Creationism at my school
24Jul. 10
I go to a small semi-private school in Victoria, a Christian school, supposedly non-denominational. Every fortnight we have a compulsory chapel service that runs for 45mins. Today we had Dr. Mark Harwood of creation.com come and lecture us on how the world was created. The whole thing was utterly pathetic, for 4 main reasons:
1. Yes he has a Ph.D, thankfully not in homoeopathy, but in science engineering. He is a satellite specialist in radio telescopes and computer techniques for antenna design and measurement. Why he didn’t come and talk to us about satellites, well, I don’t know. If he had, at least his lecture wouldn’t have been filled with logical fallacies, lies and some plain offensive statements.
2. He started the lecture by getting a consensus of how we thought the Earth came to be through a series of true or false questions. “Hands up if you think the Earth is only thousands of years old”, was met with a few scattered hands. Sadly some of these were from science teachers that I have had through my high schooling. When he asked who thought the statement was true he got about 10 times the response from the majority year 11’s and 12’s and myself (being a year 10). The look on his face was rather hilarious, that may have been the only entertaining part of the session.
3. Everyone of his arguments was fallacious. I don’t mind having people come and speak to us in chapel if they are talking about how God wants to help you, loves you, ect; but I cannot stand it when someone comes into the school and tells us the curriculum set for us is wrong. “You learn about evolution in the classroom, but this is the real truth. All of that stuff isn’t based on anything provable.” Arguments ranging from irreducible complexity to the point that Noah’s flood is the reason for the Grand Canyon being around. He even managed to mess up natural selection by almost reversing how it works. What a spectacular man!
4. He used a Carl Sagan quote out of context. I can’t remember which one of Sagan’s gems he did it to, but that was probably because I had to block it out so it wouldn’t run up the front and start correcting him.
During the lecture I recieved a message from a fellow student saying “Don’t worry, the bad man will stop talking soon.” But sadly I don’t think he will. I’ll leave you with a snippet of the lecture he gave to us today. This was the last reason for a created world that he discussed:
July 30th, 2010 at 2:14 pm
Massive thumbs up for telling us about this. I find it very disappointing that a presentation of this sort would find its way into a Victorian school in 2010, but of course I am biased by own beliefs. If the management of a private school (or any other community organisation) school sees fit to invite someone to speak about creationism, then it really does belong in chapel or a theology class, etc, so your school have probably done the right thing in that respect. The speaker, the teachers and the students present are entitled their own opinions, and the school must develop and maintain its own policies and priorities, so – although is makes me frown, gasp and squirm uncomfortably — I respect the school’s right to invite someone to speak to their students on creationism, in chapel.
What is unacceptable, however, is the notion that any such speaker should deliberately and overtly deny biological evolution and thereby undermine the curriculum and teaching practice in other parts of the school (let alone the overwhelming majority of the scientific community). Evolution the methods for scientifically investigating evolutionary processes and the mountain of evidence gathered to date should not be disputed in chapel. Discussions of evidence and data analysis belong predominantly in a science classroom, but I would love to think that these discussions also go in the yard, the locker room and the staff room.
It worries me that teachers — especially science/biology teachers – would express doubts about the validity of biological evolution at all, but I am deeply concerned that such doubts might make their way into the classroom. If a teacher or a school really finds the curriculum so misguided, there are appropriate avenues to challenging it. If they remain unsatisfied they should have the decency and the dignity to move to a setting with a different curriculum that sits more comfortably with their beliefs. Well done on your calm and reasoned response and — off the record, I’d also be interested to know what school you are at (you can email me via my website if you like).
September 24th, 2010 at 9:18 am
They lie, always. They will always lie, because their faith in their faith needs to be buttressed, and so they cannot deal with truth, be it biological, geological or physical. And so to the next lie… It is a process of self-reinforcement in an echo chamber, because anything which might contradict the “True Word of Dog” must be excluded.
To allow this loon into a school, thereby giving him the cloak of approval, to announce that the scientific disciplines of Biology and Geology are “wrong” constitutes professional incompetence at best. This is not education, but religious indoctrination.
October 10th, 2010 at 11:34 pm
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