Would it Happen Here? Girl Scout Receives Award for Building Creationist Library

• Hello JacobD Regarding the Bible, you wrote: "You take a book, ... and you actually take it literally ... It was never meant that way." Yes, as a Christian (Catholic), "I take it (the Bible) literally. Three reasons (to be brief), include: 1.) Jesus told us Scripture, the words of God, were truth: John 17:17 Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John17:17;&version=31; 2.) Catholic magisterial statements on the book of Genesis tell us Genesis is real history: (Summary) - Genesis does not contain purified myths. (Pontifical Biblical Commission 1909) - Genesis contains real history�it gives an account of things that really happened. (Pius XII) http://www.kolbecenter.org/church_teaches.htm 3.) The conclusions of Linguistic Biblical studies tell us Genesis is meant to be taken literally, such as those of: Steven W. Boyd, Ph.D. in Hebraic and Cognate Studies, ... an Associate Professor of Bible at The Master�s College in Santa Clarita, California. ... i.e. "Genesis 1:1-2:3, ... is a narrative, not poetry." http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis1:1-2:3;&version=31; Partial quote: ... Conclusion The distribution of preterites to finite verbs in Hebrew narrative differs distinctly from that in Hebrew poetry. Moreover, a logistic regression model fitted to the ratio of preterites to finite verbs categorizes texts as narrative or poetry to an extraordinary level of accuracy. With its probability of virtually 1, Genesis 1:1-2:3, therefore, is a narrative, not poetry. Three major implications from this study are: (1) it is not statistically defensible to read Genesis 1:1-2:3 as poetry; (2) since Genesis 1:1-2:3 is a narrative, it should be read as other Hebrew narratives are intended to be read as a concise report of actual events, couched to convey an unmistakable theological message; and (3) when this text is read as a narrative, there is only one tenable view of its plain sense: God created everything in six literal days. See: The Biblical Hebrew Creation Account: New Numbers Tell The Story http://www.icr.org/article/biblical-hebrew-creation-account-new-numbers-tell-/ ------- As stated before: Genesis 1:1-2:3, ... is a narrative. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis1:1-2:3;&version=31;

• JosephU, - First, as to the information growth crap you're peddling, let's forget for a second about redundancy in the genome allowing random mutations. Let's just forget about that. We know, on the level of the genome, exactly where one of the most massive changes occurred between humans and all other apes. Note, I say other apes because humans did not just evolve from apes, we are still apes in the same way that we are still primates in the same way that we are still mammals in the same way we are still in the animal kingdom. That's with Linean classification, mind you, created by a creationist before Darwin breathed his first breath. Anyway: it's on chromosome 2. How do we know this? Well, humans have 23 chromosome pairs. Every other ape has 24. In case your counting has been impaired by Answers in Genesis, 24 is more than 23. At the time this was discovered, this could have been a major blow to evolutionary theory. Since evolutionary theory is a science, it relies on rules of evidence and can be disproved. Unlike... say... creationism. But like I said, it was a challenge to the theory of evolution. So, scientists looked at the problem, and theorized that humans having one less chromosome than our ape cousins could have been due to the fusion of two ape chromosomes, and that's exactly what we found. See, every chromosome has specific markers called telomeres and centromeres. The telomeres are on the ends of the chromosomes, and the centromeres are in the middle. Except for in Human Chromosome 2. See, that particular chromosome has an extra telomere - in the center of the chromosome. It also has an extra, though non-functional, centromere. Evolution has an explanation for this. Creationism's only answer for it is "well... um... the devil put that there to trick you." - Scientists are aware of the limits of radiocarbon dating. That's why they don't use it for everything. We have many other dating methods that all point to the earth's age being in the billions. By trying to establish a young earth, you do not only go against evolution (the fundamental theory of biology, mind you), you go against cosmology, geology, and chemistry. Thank you for revealing that the creationist agenda is not simply to destroy evolution, but to take out all science so that all that is left is theology. I have no interest in returning to the dark ages, thank you very much. - "There is no gradualism in the fossil record." How exactly are you defining "gradualism"? The fossil record is, no matter what creationists would like us to believe, remarkably complete. We have skeletons of whale ancestry which show us exactly how they moved from being cow-like bovines to whale-like bovines. Recently, a skeleton was discovered of a whale like animal that used to give birth on dry land. We know that because the baby was coming out head first, and animals that give birth in the water give birth tail first. This is not just a change in behavior, this is a change in physiology. We just found teutolic a few years ago, the first animal that moved from seas to dry land. Ida, who shows us a movement from proto-simian lemurs to the great apes, our family. Go over to the Natural History Museum some time and take a look at their exhibit just on the evolution of the horse, where you can see a gradual increase in size, as well as the many failed evolutionary offshoots, the horses that might have been if they had survived instead of the ancestors of the modern horse. There is no gradualism in the fossil record? There is no truth in your statement. You have ONE SOURCE for all of your crap. You go against scientists in pretty much every single field all around the world. What's more, your side does not actually produce evidence of your theory, you just try to poke holes in other theories with the supposition that when the smoke clears, you will be the only ones standing. There are so many problems with flood geology, there's pretty much no point in going into it. You take a book, written by my people, the Jewish people, as a method of explaining why we were special because everyone kept on killing us and how we were different from other people, an attempt to give us a moral foundation, and you actually take it literally. It was never meant that way. If you can't read it without realizing that it's all metaphor, I believe I speak for my entire people when I ask you to STOP READING IT.

• Ray Ingles asks: If the Earth is only 6,000 years old, where did the oil come from? ... perhaps it did form from plankton, but 10,000 times faster than any chemist thinks it could in those conditions? An informative article is: The Origin of Oil http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v2/n1/origin-of-oil (Partial quote) The Origin & Rate of Oil Formation ... it has been demonstrated in the laboratory that moderate heating of the brown coals of the Gippsland Basin of Victoria, Australia, to simulate their rapid deeper burial, will generate crude oil and natural gas similar to that found in reservoir rocks offshore in only 2�5 days. ... Conclusion All the available evidence points to a recent catastrophic origin for the world�s vast oil deposits, from plant and other organic debris, consistent with the biblical account of earth history. ... See Genesis 6-9 The Flood http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis6-9;&version=31;

• Wow... Amazing. Satan must be so incredibly powerful that he was able to cheat God and hide fossils into the world and cause scientists to get the wrong data and conclude that evolution is real and that the universe is older than 6000 years. And for that matter, it's so sad that God was just unable to stop mean, bad Satan from giving us genetic material that so closely matches the apes and again trick scientists, all while God, so helpless, could only sit back and watch and wish he could stop mean, bad Satan. Bad, bad, Satan. What a joke. At least the girl called it "Alternative Universe." Maybe she's secretly admitting that it doesn't represent This Universe.

• Tyler: Ha! Thanks. Point well taken. For the record: the Girl Scouts are not homophobic AND they have better snacks!

• This is a crass, poorly researched story. 1. The Girl Scouts DO NOT "come from the same bible-toting, gay-nervous family as the Boy Scouts". Juliette Low developed the Girl Scouts in the US independently of the Boy Scouts. Unremarkably, both of my daughter's troops' are full of Atheists. 2. Since it's founding, the Girls Scouts has striven to be inclusive, including the physically and mentally handicapped. Creationist are presumably included in that last category. 3. The Gold Award is for "outstanding service to your community." If your community is full Creationists, then helping build a creationist library is a fine Gold Award project. Presumably a Laguna Beach Girl Scout could get a Gold Award for setting up a Medical Marijuana Dispensary or organizing a Gay Rights march. In short, the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts are very different organizations. Please don't confuse the Boy Scout's top-down homophobia with the Girl Scouts distributed culture of inclusiveness. ...and the Girl Scouts have better snacks.

• JosephU - Finding oil is a very high-stakes issue for oil companies. Trillions of dollars are riding on it. When they look for the most likely spots to drill, do they use Flood geology, or mainstream? Which one actually delivers the goods? If the Earth is only 6,000 years old, where did the oil come from? If created in the ground, is there a way to predict where it might be found? Or perhaps it did form from plankton, but 10,000 times faster than any chemist thinks it could in those conditions? A young Earth and a Flood would imply some interesting questions to ask, some <i>extremely</i> valuable research programs to start. How come nobody's actually <i>pursuing</i> such research programs? Why don't creationists put together an investment fund, venture capital for things like oil and mineral rights? If "Flood geology" is really a <i>better theory</i>, then it should make <i>better predictions</i> than standard geology does. The profits from such a venture could pay for a lot of evangelism. Why is no one doing this?

• JosephU, I can forgive young girls for being brainwashed. What's your excuse for being so hopelessly stupid?

• It was indeed "an extraordinary degree of leadership and citizenship skills," Girl Scout Annie Wichman displayed by building an extensive creationist library and teaching creationism. Creationism is in accord with "Cutting-Edge Science" A few examples include: - The specific complexity of genetic information in the genome does not increase spontaneously. Therefore, there is no natural process whereby reptiles can turn into birds, land mammals into whales, or chimpanzees into human beings. . . . - Many worldwide natural processes indicate an age for the earth of 10,000 years or less. These include population kinetics, influx of radiocarbon into earth�s atmosphere, absence of meteorites from the geologic column, and decay of earth�s magnetic field. . . . - There is no gradualism in the fossil record, no intermediate types. For more examples, see: What Does The Catholic Church Teach about Origins? What Does Cutting-Edge Science Teach about Origins? http://www.kolbecenter.org/church_teaches.htm

• Christian American Retards. You just gotta love em.

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