Thursday, April 24, 2008

Maybe it's time for some real science?

I was pretty excited last night when I was talking on the phone with a friend. She told me that one of our Co-Op moms, Mrs. Scopes, was teaching a science class for 10-14 year-olds next fall. I spoke with H Girl on the ride into class about possibly being an assistant in the class if there was no class for her to take 3rd hour. I was dissapointed to see, on the class list: 'Creation Science' listed as a class. OK, so I suppose doing a little science from a creationist viewpoint ain't so bad... It seems like I'm the only one around here that is still trying to keep the co-op neutral territory, so that non-Believers feel welcome.

Then I read the class topics:
Is God Real?
Can we believe what the Bible says about Creation?
10 ways we know evolution is wrong
How old is the Earth?

So, this is not a science class at all. It is a religion class teaching the theory of young earth creationism to kids that can't possibly understand enough science to reason their way to an understanding of the topic - being taught by a mom who has no background in science at all - but bought some fabulous Ken Hamm books when she was at the Creation Museum in Cincinnati. Scientists of both creation and evolution bents have had a wonderful time smashing apart his books. They are a train-wreck of flawed arguements and scientific proofs.

The really interesting thing is that it is possible that a few kids could go from my second class-hour 'Critical Thinking' class to this religion class.

H Girl and I will be coming home.

~M.E.

P.S. Don't light up the fires yet. I do believe that God Created Everything, but I believe Galileo said it best: "The Bible tells us how to go to Heaven, not how Heaven goes..."

3 comments:

vxbush said...

Ah, yes; the tender, dangerous area of "science" and "creation." I recently witnessed a huge blog argument take place between adherents of both sides, complaining about "intelligent design", "creationism", "young earth-ism", etc.

For an evolution class to be taken seriously by me, it would have to do one simple thing: not only do you show the science, but also show some of the problems that have cropped up with the science. Now granted, that's hard to do to a class of youngsters who aren't going to have the foundations to understand some of these issues, but wouldn't it be nice?

Hey, even gravity had problems for a few years.

Kate said...

If this were a business there would be a label for this - "false advertising". Perhaps a Point/Counterpoint arrangement could be made with the students debating.

M.E. Again said...

trouble is: there would be no debate. The kids are too young to think through this on their own, and recent issues within the homeschool community have lead to a culture that doesn't welcome questioning of this. This same woman sent Harry a ream of copied material last fall and asked him to comment. She would hear nothing he said, and kept falling back on 'Biblical inerrancy' meaning that Harry must be a heretic since he obviously doesn't believe that the Bible is literally true in every jot and tittle. All he asked her to think about is that we don't understand exactly how God Created, and we discover more about it all of the time - as God so designed for us to. Personally I think that God, being outside of our concept of time, spoke to us in Genesis in a way that we are able to understand beacuse he knows our limitations, and that this just doesn't matter, and those that make this a divisive issue ought to spend more time on things that do matter.