science
{advertisement}
(Repost) Adventures in Creationist Earth Science Education IVb: Wherein I Forecast a Crisis of Faith
After the desert of Science of the Physical Creation, I’m hoping Earth Science Fourth Edition doesn’t let me down. When I read Christianist textbooks, I expect them to incorporate a bit more God into the instruction, but it seems like no one wants to admit that they think God controls the weather. Sad.
And the beginning of ES4’s chapter on Weather is positively crunchy. It’s all about wind as an alternative to fossil fuels. The authors insist we come up with better, cleaner solutions to humanity’s energy needs. Even the cross-box doesn’t gabble about God – it just wants us to consider the benefits and drawbacks of wind power. That’s… positively sensible.
(Tier 1) Adventures in Christianist Earth Science Education XXXVI: Wherein Literally Everything is Wrong
We’ve just heard Earth Science 4th Edition’s rather inaccurate ideas about what they think we old earthers think about geologic history. Now they’re going to tell us what they think is wrong with our models. Buckle in, kids. It’s going to be rough.
Their intro explains the problem they have with getting their heads around this stuff.
The secular, deep-time story of Earth’s history up to this point can be summed up as being in disorder and lacking direction. The random events and motions of planetesimal collisions, drifting tectonic plates, and the ebb and flow of glaciers are natural and necessary to make their model fit the evidence.
See, they just can’t stand the idea of things just happening. Without a supreme head honcho telling everything what to do, all they can see is a frenetic jumble of events all happening willy-nilly. They don’t see the magnificent, undirected story unfolding. They don’t see the stately order of things progressing according to natural laws, everything happening according to the nature of the universe. On the scale of deep time, I see the universe and solar system and our beautiful planet following a self-choreographed routine.
And we know the broad reasons why stars and planets form and how they evolve. The motions the ES4 writers are talking about when it comes to moving plates and ebbing and flowing glaciers aren’t quite as random as they think. Shit doesn’t happen haphazardly. There’s a certain order to the chaos, patterns to the randomness, and we’re learning more about the laws driving those motions all the time.
I don’t even know how to address their other points. They try to debunk the lines of evidence we have for plate tectonics, such as paleomagnetism, fossils, and matching strata, but they’re so very terribly wrong that it would take pages to debunk every paragraph. And they’re just blurting creationist talking points that have already been debunked a thousand times. So no, I’m not going to reinvent the damn wheel. I’ll make a list of their claims and mostly just link you to where other folks have already handily disproved them. Continue reading “(Tier 1) Adventures in Christianist Earth Science Education XXXVI: Wherein Literally Everything is Wrong”
(Repost) Adventures in Christianist Earth Science Education IVa: Wherein We Enjoy Nearly-Godless Weather
Have I told you lately that A Beka’s Science of the Physical Creation’s graphics are a touch tacky? They are. At the start of the “Earth’s Weather” chapter, there’s a grainy picture of a hurricane from space, and across the bottom are three photos that rather clash. There’s an iceberg inside a snowflake shape, a wispy waterfall surrounded by verdant green inside a raindrop shape, and something like a very red-orange Monument Valley inside a sunburst shape. This is the kind of stuff people with stunted imaginations do when they get their hands on a graphic design program.
At least they didn’t have Jesus up there making all that weather stuff happen. Small mercies, amirite?
Aside from a questionable definition of climate (which implies the climate of a place doesn’t change), the first bits aren’t bad. At least there’s no god-talk. We have to wait until they’ve finished with evaporation before we get any of that. Then we learn how “God designed our bodies” to use evaporation to keep ourselves at the right temperature. What, you didn’t think evilution did that, did you? Continue reading “(Repost) Adventures in Christianist Earth Science Education IVa: Wherein We Enjoy Nearly-Godless Weather”
(Tier 1) Adventures in Christianist Earth Science Education XXXV: Wherein We Taste the Rainbow of Inanity
Can anything in Science of the Physical Creation’s unit on physics top their claim that our perception of color is a function of our souls? We can only hope.
(Content note: mentions of abuse and abusive behavior)
Unfortunately for connoisseurs of fine creationist crock, there are no shenanigans in the early bit of the next section, where they talk about the way light behaves. They do a really fine job explaining reflection. And we learn that paper doesn’t act like a mirror even though it reflects most of the light striking it because its roughness scatters the rays. Pretty neato! As I’ve said before, they’re super good at explaining science when they’re not indulging in creationist nonsense.
When it comes to refraction, they try a bit too hard to simplify: they say that “refracted light waves always bend toward the medium that slows them down.” But it’s more accurate to describe light as bending toward or away from the normal. Otherwise, they do a reasonable job explaining refraction, although with an inordinate focus on rainbows. We find out why when we reach the end: Continue reading “(Tier 1) Adventures in Christianist Earth Science Education XXXV: Wherein We Taste the Rainbow of Inanity”
(Repost) Adventures in ACE VII: Ignorant About Igneous
You’d think something as basic as the three basic rock types would be hard to screw up. But if there’s one thing the authors of ACE excel at, it’s abject failure to get anything right. I mean, a stray fact here or there sneaks in, but the poor lonely things are isolated, surrounded by vast tracts of utter wrongness. One wonders what they’re doing there.
So. Igneous. After the violence done to volcanoes, I’m sure you can’t wait to see what they do to the related rocks. Continue reading “(Repost) Adventures in ACE VII: Ignorant About Igneous”
(Tier 1) Adventures in ACE XXV: The Grass Ain’t Greener
After getting almost every single detail of a spy plane wrong, plus screwing up science facts at almost every turn, the ACE writers continue our atmospheric miseducation. As per usual, the fail is in the details. They get the temperature of the thermosphere wrong by almost 1000°F. They also fail to mention that, due to the gas molecules being so sparse, you’d actually feel cold even in the 3,600+°F temperatures: there simply isn’t a great enough density of air to transfer that heat to our skin.
Leave it to ACE to miss the really fascinating facts.
They have a surprisingly good explanation of what ions are and how they’re formed. But any pleasure we may take in that is quickly ruined by the horribly unfunny comic strip on the following page:
Racer says the weatherman he was listening to on the radio “said that the aurora borealis, the northern lights, were particularly brilliant at night this week.” Either the ACE people have never heard children talking, or Racer has been programmed to be a particularly tedious know-it-all. Kids don’t generally talk like that. It’s annoying, but not half so annoying as Reginald cutting in just as Bill finishes explaining to a clueless Sandy why they can’t see the aurora from where they’re at. He’s just dying for them to know what a pious prick he is. Continue reading “(Tier 1) Adventures in ACE XXV: The Grass Ain’t Greener”
(Repost) Adventures in Christianist Earth Science Education IIIb: In Which BJU Goes Yellow-Green
After A Beka’s nonsense about humans being able to do anything they want to the earth’s atmosphere because God will save it, it’s a bit of a shock to open to the Earth’s Atmosphere chapter of our BJU Earth Science 4th Edition textbook and see, before anything else, a bit about “Killer Air.” Sure, they talk about how God wants to fill the earth right up with people. But they admit air pollution is a problem. They even admit it kills people. And they want their readers to join in fixing it. They don’t leave the whole thing up to God.
ZOMG. Is BJU full of environmentalists? (Answer’s “not really,” but we’ll get to that). Continue reading “(Repost) Adventures in Christianist Earth Science Education IIIb: In Which BJU Goes Yellow-Green”
(Tier 1) Adventures in Christianist Earth Science Education XXXIV: Wherein Dog Whistles Abound
Oh, goody. We’re back to young earth creationists trying to tell us what we icky secular types think of geology. This time, the authors of Earth Science Fourth Edition are on about changes over the course of the earth’s existence. Let’s see how much fail they pack into the topic, eh?
Our section objectives tell us that we’ll be able to show how the earth has changed over time. Everybody agrees it has, so that’s lovely.
Then they’ll want us to “compare and contrast the old-earth and young-earth histories, emphasizing when changes happened and how long they took to occur.” Fabulous! We’ll be able to stick science and myth in two columns and see how badly the myth mangles reality.
Then we’re to “evaluate the scientific problems with the old-earth view of the earth’s history.” Ha ha ha no. No, because they won’t be addressing actual problems, like the bits in our theories that still need improving (fer instance: we really don’t quite understand hot spots yet, although we’ve got some good leads). What they’ll be doing is more like complaining that guides to King’s Cross Station are wrong because they don’t include Platform 9¾. Continue reading “(Tier 1) Adventures in Christianist Earth Science Education XXXIV: Wherein Dog Whistles Abound”
But Why Mud Mountain?
Usually, when I go to Mount Rainier, there’s no time for diversions. Which is sad, because I’ve wanted to see Mud Mountain Dam ever since I found out about it a few years ago. Every time, I plan to swing by, and every time, it just never works out. Until now.
Behold!
This trip to Mount Rainier hadn’t looked promising. After scorching heat all week, the weather took a turn for the Pacific Northwest. We’d intended to go down on Sunday, but the forecast changed to snow showers. Snow. I’m not doing snow on a volcano in a Honda Civic. So Merideth and I switched our plans, moved the trip up to Saturday, and decided we’d play it by ear. We didn’t think we’d see any volcano, but there are plenty of things to do around the base of Mount Rainier. And hey, since the National Park Service was celebrating its centennial, we were going to get in free anyway, so if the trip turned out to be a bust, no big deal.
I had Mud Mountain Dam on the wish list again, but since we got a leisurely start and stopped for a proper lunch, I’d changed my mind. I wanted to get Merideth to Longmire for some hawt hot springs action, and since we were coming in from the north, it was going to take quite some time. But as we passed the sign for Mud Mountain Dam, I decided to hell with it. We’d try for it. I couldn’t remember how far off the highway it was, but figured we’d turn around if it was too far. Continue reading “But Why Mud Mountain?”