This use to be circulating the web back in 2001. Never did figure out if it was real (it was presented at http://objective.jesussave.us/creationsciencefair.html), but good for a laugh or looks of disgust anyway.
2001 Prize Winners:
Elementary School Level:
1st Place: "My Uncle Is A Man Named Steve (Not A Monkey)"
Cassidy Turnbull (grade 5) presented her uncle, Steve. She also showed photographs of monkeys and invited fairgoers to note the differences between her uncle and the monkeys. She tried to feed her uncle bananas, but he declined to eat them. Cassidy has conclusively shown that her uncle is no monkey.
2nd Place: "Pine Cones Are Complicated"
David Block and Trevor Murry (grades 4) showed how specifically complicated pine cones are and how they reveal God's design in nature.
Middle School Level:
1st Place: "Life Doesn't Come From Non-Life"
Patricia Lewis (grade 8) did an experiment to see if life can evolve from non-life. Patricia placed all the non-living ingredients of life - carbon (a charcoal briquet), purified water, and assorted minerals (a multi-vitamin) - into a sealed glass jar. The jar was left undisturbed, being exposed only to sunlight, for three weeks. (Patricia also prayed to God not to do anything miraculous during the course of the experiment, so as not to disqualify the findings.) No life evolved. This shows that life cannot come from non-life through natural processes.
2nd Place: "Women Were Designed For Homemaking"
Jonathan Goode (grade 7) applied findings from many fields of science to support his conclusion that God designed women for homemaking: physics shows that women have a lower center of gravity than men, making them more suited to carrying groceries and laundry baskets; biology shows that women were designed to carry un-born babies in their wombs and to feed born babies milk, making them the natural choice for child rearing; social sciences show that the wages for women workers are lower than for normal workers, meaning that they are unable to work as well and thus earn equal pay; and exegetics shows that God created Eve as a companion for Adam, not as a co-worker.
High School Level:
1st Place: "Using Prayer To Microevolve Latent Antibiotic Resistance In Bacteria"
Eileen Hyde and Lynda Morgan (grades 10 & 11) did a project showing how the power of prayer can unlock the latent genes in bacteria, allowing them to microevolve antibiotic resistance. Escherichia coli bacteria cultured in agar filled petri dishes were subjected to the antibiotics tetracycline and chlorotetracycline. The bacteria cultures were divided into two groups, one group (A) received prayer while the other (B) didn't. The prayer was as follows: "Dear Lord, please allow the bacteria in Group A to unlock the antibiotic-resistant genes that You saw fit to give them at the time of Creation. Amen." The process was repeated for five generations, with the prayer being given at the start of each generation. In the end, Group A was significantly more resistant than Group B to both antibiotics.
2nd Place: "Maximal Packing Of Rodentia Kinds: A Feasibility Study"
Jason Spinter's (grade 12) project was to show the feasibility of Noah's Ark using a Rodentia research model (made of a mixture of hamsters and gerbils) as a representative of diluvian life forms. The Rodentia were placed in a cage with dimensions proportional to a section of the Ark. The number of Rodentia used (58) was calculated using available Creation Science research and was based on the median animal size and their volumetric distribution in the Ark. The cage was also fitted with wooden dowels inserted at regular intervals through the cage walls, forming platforms which provided support for the Rodentia. Although there was little room left in the cage, all Rodentia were able to move just enough to ward off muscle atrophy. Food pellets and water were delivered to sub-surface Rodentia via plastic drinking straws inserted into the Rodentia-mass, which also served to allow internal air flow. Once a day, the cage was sprayed with water to cleanse any built-up waste. Additionally, the cage was suspended on bungee cords to simulate the rocking motion of a ship. The study lasted 30 days and 30 nights, with all Rodentia surviving at least long enough afterwards to allow for reproduction. These findings strongly suggest that Noah's Ark could hold and support representatives of all antediluvian animal kinds for the duration of the Flood and subsequent repopulation of the Earth.
- Log in to post comments
More like this
Wow. It's part of our 21st century era where the absurdity of reality makes it difficult to differentiate from a satirical view of it. Thus, The Daily Show's brilliance and success and why so many people claim it as their source of the real news. The reality-satire divide has blurred too much.
I disrupted the whole office laughing at "Pinecones Are Complicated."
It's funny because it's true.
And I'm serious about not being sure if it was real or not. The website was certainly very convincing, in that there were big sections that seemed perfectly on par, realistic with this sort of thing. Anyway, if it is fake, then kudos to the author.
Oh wait, here it is - http://objectiveministries.org/creation/. What do you think?
That site is definitely a satire, subtle as it may be. Look at some of the shirts they're selling, and notice that there's a Dr. Paley on the creationist pages.
failure to recognize satire is far older than "the daily show" - that site just took advantage of a market long since in search of programming since not (necessarilly) the (9 o'clock) news went off the air in their respective countries.
back in '91, the 'post had an article about the "home mutual fund shopping channel", a complete parody and fabrication, and in the next few weeks received a number of serious inquiries into the network and requests for the address of the network president.
his conclusion - given that no satirist could ever have invented michael jackson (and this was before he turned white, nose job, 2nd marriage, and the trials - at the time it was just smashing a car and buying the elephant man) or elizabeth taylor and her serial monogamy taken to extreme - yet there they were. reality out did satire.
so it is with creationists and other religious whackjobs. given the nutballs singing praises at the deaths of hundreds of innocent lebonese because "the rapture is coming and i'll be closer to the god who loves me", or the nutcase anti-abortionist who hadn't figured out that The Onion was a satire site? you really can't tell when their "faking" it.
Of course you're right, but my point was that we can understand The Daily Show's success because of the conditions of our era, not that it's somehow the first effort at satire or fake/mocked news. (Plus, getting into the origins of satire will take us much farther back than last century -- Franklin was pretty spot on with his stuff; ditto that Gulliver-writing guy; and don't forget Aristophanes, or Juvenal.)
Since there are self-basting turkeys, I'm sure there could be self-satirizing creationists, but this really has GOT to be satire!
This site is put up by "Landover Baptist". Definitely satire. . .check out the "Take a Quiz" link. Hilarious.
"The Cross in Space" ???
Has to be satire.