I really do appreciate all of my commenters, even those who disagree with me. And I know I can sometimes come across a little more aggressive than I mean to. Believe it or not, I have toned it down a lot since becoming a Christian and even more since blogging.
But I am having a really hard time taking some recent comments seriously. How do you respond to something like this:
The problem with teaching creationism as science or as the truth is that you are ceeping people dum.
I’m guessing Constantjn is a non-native speaker, in which case I understand. If not, well, our school system is worse than I thought. The whole comment thread has been interesting, and I really do appreciate that most of my visitors leave their own thoughts. It is very engaging to me to be able to actually carry on a conversation in my comment box now and again!
Principled Discovery is a place to stop and discuss news and information related to faith, family and particularly education. Pour yourself a cup of tea and join the conversation! 
“How do you respond to something like this:”
By simply not responding LOL I know, a bit rude of me. But honestly, I don’t know how you remain so calm and diplomatic sometimes, Dana.
I actually said something I immediately regretted and then deleted. The first thought that came to mind was “troll.” But then, if English is a second language, that wouldn’t be very nice of me, would it?
I do recall that monks, and organized religion, did quite a lot to help people become literate.
A lot of the foundation for modern science was set by monks in their monasteries.
Like Mendel and his beans.
I find this conversation very interesting. I have a difficult time understanding the aversion to evolution. If I believe God is the creator of all things and controls all things, why is it impossible to think that his vision of the world is bigger than my view.
Could it not be God’s intention that we evolve? How do we know? Who amongst us can say they know the mind of God?
The creation of the world is more complex than the human mind can fathom. There are many things at work that are beyond our understanding. As I see it, all things are possible with God. The world is his garden and he allows it to grow.
Thanks for stopping by, Kymberlyn. I agree with your statement that God’s view is bigger than my view. That’s why I tend to believe the bible when it says God created the universe. : )
But the original post wasn’t really about evolution or creation, per se. It was more about people who are determining that creation cannot be taught for whatever reason. That is not really an issue for me in the public schools, but I don’t think that the government should have that kind of power over what families teach their children.
The idea of creation is not dangerous, even if you disagree with it. What is dangerous is when a group of people determine that they are right and that they need to ensure that everyone agrees with them. When opposing viewpoints are deemed illegal, we have a serious problem.
Hi, my name is Constantijn. As I said, may native tongue is not English but Spanish and Flemish.
I see that you see me as “dum” by putting the word that way in the title together with the “c” of “ceep”.
A vast amount of fossils have been found.
There are widely accpted methods to measure the age of these fossils.
with all these accepted methods you can proof that the world is billions of years old.
Creationism says that the world is 6000 years old.
How are you going to teach craetionsim as science if there are so many contradictions, like the age of the world?
Is there any (widely accepted) method thats says that all of the fossils found untill now are less then 6000 years old?
It seems to me accepting and teaching only one possibility or view would be a lot more oppressive to someone’s education than introducing the concept of Creationism into a school room. Forcing people to think like we do isn’t really increasing their intelligence, it’s brainwashing.
Hmmm…I guess that’s how I’d respond.
But, I find you can’t really have an intelligent conversation with people who are set on proving you wrong, myself included. You just end up beating your head against the proverbial wall.
Hi, my name is Constantijn.
If you want to teach different views, then you also should teach all the other opinions of all the other religions. Almost every religion has it own different view on how we all got here. None of them can prove their story, except by quoting the Bible, Koran,…
If you were born in an Islamic culture, you would have been a Muslim.
If you were born in India, u would have been a Hindu.
If you were born in the ancient Egyptian times, you would have believed in Ra.
What makes you think that Christianity is right and the other religions are wrong? Ever thought about that, or is this simply not an option?
You are brainwashing a generation is you teach creationism/religion as science.
No, Constantjn, families should be allowed to teach their own children according to their viewpoints.
And if you want to continue the conversation, you need to 1) provide more information than vague references to what is “widely accepatable” and 2) respond to what others have said.
The point of my blog is not debating creation and evolution but demonstrating why the state cannot be given the power to regulate families so stringently that only one view can be taught.
Kinda sounds like what goes on in North Korea, and I don’t want that life here, even if the state is supposedly based on science.
I enjoy a good conversation, but a series of attacks with no basis and no attempt at responding to what people bring up is the definition of a troll. And while I can take some enjoyment for my trolls now and again, even I will cut the nonsense after awhile and begin removing comments.
Dana,
I do understand the orignal post, but it seems like many people are divided. It is either creation or evolution but few care to entertain the possibility of both. In my mind they can co-exist.
I believe Shawna might have said something to the affect that both should be presented, and the child should determine what it is they believe. I agree with this whole heartedly.
Hi, my name is Constantijn
I’m sorry to upset you, that is by far my intention.
I just find it very strange that people tend to read the bible literally.
I’m a big defender of the secular state. If secularism falls, democracy might fall to.
Secularism demands that our education teach the basics of the scientific method and a non-philosophical or religious approach to science.
My starting point is that God does no exist and I try to find my answers in that way.
Your starting point is the opposite.
I do not think one can have a good discussion with such different starting points. Therefore I’ll stop posting comments on your blog.
Consider reading this last article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_Church_and_State
Have fun.
Constantijn,
” I’m a big defender of the secular state.”
So Constantijn this is what your world view boils down to.
You believe in NO moral absolutes and have cast your lot.
You believe in evolution. You believe in millions, if not billions, of years of death, disease, destruction and suffering. You believe in the constant killing of the weak by the strong either in the animal or plant kingdoms. You believe you are no more than a monkey and for what reason, Naught!
You support abortion, child pornography, illegal drug use, easy divorce, thievery, adultery, violence, murder, lying and any form of debauchery since evolution and nature at such randomness calls for such behavior.
You elect, increase and do not deny the power and authority of the evil villains of the past century who brutally murdered 170 million of their own citizens. Not only these persons of infamy but any other such characters from history and certainly those to come.
And why? Maybe because if their was a God you would be personally accountable to Him. That would definitely spoil your party.
How true it is though;
“Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes: but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment.”
Ecclesiastes 11:9
“The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution.”
Stephen Jay Gould (Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University), “Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging?” Paleobiology, vol. 6(1), January 1980, p. 127
“Contrary to what most scientists write, the fossil record does not support the Darwinian theory of evolution because it is this theory (there are several) which we use to interpret the fossil record. By doing so we are guilty of circular reasoning if we then say the fossil record supports this theory.”
Ronald R. West, PhD (paleoecology and geology) (Assistant Professor of Paleobiology at Kansas State University), “Paleoecology and uniformitarianism”. Compass, vol. 45, May 1968, p. 216
“The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way is comparable with the chance that ‘a tornado sweeping through a junk yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein’.”
Sir Fred Hoyle (English astronomer, Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge University), as quoted in “Hoyle on Evolution”. Nature, vol. 294, 12 Nov. 1981, p. 105
“Echoing the criticism made of his father’s habilis skulls, he added that Lucy’s skull was so incomplete that most of it was ‘imagination made of plaster of Paris’, thus making it impossible to draw any firm conclusion about what species she belonged to.”
Referring to comments made by Richard Leakey (Director of National Museums of Kenya) in The Weekend Australian, 7-8 May 1983, Magazine, p. 3
“The entire hominid collection known today would barely cover a billiard table, … the collection is so tantalizingly incomplete, and the specimens themselves often so fragmented and inconclusive, that more can be said about what is missing than about what is present. …but ever since Darwin’s work inspired the notion that fossils linking modern man and extinct ancestor would provide the most convincing proof of human evolution, preconceptions have led evidence by the nose in the study of fossil man.”
John Reader (photo-journalist and author of “Missing Links”), “Whatever happened to Zinjanthropus?” New Scientist, 26 March 1981, p. 802
“A five million-year-old piece of bone that was thought to be a collarbone of a humanlike creature is actually part of a dolphin rib, …He [Dr. T. White] puts the incident on par with two other embarrassing [sic] faux pas by fossil hunters: Hesperopithecus, the fossil pig’s tooth that was cited as evidence of very early man in North America, and Eoanthropus or ‘Piltdown Man,’ the jaw of an orangutan and the skull of a modern human that were claimed to be the ‘earliest Englishman’.
“The problem with a lot of anthropologists is that they want so much to find a hominid that any scrap of bone becomes a hominid bone.’”
Dr. Tim White (anthropologist, University of California, Berkeley). As quoted by Ian Anderson “Hominoid collarbone exposed as dolphin’s rib”, in New Scientist, 28 April 1983, p. 199
“We add that it would be all too easy to object that mutations have no evolutionary effect because they are eliminated by natural selection. Lethal mutations (the worst kind) are effectively eliminated, but others persist as alleles. …Mutants are present within every population, from bacteria to man. There can be no doubt about it. But for the evolutionist, the essential lies elsewhere: in the fact that mutations do not coincide with evolution.”
Pierre-Paul Grassé (University of Paris and past-President, French Academie des Sciences) in Evolution of Living Organisms, Academic Press, New York, 1977, p. 88
“The essence of Darwinism lies in a single phrase: natural selection is the creative force of evolutionary change. No one denies that natural selection will play a negative role in eliminating the unfit. Darwinian theories require that it create the fit as well.”
Stephen Jay Gould (Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University), “The return of hopeful monsters”. Natural History, vol. LXXXVI(6), June-Jule 1977, p. 28
“And in man is a three-pound brain which, as far as we know, is the most complex and orderly arrangement of matter in the universe.”
Dr. Isaac Asimov (biochemist; was a Professor at Boston University School of Medicine; internationally known author), “In the game of energy and thermodynamics you can’t even break even.”. Smithsonian Institute Journal, June 1970, p. 10
“Why do geologists and archeologists still spend their scarce money on costly radiocarbon determinations? They do so because occasional dates appear to be useful. While the method cannot be counted on to give good, unequivocal results, the number do impress people, and save them the trouble of thinking excessively. Expressed in what look like precise calendar years, figures seem somehow better … ‘Absolute’ dates determined by a laboratory carry a lot of weight, and are extremely helpful in bolstering weak arguments.
“No matter how ‘useful’ it is, though, the radiocarbon method is still not capable of yielding accurate and reliable results. There are gross discrepancies, the chronology is uneven and relative, and the accepted dates are actually selected dates. This whole bless thing is nothing but 13th-century alchemy, and it all depends upon which funny paper you read.”
Robert E. Lee, “Radiocarbon: ages in error”. Anthropological Journal of Canada, vol.19(3), 1981, pp.9-29. Reprinted in the Creation Research Society Quarterly, vol. 19(2), September 1982, pp. 117-127 (quotes from pp. 123 and 125)
“The intelligent layman has long suspected circular reasoning in the use of rocks to date fossils and fossils to date rocks. The geologist has never bothered to think of a good reply, feeling that explanations are not worth the trouble as long as the work brings results. This is supposed to be hard-headed pragmatism.”
J. E. O’Rourks, “Pragmatism versus materialism in stratigraphy”. American Journal of Science, vol. 276, January 1976, p. 47
“Scientists who go about teaching that evolution is a fact of life are great con-men, and the story they are telling may be the greatest hoax ever. In explaining evolution, we do not have one iota of fact.”
Dr. T. N. Tahmisian (Atomic Energy Commission, USA) in “The Fresno Bee”, August 20, 1959. As quoted by N. J. Mitchell, Evolution and the Emperor’s New Clothes, Roydon Publications, UK, 1983, title page.