Last year, Answers in Genesis ran an essay contest for young creationists — the prize was a $50,000 scholarship to Liberty University (second prize must have been a $100,000 scholarship). Well, they ran it again this year, and the 'winners' have been announced, and a sorry lot of recitations of bogus creationist talking points they are. Evolution turns people into immoral killers! Darwinism leads people to abortion and Hitler! Cells are full of little machines created by Jesus! It's really sad to see young people led down the path of stupidity like that.
If you really must read them, you can … but Zeno has read and summarized them so you don't have to. Maybe I should read them more myself — since a new semester is beginning next week, they'd recalibrate my brain to have lower expectations, and all of my freshmen students will be brilliant, literate geniuses by comparison.
Nah, I don't have to. They already are, and I know it.
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I wonder if anyone has submitted writings of a Swiftian nature. If so, how far did it go?
What a bunch of sorry tripe. It just makes me sad to watch this country move forward with the "Un-Enlightenment."
I tell my wife when the science gig runs out I want to move to Europe or New Zealand. There's not much left of intellectual thought or accomplishment in this country; mostly pig-ignorant morons breeding pig-ignorant morons and corrupting much of our intelligentsia with religiosity, while we fall further and further behind in math and science.
That is a great question, Thelogos. I think the winning essays were all in desperate earnest and I picked up not even the tiniest bit of pretense or parody (intentional parody, that is). I'm pretty certain I could write this stuff now without breaking a sweat -- it's all so dreadfully predictable -- but the contest is limited to teenagers. Alan Sokal and I are both much too old. And even if I were to win, what would I do with a scholarship to Liberty University?
And even if I were to win, what would I do with a scholarship to Liberty University?
Take it and write a book about the experience.
Well, as with many other forms of child abuse, the cycle is perpetuated. Just as some adults who were beaten as children grow up to take it out on those kids, so the children of yesterday, whose mental faculties were torn to shreds through this sort of indoctrination, repeat the behaviour in adulthood.
Unfortunately, it is still sadly taboo amongst most circles to view this barbaric behaviour for the disgraceful travesty against civilised humanity that it is.
Whew! OK, I just read Zeno's summation and that's enough for me. The eyes tend to glaze over after a bit. Truly sad what is being done to these young people. Still makes me angry.
"Maybe I should read them more myself -- since a new semester is beginning next week, they'd recalibrate my brain to have lower expectations, and all of my freshmen students will be brilliant, literate geniuses by comparison. Nah, I don't have to. They already are, and I know it"
Of course, given your previous depressing post on the number of desperate grad students competing for virtually no jobs, if you succeed in convincing these brilliant kids to fall in love with biological academia, you'll be setting most of them up for a lifetime of exploitation and disappointment. :(
second prize must have been a $100,000 scholarship
ba-dum CHING
You want to know what is being done to these young people? It is scary, man! Religiosity is like a case of the sniffles, or the flu, and spreading equally fast among the youth of America. According to an AP poll that greeted my eyes this morning, among America's young people, godliness contributes to happiness. And these young people will grow up to be tomorrow's generation, and will perpetuate the same delusional, kooky mindset that the religious wingnuts of today display.
There must be something wrong somewhere. Either we are failing to spread the awareness of rational thought and scientific enquiry, or we are not pitching the message strong enough. Why should young people need the crutch of religiosity and godhood to go about their business in daily life?
I can only hope that only these people are out of their angst-ridden teen years and into the real world, their eyes would open to all the inequities of religion - the lies and deceptions, the bigotry and close-mindedness, the hatred and intolerance, the discord and strife, the immeasureable harm that religion has brought to the lives of millions of people worldwide.
What's scary is there was a point in time where I easily could have seen myself going down that path. Having adults you've been taught to respect tell you that you're brilliant is a very seductive feeling. Of course, they don't tell you that your "brilliance" relies on parroting ridiculous claims; but of course, when you've never really been taught how to think critically and skepticism is definitely not seen as a virtue, those claims don't seem all that ridiculous.
I'm just glad I finally got some sense smacked into me. Looking back, that seduction seems exactly like a siren's call. Beautiful and alluring, but ultimately it leaves you stranded on the intellectual rocks with nowhere else to go.
It's just really sad. These kids are obviously bright and literate, but they've had pretty much any chance of making anything of themselves stolen by the people who should have been opening doors for them.
I'm not a sports fan, but in answer to this question I immediately responded, "Football, most definitely FOOTBALL!"
Poor kids.
I should add that by "beautiful alluring", I mean when you don't know any better. It's like someone tells you there's a gorgeous painting behind a veil. You can't see it--no one can see it--but many people are certain it's there, and they act as if it is. So when you're young and don't know better, you assume they're right! There must be a wonderful painting behind the veil; otherwise, all these people would just be kooks!
Then years later, you find out your darkest suspicions were correct: they're just kooks with a veil and an empty wall behind it. Then there's nothing beautiful about it. It's just an ugly, hideous sham.
One does not have to look as far as AiG for religious kookery. The local Baptists delivered a 'Chik Tracks' right to my door last evening. Being an entomologist, I wonder what is the best control methods for kookroaches.
The DI claims that ID has no religious implications, which makes it rather curious that the $50K scholarship is to Liberty rather than say, Stanford or Harvard, assuming any of the applicants could qualify for anything other than Liberty.
Jesus has moved the manufacturing of little machines for cells to China.
Tom (#15),
This is AiG, not DI. AiG certainly claims religious affiliation.
Mike P's story (#10) is illuminating:
Maybe ID's concentration on science will be their undoing. As long as they're talking science, scientists will bluntly insist they approach it scientifically and these endless flame wars will continue. Any half-bright youngster who gets interested in ID is likely to take IDers at their word. Many of these may see potential glory in felling Big Science with science's own tools. They'll study up even a little bit on science, try to formulate a good hypothesis, some predictions and some tests...and realize they've been had. In a lot of cases, I bet we'll have a recruit for our team.
The ID proponents who don't know science are full of it, of course, and those like Behe who do know science are lying. I'm hoping a lot of these kids--especially the best "draft picks"--come to see that clearly and quickly.
Okay, call me Pollyanna.
Maybe some of your soon to be freshmen students took part in the contest.
Well, Hitler was a Xian, so....don't know why evolution would turn people into Hitler, nescafe? Should be the other way around! By the way, I'm getting really irritated by religious people (as seen on Bill Moyers recently) arguing that atheism leads to mass death, and totalitarianism (they cite Stalin, et al.) But atheists need to remember Hitler in response to that lame argument!
Welp, i'm all for these awards. If we ever had proof land in our proverbial lap that ID is nothing more that a repackaged creationism, all we have to do is read these thought provoking (barf!) essays. I think just about everyone of 'em mention that jebus was the creator and go and jesus ( bipolar disorder?) are the ID. Oh, I know the ID has already been ripped to shreds, but I canna believe these kooks and crackpots are doing exactly what got ID bounced in the first place. Oh, those nutjobs never learn!
I've heard of suffering for your art, but DAMN!!
CRAP!
why doesn't anyone tell me about these things BEFORE they happen? i would have entered! it would have been fun to see what exactly i could squeeze by the judges in terms of satire.
i would have sokaled their asses.
looking over the summations, i see little reason to ridicule runner-up #2. why?
because the argument is actually correct. the days represented by the first chapter of genesis are literal days. religiosity of the language, and missing the major point* aside, there is nothing there of classic creationism. just actual biblical literary study.
and correct literary study. i see no point in promoting views of ross and co, and i doubt you would either, pz. the text says one thing, science says another. the text is wrong -- we shouldn't distort it (OR SCIENCE) to try to make the two fit. the people who wrote the text did not know things we know today, and we should be honest about that.
* the major point, btw, is that the first chapter of genesis was written specifically to justify a major division of the hebrew calendar -- the week of 6+1 days -- and to justify the practice of shabbat. while the author references the ten commandments, she fails to connect one to the other in this manner. rather the reverse, the obvious biblical "we do this because of gen1" and not "gen1 was written because we do this." to read the text apart from its etiological function and presuppose it makes a scientific claim is just as erroneous when the moderates and apologists do it.
Yesterday when trying to re-hydrate my aging bod after chores in the humidity I flipped-on C-Span. Some Afro-Am Conservative leader was mouthing off on why it is OK for the candidates (Rethuglicans?) to deny evolution.
Went something like this: Caller "..how can they deny the evidence that clearly [proves/supports] evolution.." Conservative (without rebuttal possible given program format) "... on the contrary the evidence proves creationism..!"
The iced water in frosted glass started to boil in my hand, steam started coming out of my ears, and I went back to work outside fearing I'd explode and leave a mess for my wife in the house.
WTF?!?!? I mean how could Lamb not have laughed in his face?!?!? OK .. I'll forgive the caller's wording -- something like "proves evolution" -- I mean I have no doubt but that's not wording I'd clinically use; however that's semantics.. the other's representation is LYING!!!! and yes (at best) willful ignorance is a crime/sin (lie) when one uses that enforced ignorance to facilitate statements one knows they could not make if they mitigated their ignorance.
I give them (the bastard lying leaders) no slack -- no honest person should!!
Never was garbage in, garbage out truer than in the output of this 'competition'.