dating is complete nonsense and full of mathematical errors.
I believed every word they told me. Much of the pseudo-science they fed me stuck with me through childhood and throughout much of high school. It felt smart to be going against the status-quo. I wasn't even sure what to think about radiocarbon dating until I took an Archaeology class in college, where I learned about various techniques used in various types of radiometric dating. Thank FSM for college and for excellent professors. I don't know where I, or the rest of the world, would be without such respectable people.
What scares me is that I might just be lucky for turning out alright after all of that. My mom still respects that place and thinks they preach a good, true message. She would probably like to take my little sister there some day. I can easily imagine the school districts in this part of Texas pulling the same kind of Intelligent Design scandal on our confused children. I'm surprised we didn't set the precedent for it.
This kind of bad information is all over the place. I almost had to bring a skeleton home to convince my sister that women and men have the same number of ribs. A college buddy of mine, who has gone through sixteen hours of college science courses but apparently still hasn't gotten the message, was willing to fight me to the death saying that men have more ribs than women. I couldn't believe it. He didn't care whether it was true or not; it was what he had been told to believe. After all of this I've started hand-writing letters to my sister, often emphasizing what science is and what it isn't. I've warned her to look out for people who claim that it proves universal facts and for people who claim that it's invalid for not proving universal facts. I wish someone had told me these things at a younger age. How much more valuable information would I have absorbed since then? Please, people, teach your kids how to reach their own conclusions!
Thank you, digitalgimpus, for remindming me about that creepy place.