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.
source



Stupid beyond belief, but what's your opinion?

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[Miles]

[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. [plus ↓]


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.

In all sincerity I suggest you pick up a copy of

or something similar, because as it stands you're making a fool of yourself in front of those who know better.


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[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to DrNoGods in post #49]

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.

What are you basing this statement on? The laws of physics indicate that these constants could have any value whatsoever. And there are over 20 constants that can have any value. The laws of physics that we have today will not change. The laws of physics today say that there is no reason for the constants to be what they are. So any theory in the future must give the same degree of freedom to the laws we have today.

Believing that science will one day come up with an answer other than a supernatural being creating all things is a faith statement based on a belief that lies outside of our current understanding of the universe. You may not like the idea of a Creator God, but the idea of a Creator God does not break any of our known laws of physics, in fact, it is in concert with the known laws of physics.

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.

The belief that there is intelligent life in a physical form like humans is another belief statement not based on observation. According to your belief system the Earth has had life on it for billions of years and yet the only intelligent life ever discovered are men (in the generic sense). So life does not seem to bend towards self-awareness, it seems to be a rarity. I am not against there being other physical forms of life out in the cosmos. I do have a high degree of confidence that it will not be intelligent if it is based in the physical realm and not in the spiritual.

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.

Modern cosmology today does not understand over 90% of our universe. Current theory has to dark energy and dark matter neither of which and is identified that is why they are called dark. Dr. Humphrey's theory does away with all of that nonsense. I predict that cosmology will in the not-so-distant future come up with a secular version of Humphreys' "achronicity theory." https://creation.com/new-time-dilation- ... -cosmology

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.

This is incorrect. The difference is the starting point. Take for example the trajectory of a projectile flying through the air. The current velocity of that object can be measured and if we want to know where the projectile came from we would have to know what happened at the origin of flight. If that object was shot from a cannon or if it was a rocket under constant acceleration for a period of time because the answer would change according to what happened at the origin.

Modern cosmology takes the view that the universe was shot out of a cannon and so the universe is a simply parabolic curve back to its origin. Creation cosmology takes the view that the projectile is on a missile. Producing an exponential curve back to its origin. Both follow the laws of physics the difference are the events that took place at the origin.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to Miles in post #52]

or something similar, because as it stands you're making a fool of yourself in front of those who know better.

Are you saying that gradualism is indicated in the fossil record?

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to Miles in post #52]

Paleontologists have documented virtually no cases of slow and steady transformation, foot by foot up the strata of hillslope — not for horses, not for humans.

Instead, most fossil species share two features: First, they do not change in any marked way during the entire course of their existence; second, they enter the record abruptly, either replacing or coexisting with their ancestors. In short, stasis and sudden replacement mark the history of most species. Darwin knew this, but he regarded it as an artifact imposed by an extremely imperfect fossil record — it the rocks preserve only one step in a thousand, gradual change will appear episodic. “This fact,” he wrote, “will to large extent explain why we do not find interminable varieties, connecting together all the extinct and.existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps.” https://www.nytimes.com/1978/01/22/arch ... fe-no.html

The NY Post puts it in simple terms so anyone can understand.

[Difflugia]

Bottom line: Did the magnetic field decrease a measurable amount from the 1970s to the early 2000s?

No. That's what "statistically insignificant" means. The difference between the measurements was within the bounds of measurement error. It's like measuring a rock that varies from spherical by 10%. Measuring once and getting six inches, then measureing a different spot and getting five and three quarters doesn't mean that the rock shrunk between measurements. It could have, but it also could have grown. The overwhelming likelihood, though, is that it's still the same size.


Also not a sphere.

If the answer is yes then your belief that the universe is billions of years old has serious problems and Humphreys prediction is correct.

Or the person telling us "yes" either doesn't know how to evaluate scientific measurements or is being dishonest about it. Creationist or not, someone with a PhD in physics should understand what his colleagues wrote in the paper he referenced, so I know which one I'm going with.

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.

First, even if that's exactly what happened, that doesn't help your argument. If the well-known mechanisms of evolution (your attempted redefinition notwithstanding) can cause such changes in such a short period of time, then any creationist argument based on the "limitations" of evolution is invalid. Second, you haven't established a pathway to an ostrich's ability to run and other adaptations to life without flying through "loss of information." Third, your redefition of evolution simply makes your argument an invalid case of equivocation.

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.

Oh you mean like this:

[Examples of floods]

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.

Exactly. The observation of punctuated equilibria in the fossil record requires significant numbers of fossils to have been laid down in geologically gradual layers. If you assert that most fossils weren't, then these punctuated equilibria must be something else ("hydrodynamic sorting" or somesuch) and your argument about "jumps" being "kinds" is invalid.


"Liquefaction, n00bs!"

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

I thought not, but that's the only way your claim could be true ("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."), so I was giving you the benefit of the doubt. Since that's not what you're suggesting, your claim is false.

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

No.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to EarthScienceguy in post #53]

What are you basing this statement on? The laws of physics indicate that these constants could have any value whatsoever. And there are over 20 constants that can have any value.

Any value? What does that mean? If they had any arbitrary values then things would not be as they are now and we'd have a very different universe. We have what we have now because the physical constants have the values they do, which allows the chemistry and physics and matter, etc. that we observe to exist. You're putting the cart before the horse again ... the chemistry and physics we have now are the result of the physical constants having the values they do, not the other way around.

Believing that science will one day come up with an answer other than a supernatural being creating all things is a faith statement based on a belief that lies outside of our current understanding of the universe. You may not like the idea of a Creator God, but the idea of a Creator God does not break any of our known laws of physics, in fact, it is in concert with the known laws of physics.

A creator god is just pulled from thin air as a convenient explanation for anything science does not yet have answers to. There is no evidence of any kind that such beings exist now or ever have. So proposing them as creating anything is infinitely more farfetched than the idea that science may solve the problems related to origins. At least the current scientific hypotheses have some observational evidence to support them, while the evidence for creator gods continues to be nil.

The belief that there is intelligent life in a physical form like humans is another belief statement not based on observation. According to your belief system the Earth has had life on it for billions of years and yet the only intelligent life ever discovered are men (in the generic sense). So life does not seem to bend towards self-awareness, it seems to be a rarity. I am not against there being other physical forms of life out in the cosmos. I do have a high degree of confidence that it will not be intelligent if it is based in the physical realm and not in the spiritual.

It is partly based on the observation that intelligent life does exist on at least one planet, and we now know that are are most likely many billions or trillions of potentially habitable planets in the universe. So it is reasonable to expect that life may exist on other planets, and that intelligent life therefore is not impossible. We know it is unlikely given the trajectory on Earth so far, but what is the boundary between "intelligent" and not? Is my dog intelligent life? What about mammals in general? Compared to a bacterium these examples certainly are intelligent life.

We know the Earth has had life on it for billions of years because we have physical evidence (eg. stromatolites) that can be dated. So this isn't faith based. A "high degree of confidence" doesn't translate into anything meaningful as far as a prediction. It is merely an opinion.

Modern cosmology today does not understand over 90% of our universe. Current theory has to dark energy and dark matter neither of which and is identified that is why they are called dark.

Uh ... no. They are called dark because they don't interact with electromagnetic radiation. Their existence is implied by other observations, but yes these also fall into the category of yet to be solved scientific problems. People are actively working on finding answers, but again this does not imply that some creator god is responsible for anything.

Dr. Humphrey's theory does away with all of that nonsense. I predict that cosmology will in the not-so-distant future come up with a secular version of Humphreys' "achronicity theory."

Spare us more of Humphrey's baseless rambling! How can you buy into such utter nonsense? A giant expanding wall of water beyond the stars based on some bible verse? It is beyond ridiculous to even consider this drivel as anything approaching real science.

Modern cosmology takes the view that the universe was shot out of a cannon and so the universe is a simply parabolic curve back to its origin. Creation cosmology takes the view that the projectile is on a missile. Producing an exponential curve back to its origin. Both follow the laws of physics the difference are the events that took place at the origin.

Parabolic? Where did you get that from. I don't know of any current theory of the expanding universe that says everything is on parabolic paths. Creation cosmology is an oxymoron, expecially when it is of the Young Earth type claiming a roughly 6000 year old universe. Creationism has yet to solve any scientific problems or properly explain natural phenomena ... it exists only to try and support an unrealistic creation narrative, and has failed miserably.

[Goat]

Further followup.

The bill was narrowly defeated in the Arkansas Senate

https://ncse.ngo/creationism-bill-narro ... d-arkansas

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to Difflugia in post #56]

No. That's what "statistically insignificant" means. The difference between the measurements was within the bounds of measurement error. It's like measuring a rock that varies from spherical by 10%. Measuring once and getting six inches, then measureing a different spot and getting five and three quarters doesn't mean that the rock shrunk between measurements. It could have, but it also could have grown. The overwhelming likelihood, though, is that it's still the same size.

Are you talking about the dipole field or the quadrupole field?

The best estimate for g10 (dipole field) is taken to
be –195 T 10 nT (1-SD uncertainty), ~27% lower
in magnitude than the centered-dipole estimate
implied by the polar Mariner 10 flyby (9)
https://www.eoas.ubc.ca/~cjohnson/CJPAPERS/paper48.pdf

Now only when the quadrupole field and some creative math are applied does one get to the predetermined outcome, which is your "statistically insignificant" difference and only for certain Mercury models.

The
corresponding g20 value is –74 T 4 nT. Allowing
other coefficients to be nonzero and attributing
all remaining residuals to the internal field gave
a final g10 value of –202.5 nT, suggesting that the
value from g10 in models accounting for higher-order structure will be within the estimated range
https://www.eoas.ubc.ca/~cjohnson/CJPAPERS/paper48.pdf

First, even if that's exactly what happened, that doesn't help your argument. If the well-known mechanisms of evolution (your attempted redefinition notwithstanding) can cause such changes in such a short period of time, then any creationist argument based on the "limitations" of evolution is invalid.

Your error is that you are not making a distinction between adaptation (natural selection) and evolution (genetic mutations).

Adaption causes a decrease in genetic information, animals lose function or abilities in order for other functions or abilities.

Evolution causes an increase in genetic information. Animals increase function and/or abilities. New organ, limb, or trunk.

Second, you haven't established a pathway to an ostrich's ability to run and other adaptations to life without flying through "loss of information."

Wait a minute let's back up here a little bit. And I am going to change my position because I have never examined Ostrichs before. Your premise is that Genesis 1:20 becomes invalid if Ostrichs could not fly in at some point in the past is simply not ture. Let's take a look at that passage. Genesis 1:20 - 21

And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” 21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

We call feathered animals today birds. We have named them according to their morphology. Genesis does not classify created kinds according to their morphology but in three broad categories according to their locomotion. Animals that swim, animals that fly, and animals that walk on the land. The Hebrew word that is translated as "bird" actually means flying creature.

So it is very possible that God created the ostrich on day six with the other land animals and is actually one of the created kinds. Bats would have been created on the 5th day with the other flying animals like pterodactyls and what we call birds today.

Third, your redefinition of evolution simply makes your argument an invalid case of equivocation.

No, those that endorse evolution just refuse to believe that information theory applies to living systems.

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 catastrophes.

Exactly. The observation of punctuated equilibria in the fossil record requires significant numbers of fossils to have been laid down in geologically gradual layers. If you assert that most fossils weren't, then these punctuated equilibria must be something else ("hydrodynamic sorting" or somesuch) and your argument about "jumps" being "kinds" is invalid.

The whole idea of jumps is an evolutionary theory but it is based on morphology and I do believe that morphology can help arrive at the created kinds.

I thought not, but that's the only way your claim could be true ("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."), so I was giving you the benefit of the doubt. Since that's not what you're suggesting, your claim is false.

I am not seeing the logical connection you are trying to make here. Traits are clustered around created kinds that appear suddenly in the fossil record, which is what creation cosmology would predict.

Gradualism has totally been disproved by the fossil records. And since this is the case then evolution is in dire straits.
No.

Really?

Dr. Gould even concedes the lack of fossil evidence is the “trade secret” of paleontology,

The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils…. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth…. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and “fully formed.” Stephen Jay Gould, “Evolution’s Erratic Pace,” Natural History, May, 1977, p. 14.

“The known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic [gradual] evolution accomplishing a major morpho­logic transition and hence offers no evidence that the gradualistic model can be valid.” Steven M. Stanley, Macroevolution: Pattern and Process (San Francisco: W. H. Free­man & Co., 1979), p. 39; cf., pp. 47, 62.

“Unfortunately, the origins of most higher categories are shrouded in mystery: commonly new higher categories appear abruptly in the fossil record without evidence of transitional forms.” David Raup and Steven M. Stanley, Principles of Paleontology (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1978), p. 372.

“We do not actually know the phylogenetic history of any group of plants and animals, since it lies in the indecipherable past.” Earl L. Core, et al., General Biology, 4th ed., John Wiley and Sons, 1961, p. 299 from Davidheiser, p. 309

[Purple Knight]

Evolution causes an increase in genetic information. Animals increase function and/or abilities. New organ, limb, or trunk.

Is this what you're saying can't happen?

If so, are you saying a giraffe's neck can't grow longer even though it is obviously the same kind as a horse (ungulate)? Or are you just saying that a giraffe may lose information that causes its neck to grow? I mean, this is possible. We know there are growth inhibitors, which is why female ligers are tinier than either parent and males are larger than either.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to DrNoGods in post #57]

Any value? What does that mean? If they had any arbitrary values then things would not be as they are now and we'd have a very different universe. We have what we have now because the physical constants have the values they do, which allows the chemistry and physics and matter, etc. that we observe to exist. You're putting the cart before the horse again ... the chemistry and physics we have now are the result of the physical constants having the values they do, not the other way around.

That is exactly the problem, they could have any value.

No, what we see are the results of the constants, the physical laws could exist without the constants being what they are they would just produce a different universe.

Believing that science will one day come up with an answer other than a supernatural being creating all things is a faith statement based on a belief that lies outside of our current understanding of the universe. You may not like the idea of a Creator God, but the idea of a Creator God does not break any of our known laws of physics, in fact, it is in concert with the known laws of physics.

A creator god is just pulled from thin air as a convenient explanation for anything science does not yet have answers to. There is no evidence of any kind that such beings exist now or ever have. So proposing them as creating anything is infinitely more farfetched than the idea that science may solve the problems related to origins. At least the current scientific hypotheses have some observational evidence to support them, while the evidence for creator gods continues to be nil.

What scientific evidence are you speaking of. In the end, energy still has to cross infinite time one way or another without dissipating into unuseable energy.



The belief that there is intelligent life in a physical form like humans is another belief statement not based on observation. According to your belief system the Earth has had life on it for billions of years and yet the only intelligent life ever discovered are men (in the generic sense). So life does not seem to bend towards self-awareness, it seems to be a rarity. I am not against there being other physical forms of life out in the cosmos. I do have a high degree of confidence that it will not be intelligent if it is based in the physical realm and not in the spiritual.

It is partly based on the observation that intelligent life does exist on at least one planet, and we now know that are most likely many billions or trillions of potentially habitable planets in the universe. So it is reasonable to expect that life may exist on other planets, and that intelligent life therefore is not impossible. We know it is unlikely given the trajectory on Earth so far, but what is the boundary between "intelligent" and not? Is my dog intelligent life? What about mammals in general? Compared to a bacterium these examples certainly are intelligent life.

I certainly hope that your dog is more intelligent than mine is. But my dog and I bet your dog is not self-aware. A dog is never going to tell me how to solve a system of equations. Or make the correct change from a purchase. It cannot solve complex problems.

We know the Earth has had life on it for billions of years because we have physical evidence (eg. stromatolites) that can be dated. So this isn't faith-based. A "high degree of confidence" doesn't translate into anything meaningful as far as a prediction. It is merely an opinion.

How did the stromatolites get here?

How did they form into complex multicellular organisms?
Evolution? There is no evidence in the fossil record of that.

Their existence is implied by other observations, but yes these also fall into the category of yet-to-be-solved scientific problems. People are actively working on finding answers, but again this does not imply that some creator god is responsible for anything.

No, just that current cosmology is wrong. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/ob ... r=7b178bae

Dr. Humphrey's theory does away with all of that nonsense. I predict that cosmology will in the not-so-distant future come up with a secular version of Humphreys' "achronicity theory."

Spare us more of Humphrey's baseless rambling! How can you buy into such utter nonsense? A giant expanding wall of water beyond the stars based on some bible verse? It is beyond ridiculous to even consider this drivel as anything approaching real science.

But it does make accurate predictions.

Modern cosmology takes the view that the universe was shot out of a cannon and so the universe is a simply parabolic curve back to its origin. Creation cosmology takes the view that the projectile is on a missile. Producing an exponential curve back to its origin. Both follow the laws of physics the difference are the events that took place at the origin.

Parabolic? Where did you get that from. I don't know of any current theory of the expanding universe that says everything is on parabolic paths.

The belief in cosmology is that we can look at the universe today and extrapolate back in time to the beginning. The only forces acting on the universe were the forces at the very beginning.

Creation cosmology is an oxymoron, expecially when it is of the Young Earth type claiming a roughly 6000 year old universe. Creationism has yet to solve any scientific problems or properly explain natural phenomena ... it exists only to try and support an unrealistic creation narrative, and has failed miserably.

Creation cosmology has solved the problem of dark matter and dark energy and how to predict magnetic field strength in astronomical structures.