bill@utastro.UUCP (William H. Jefferys) (12/17/84)
The following summary of an article from *The Skeptical Inquirer*,
Winter 1984-85 issue, pp. 111-113, may be of interest in connection
with the topic "Creationists are not stupid" that was discussed some
time ago. The article was written by Robert Schadewald, a long-time
observer of the Creationist movement.
"BIBLE-SCIENCE CONFERENCE: EMPHASIS ON GEOCENTRICITY
"The 1984 National Bible-Science Conference was held
on June 28-29 at the Brookside Baptist Church just outside
Cleveland...
"...As usual, there was little serious effort to offer
evidence for creation. Speakers typically flailed at
a straw man labeled 'evolution' and then produced
'the only alternative.'
"The atmosphere was more like a revival meeting than a
scientific conference... Scriptural texts flew fast and
furious... One speaker was so overcome by the perversity
of the 'Satanic counterfeit' of heliocentricity that he
apparently wept, and he began shouting that the time has
come to fight for truth.
"Indeed, the most remarkable feature of the conference
was the emphasis on geocentricity. Of eighteen speakers,
four spoke in favor of geocentricity and a fifth was
a well-known geocentrist who addressed a different topic.
While this proportion of geocentrists is not representative
of creationism as a whole, it illustrates a growing trend.
"...Interestingly, there were no significant challenges
[to the geocentrists] from their fellow creationists.
Duane Gish, who sat in a front pew, commented that the
angular momentum of the sun is a 'great problem' for
evolution, but if he saw any problems with geocentricity
he didn't mention them.
"Most bizarre was a joint presentation by Marshall and
Sandra Hall, authors of *The Truth: God or Evolution?*
The Halls are convinced that a flaw lurks in the 'Satanic
Counterfeit' of heliocentricity... Unfortunately, the
Halls' presentation was rambling, disconnected, and
garbled beyond belief. They seemed to argue that during
the solar eclipse of May 30, 1984, they observed the moon's
shadow moving *the wrong way*, demonstrating the flaw in
Satan's heliocentric lie... At any rate they profoundly
embarrassed the more sophisticated geocentrists, whose
Tychonian system predicts precisely the same observations
as the Copernican system [except for stellar parallax
and annual aberration of light - WHJ].
"While most creationists don't advocate teaching geocentricity
in public schools, they do want equal time for 'creation
science.' A dissenter, engineer Richard G. Elmendorf, blasted
the 'Two Model Approach' as a misrepresentation of religion.
"'Creation is essentially a religious faith,' said Elmendorf.
'Why deny it? Why hide it? Why try to sneak religion into
the public schools as a sort of Trojan Horse? Of course,
proponents of the Two Model approach say there is a distinction
between what they call scientific creation and Biblical
creation. The idea of a creator isn't necessarily the
God of the Bible. The idea of a glorified catastrophe is not
necessarily the Genesis Flood. But this isn't fooling
anybody. The real issue is the Bible versus evolution,
and everybody knows it.' Elmendorf wants to have
evolution banned from the schools on the grounds that it
is also religion.
"The most interesting report on new research was by Hugh
G. Miller and the Reverend Carl Baugh, who discussed their
excavations at the Paluxy river in Texas. Besides all the
'human footprints,' someone recently discovered two
travertine skulls, apparently washed out of the
120-million-year-old rock of the riverbed. They displayed
the skulls, which had been sawed in half to show their
internal structure. Baugh identified one as a cat and the
other as either a human infant of some sort of primate.
Since primates and cats evolved much later than 120 million
years ago, Baugh claimed these fossils contradict evolution.
"After the presentation, two skeptical scientists, Emmanuel
Sillman and Frank Zindler, hurried up to the pulpit and
closely examined the 'skulls.' They came back amused and
amazed. Sillman, who taught comparative anatomy for
twenty years, said the objects bore only a vague resemblance
to genuine skulls. The 'hominid skull', for instance, was
a rock with two different-sized pits that the creationists
interpreted as orbital openings. Zindler identified
the rocks as weathered nodules of silicified limestone."
The Skeptical Inquirer can be ordered from
The Skeptical Inquirer
Central Park Station
Box 229
Buffalo NY 14215
A subscription is $16.50 per annum.
--
"When evolution is outlawed, only outlaws will evolve"
Bill Jefferys 8-%
Astronomy Dept, University of Texas, Austin TX 78712 (USnail)
{allegra,ihnp4}!{ut-sally,noao}!utastro!bill (uucp)
bill%utastro.UTEXAS@ut-sally.ARPA (ARPANET)johno@tekchips.UUCP (John Ollis) (01/03/85)
> "BIBLE-SCIENCE CONFERENCE: EMPHASIS ON GEOCENTRICITY
*****GEOCENTRICITY*****????!!!!!*&#@$*&^@#*&%* :-(
What's next? Are we going to be required to give equal time in our
classrooms to the flat earth and inside-out universe people?
John R. Ollis
tektronix/tekchips/johnogjk@talcott.UUCP (Greg Kuperberg) (01/05/85)
> > "BIBLE-SCIENCE CONFERENCE: EMPHASIS ON GEOCENTRICITY > > *****GEOCENTRICITY*****????!!!!!*&#@$*&^@#*&%* :-( > > What's next? Are we going to be required to give equal time in our > classrooms to the flat earth and inside-out universe people? > > John R. Ollis > tektronix/tekchips/johno Well, they may try to resolve the age-old problem that I posted before: If the Earth is convex, why do your shoes curl upward, as if it were concave? --- Greg Kuperberg harvard!talcott!gjk " " -Charlie Chaplin, for IBM