In 1936 Harry Rimmer published a book, The Harmony of Science and Scripture. Among the amazing things he cited was found in an 1890 book that "proved" that the Bible was right when it told the story of the day the sun stood still.

This malarkey evolved. By the 1960s it had become a story that NASA scientists were unable to account for a missing 23 hours and 20 minutes. Not to worry: the other 40 minutes were lost on the day that the sun went backwards.

Snopes covered this as false in 1999. That has not stopped its spread. On Saturday, Feb. 4, 2012 RAP/NESARA ran the same story as NASA & THE BIBLE.

This is not an instance of poor understanding of science or legitimate skepticism of science or any of the other excuses for this kind of false claim. It is an instance of deliberate lies. The original story had nothing to say about NASA scientists and their computer runs; it was first told in 1936 or perhaps 1890 (when President Obama was born). By the 1960s NASA and computers had been introduced into the story, with the new narrator being Mr. Harold Hill, "President of the Curtis Engine Co. in Baltimore and a consultant in the space program." Mr. Hill's company serviced electrical generators at the NASA facility in Greenbelt, MD.

Snopes speculates that Hill heard the story somewhere and embellished it with the NASA story. The story appeared in church bulletins, and Hill spoke about it before school groups. The story appears in Hill's 1974 book, How to Live Like a King's Kid: The Miracle Way of Living That Has Changed Millions of Lives!

I imagine that there are many such stories that have been "improved" over the years so as to prove the literal truth of the Bible. The motivation of the liars may be a strong need to believe that the Bible itself cannot satisfy. Mormons sponsor archaeological expeditions to show the truth of their beliefs. People (including maybe a scientist or two) have been dispatched to provide proof of the existence of the Giants in the Earth with whom the daughters of men bred. If others believe the lies, that is good because the fundamental truth is intact: the Bible is literally true. I imagine that Harold Hill thought that he was saving souls with this amazing story, no matter how much he changed it over the years.

No one has yet connected this Harold Hill to River City, Iowa. However, I like to think that Meredith Willson had encountered Harold Hill of Curtis Engine sometime before 1957.

I think it is despicable to do this to kids' minds. However, in the creationist and intelligent design movements we are seeing an attempt to do this on a national scale.

The megachurch that my ex attends has had apologetics classes frequently over the years that I've been aware of it. They have some sort of relationship with the Discovery Institute and some other organizations. My ex has been very interested in these classes and the literature.

I was rather alarmed when he started bringing our teenaged children to the classes*, but I should have known not to worry: one of the teachers actually gently suggested that my second son should feel free to choose not to attend. Apparently he was asking questions. (He is a very polite person, of course, but his questions were not answerable by the creationist folks.) Some of the things reported back to me by my kids included: "science and logic are tools of the devil". It was a very strange approach, to me. Make your pseudoscientific presentation AND be sure to push back against any questions.

The intelligent design movement IS deliberate untruth. The kids brought all sorts of materials to me over the years, and they were full of purposeful and despicable plotting to get around the religious restrictions on educational materials. I think the organizations that push this agenda are in it for many reasons, all of which start with $. But I think many of the families that push it genuinely fear that science will pull their children away from god, so they have to counter, shield, shelter, protect. I hate this as much as any of it. You can't lead your child to a spiritual truth by lying to them.

*Our minor children attended church with their dad; it was part of our custody agreement and I still think it was one of my better choices. He deserved the chance to expose them to his religious traditions. The apologetics class was the only time I worried about the decision.

Edit to add: I'm not feeling well; I may come back and make this post make more sense if necessary.

I attended a Lutheran grade school. Lucky me, the Lutheran high school wasn't built until long after I graduated college. During the final days of 8th grade, our teacher repeatedly warned us about the dangers of science class -- and the threat science could be to our faith. Funny thing, despite classes in biologogy, advanced biology, chemistry, physics etc in high school, what really started me on my path towards atheism was my sociology class in college.

I got started down that path during religion class in Catholic school. The nun would crack me over the head for not paying attention.

BTW, I don't completely discount the idea of a creator. I just happen to believe that if there is a creator, this creator is nothing like the one invented by man.

I hope not. Think about it. God is suppose to be all knowing. Here we have Adam and Eve who couldn't know what good and evil were since they hadn't eaten from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Do they even know what death is -- as in eat the fruit and die? So God tempts Adam and Eve and tells they will die if they eat a simply piece of fruit -- all the while knowing just what they will do. And again, we have this all-powerful God who seems to lack the power to simply forgive sinners. No, first God HAS to sacrifice his son, that he has no other option. Even if he made the rule, he can't just change his mind? I see the God depicted in the Bible more like the spoiled child-like Squire of Gothos in an old Star Trek episode than some awesome being worthy of worship.

For the non-geeks: Squire of Gothos

Actually he had the power to forgive sinners. He did it all the time in the Old testament. See Ninevah in the book of Jonah as one example. In my view, Jesus's coming had more to do with the fact that God was responsible for the consequences of creating a world with freedom of choice, so he is indirectly responsible when people do evil things and endless suffering. So, for that, God deserved to be tortured to death by a cowardly judge and a corrupt court.

In any case, the real root of this is that people were promised that Science would answer everyone's questions and would lead to a world of peace and plenty. It hasn't happened. In some cases its made things worse. And frankly, putting the responsibility on science to come up with the answer to life the universe and everything was vastly unfair. Science IS limited in many ways (e.g. who knew that fracking could cause earthquakes?), and the scientific method has big limitations, and those limitations are what are being used by companies and climate change deniers to wreck havoc. Science is a tool that can explain how something works that it can get its hands on, but it can never explain why. That's one of the reason most of the scientists and mathematicians of history were clerics.

So what is the natural reaction of people to the simple fact that science has not delivered what was promised? Disillusionment with science as a whole. In effect, though people don't want to admit it, people are becoming agnostic and atheists when it comes to the religion of science. That leaves an opening for biblical literalists to fill the void left by that disappointment that science cannot fill the role that was promised by people who really should have known better. And frankly it should never have been expected to fill that role in the first place.

Genesis is a book that was codified in the 5th century BC and gathered together some really beautiful stories and folklore of the Jewish people. The 7 days part at the beginning of Genesis was a song that was chanted by the priests of the temple at the time and added in. The fact that I know this means that knowledge does not hamper faith, and to my mind there is and should be no conflict between science and religion. Indeed one can enrich the other.

Oh yeah, and Abraham was an asshole.

One of the contradictions in the states is that they revere the pilgrims who "fled Europe to escape religious persecution" The problems is that the Pilgrims were fundamentalist puritans who were biblical literalists, and who actually fled to Holland to escape religions persecution, and who then fled to America to escape religious toleration.

If they would just admit the pilgrims were assholes they might be on the way to healing that rift in their culture.

This intellectual regression is definitely frightening. One generation ignores/dismisses science and then goes out of their way to keep their children equally ignorant.

The Catholic and Episcopalian schools I attended taught science and, I think, evolution (it was grade school, lo these many moons ago). But I do know that neither of those schools nor the Pres-by-God-terian church I attended taught that the Bible was literal truth, but "divinely inspired."

I like the approach that science can explain the "what" and religion - should you choose to accept it - can help explain the "why," as Suranis mentioned.

In the end, it's fear that motivates uber-religious people, just like it motivates the RWNJs. They're comfortable with blind acceptance of what they learned as a child or are told my some authority figure. If they look too closely at either their political or religious beliefs, they might not hold up to scrutiny and then, oops, their goes their whole world view.

I'm completely soured on organized religion of any stripe, but I still like the idea of faith - a personally-held belief that brings someone comfort. And that faith can be in science or a tomato-y pasta dish or reincarnation or god(s). I say embrace it, live it, enjoy it - and keep it to yourself.

Are there Web sites that collect the lies told by Creationists and Intelligent Design advocates? I suspect that the NASA "Lost Day" history is not atypical of much of what is taught. What might have begun as a simple misunderstanding is tweaked a bit to make it more credible and then re-tweaked to make it "undeniable."

If you Google "NASA Lost Day," the Snopes debunking comes up first. The next hit concerns the Paluxy River Tracks Hoax, the Calaveras Skull Hoax, and Malachite/Moab Man, all of which involve attempts to prove a young earth theory by finding "evidence" of dinosaurs contemporary with modern humans.

Providing information is the best way to combat the ID advocates and Creationists. It would be great for a curious teenager to be able to discover that what she is being taught in church or religious school is nothing but a hoax or an instance of really bad science.

As I recall, we have at least one TFB member who has done work in combating the Creationists. Does such a site exist? If not, I would like to contribute to building one. It might be called The Creation Science Noseum or something like that.

It might be worthwhile to point out that lies are not essential to spirituality (although they may be essential to organized religion). Thomas Jefferson had it right.

I think this site is the granddaddy. http://www.talkorigins.org/

At the risk of sounding self-serving, this is my go to site when I want to keep up with the whole CREVO issue.



I was one of the founders of the NCSE back in the 80's, and even contributed one article to the Creation/Evolution Journal ; a personal point of pride as the "concerned layman" surrounded by genuine scientists and educators.

You will find here both a set or wonderful resources to respond to creationist falsehood, as well as what is still the core of rational response to the ongoing efforts of creationists in this country.

A wealth of information there.

I found this old announcement to be interesting, in that it confirms the willingness of someone to try to suppress the information that is there. Information is dangerous for Creationists and IDers.

Religious Tolerance has a useful site Various beliefs about the oigins (sic) & development
of the species, the Earth itself, & the universe. It is not, however, a debunking site of the nature that TFB provides so efficiently in Birther Claims Debunked and Birther Debunkers Wiki.

It's more a matter of which Lutheran denomination or Synod you belong to. I grew up in the Missouri Synod. I believe it is the most conservative of all the Lutheran denominations, but I'm not 100% sure because I haven't researched them all. In my lifetime, the Missouri Synod has become increasing conservative as those who held even slightly less conservative views broke away and formed new or joined less restrictive, more liberal leaning Synods.

It's not surprising that the Missouri Synod is so much more conservative than other Lutheran denominations. The Missouri Synod was founded by German Lutherans who followed the lead of a Saxon German by the name of Martin Stephan. Near the start of the 1800's, Stephen and his followers began to move away from the established Lutheranism of the day which appealed to reason as a source of knowledge or justification as well as ecumenism aimed at greater Christian unity or cooperation. This group was similar to the English Puritans in that they wanted to keep to a very strict adherence to the original doctrine laid out in the Concordia which first laid out Lutheran doctrines in 1546 -- and they had little or no tolerance for those who didn't share their views. Like the Puritans, they believed that the church had strayed from it's original teachings and wanted to return to its roots, pure from any man-made changes or additions.

And thus ends the history lesson for today. This will be on the test.

From an October sermon at the megachurch I mentioned (by the senior pastor, Lon Solomon):



The sermon is full of, well, lies. Here is my "favorite" example.



If you have read Gould, you know why this is a dishonesty-based approach to what Solomon is trying to accomplish here.

I find it incredible that this kind of message gets pulpit time, but it does. And there are parents sitting there in the congregation who are desperately afraid their kids will turn away from god, and so they don't question the Gould quote or the second law of thermodynamics claptrap (and yes, he pulls that into this sermon from the pulpit, as well). The parents are afraid, and so they let the lies go.

This was the first sermon I found using google. There are a lot.

http://www.mcleanbible.org/uploads/Serm ... sisPart3(2).pdf

Great minds think alike. Before my internet provider stopped supporting usenet groups, Talkorigins was my drug of choice -- much the same way Fogbow is today.

Mine was alt.folklore.urban, when Snopes.com was Snopes and we were all Lon Stowell. Furrfu, that was a long time ago.

The only time I ever saw my parents in church was at my wedding (to the 1st MrDaisy). But when I was around 9/10 years old they packed me off with the neighbor kids to Sunday school at a Baptist church so I could get my religious edumacation. I failed. Not only did I fail, but I also got kicked out of Sunday school (after about a month) for being argumentative. I was an ornery child; there is no question about that. But when I asked “Why” (with hands on hips), I never considered “Cuz” (with arms folded) to be a satisfactory answer and I felt I had the right to say so. They disagreed.

As I grew up I realized that “Church” was never a place I could fit in. I tried a few, and I still haven’t recovered from the Pentecostals. But I came to the conclusion that the religious claim that “God created man in his own image” was completely bass-akwards. I believe that “Man created God in his own image”, not the other way around.

I have no idea whether or not there is a supreme being, but if there ever was anything close I think it might possibly have been a race of ancient beings “further advanced” than we were in ancient times. Who knows? We could have been planted here as a controlled experiment of some sort by ET’s for all we know.

We’ll either find out when we die, or not.

Actually, it was the mice who commissioned the Earth to be built.

Ask Slarti for more info since he worked on design of the Nordic countries. Beautiful fjordwork.

And they gave us the answer: "42." Unfortunately, they did not stick around to tell us what the question actually was.

Those mice lived on my grandfather's farm and understood.

42 is the greatest achievement of sentient life.

Study tracks how conservatives lost their faith in science

From Gordon's dissertation at UConn.

NB the sea change over the past 36 years: in 1974, conservatives were a bit more likely than moderates or liberals to have confidence in science. Note also that lack of education does not explain this sea change. "The figures do support a link between more education and more trust in science, but they also show that more highly educated conservatives are, if anything, more distrustful."

And there is a reason for that, and the reason is not "liberals are more sceptical and intelemegent than Conservitives" A lot of liberals, are more closed minded and dogmatic than any Opus Dei member and cant talk about anything without a stream of catch phrases. Here is the real reason... TOBACCO.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opi ... 07142.html



That breaks the 4 paragraph rule but those 5 paragraphs are key to understanding the article for those without the time to read the whole thing.

I urge you to read the full article. Essentially, since science was proving their product was harmfull, the tobacco industry declared war on science itself. To cast doubt was their strategy. "Doubt is our product". And it was enormously succesful. So much so that every other group right down to the Birthers is in some way or other copying their strategy. But it directly comes from the tobacco industry.

{Deleted ani-liberal rant. Moron, thy name is Suranis}

But in any case, the attack on science came not from Religion or anything close to it, but from those to whom science was interfering with their ability to make money by killing people. Certain other groups, including some religious denominations, took up the same weapons and are now waging an anti- science war themselves. And even some liberal groups are using the same weapons of doubt to attack Religion and other concepts. Its a genie that needs to be faught becasue its not going back into the Pandora's box anytime soon, and no matter who is using those weapons it is eating away at knowlage itself.

Of course the Onion Weighs in



http://www.theonion.com/articles/conser ... ess,27850/

Having dealt personally with a couple of these "merchants of doubt," I would cite an additional reason for what they do: they think that their knowledge of science has no limits, that whatever they learned about, say, atmospheric chemistry applies to everything from climate change to the role of the HIV virus in causing AIDS. This could be clearly seen in reaction to the Sagan-Schneider hypothesis of a "nuclear winter" if there should be a nuclear exchange. Carl thought that this would be a clenching argument that a nuclear exchange would not be survivable. The merchants of doubt went after him with a vengeance. The hypothesis was later moderated to be a "nuclear fall." Sagan and Schneider did good science (although Schneider was the better bench (modeling) scientist), and their doubters spouted their half-informed rebuttals.

People in the social sciences are well-accustomed to being told by physicists, for example, how to fix the problems of the world. That is an add-on to being told by economists how to fix all the problems of the world. Murray Gell-Mann never thought this way. Many others have.

Suranis, I am entirely confused.

You go on and post a long quote about how the tobacco industry worked to undermine the documented science about tobacco's effects on health --- and this causes liberals to attack religion, or something?

There is no documented science "proving" any religion. Religion is a belief system -- a superstition, if it's someone's other than yours. It's all in your head.

And what's in YOUR head is different from what's in mine, or in anyone else's.

And I dare to say that it wouldn't be "under attack" except for the people who want to force their religious beliefs or, worse, their dictates about how life should be lived because their religion says so, on everybody else. The best defense is a good offense, but if those who choose to be religious didn't spend so much of their time pushing their beliefs on those who don't, or who choose to follow a different spiritual path, or who just want to be left alone, they wouldn't have so much to complain about.

This claiming that it's "the same weapons of doubt" and therefore you can be a victim too is an incredibly illogical conflation. Doubt and skepticism are generally the "good guys," helping us not to fall for every bit of BS that comes along. The tobacco industry and the energy industry pushed false data and slandered scientists for the purpose of causing people to discount the scientific factual evidence and findings that are against the industries' interests.

There is NO scientific factual evidence for religion. ANY religion. Sowing seeds of doubt? There are no facts there in the first place -- only "faith," which is what you have to have to believe when there's no evidence. If your faith is at risk because of that, it's because you can't accept mythos for what it is, and insist it must be logos.

And furthermore, just whose religion are you talking about? Yours, of course. But is it OK to point out that, no matter what the Mormons believe, Native Americans are genetically provable not to be the lost tribes of Israel? Or that making human sacrifices to a volcano does not cause them to stop erupting? Or that the value of pi is NOT 3, no matter what I Kings says? Or that believing the Pope to be infallible because the Pope said so is circular logic? And how about those Hindu gods and goddesses ... or is the only thing that qualifies for "religion" the belief in "One God"? BTW, does Allah qualify as that one, too, or is he a different god?

Or is mentioning these "sowing the seeds of doubt" that must be fought against because it's ... sowing seeds of doubt? Just like those "Merchants of Doubt." Not.