Professor Lawrence M. Krauss, theoretical physicist and cosmologist, Arizona State University
2"Allowing the notion that the Earth is 6,000 years old to be promulgated in schools is like teaching kids that the distance across the United States is 17 feet."
Professor Lawrence M. Krauss, theoretical physicist and cosmologist, Arizona State University
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29 June 2016 at 8:31 pm
“Allowing the notion that the Earth is 4.54 billion years old to be promulgated in schools is like teaching kids that the distance across the United States is 1.000.000 km.”
… the same kind of reasoning
29 June 2016 at 9:38 pm
That would be a fair argument if there was any evidence of the Earth only being 6,000 years old. I have never seen any, I have only seen Young Earth Creationists attempt to debunk the wealth of evidence supporting an ancient Earth (unsuccessfully).
30 June 2016 at 10:25 am
Darren, why do you bother?
Any scientific argument will be answered by an arrogant smile and “the bible says …”. You fight against dogmas or lack of education. In both cases you can not win, because they either do not listen or are too uneducated to understand it
(I don’t understand school physics, thus I made my own).
Just leave them behind.
Only if somebody is curious enough to look over the fence you have a good chance to make a difference. The others are just lost. They do not want insight, otherwise they fear to go to hell.
Be happy that you live in a country, where the creationists do not have a lot of followers.
Apart from Brexit and the Flat Earth Society (which might be a joke anyway), the Brits do seem to be pretty educated.
30 June 2016 at 8:21 pm
Why do I bother? Basically because I’m fascinated by the fact that some people believe in creation, and also that things occurred during a certain time in the world’s history. I am an avid consumer of Roman and Egyptian history, as well as information on natural sciences and physics. I find that constructing arguments against creationist beliefs is actually a good basis for researching other scientific subjects. I don’t get into these conversations because I’m looking for an argument, I am honestly interested in the thought processes of people who ignore masses of evidence and research in favour of what an old book says. I’m not looking for an argument, but I do sometimes enjoy the debate, especially if the creationist has crafted their arguments well…and they have often been very thorough in developing their counter-arguments, even if it is just attempts to debunk rather than providing evidence of their own. A good example lies in Egyptian history – the date of their supposed global flood falls right in the middle of the 5th dynasty, but the Egyptians weren’t wiped out and carried on regardless. Creationists will just claim that many Egyptologists, despite their thorough research and evidence, got the dates wrong. But no creationist has ever presented evidence for a different time-line, they just dismiss the evidence of the experts.
I know I’m unlikely to change the minds of the hard-line creationists, but it saddens me to think that children are being exposed to ‘education’ that teaches them that humans co-existed with dinosaurs. That doesn’t set them up very well for life.
30 June 2016 at 8:22 pm
Oh, and also, I wanted to try out the quote capability of this new WordPress theme… and this was as good a quote as any.
30 June 2016 at 5:01 pm
I think it’s important not to make too many assumptions about precise dates and events that occurred in prehistory. This man was initially mocked and discredited for his “outrageous” theory about ancient flooding in the Pacific Northwest but was ultimately vindicated:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Harlen_Bretz
Based on current science, 6,000 years doesn’t make sense. However, a brief look at Krauss’ published works and activism makes me suspect he is less worried about specific dates and times than he is about keeping mention of a Creator out of education.