Bill Allowing The Teaching Of Creationism In Public School Science Classes Is Passed In Arkansas House 72-21

[Miles]

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A bill to allow Christian beliefs to be taught in Arkansas classrooms easily passed the state House Wednesday. House Bill 1701 now heads to the Senate side for a vote.

The bill will allow kindergarten through 12th grade teachers to teach students about the Christian theory of creationism, which claims that a divine being conjured the universe and all things in it in six days. The bill specifies that creationism can be taught not only in religion and philosophy classes, but “as a theory of how the Earth came to exist.”

As with so many pieces of legislation churning out of the Arkansas Capitol this session, if HB 1701 passes, a quick court challenge on this blatant mixing of church and state is all but inevitable. The United States Supreme Court already considered this issue in 1987 and ruled in no uncertain terms that teaching creationism in public school classrooms is unconstitutional. But blatant unconstitutionality hasn’t dissuaded Arkansas lawmakers so far this session. One Senate bill that passed recently, for example, declared all federal gun laws null and void within our state’s borders, in clear opposition to the Supremacy Clause that says federal laws take precedence over state laws.

Rep. Mary Bentley (R-Perryville), sponsor of House Bill 1701 “TO ALLOW CREATIONISM AS A THEORY OF HOW THE EARTH CAME TO EXIST TO BE TAUGHT IN KINDERGARTEN THROUGH GRADE TWELVE CLASSES IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND OPEN–ENROLLMENT PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOLS,” said she put forth the bill at the request of science teachers in her district.

“There are phenomena in our nature that evolution cannot explain,” Bentley said. She emphasized that science teachers may teach creationism under this bill, but they don’t have to.
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Stupid beyond belief, but what's your opinion?

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[DrNoGods]

[Replying to EarthScienceguy in post #40]

Ponds and fragrant water lilies cannot exist unless the fundamental forces have the values that they do.

Don't you think that liquid water existing on a planet is because the pressure and temperature are within ranges on a phase diagram that allow it to exist in that phase, and that there is a sufficient quantity of H2O molecules to form ponds? P and T on the Earth's surface did not come about specifically so that liquid H2O could exist ... liquid H2O exists because P and T happen to be in the correct ranges and there was enough H2O around to condense into a liquid phase (ie. conditions well above the ~6 mbar triple point pressure of H2O).

Oxygen-dependent, air breathing life evolved on this planet because the atmosphere eventually contained enough O2 to allow it (thanks, cyanobacteria). It wasn't the other way around and O2 came about in the atmosphere because air-breathing life needed it.

However the physical constants obtained the values that they have, once that happened (billions of years before Earth and its life existed) it is physics and chemistry that governed how things developed. This "fine tuning" idea is just another attempt to inject a divine being into the discussion when no such being has ever been demonstrated to exist. Water lillies evolved in an environment that was suitable for them to survive in. That environment did not come into existence because it was required for water lillies.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to Difflugia in post #30]

That's just saying that because creationists can make up answers and don't have to test them, creationism's better. If any scientists have speculated about what the answer might be, then those have to be considered as equal in quality to the creationist speculation. Once the answer's been confirmed, then you get to say that creationists have found an answer.

But if it is confirmed creation cosmology did find the answer.

This theory did not materialize out of thin air. Lighting that all of us see in the sky produces enough energy for a z-pinch to occur. Ground lightning has been observed during earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. In fact, there is growing evidence that earthquakes and volcanic eruptions can be forecasted by an increased number of electrons in the ionosphere. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/12 ... arthquakes

The only thing he predicted that is anomalous is that Uranus has a stronger magnetic field than should be expected based on existing models involving fluid dynamics. Humpreys based his predictions on a solid core. More detailed measurements later falsified Humphries model by showing that the magnetic field of Uranus is, in fact, highly dynamic and variable. It turns out that rather than being more solid and static than expected (as Humphreys' model assumed), the fluid dynamics of Uranus are weirder and more unstable than expected. That's the wrong direction for Humphreys.

Humphreys predicted that Uranus was weird. It turned out that he was right, but for entirely the wrong reasons. Even a blind squirrel sometimes finds a nut.

Humphrey's also predicted the degradation of Mercury's magnetic field from when it was measured in the 70's to when it was measured again in the early 2000's.

Ostriches did not need to evolve to become flightless birds. There was no new information needed for an ostrich to become flightless. Ostriches becoming flightless would be an example of a loss of information in the genome.
You're using the term "evolution" incorrectly. It doesn't matter whether the change involves some unquantifiable "gain" or "loss" of information. The key claim here, unless I'm misunderstanding you, is that ostriches flew at the time they were collected by Noah, but then lost that ability sometime before the modern era. Is that right?

Sure I will go with that. I am not sure what your point is because evolutionary theory also believes that ostriches "evolved" from a bird that once flew.

The tinamous' place on the evolutionary tree offers a glimpse into the origins of flightlessness. All ratites, including tinamous, probably trace their ancestry back to a flying relative, according to Baker. Tinamous retained their ability to fly, while the other lineages each lost flight independently. "It's very unlikely that tinamous would re-evolve flight from a flightless ancestor," says Baker. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/cult ... on-science

People that believe in evolution admit to not seeing gradualism in the fossil record. The belief now is that there are great jumps in evolution. I would assume that many of these "great jumps" are not jumps in evolution but simply different created kinds.

Even if you were right, what would that have to do with this conversation?

The great jumps are not jumps but were the different kinds in most cases.

Why do all cars have four tires and an engine? Because that is how we classify cars.
That's right. And to extend the analogy to my claim, things like cars, trucks, and motorcycles gain the benefits of design lessons learned from each other even after the divisions already existed. There are now fuel-injected cars and motorcycles because they were developed for trucks because designers don't have to rely on descent (or the rare case of convergent evolution).

Yes, you are correct. It does take a designer to make a type of car.

The evolutionary lines leading to mammals and birds diverged before mammals and birds evolved. That means that no organism with any of the uniquely mammalias traits will ever have uniquely bird traits and vice versa. This is a limitation inherent in the mechanism of evolution. An omnipotent designer wouldn't be bound by such a limitation, so there's no predestined reason that traits would "cluster" in existing animals the way they do. They would be like LEGO blocks; some animals would have gills, hair, and beaks. Some would have chitin exoskeletons, but be warm-blooded. Some would have feathered wings, but lactate for their young. Nothing like that exists. All of the patterns look evolutionary. While it's possible that a divine designer exists and her tastes simply never deviate from an evolotionary aesthetic, the simplest answer is that evolution happened.

So is this point you are trying to make. Traits would cluster around the created kinds. And that is exactly what we observe in the fossil record and the reason why punctuated equilibrium has grown in popularity.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to DrNoGods in post #42]

Water lillies evolved in an environment that was suitable for them to survive in. That environment did not come into existence because it was required for water lillies

No, the environment came into existence because of the physical constants in the universe.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to DrNoGods in post #41]

Science is not a personal opinion.

Science is nothing more than a methodological approach to solving problems. And in the case of cosmology the starting point or point of origin is a matter of personal opinion. You, yourself have said on many occasions stated that the origin of the universe is a question that science has yet to answer. So the point of origin of cosmology is a personal opinion.

Your opinion is that the universe came into being through some sort of natural means. Most of the rest of the world believes that some sort of supernatural being created the universe.

There is nothing stopping parents from home schooling their kids and teaching them anything they want, but in the public school systems science should be taught as the subject it is, which is study of the natural world with the goal of a better understanding of how it works and how we can benefit from that knowledge (eg. new medicince and vaccines, new technology to improve quality of life in many ways, etc.), with hypotheses supported by extensive evidence, observation and analysis yielding consistent and reproducible results.

Cosmology is the only real point in which this controversy arises. Cosmology and the idea that organisms can evolve between kinds.

Creationism is not science, and it could also be presented to students at some level for what it is ... various mythical stories common to many religions and cultures that are inconsistent with each other and have no scientific basis, but are part of those religions or cultures:

It should more accurately be called supernatural cosmology. Theories in modern cosmology and evolution are very fluid. So how can you say that these theories describe reality because chances are they will change in the next few years.

For example "inflation theory" has come under very heavy fire as of late.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... hallenges/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswith ... 821a24b45e

[Difflugia]

But if it is confirmed creation cosmology did find the answer.

That's right. When it is, let us know.

Humphrey's also predicted the degradation of Mercury's magnetic field from when it was measured in the 70's to when it was measured again in the early 2000's.

He predicted that, but that's not what the data show. He misused the numbers to get the result he wanted. From the 2008 paper that he quoted:

Estimates for the planetary dipole moment derived from Mariner 10 data range from 170 to 350 nT R_M³ (where R_M is Mercury’s mean radius); the uncertainty arises from the difficulty of distinguishing dipole and quadrupole contributions.

During its first flyby of Mercury, the MESSENGER spacecraft measured the planet’s near-equatorial
magnetic field. The field strength is consistent to within an estimated uncertainty of 10% with that observed near the equator by Mariner 10. Centered dipole solutions yield a southward planetary moment of 230 to 290 nanotesla R_M³ (where R_M is Mercury’s mean radius) tilted between 5° and 12° from the rotation axis.

We find no evidence for a change in the planetary dipole since 1974 and also find that the planetary field is predominantly and possibly entirely dipolar. Although there are significant uncertainties associated with these results, they are consistent with the presence of a stagnant outermost core.

All he successfully predicted is that the latest magnetic field measurements would be within the uncertainty range of the old measurements. The scientists predicted that, too. It turns out that everybody was right.

Sure I will go with that. I am not sure what your point is because evolutionary theory also believes that ostriches "evolved" from a bird that once flew.

You're arguing against bird evolution by asserting without evidence that ostriches actually evolved super quickly.

Even if you were right, what would that have to do with this conversation?

The great jumps are not jumps but were the different kinds in most cases.

How many kinds do you think there were compared to how many evolutionary jumps? If you've ever examined any of Gould's datasets, you'd see that most of the "jumps" he's talking about appear within lineages. Rather than affording some explanatory power to the creationist, this just compounds the problems they already have when they try to fit all of the "kinds" onto the Ark. Another aspect is that the equilibrium stasis is often only seen at all because the rocks in which the fossils appear can be dated in distinct layers. If they couldn't, like if all of these kinds were alive at the same time and jumbled up when they were killed by a flood, then they would just appear as a broader range of variation within the same species. Gould's equilibria often differ from one another by relatively minor differences that only appear at all because they are separated in datable layers. If one were to assert that these layers cannot be accurately dated (as the occasional creationist does), then once again, the equilibria lose all value as evidence.

Why do all cars have four tires and an engine? Because that is how we classify cars.
That's right. And to extend the analogy to my claim, things like cars, trucks, and motorcycles gain the benefits of design lessons learned from each other even after the divisions already existed. There are now fuel-injected cars and motorcycles because they were developed for trucks because designers don't have to rely on descent (or the rare case of convergent evolution).

Yes, you are correct. It does take a designer to make a type of car.

The analogy also no longer fits biological organisms. Cars show evidence of designers, but animals don't.

So is this point you are trying to make. Traits would cluster around the created kinds. And that is exactly what we observe in the fossil record and the reason why punctuated equilibrium has grown in popularity.

Again, how big are these created kinds? Are all mammals one created kind? Are all birds one created kind? Are all insects one created kind? If so, you're just calling evolution something else. If not, then the traits are clustering far beyond the created kinds, providing evidence that the kinds share a common ancestor.

[Purple Knight]

I actually don't have a problem with this.

I don't have a problem with lying to children even though from where I sit, this is what it seems like.

I do have a problem with preventing children from seeking out alternative theories.

Look, there are two kinds of people born on this Earth: The ones who will believe the first thing they're told and never think one thing about it, and the kind who will inevitably question what they're told.

If you're the first kind I can't help you and neither can any law. I can try to make sure you're told what I think is the right thing first but this is still indoctrinating you, because you have no defence. If beliefs are viruses, and you're a bubble-boy, you're going to get sneezed on eventually. I can not sneeze on you myself but I can't stop that inevitability. And honestly as an atheist I don't really want you on my team. I know how that sounds but holy larval dragon koi I know some of these people, these arrogant atheists who never examine their beliefs, never question, and always think they're right.

If you're that second kind, you're the one I want to protect, because you can be protected. You have a defence. You have an immune system. I will sneeze on you and hope everyone else does too because that will only stoke that beautiful spark of curiosity into a roaring flame with which to burn away lies. There is only one possible tragedy here and it's an entirely preventable one: For this second sort to be beaten and abused into the first sort, his spark snuffed out, denied the slightest bit of fresh air for which it was striving, injected with a heavy dose of live ebola deliberately, by someone who knew its deadliness.

[Purple Knight]

The great jumps are not jumps but were the different kinds in most cases.

Now, I will give you a point here because I rely on what I see, first. I actually breed cats and I owned a Florida panther at one point. Some of my friends who were into exotics owned even bigger cats. But you know what? Aside from increasing danger as size increases, they all act just like cats. Nothing but a cat is a cat, and every cat is exactly a cat (which will be a silly tautology to anyone but a cat owner who will understand the very weird and specific set of inexplicable behaviours I'm talking about). So I will give this kinds theory a point for observability.

However, I will present an alternative: That evolution is true and intermediaries simply don't last very long, because once an animal attains a new niche, it fast-tracks itself to being best at what it is doing now, while rapidly shedding anything it no longer needs like a suitcase full of parkas at Disney World on the hottest day of the year. Once an animal starts doing something new, and surviving by that, in-species competition quickly guides it to optimal configuration for the new way, and any throwbacks are markedly less successful. So are you going to find intermediates between kinds? Not really, because these clear kinds lines (which I admit I can see) are created by the niches the animal exploits. That cassowary, that chicken, that turkey have all been guided into a similar kind because they're all birds who peck around on the ground for what they need to eat. So of course they're shaped similarly, act similarly, and have similar adaptations.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to EarthScienceguy in post #44]

No, the environment came into existence because of the physical constants in the universe.

The physical constants may dictate how the components of atoms bond and how light travels and lead to the rules governing fundamental physics and chemistry, but environments for living things (so far found only on this planet) are the result of chemistry and physics playing out upon the materials (atoms and molecules) available on this planet. There is no indication that the physical constants were in any way "designed" just so Earth could exist and life could exist on it. The fact that we have yet to find evidence of life outside of Earth (although the spatial range we have been able to investigate is negligible compared to the size of the known universe and the trillions of potential habital planets in it) is another argument against any sort of fine tuning that allows life to exist. Why matter won out over antimatter, and the answers to many other scientific problems may not yet be known, this does not give license to simply proclaim a divine creator as a default alternative to eventual scientific explanations.

Science is nothing more than a methodological approach to solving problems. And in the case of cosmology the starting point or point of origin is a matter of personal opinion. You, yourself have said on many occasions stated that the origin of the universe is a question that science has yet to answer. So the point of origin of cosmology is a personal opinion.

Your opinion is that the universe came into being through some sort of natural means. Most of the rest of the world believes that some sort of supernatural being created the universe.

It does not follow that if the origin of the universe is an unsolved scientific problem that any mechanism suggested by science is therefore a personal opinion. It just means the details of the mechanism have yet to be worked out and research continues towards trying to fill in the blanks. There is some evidence to work from which has led to the current "big bang" scenario ... this was not simply proclaimed by scientists for no reason as a personal opinion as you seem to suggest. On the other hand, all creation stories involving a deity of some sort are purely made up and are far more accurately described as personal opinions than any scientific hypotheses of the origin of the universe, or origin of life on this planet. They have no physical evidence to support the story.

Science gathers information from actual observations, experiments, etc. and tries to formulate explanations that are consistent with the observations and other known science. Opinions may lead to hypotheses or experimental ideas or ideas for improved theoretical analysis, but they must be supported by real evidence and if shown to be wrong they are tossed out. Creationists nearly always resort to origins and claim that because science has yet to solve open problems in those areas that this somehow supports a creator as the correct explanation by default. It doesn't.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to Difflugia in post #46]

Bottom line: Did the magnetic field decrease a measurable amount from the 1970s to the early 2000s? If the answer is yes then your belief that the universe is billions of years old has serious problems and Humphreys prediction is correct.

You're arguing against bird evolution by asserting without evidence that ostriches actually evolved super quickly.

I am not saying that they "evolved" I am saying that they adapted to their environment quickly losing information in the genome not gaining information.

How many kinds do you think there were compared to how many evolutionary jumps? If you've ever examined any of Gould's datasets, you'd see that most of the "jumps" he's talking about appear within lineages. Rather than affording some explanatory power to the creationist, this just compounds the problems they already have when they try to fit all of the "kinds" onto the Ark. Another aspect is that the equilibrium stasis is often only seen at all because the rocks in which the fossils appear can be dated in distinct layers. If they couldn't, like if all of these kinds were alive at the same time and jumbled up when they were killed by a flood, then they would just appear as a broader range of variation within the same species. Gould's equilibria often differ from one another by relatively minor differences that only appear at all because they are separated in datable layers. If one were to assert that these layers cannot be accurately dated (as the occasional creationist does), then once again, the equilibria lose all value as evidence.

Oh you mean like this:

If the team, led by Robert DePalma, a graduate student in paleontology at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, is correct, it has uncovered a record of apocalyptic destruction 3000 kilometers from Chicxulub. At the site, called Tanis, the researchers say they have discovered the chaotic debris left when tsunamilike waves surged up a river valley. Trapped in the debris is a jumbled mess of fossils, including freshwater sturgeon that apparently choked to death on glassy particles raining out of the sky from the fireball lofted by the impact.

And this:

Fossils found at Dinosaur National Monument include foraminifera, petrified wood and plant remains, Charophytes, bryozoans, sponges, crinoids, ostracodes, trilobites, mollusks, vertebrates (fish, turtles, frogs, theropods, sauropods, ornithopods and mammals), and tracks. One of the best terrestrial fossil records from the Mesozoic, the Morrison Formation, contains numerous dinosaur remains such as Allosaurus, Apatosaurus, Diplodocus, Camarasaurus, and Stegosaurus in the Dinosaur Quarry. https://www.nps.gov/articles/nps-geodiv ... %20mammals)%2C%20and%20tracks.

And this:

The nonmarine sediments contain abundant fossils—plants as well as the famous invertebrate and vertebrate animals. Dinosaur National Monument in eastern Utah was established to preserve and exhibit fossils from the Morrison Formation. Many of the dinosaur fossils are found as jumbled accumulations consisting of dozens of partially disarticulated skeletons; these probably resulted from the transportation of dinosaur carcasses along streams and their subsequent burial on sandbars. The dinosaurs are quite diverse and represent a number of different habitats. Mollusks, fishes, insects, crocodiles, turtles, and other fossils suggest that some lakes in the area were freshwater but that saline, alkaline lakes were also present. https://www.britannica.com/place/Morrison-Formation

Or the fossils in the Burgess Shale formation.

Fossils are found jumbled with other fossils.

This is where the whole idea of catastrophism came from, like meteor impacts, gamma-ray bursts, and other imagined catastrophies.

Again, how big are these created kinds? Are all mammals one created kind? Are all birds one created kind? Are all insects one created kind? If so, you're just calling evolution something else. If not, then the traits are clustering far beyond the created kinds, providing evidence that the kinds share a common ancestor.

I do not believe anyone has said that all mammals were a created kind or that all birds were a created kind.

Creation researchers have found that “kind” is often at the level of “family” in our modern classification scheme. For example, zebras, horses, and donkeys all belong to the family Equidae and can mate with each other to form hybrid animals such as mules (from a horse and donkey) and zonkeys (from a zebra and donkey). However, there is no reason to assume a one-to-one correspondence between our manmade system and the biblical terminology. So “kind” may be at a higher taxonomic level in some cases, lower in others.

Gradualism has totally been disproved by the fossil records. And since this is the case then evolution is in dire straits.

http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/sh ... hp/id/1551

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to Purple Knight in post #48]

Now, I will give you a point here because I rely on what I see, first. I actually breed cats and I owned a Florida panther at one point. Some of my friends who were into exotics owned even bigger cats. But you know what? Aside from increasing danger as size increases, they all act just like cats. Nothing but a cat is a cat, and every cat is exactly a cat (which will be a silly tautology to anyone but a cat owner who will understand the very weird and specific set of inexplicable behaviours I'm talking about). So I will give this kinds theory a point for observability.

You can breed cats all you want. And you will still have a cat in the end. Usually a cat with less genetic information than when it had when you started. This would be called de-evolution, not evolution.

However, I will present an alternative: That evolution is true and intermediaries simply don't last very long, because once an animal attains a new niche, it fast-tracks itself to being best at what it is doing now, while rapidly shedding anything it no longer needs like a suitcase full of parkas at Disney World on the hottest day of the year. Once an animal starts doing something new, and surviving by that, in-species competition quickly guides it to optimal configuration for the new way, and any throwbacks are markedly less successful. So are you going to find intermediates between kinds? Not really, because these clear kinds lines (which I admit I can see) are created by the niches the animal exploits. That cassowary, that chicken, that turkey have all been guided into a similar kind because they're all birds who peck around on the ground for what they need to eat. So of course they're shaped similarly, act similarly, and have similar adaptations.

This is a belief of yours. The fossil record does not show gradualism, therefore evolution is not indicated in the fossil record. What is indicated in the fossil record is the sudden appearance of new families and orders of organisms.