Haggis_McMutton wrote: PLAYER57832 wrote: I used to think that way myself (though substitute "educated person" for "UK").. and I have watched this movement spread insidiously through conservative churches, just beneath the light of day, occasionally "peaking out",but mostly just quietly building its following.
Seriously? Is it really spreading? I don't have any numbers but for some reason i was under the impression that creationism(and religion in general) was in the decline.
It is definitely growing. I have heard numbers that range from below 20% to just over 50% for creationists. However, part of that depends on how the question is asked. If you ask about creationism, whether you believe God created all, most people (including myself) would say they are creationist. If you ask whether people "see issues" with evolution, then you still get fairly high numbers (again, depending on how it is worded, I might say I "have issues"). BUT, if you specifically ask about young earth ideas, the numbers drop. Even so, even if its "only" 17% of the population, that is still a pretty significant number. Also, when you realize that there are far more younger people in that number than those over 40 and that their children are not included in that survey.. the picture becomes more worrisome.
One reason you don't hear so much about this is by intention. They no longer concentrate on court cases, instead they try to change textbook standards and work in other "subtle" ways. Further, you have to sometimes pay pretty close attention to even "catch" what they are doing.
For example, my son brought home a paper that talked about fossils. It said that fossils are formed almost entirely from bone, that one reason we don't see bird fossils is that feathers and skin are not so readily converted to rock. Problem?
Read it closely. They said that "we don't see bird fossils". You see such things inserted over and over. In PA, evolution is reuired. Young earth ideas, creationism in any form is not supposed to be taught. Yet... Begin with teachers who don't know. Add in a few who belong to young earth churches, and.... You get kids not hearing until high school that there might be bird fossils. By then, they have already been well schooled in all the "errors" and "problems" with real science.
Haggis_McMutton wrote:
Also, what's your take on the guys writing ICR articles. Are they uneducated? Do they somehow managed to posses the knowledge any biologist would have but are still able, through some impressive mental gymnastics, to believe in a young earth? Or are they just doing it for money/ulterior motives/ whatever?
They are absolutely and definitely not uneducated. IN asome cases, Dr Morris, in particular, these are people who believe in what they think so strongly that they have actually convinced themselves that anything they put forward that they feel agrees with the Bible is OK, becuase eventually it will be shown to be fact.
In other cases... I absolutely believe there is something far more nefarious at work. The reason I say this is that the articles are just too "pat". They usually come just barely close enough to truth, then skirt away from it that it becomes very hard to believe they could collect all that without having some contact with real science and real evolution. That article I posted in the "God is logical" thread, where I tracked down not just the article, but the sources, where they took a newsrelease from a master's project and twisted it into "these guys just refuse to see the truth ... and their own evidence shows it! Is a classic example. (I critiqued a couple of other articles in the young earth again thread).
AAFitz wrote:
Player has mentioned this before, and like you I find a hard time believing it, but it does seem to becoming more visible, if not more widespread. Here in the northeast, its more a joke when discussed, and most that I know are completely unaware that people have believed this, and are teaching it.
But to some degree she is correct. There is an actual movement, and mostly in the bible belt. In fact, the gov of TX seems to have purposely canceled the science text books for his entire states educational system, by making sure there were no funds for them, while at the same time making some interesting white-washing changes to history in others.
I wish it were "mostly in the Bible belt". The Institute was long based in Pasadena, California. It lost its accredation and tried to move to Texas, but not because their views are less popular.
In fact, that ridicule has just pushed them more "underground". I can point to family after family in my community who send their kids to the local AWANA program, who belong to Creationist Churches. Yet, you won't hear them bring it up. In fact, if you were to even try to get into a discussion, you would either get a puzzled look.. "oh, I don't know much about that" or a flat "I just follow the Bible". If someone knows you are not a creationist, they tend to just avoid the subject because they have been taught that they will never convince you, you just believe "experts" and "make assumptions".
They used to have articles saying exactly that on the Institute website, but I don't know if they are still there.
AAFitz wrote:
School systems are literally trying to sue, for the right to teach that the world may only be 6000 years in science classes, and essentially eliminate the hundreds of years of science we have learned in the process. In the end, it wouldnt matter, except that these are children we are talking about, and just as they deserve to eat, learn to speak english, add and subtract, in order to survive in what could be a difficult economic environment...they deserve to understand the basics of science and the make-up of the world around them. Parents are of course free to tell their children that everything they are taught is fake and that they dont happen to believe it, but its arguable that they should be allowed to deny the very knowledge, and not that its even all that much in this country, they is really a minimum to excel in a future that will clearly be based on new science and technology.
No doubt the planet can survive not all people understanding these concepts, as it does right now....ie. The US does just fine for the moment with pathetic science scores and math scores...but that does not mean we will be able to compete in the future if half the country ignores scientific fact, for that of fiction, simply because they really, really, really believe that fiction, because they know....absolutely know, that it just has to be that way...............because their daddy told them it was.
Except, AA, the US really is NOT doing OK. We just don't all realize how bad off we are. I know I harp on it, but the whole BP thing would not have happened if people really and truly understood what the damage could be, what the risk was and the result would be to the Gulf and all the country. That damage was very much comparable to a moderate nuclear explosion (similar to Nagasaki in the long term damage, though not the immediate death toll and physical damage, of course)). Yet, few people, even now, treat it as if that is the kind of risk those wells present. That is, such direct comparisons are hard to make, almost meaningless. A bomb kills people instantly, destroys buildings. This killed only a few (fortunately) , mostly "just" kills an ecosystem. But, over the long term, I strongly believe that the damage will equal out.
