The delusional creationists are everywhere, and the funny thing is how many of them consider themselves brilliant, well-informed, and objective, when what you discover on examining their claims is that they are foolish, ignorant, and blinded by religious bias — and obviously, they don’t even know it. Take, for instance, this high school teacher who issued a debate challenge.
Ritter, 59, has taught chemistry and physics at Annville-Cleona High School since 1997.
Ritter says he has no religious motivations, and he was not arguing for intelligent design or creationism.
He said he was barely aware of the controversy about evolution and intelligent design in the Dover Area School District until the issue went before a federal judge in late 2005.
Hooray for high school science teachers, they can be terrific. Unfortunately, this one who has no religious motivations and doesn’t argue for ID creationism or plain old creationism, was arguing against evolution, calling it “bad science.” As for his lack of awareness of the Dover controversy…he’s from central Pennsylvania, about an hour’s drive from Dover. Shouldn’t that self-announcement of utter obliviousness be an immediate warning that either he’s rather unqualified to be discussing the issue, and/or he’s hiding his actual motivation?
I vote for both—he’s hiding his beliefs. Later in the article, he mentions a few of his reasons.
While he said he has no religious motivations, one of his criticisms of evolution is that it promotes atheism.
“When evolutionists say that a creator cannot exist, they are saying God cannot exist,” Ritter said.
I’m also voting for “obliviousness,” since you have to be a complete fool to trot those old claims out as arguments against evolution, while simultaneously trying to pretend you’re completely open on the question of religion. Oh, well, the good news is that he only teaches physics, so he doesn’t have much opportunity to mislead his students about biology. I hope.
(via Spanish Inquisitor, unexpectedly)
On the ohter hand, plenty of scope to talk bollocks about thermodynamics, energy conservation, radiometric decay…all in all, it’d probably be quicker to list the subfields of physics which creationists haven’t abused at some point:
There.
Hmm. The guy has been teaching high school since 1997, according to the article, and is 59 years old. So, what was this fellow doing for the first 49 years of his life? Any bets for pastor or deacon of some obsure Christian sect?
This is why I don’t call myself an agnostic (aside from the fact that I’m pretty certain that I’m right that God doesn’t exist). It’s like calling oneself an “independent” when in fact that’s all too often a code word for closet Republican. The teacher doesn’t call himself an agnostic, but the “don’t lean one way or the other” B.S. is a giveaway.
So, what was this fellow doing for the first 49 years of his life? Any bets for pastor or deacon of some obsure Christian sect?
I’m hoping he wasn’t in jail.
Fellow probably fancies himself another Fred Hoyle.
Any side-bets he trots out the old ‘tornado in a junkyard’ canard?
I’ll bet on that old dead horse.
“While he is said to be in possession of a nose, Ritter is arguing against the existance of noses calling them ‘silly and useless non-features’. He mentioned to the press gathered at the school door that he heard, ‘smelling leads to abuse of glue and/or gasoline and that’s bad, mmkay.’“
From the end of the linked article:
Although Ritter’s response to this (if there was one) wasn’t given, I think I can fill in the blanks: “Yes, but the ones in the subway are still mosquitoes. No one has ever seen a mosquito turn into a giraffe. And no sir, this is not about religion.”
Great, just what I need on my commute – mutant mosquitos!
I’ve often wondered if there’s a secret style guide for crackpottery. It’s remarkable how loons of all stripes converge on the same incoherent formatting excess – random capitalisation, coloured writing, underlining, multiple exclamation marks etc.
Whoops. That second comment should have been in the “We get email” thread. My real second comment was going to be the obvious point that “evolutionists” don’t say that a creator cannot exist. Even those who do tie evolution to atheism to some degree, like Dawkins and our esteemed host, only say that evolution makes a creator an unnecessary and (even) less plausible scenario.
I’m with MartinM #1.
He claims no religious motivation AND he says “When evolutionists say that a creator cannot exist, they are saying God cannot exist”. The typical denialist equivocation is so blindingly obvious it would trip a horse a mile away.
This guy allegedly teaches chemistry and physics and proclaims evolution to be “bad science”? How can anybody trust him to understand anything (or not be concerned with his obvious penchant for deception), let alone allow him to teach high school science? Dispicable.
Guys reading off a standard creo que card. Evolution is a scientific theory, not a religion. It is neutral on religion and “evolutionists” can be of any religion or none.
He is hopelessly confused about science and religion. And teaching kids in high school?
What about physics promoting atheism? After all the physics guys say the universe is 13.7 billion years old and started with a big bang event. Doesn’t fit into genesis very well.
I doubt it. He sounds like the kind of guy who likes to hop on his soapbox at every opportunity he can get. He also doesn’t sound too bright, so I’d imagine that, if he isn’t watched closely, he’ll have his students coming out of that class saying, gleefully, “The 2nd Law of Themrodynamics means evolution can’t happen!”
Cannot remember which blog I got this reference from (sorry) but does go a long way in explaining why the incompetent feel qualified.
http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf
Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognising One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessment
I Googled the school name and came up with Ritter’s e-mail address (you can too if you want to send him a message). I made him aware of this thread, so perhaps he’ll drop by and provide some amusement.
Please, stop saying he’s religiously motivated just because he mentions God. For your information, GOD is an acronym for “Great Original Designer”, and it’s a technical term of the ID theory. Nobody’s claiming that the GOD is the Christian God, it’s just an unintended name coincidence. In the same vein, CHRIST stands for “Creation of Highly Radiated Intelligent Species Taxonomies.” It’s not our fault if the acronyms appear to be religious by sheer chance!
Please, stop saying he’s religiously motivated just because he mentions God. For your information, GOD is an acronym for “Great Original Designer”, and it’s a technical term of the ID theory. Nobody’s claiming that the GOD is the Christian God, it’s just an unintended name coincidence. In the same vein, CHRIST stands for “Creation of Highly Radiated Intelligent Species Taxonomies.” It’s not our fault if the acronyms appear to be religious by sheer chance!
Hmm. Wished I lived in the Keystone State. I’d eat this fella for breakfast. While I’m a believer, it is obvious that science is an inherently atheistic enterprise as practiced and there is no way to promote science without promoting the possibility that atheism is credible. And, whether theists like it or not, the possibility of that conclusion can not be gainsaid on the basis of personal preference.
(sigh) I could use an extra thousand or so.
No, you don’t.
Like many rural areas, an uninformed conservatism (in the worst sense of the word) prevails, and many old and unchallenged ideas hold sway in the minds of its inhabitants.
“Republican” is not the correct term for people who don’t agree with your social and economic views.
Somebody had better run tell Ken Miller.
Since God doesn’t exist,….. This belief is what scientists leave out of the theory of evolution and many ideas they derive from it. If evolutionists where better mathematicians, they wouldn’t be so sure of the creative capacity of their god which is chance. Think of the number nucleotides that make up the genome of each organism. Realize that the genomes of organisms are a gene pool and not one line of DNA code. Think of the number of chance mutations that would have to occur for evolution to be true. Compare this to the number of seconds since the first living thing is theorized to have spontaneously generated. Think about the uselessness of organelles in cells without DNA and think about the uselessness of DNA with out organelles to express the code. With the above improbabilities above, the issue of the evidence for macroevolution vs. microevolution can be set-aside for another time. The list goes on……
From these improbabilities, we can see evolution is a belief in chance and creationism is a belief in God. The evidence isn’t there for or against evolution. It is a matter of belief and this makes sense if a creator were to really leave us with a freewill. I am a Christian and created things like time and chance are not the gods I believe in.
The Bible says:
“because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.
Believe it or not, God leaves it up to you.
This guy isnt totally new to Creationism/Evolution, as I found a thread on IIDB about him from March 2006. The original article is gone now, but someone quoted this as his bio:
Thread title is ‘PA Teacher offers public challenge to evolution’ if you want to search for it :)
JimC-
From your very first line:
It’s not whether he does or doesn’t. There is no evidence that such a being exists. And if there was there are so many to choose from you’d have to narrow it down(maybe). Hence God belief is not a factor is science.
Oh, well, the good news is that he only teaches physics, so he doesn’t have much opportunity to mislead his students about biology. I hope.
My high school physics teacher took time after our final exam to present us with the “plan for salvation”, saying it was all laid out for us in the “ultimate formula sheet, the bible”. Not necessarily misleading science, but certainly breach of the separation of church and state. And an absolute abuse of power since nobody wanted to challenge him when he held our completed final exams in his hands.
Jim C, I wrote a post which you might find interesting. That’s bait, by the way. I really doubt you’ll find it interesting, so much as infuriating.
Jim C, all I can “Think of” and “Think about” is how little you seem to know about all the topics you are encouraging us to consider. If you don’t think these have been considered, you need to go study. I’ve grown weary of arguing on so many blogs with people like you who know the words but don’t know the details well enough to construct an argument that even approaches the limits of our understanding of these issues and results in thoughtful contemplation and discourse with me or others (on this blog in particular). I tell you this, you will not convince us of anything but your adherence to authority with your quotations from the Bible. You did aggravate me just enough to respond, so good for you.
Sorry, Caledonian, what I meant to say was that for purposes of challenging this fellow’s bad conduct I wished I lived close enough that I could do so personally. I try to be mild-mannered here (I’m a guest), but I’m always ready to rumble with a creationist.
And (sigh) I could use the money.
Bogus physics might be worse.
I wonder if Ritter is a friend of the retired science teacher down the road, Richard Cleary, who taught at Dallastown area high school and is a contributor of opinion pieces to the York papers. Last week he had a good one–intelligent design may be supernatural, but that doesn’t mean it’s religious. As usual, Cleary misrepresented science and scientists.
Tom Ritter, a bargain basement Kent Hovind.
Since God doesn’t exist,….. This belief is what scientists leave out of the theory of evolution and many ideas they derive from it.
This is also the belief that you leave out of living every morning when you don’t ask God to scramble your eggs, start your car or open your door. It’s called methodological naturalism and it’s how science operates. It’s also how everyone who isn’t completely batshit insane operates. I assume you turn on your stove to cook your eggs, turn the ignition key to start your car, and turn the door handle to opne your door, just like us atheists.
Jim C.
1) evolution does not happen just by chance.
2) there is no such thing as god.
3) the bible is fiction.
4) the bible is wrong.
You may not like that, but that is the way it is. You can continue living in your fantasy world bubble if you want to. The rest of us will continue to advance with reason, rationalism, critical thought, and exploration.
As a high school physics teacher last year, I had great fun teaching students about science. More important than any equation, though, was the notion that nobody’s statements are above question, and that evidence from experiments is the root of all scientific truth. Nothing against biology and chemistry, but I think physics is the best science to teach the primacy of experiment in, since the experiments are the simplest.
How can this man claim to be a physics teacher when he ignores evidence?
I’d apologize for my profession, but this man isn’t a real physics teacher, just a wanna-be.
Unfortunately,Spanish Inquisitor says
but quotes a student to the effect that he says nothing about evolution in class. However, it is not clear whether the student was talking about biology of physics classes.
Biology, no. Cosmology, yes (remember that a lot of those IDiots consider Cosmology to be part of physics). I also expect him to point out some version of the anthropic principle and arguments from fine-tuning at every opportunity.
Sorry – ‘biology or physics’ in the previous post.
Ow. Thanks a lot, PZ. Remember: we physicists don’t like to have deranged idiots posing as us, either.
Well said, Graculus. If you don’t mind my expanding on this, I’m pretty willing to bet that when Jim C and other religious types encounter trouble with their stoves, door handles, and cars, they don’t immediately look to the bible for answers, either.
Dustin, that is an excellent post you linked to, and it is interesting that it only takes 164 generations to get there. I always found that hard to visualize till I rfead “the blind watchmaker”. Have you ever come accross the guys that do gentic programming – that is generating computer programs in a genetic manner by random variation rather than by design? It works well. here is the link:
http://www.genetic-programming.org/
Well, if you are an atheist when it comes to Evolution, we need to know if you are an atheist of the Natural Selectionist Evolution or the Genetic Drift Evolution.
Cosmology is a part of physics, and a well-respected one at that. It doesn’t belong in HS, but that’s a whole nother kettle of fish.
– JS
Jim C:
Congratulations on the brilliant satire of Creationist nonarguments and absurdity.
…that WAS satire, right?
…he’ll have his students coming out of that class saying, gleefully, “The 2nd Law of Themrodynamics means evolution can’t happen!”
From personal experience, yes, exactly that.
My high-school ‘Advanced Placement’ Chemistry teacher, Mr. L., was a young-Earth creationist. Of a class of 16 students (in a school of 1600), perhaps seven or eight were also young-Earth creationists, myself and two others were atheists, and the remainder were unknown to me in their affiliations. Mr. L. pulled the second-law fairy tale on a regular basis, usually at the end of class after discussing something completely different. The more vocal cretinist students in the class would happily shout out “evolution is disproven by the second law! ha!” to the hallways when class ended. It was all rather frustrating and annoying.
On the other hand, Mr. L. was a fantastic Chemistry teacher. The assinine cracks about thermodynamics aside, I learned a tremendous amount about covalent bonds, Van der Waals forces, electron ‘orbitals’, chemical bond energies, et cetera, so much so that all of first year chemistry was basically a cakewalk when I went to university – I’d already met 1.5-order rate kinetics, so I could sit back and enjoy the exploding balloons.
I even learned a bit about critical thinking and the scientific method from Mr. L. He’d bring in amusing inventions he’d bought off of late-night infomercials, like the golf-ball finder. This “device” is essentially a palm-sized black plastic box with a telescoping radio-style antenna on a freely-moving mount. To find lost golf balls, one held the device in one hand, with the antenna extended straight out in front. Then one walked carefully in a straight line, and the antenna would swing to point at the ball – in other words, it was a dowsing rod. We had great fun in class that day discussing the idiomotor effect and other woo-ish phenomena. And then there was the time we evaluated some miracle fuel additive…
My point in the above story is that despite the damage caused by magical thinking and the suspension of critical thinking associated with religious belief, useful scientific knowledge and critical thinking skills may still be imparted by a skilled, intelligent teacher.
Having said that, Mr. L. was also keenly aware of local politics, especially as regards the public education system that paid his salary. Ritter’s protestations of ignorance indicate to me that he does not possess my former teacher’s intellectual abilities, or he’s lying. Mr. L. so far as I am aware, never lied to us. I think he honestly believed the 2nd law really did prohibit biological evolution, despite a very good working understanding of the 2nd law in relation to HS-level laboratory experiments in Chemistry.
Jim C said: If evolutionists where better mathematicians, they wouldn’t be so sure of the creative capacity of their god which is chance…With the above improbabilities above, the issue of the evidence for macroevolution vs. microevolution can be set-aside for another time.
If creationists were better mathematicians, they wouldn’t make such ignorant arguments. If they were more truly scientific, they’d notice that the vast majority of mathematicians keep noting this ignorance. Most scientists pay attention when they are working on something involving some math and the mathematician wanders by and notes an error.
The mistake, for those of you that missed it the first 10,000 times you heard this canard, is assuming a unform probability in the absence of any knowledge of the actual probabilities. No can do. So the minute someone says something like “think of the number of chance mutations”, you know they are screwing up. It’s like saying my 5’10” 26″ vertical “leap” self has a 1 in 100 chance of winnning the NBA slam dunk contest because there are 99 other entrants.
No one’s taking any bets on the Hoyle quote? Yeah, it’s a sure thing it’ll get trotted out.
Jim C.
Newsflash.
Only people who worship chance are gamblers. Go ask Kenny Rogers.
If you knew squat about evolution, you’d know chance got nuthin’ to do w/it.
In the same vein, CHRIST stands for “Creation of Highly Radiated Intelligent Species Taxonomies.” It’s not our fault if the acronyms appear to be religious by sheer chance!
AHA! so chance hides at the core of your evil materialist ID philosophy!
Neither PZ nor any commenter has yet pointed out the article said Ritter was publicized by the Constitution Party. A dead giveaway.