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Excerpts from a Christian homeschool science textbook

Radically Rethinking

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Well...last week I visited my parents' house and tried to dig up some of my old books from when I had been home schooled for 3 years. Unfortunately I could not find the history or health texts but I could find the science book, which I'm sure is the one you'd want to see most of all.

Some of this stuff you've probably already seen countless times in the past from creationist books, websites, and videos; but keep in mind this is a book that's specifically written to teach children science.

The book in question is called Science: Order and Reality and was published by A Beka Book, a fundamentalist publishing house based in Pensacola, Florida. I think it's actually run by the same people who run Pensacola Christian College. The book's copyright date indicates it was first published in 1980 but this specific edition is from 1992. Think about how many children have learned their science from this book in the 30 years since the first edition of this came out.

The first chapter teaches us about different kinds of knowledge:
(all bolding and italics are from the original text)

Scientific knowledge. We already know that scientific knowledge is factual and exact knowledge about nature, and it is the precise and exact nature of scientific knowledge which distinguishes science from that which is not science. Now let us determine what scientific knowledge is not. Scientific knowledge is not absolute knowledge, or knowledge that is perfect and unchanging. Humans have only one source of absolute knowledge, and that source is the Bible. "The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of God shall stand forever." (Isaiah 40:8) "For ever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven" (Psalm 119:89)
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Because scientific knowledge is subject to change, it is not as important as absolute truth. In other words, scientific knowledge must always be interpreted in light of the Scriptures, our only source of absolute truth. We ought to be very careful about interpreting the Bible--absolute, eternal truth--in the light of science--"growing" knowledge subject to change.
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That pretty much sets the tone for a lot of the stuff to come.

The second chapter--about the three kingdoms of animal, plant, and protist life--begins with a large picture of Adam surrounded by a multitude of animals. The caption reads:

The first man, Adam, had a monumental task of naming the animals following creation. He was the first taxonomist. We do not know on what basis he named the animals or the names he gave them, but God must have given Adam great wisdom and understanding to accomplish such a big task.
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I will say that the vast majority of this book is harmless. After that part at the beginning of chapter 2, it delves into describing the different kingdoms of life. Chapter 9 is the part about evolution and creation (we'll get to that next) but after that it goes into other branches of science and is nothing anyone could take issue with.

And now into Chapter 9, "The Origin of Life."

Chapter 9 starts by explaining that "modern science arose as a result of many European thinkers returning to a Biblical belief in God and creation" but then "some scientists of the nineteenth century attempted to separate science from its rational Christian heritage."

This introduction is followed by the Genesis creation account which takes up an entire page. After that, we are told, the basis for belief in evolution is the idea of uniformitarianism:

According to uniformitarianism, the present is the key to the past. In other words, we have to explain what happened in the past on the basis of what we observe happening today. Since we cannot observe supernatural interventions of nature today, scientists who accept uniformitarianism declare that God has never interrupted the workings of nature. According to them all things continue to operate just as they have always operated from the beginning (see II Peter 3:3-7)

We know that uniformitarianism is wrong because the Bible tells us that God not only created the earth and its living things but that He also has interrupted the natural workings of nature. For example, we know that rain has not always fallen on the earth and that mists watered the earth at first. "For the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth. . . . But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground" (Genesis 2:5-6). It did not rain on the earth until God caused it to rain a long time after the earth was created.
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After that is a discussion of the old idea of "spontaneous generation" and how Pasteur's experiments disproved it. Then they claim that evolution is just another form of the spontaneous generation idea.

There is also a short essay answering the question "What are some logical implications of evolution?" by criticizing social Darwinism, and then veering off into a brief tangent about free market economics.

Next up they claim that similar body structures aren't evidence of evolution:

Despite the differences in function between the arm of a man, the foreleg of a dog, and the wing of a bird, evolutionists believe that the man, the dog, and the bird evolved from a common ancestor many millions of years ago.

But this same evidence can be much better interpreted as evidence for creation. Anatomical similarities, to a person who believes the Bible, are assumed to show a common Designer or Creator. The fact that He used similar but specialized structures indicates His wisdom in choosing the best possible design for the functions the structure would perform.
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This is followed by an argument against evidence from embryology, which depends mostly on pointing out that any resemblance between gill slits on a a fish embryo and skin folds on a human embryo is purely superficial and coincidental.

DNA?

It is true that DNA and ATP are found in all cells, but that proves nothing about evolution. Furthermore, reasonable people would admit that DNA is so very complex that it is unthinkable for it to have evolved by natural random processes. No evolutionist has yet offered a feasible (practical) explanation of how DNA could have evolved. They simply assume that it took place.
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Vestigial organs?

At one time, evolutionists could proudly list almost two hundred so-called useless organs, but today their list has dwindled to perhaps a half-dozen.

We still do not know the complete function of the ear muscles, the appendix, the coccyx (tail bone), and other so-called vestigial organs. Just a few years ago, however, scientists did not know the functions of almost two hundred vestigial organs. But as time passed, their functions were discovered.
...
A person can get along without an arm, a leg, a lung, and a number of other organs, but that does not make them vestigial. On what basis are evolutionists justified in calling the remaining organs useless?
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Mutations?

Because mutations are harmful and because because they are the result of chance changes in the genes, it is difficult to imagine that mutations are responsible for the complex world of living things around us.
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What about the fossil record? Are there any transitional forms?

Charles Darwin, who made evolution popular with his book Origin of Species, realized this problem. But Darwin assumed that the transitional forms would eventually be found; however, more than one hundred years have passed since Darwin, and thousands of paleontologists have searched diligently for the transitional forms. The missing links are still missing! Evolutionists cannot find that which simply does not exist.
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The geologic column is next in line for a supposed refutation, with arguments against the way rocks are dated. Then there's quotes from evolutionists supposedly admitting that their theory doesn't hold water (for example, EJH Corner stating that the "fossil record of plants is in favor of special creation").

Then there's the argument from entropy, i.e. the Second Law of Thermodynamics argument. But there's something else in there I wanted to single out because I haven't seen it brought up in any other creationist argument:

We can say the universe is doing this; it is moving toward an eventual "heat death." That means that the universe will eventually cool until all its parts are at the same low temperature; its energy concentrations will have evened out. When this occurs, all processes of the universe will have stopped, and the universe as we know it will have come to an end. It will be at maximum entropy. The Bible indicates that this process is now taking place. "The heavens are the work of Thy [God's] hands. . . yea, all of them [the works of Thy hands] shall wax old like a garment. . ." (Psalm 102:25-26). Fortunately, we are also told that God is going to intervene before maximum entropy is reached.
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One of the last arguments is the one about monkeys with typewriters. They give the staggering improbability that a billion monkeys with typewriters could ever type out Genesis 1:1 and conclude thus:

Evolutionists will admit that the mathematical possibility of evolution taking place is indeed slight. As we have seen, according to the laws of probability, the probability that evolution occured is essentially zero. Yet, evolutionists believe sincerely that it did somehow happen. We marvel at their faith in the impossible.
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Next are the usual arguments agains radiometric dating, and the final wrap-up:

Because science is still in a state of learning about the real world, we realize that some of the scientific evidences we have presented in this chapter may change at some time in the future. The one evidence which will not change, however, is the evidence of man himself, who is a reasonable, orderly personality created in God's image, and who, because of faith in the order and reason of a reality created by God, was able to give birth to modern science.
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I was 10 years old when I read this stuff for the first time, and I believed it all without question. By the time I got to public schools I was already indoctrinated enough not to believe what the secular science book said about uniformitarianism, plate tectonics, the age of the earth, and evolution (even though it sounded pretty reasonable to me). It took liberal Christians to pull me into reason.

This book has been updated since 1992, of course. A newer addition has an essay on evolution to which RationalWiki has posted a rebuttal.
 
And that'S why around here (germany) you are not allowed to homeschool children, and even in my old country (france) they examinate what the child is learning.

ETA: homeschooling can be a good things, when parents with formal education give a correct teaching to their child, but such case as the op are really egregious.
 
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The thing that irritates me most about this is the '1 chance in large number is the same as no chance' fallacy.

Consider: If a civilisation has a 1 in 10,000 chance of abruptly collapsing each year, then the average survival time of every civilisation is 10,000 years. If there was no chance, the civilisation would go on forever. That's a pretty big difference.

Can't they see this?
 
This is followed by an argument against evidence from embryology, which depends mostly on pointing out that any resemblance between gill slits on a a fish embryo and skin folds on a human embryo is purely superficial and coincidental.
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The important thing for a skeptic is to take each statement and investigate whether or not it has any factual support. The source of the statement whether atheist, deist,, agnostic or otherwise should remain irrelevant. Actually, the idea you find so compelling has long been rejected by evolutionists themselves and Heckal, the person who concocted it has been severely criticized for crass misrepresentation of his findings. Here are just a few of the many evolutionists who have tagged the idea as bogus.


Embryologist Erich Blechschmidt considered Haeckel’s “Great Biogenetic Law” (as it came to be known) one of the most serious errors in the history of biology. In his book, The Beginnings of Human Life, he minced no words in repudiating Haeckel’s fraudulent forgeries: “The so-called basic law of biogenetics is wrong. No buts or ifs can mitigate this fact. It is not even a tiny bit correct or correct in a different form. It is totally wrong” (Menton, 1997)
Sir Arthur Keith [Scottish anatomist and anthropologist, who became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons] stated:


It was expected that the embryo would recapitulate the features of its ancestors from the lowest to the highest forms in the animal kingdom. Now that the appearance of the embryo at all stages is known, the general feeling is one of disappointment; the human embryo at no stage is anthropoid in appearance. The embryo of the mammal never resembles the worm, the fish, or the reptile. Embryology provides no support whatsoever for the evolutionary hypothesis (1932, p. 94)

Unfortunately, the biogenetic “law” still is being taught as a scientific fact in many public schools and universities. Of 15 high school biology textbooks being considered for adoption by the Indiana State Board of Education in 1980, nine offered embryological recapitulation as evidence for evolution. Evolutionists themselves have conceded that the biogenetic “law” has become so deeply rooted in evolutionary dogma that it cannot be weeded out. For example, Paul Ehrlich [a German immunologist] observed: “Its shortcomings have been almost universally pointed out by modern authors, but the idea still has a prominent place in biological mythology” (1963, p. 66).

It is time we began teaching the next generation the truth. All embryos are not the same, and embryonic humans are not the equivalent of fish, or reptiles. The evolutionists themselves have admitted as much. In their classic biology textbook, Life: An Introduction to Biology, George Gaylord Simpson and William S. Beck put it bluntly when they wrote: “Ontogeny does not recapitulate phylogeny.” Then, in a footnote at the bottom of the page where that statement appeared, they told the student: “You may well ask why we bother you with the principles that turned out to be wrong. There are two reasons. In the first place, belief in recapitulation became so widespread that it is still evident in some writings about biology and evolution. You should know therefore what recapitulation is supposed to be, and you should know that it does not really occur” (1965, p. 241).

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2049
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The same applies to many other of the claims which you find unscientific or anti science. They are merely enumerating things which science itself has rejected. So if we are indeed interested in unbiased conclusions--then it is imperative that we avoid making snap judgements based on source alone.

Scientific Misinformation in Schools
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5w052_evolutionary-fraud-in-education_tech

BTW
Few brief adds before video starts.
 
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Radrook said:
The important thing for a skeptic is to take each statement and investigate whether or not it has any factual support. The source of the statement whether atheist, deist,, agnostic or otherwise should remain irrelevant. Actually, the idea you find so compelling has long been rejected by evolutionists themselves and Heckal, the person who concocted it has been severely criticized for crass misrepresentation of his findings. Here are just a few of the many evolutionists who have tagged the idea as bogus.







The same applies to many other of the claims which you find unscientific or anti science. They are merely enumerating things which science itself has rejected. So if we are indeed interested in unbiased conclusions--then it is imperative that we avoid making snap judgements based on source alone.
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Are you aware this is`2010? Do you think there was no progress in embryology since 1997?
 
Did the book mention the incest used to populate Earth twice? Once before the flood with Adam and Eve and then again with Noah and his family? Did it also mention if the population came from such a tiny genetic pool it would probably not have made it more than 6-7 generations?
 
"You cannot use science to disprove the Bible, because the Bible is meant to be interpreted as moral guidelines, not literal truths."

"You can use the Bible to disprove science, because the Bible is literal truth, not meant to be interpreted as mere moral guidelines."

Even I remember reading books about "the missing link" (1996~8? I was still in primary school), even though such missing links have been discovered long ago...

As for that "Scientific Misinformation in Schools" video, I do say I feel more likely to trust the man in the white lab coat who says that he doesn't have all the answers and to love your fellow man than a man in a white robe who claims to have all the answers (which include stoning homosexuals, among many others)

There's also more evidence for evolution than for creationism, if there's any form of discrepancy of the evidence towards evolution, then the theory is clearly not complete and we should revise it, not jump clear across the water to follow the other way of thinking instead.

Oh, Also I love the claim that Carl Sagan KNEW Evolution was a lie, it's almost as good as the whole "Darwin admits it's all a fraud on deathbed" one people of your beliefs used to tell me.
 
Radically Rethinking said:
... keep in mind this is a book
that's specifically written to teach children science. ...

The second chapter--about the three kingdoms of animal, plant, and protist life--begins with a large picture of Adam surrounded by a multitude of animals. ...
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Wow, before I came to this board, I never dreamed this kind of thing went on anywhere.
 
When we were homeschooling, and interacted with other parents doing the same, the first question I would ask is "What curriculum?" If they said Abeka, I would start quietly backing away.
 
Radrook said:
Why are you being so cryptic? Don't you want to be understood?
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It's a joke, about prostitution being considered the oldest profession.

I fortunately had a pantheist mother who has a fair amount of common sense, so the one year I was homeschooled, I was never exposed to such a thing. I was in the first grade and was pulled out because of the intense ease of the public school curriculum. I can't imagine how I would have coped. (Heck, I remember feeling frustrated that every question I had asked in Sunday school, no matter how well thought out, was given the same lukewarm answer. Not fun.)
 
My 6th grade teacher was a big xtian (Church of God, speaking in tongues, etc.) During science when discussing how the universe was created(Big Bang, etc.) she had a student, who attended her church, read the creation story from Genesis. On the test the question was worded "How do men say the universe was created?"
 
There were three other books that stand out as memorable: American history, world history, and health. The two history books were mostly not that different from what you'd expect from a public school, except for the occasional Bible references and a greater focus on the Great Awakening and on American missionaries (ever learn about David Brainerd, Marcus & Narcissa Whitman, or Jonathan Goble in a public school?) That, and, I do not recall any mention of Thomas Paine in the chapters on the American Revolution.

In the health book, what I'll never forget was the long interesting section about different diseases and how doctors treat them. I enjoyed learning all these medical terms (like, -itis means inflammation, gastro- means stomach, etc.) but then didn't expect how the discussion ended. The book said that what we have learned was only "the tip of the iceberg," and that most diseases are caused by disobedience of God's Word, followed by several Bible verses to back this up. I remember I showed that to my mom after reading it and she thought that was rather "out there," since we never heard anything like that in our Lutheran church.
 
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