Of course the creationists disregard the peer review process they know that they could never get anything through the gauntlet that is peer review. They would rather insist on indoctrinating as many children as possible by teaching their nonsense in the classrooms. They want to hold back the human race. They don’t want debate they want to supplant science with religion, and that is detrimental to us all.

I would like to have seen Yoest up against an articulate scientist who would have taken her to the wood shed. Of course, she never answered the question about the age of the Earth and if humans co-existed with dinosaurs.

I like how he held her feet to the fire on that one. Genius. Pure genius. Try as she might he would not let her back peddle. I am not the least bit surprised that she suggested that we should teach things that have been conclusively disproven. “Teaching the controversy” as they call it. If we can introduce cultural relativism into the classroom and teach such nonsense as if it sits on even ground with empirical scientific evidence then, should we not also teach astrology, alchemy, or wicca. Of course not, they would say! That’s just plain silly! And so is believing that we are born with a defect that means that we are incapable of knowing right from wrong in the absence of a god or in the absence of a big black book written by slave-loving men who were flagrant sexist all because some dumb bitch couldn’t obey one rule in a garden 10,000 years ago and that she was tricked by a talking snake into eating from a magical tree. If we are to believe those things we may as well teach Alice in Wonderland as if it were true so long as they hear all sides of the story. ;)

Or wait!! I have a better way of phrasing the question for her. Why should we teach something as if it were fact, when we know for a fact that it is not a fact? Or, never mind. She probably wouldn’t have a straight answer for that either.

I do not disagree with teaching kids on how the scientific thought process has changed through the centuries. It is imperative to help them understand that early scientists were influenced by creationist thought and it heavily influenced their work. In most cases it made it impossible for them to see the truth. Darwin was at one time going to be a member of the clergy and was a creationist for the first part of his life. It did influence him BUT he was able to THINK for himself and form his own opinion. Kids need critical thinking skills not misinformation though. You cannot teach them these “controversies” as fact but instead you need to teach them as out of date and proven wrong. I do not think they, creationists or ID people, want scientists in the classrooms talking about all of the fallacies and false information in the Bible. That would only hurt their beliefs if their kid comes home saying “we learned in school today that Hell is not a literal place below the surface of the Earth and that no such place exists” or “today we learned that Jesus’ real name would have been Joesph and that his parents last name was not Christ and any woman who gives birth without being impregnated by another man can only have females, it can happen, therefore he never existed!” They would not like that at all. Leave my science alone and I will leave your superstitions alone.

“Religion is like a penis
It is fine if you have one but please
do not whip it out in public
and please do not try to shove it in my kids’ faces”