After all, when in doubt, blame an asteroid.  No other disaster will do.

When I was a child I once acquired a mainstream “educational” coloring book about dinosaurs.  The last page in the book featured two parrots with the caption, “This is what dinosaurs look like today.”  But I thought they were called birds, and nobody forced me to think like that.  Following that train of thought, I would later conclude that Evolutionists don’t know science from Adam.

Consider this quick test: What is science?

If you answered, “The only unbiased, infallibly truthful source of answers that we know of,” then you are likely of evolutionary upbringing.  I don’t mean any personal offense, but you’re also wrong.  Science never gives us infallible answers.  Essentially, it only asks questions.  Science is a procedural tool used to discern evidence about the workings of the natural world (the key word being discern).  Colloquially speaking, the definition of science is more inclusive than that, but let us be technical here.  After all, the beginning of a good education in a subject should be to define the subject, shouldn’t it?  [Insert the next few thousand Socratic questions here]

Here is the buzz:

“Top home-school texts dismiss Darwin, evolution”

“Christian-based materials dominate a growing home-school education market that encompasses more than 1.5 million students in the U.S. And for most home-school parents, a Bible-based version of the Earth’s creation is exactly what they want. Federal statistics from 2007 show 83 percent of home-schooling parents want to give their children ‘religious or moral instruction.'”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100306/ap_on_re/us_rel_home_school_evolution

Now for a little fact-checking from a homeschool graduate: We DON’T totally dismiss Darwin and evolution.  How then do we view them differently, you ask?  Frankly, my dears, we receive your sacred cows in their entirety, warts and all.  That’s why they look a little different from your airbrushed pinup versions in the public schools.

“‘If this is the way kids are home-schooled then they’re being shortchanged, both rationally and in terms of biology,’ [Jerry Coyne] said. He argued that the books may steer students away from careers in biology or the study of the history of the earth.

[Jay Wile] countered that Coyne ‘feels compelled to lie in order to prop up a failing hypothesis (evolution). We definitely do not lie to the students. We tell them the facts that people like Dr. Coyne would prefer to cover up.'”

I grew up with a science textbook that said you can never claim to “prove” something through science because of its tentative nature.  My science textbook also said that science is such an expanding field that many things I learned in it might be outdated in a few years.  You call that bigotry?  Narrow-mindedness?  It’s a lot more integrity than can be found in this headline:

It’s official: An asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs

LONDON (Reuters) – A giant asteroid smashing into Earth is the only plausible explanation for the extinction of the dinosaurs, a global scientific team said on Thursday, hoping to settle a row that has divided experts for decades.

A panel of 41 scientists from across the world reviewed 20 years’ worth of research to try to confirm the cause of the so-called Cretaceous-Tertiary (KT) extinction, which created a “hellish environment” around 65 million years ago and wiped out more than half of all species on the planet.

Scientific opinion was split over whether the extinction was caused by an asteroid or by volcanic activity in the Deccan Traps in what is now India, where there were a series of super volcanic eruptions that lasted around 1.5 million years.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100304/sc_nm/us_dinosaurs_asteroid

It’s official? What is this, the final vote count on American Idol?  I see there were only two contestants in this thing: Asteroid vs. Volcanic Activity in the Deccan Traps.  Oh, and do let me guess…the dead dinosaurs appear to have been swimming in a violent torrent because they were clawing through parched sand in their final hours (I’ve actually heard that one before).  Note:  I believe the massive, chaotic fossil record to be a result of the kataklysmos, or Great Flood, though the complete disappearance of dinosaurs is likely due to post-flood factors that dwindled their population.  Maybe I can be a guest judge the next time this panel has an earth shattering decision to make.

You’ve got to put everything out on the dissection table in order to know hypothesis from theory, theory from law, fact from fiction.  Dismiss Darwin?  Why bother?  He was pretty good at dismissing himself.  The beloved evolutionary saint Charles Darwin was a naturalist (not a trained scientist), and his observations of microevolution were a decent contribution to our knowledge of the world.  Besides, every now and then he stumbled upon some interesting advice:

“False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often long endure; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, as everyone takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness; and when this is done, one path towards error is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened.”

– Charles Darwin

He was certainly right about the false facts part.

“The fact of evolution is the back bone of biology and is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an unproved theory – is it then a science or a faith?”

– L. Harrison Matthews, evolutionist, writing a forward to an edition of On The Origin Of Species in 1971

*Gag* Draw your own conclusions.

Oh, and I’ve theorized that the asteroid 150 years ago might have affected the Associated Press as well.

“If you read the comments on my previous entry, you know that an AP article recently mentioned me and a textbook that I co-authored. Well, there have been a couple of developments you might want to know about.

First, I received an E-MAIL from the author of the story (Dylan T. Lovan). In my reply to his E-MAIL, I mentioned the fact that he truncated my quote about the demographic of homeschooling. He replied with the following:

“I had your full quote on the question of why the homeschool materials industry is dominated by Christian-based texts. I especially wish your last clever line about natural selection would’ve made it in.

“If I’m planning to write a curriculum, and I want to write it in a way that will appeal to homeschoolers … I’m going to at least find out what my demographic is. And that demographic is, according to most research, 85 to 90 percent conservative Christian. I think in the end if I were an evolutionist looking at that market I’d say, ‘I’m not going to waste my time on that nonsense.’ ” “If I’m a creationist looking at that market I’m thinking this is a place where my views will be received very well. So I think this is sort of a ‘natural selection.’”

So it was not his decision to truncate the quote to make it sound like I was saying something I clearly was not saying. It’s nice to know that, because Dylan does seem like a great guy. It also makes me wonder how much of the AP’s dismal record when it comes to bias and inaccuracies is not the fault of the reporters who write for the AP.”

Continue reading at Dr. Jay L. Wile’s blog

I’ve got a bunch of exams going on, so I’ll have to wait until Spring Break to respond to my latest commenter.  Check back in a week or so.

~Amanda~

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