Excerpts from a Christian homeschool science textbook

[Radically Rethinking]

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?

That was all unsurprisingly left out.

 

[Maia]

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.

(yap yap yap...)

Stephen Jay Gould has written more than one wonderful essay debunking weird ideas about recapitulation (Pervasive Influence especially comes to mind), which includes examining and rejecting Ernst Haeckel's bizarre concepts. (Gould's writings were not referenced anywhere in that linked article, which probably shouldn't have been much of a surprise.) And Gould accurately pointed out that the stupid Haeckel drawings kept being reproduced in textbooks right up through the 1960's and 1970's. But the reason why Haeckel's ideas were so popular in the first place is that like those of Brinton, Cope, Vogt, Crofton, Serres, and a host of other 19th century scientists, they formed an appealing "scientific" explanation for the racism of that era. (And that explanation is a whole different thread...) So none of this has anything to do with the accuracy of "evolution."

 

[Corsair 115]

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

The TVO program Big Ideas earlier today ran an episode featuring Christopher Hitchens talking about the Ten Commandments, and demonstrating how morality has little to do with it. Click the video link on this page to watch the episode.

Note that it might not play for those folks living outside of Canada, but give it a try.

 

[Lukraak_Sisser]

*snipped for brevity*
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.

I'm not quite sure what your point is here.
in the OP it is mentioned that evilution is wrong because of the embryo thing being accidental.
As you point out that particular myth has been dropped from the current theory years ago, so the homeschool book uses a false argument. After all, science HAS dropped that argument, but the book acts as if it still is part of the current theory.
So the antiscientific part is that the book cherrypicks something, lifts it out of context, ignores what is the actual theory and then 'disproves' it without actually proving in any way how it is wrong. All the author seems to say is: "I think its accidental" which is about as unscientific as you can get.
The proverb of a broken clock still showing the right time of day twice comes to mind here.

 

[Aepervius]

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?

I think the average survival time would be more complicated to calculate.

If a civilisation has a chance P od dying every year, then it will have a change 1-P not to die.

So probability that a civilisation does not die after N years is (1-P)^N

This gives such a table (probabiltiy the civilisation still exists) // year

0,99999 1
0,999900004 10
0,999000495 100
0,990049784 1000
0,904836966 10000
0,367877602 100000

So you see even after 10000 years the civilisation has a probability of 91% to still be alive.

To calculate the average time would be expected to live is more complicated, but it would not be 10000 years but much more (one would have to look at the distribution and I don't want to look up wiki to check that out).

 

[quixotecoyote]

I think the average survival time would be more complicated to calculate.

If a civilisation has a chance P od dying every year, then it will have a change 1-P not to die.

So probability that a civilisation does not die after N years is (1-P)^N

This gives such a table (probabiltiy the civilisation still exists) // year

0,99999 1
0,999900004 10
0,999000495 100
0,990049784 1000
0,904836966 10000
0,367877602 100000

So you see even after 10000 years the civilisation has a probability of 91% to still be alive.

To calculate the average time would be expected to live is more complicated, but it would not be 10000 years but much more (one would have to look at the distribution and I don't want to look up wiki to check that out).

Maybe I'm oversimplified this, but doesn't the term "1 in 10000 chances" mean that it is expected to happen once every 10000 chances? So if a chance is a year, shouldn't we expect it to collapse once in a 10000 year span?

 

[Radrook]

Stephen Jay Gould has written more than one wonderful essay debunking weird ideas about recapitulation (Pervasive Influence especially comes to mind), which includes examining and rejecting Ernst Haeckel's bizarre concepts. (Gould's writings were not referenced anywhere in that linked article, which probably shouldn't have been much of a surprise.) And Gould accurately pointed out that the stupid Haeckel drawings kept being reproduced in textbooks right up through the 1960's and 1970's. But the reason why Haeckel's ideas were so popular in the first place is that like those of Brinton, Cope, Vogt, Crofton, Serres, and a host of other 19th century scientists, they formed an appealing "scientific" explanation for the racism of that era. (And that explanation is a whole different thread...) So none of this has anything to do with the accuracy of "evolution."

All good and well if that's your opinion fine. But what's with rthe unnecessary Yap! Yap! Yap!
garbage?

 

[Radrook]

I'm not quite sure what your point is here.
in the OP it is mentioned that evilution is wrong because of the embryo thing being accidental.
As you point out that particular myth has been dropped from the current theory years ago, so the homeschool book uses a false argument. After all, science HAS dropped that argument, but the book acts as if it still is part of the current theory.
So the antiscientific part is that the book cherrypicks something, lifts it out of context, ignores what is the actual theory and then 'disproves' it without actually proving in any way how it is wrong. All the author seems to say is: "I think its accidental" which is about as unscientific as you can get.
The proverb of a broken clock still showing the right time of day twice comes to mind here.

If indeed I misunderstood the OPED then thanks for decently bringing it to my attention.

However, please note that the OPED doesn't indicate that the embryonic Recapitulation is in error. Instead it critices the homeschooling curriculum for is calling it wrong. In fact, the oped writer calls it evidence against which the homeschooling curriculum wrongfully argues. Here. read it for yourself!

"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.

But again, if indeed I misread thanx for pointing it out.

 

[Cactus]

If indeed I misunderstood the OPED then thanks for decently bringing it to my attention.

However, please note that the OPED doesn't indicate that the embryonic Recapitulation is in error. Instead it critices the homeschooling curriculum for is calling it wrong. In fact, the oped writer calls it evidence against which the homeschooling curriculum wrongfully argues. Here. read it for yourself!



But again, if indeed I misread thanx for pointing it out.

I assume it was more to the fact that they were dismissing it as coincidence, when science had dismissed it as never occuring in the first place.

Let's not forget OPs book was the 1992 edition, we've already talked about how people complained about the drawings still being in science textbooks in the 60's and 70's

 

[Aepervius]

Maybe I'm oversimplified this, but doesn't the term "1 in 10000 chances" mean that it is expected to happen once every 10000 chances? So if a chance is a year, shouldn't we expect it to collapse once in a 10000 year span?

I could be confused ... Or wrong. Let me think about that.

 

[Cactus]

Maybe I'm oversimplified this, but doesn't the term "1 in 10000 chances" mean that it is expected to happen once every 10000 chances? So if a chance is a year, shouldn't we expect it to collapse once in a 10000 year span?

Yes, we'd expect that it should collapse given a 10,000 year span, that doesn't mean it will.

If you roll a 6 sided die 6 times you aren't guaranteed to get one 6, even though you'd expect to, the odds of getting only one six are something like 6.7%

Caveat - I haven't slept in like 30 hours, so feel free to check my maths

 

[Dragonrock]

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.

Abeka Books was created and run by Rebecca Horton, wife of Pensacola Christian College (PCC) founder, president, and Bob Jones University alum Arlin Horton.

I used those books during a few of my school years, and Mrs. Rock attended PCC for almost 4 years.

And for those of you who don't know, PCC is about a half-step short of being Fred Phelps university. While they don't teach you to hate people outside of their group, they do teach you to fear them. Oh, but they won't come out and say that. No, rather they tell you that the devil will try to lead you astray using catholics and atheists and jews.

I had the advantage of knowing more about science than the authors of the books, so I knew they bits that were complete BS.

 

[Twiler]

I could be confused ... Or wrong. Let me think about that.

The statements don't contradict. You have to consider that the series goes on to infinity.

 

[Beerina]

Humans have only one source of absolute knowledge, and that source is the Bible.

I thought it was un-Christian to lie.

Secondly, in any conflict between science and the Bible, so much the worse for the Bible. The Bible must be declared incorrect, or its followers must force themselves to re-interpret things as allegory, etc. in an ever-growing list of such reinterpretations.

Said reinterpretations are, of course, evidence that the Bible was wrong, if'n one wanted to be honest. If'n.