Creationists in Australian Classrooms...

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It is funny seeing creationists jumping the boat in this case when the reason these pentecostal loonies have to resort to these arguments is simply that creationism makes no sense. For it to make any sense at all you would have to invent all these tales to bypass evidence. In effect, creationism needs these Pentecostal loonies to do their dirty job. Creationism also needs children at schools as targets, because only children would buy all these ridiculous stories from the bible. The thing is that if you tried to tell an adult that was never exposed to the bible before all these things, he would laugh at your face.

Your attempt to trivialize this issue fails because the main difference between the bad examples of evolution you mentioned and the ones from creationism in the article is that evolution does not need those bad examples to work while creationism needs all that BS about eggs in the arc and avoiding the inbreed question altogether to give the appearance that it works.

Lest we forget that evolution being an actual scientific theory, it changes over time as new evidence is found and mistakes are corrected, all while creationism, being a lame anti-scientific theory will stay the same for the course of eternity.

Social Darwinism was too individualistic.

I actually don't see how the inbreeding question is problematic. YECs often don't like to admit that there was inbreeding, but if you follow the Biblical stories it's quite plain that there must have been. Inbreeding in humans is well established on genetic grounds as well, so its not like evolutionary biology doesn't believe humans are inbred.

Well, plus it was seen as racist. Leninism had to maintain that all people were equal at birth, and thus they rejected inter-group differences and the genetic basis of natural selection.

One of you provides a crappy example, another of you decries it that I don't stand for the crap and insults me as well.

Also, there are creationists I do admire and would support: namely, Jonathan Sarfati, Werner Gitt, Tas Walker, Russell Humphreys, Don Batten, and many others at organization at Creation Ministries International, Creation Research Society, etc. However, the statements of these teachers show one of two things: (1) they are on their own and don't care about accountability, or (2) they aren't even creationists but are teaching creationism according to the caricature of it in the literature provided them by the school.

I see no reason to doubt their sincerity, Pentecostals are often just stupid. And most lay Creationists would argue based on very obviously ridiculous claims, many times equivalent to saying "DNA hadn't been invented yet." (To be fair, most lay evolutionists are no better)

The issue as I see it here (with inbreeding) is that I don't believe the Bible gives a complete picture of the ENTIRE world, only those in particular with whom God made a special covenant. It seems like ONLY those specifically NAMED in the Bible are the only ones who existed at the time. This need not be so.

The thing with inbreeding is we aren't talking about inbreeding in the strictest sense, i.e. Father-Daughter, Brother-Sister. Inbreeding in the Bible COULD reasonably be among first cousins, from which the family trees would spread out. We know, for example, that God chose to save Noah and his family--three sons and their wives. The Bible informs us (pre-flood) of the Nephilim, generally assumed to be the progeny of angels and women. The question becomes "from whence came Noah's daughters-in-law?" Assuming each of the sons only had ONE wife, genetic traits among all three women COULD have been very distinct--distinct enough to spawn any number of distinct races. Inbreeding need not be prohibited beyond first or second cousins, so as each different clan or tribe grew, it would be easy and safe to marry only within the family.

Modern science suggests that marrying first cousins holds very little danger at all, with only slight increased likelihood of perpetuating genetic diseases. Father-daughter, mother-son, brother-sister couplings WOULD significantly increase the likelihood that dangerous recessive traits multiply in their progeny. So not only are there valid scientific reasons why it's a bad idea, but given the implications of incest and potential for abuse, incest poses strong moral problems as well.

I'm not saying it NEVER happened. I believe it was Lot and his two daughters that gave in to incest as an ill-perceived necessity. Aaron and Miriam WERE brother and sister. Abraham and Sarah were part of a union that would have been prohibited in Moses' time. I wonder about this one. The Hebrew laws concerning incest: were they laws put in place to distinguish Israel from other nations? After all, Egyptian royalty were KNOWN for close incestuous sexual relationships (brother sister). This also means that these kinds of relationships are acceptable for Gentiles. Or were they laws expressing God-dictated morality intended for universal acceptance? Most of us accept the latter, and indeed most nations' laws forbid these kinds of couplings as taboo.

Ad hoc nonsense. The Bible is perfectly clear that only one family survived the Flood. Noah's great-grandchildren were inbred, being the result of a union between first cousins. Subsequent generations would have had a harder time maintaining even that great a distance.

And in any case, given a population of n humans, you have at most log2(n) generations before inbreeding must occur. Take as given that the human population has at some point been below 1 million and that at least 20 generations have passed since then. Humans are inbred. If you disagree on that point, it's because you suck at math.


Look up "inbreeding coefficient" and "genetic distance." There is a simple formula to calculate the relative risk of inbreeding. Repeated rounds of reproduction among cousins is every bit as deleterious as sibling incest.


Have you ever seen the Hapsburg family tree?

Is anyone surprised? When you allow a religious hateful old man ban videogames because they are "too violent" and then have a right wing government do all it can to ban porn, you just know who is behind it.

It's only in the second possibility that I consider them to be insincere, probably like having Dawkins teach in other words. They could very well believe what they say, but that would be the first possibility that I considered: lack of accountability. As such, these Religious Instruction teachers at some random school in Australia may be as sincere about whatever comes out of their mouths. However, the tactic being used by the authors of the links that Skafather posted and partially quoted is that of selecting the weakest link and then applying the fallacy of composition. "Here is a member of such and such, therefore all such and such is like this. Since they are all like this, and this is horrid, we should remove their ability to speak."

Bush is now the Prime Minister of Australia.

Creationists don´t have any peer reviewed articles in academic journals. It is not a scientific theory.


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X50lH-XxHI[/youtube]


Should not be teached at schools. I studied at a catholic school and we had religion classes but they didn´t teach religion in science classes.

There are peer reviewed journals, such as Creation Research Society Quarterly and Technical Journal of Creation. Yes, they are peer reviewed by creationists, who still practice science and do research to the same degree as those who are the gatekeepers in Nature and the others do also.

Oh, and your clip guy contradicts himself in less than three minutes.

I'm not disputing inbreeding of 1st cousins.

Re: Hapsburg family tree--good point.

Regarding inbreeding, this is something the Australian Aborigines understood well, they had and still have a system of skin colour to determine who can and cannot marry. If we were all descended from Noah, his sons and wives I'd hate to think of the genetic malformations that we would be 'blessed' with

Were there more or less genetic malformations in the past then there are today? What if the current ones are the result of such inbreeding?