I don’t qualify at all


Answers in Genesis is looking for a full-time high school science teacher. I’m not looking for a new job, but even if I were, I’m stunned by how supremely unqualified I am for this position.

The qualified individual must be an evangelical Christian committed to living a biblical lifestyle in all areas and in full agreement with the schools statement of faith. The teacher is expected to be in alignment with the science and biblical positions held at Answers in Genesis and able to teach science from a biblical worldview in the classroom. The teacher must also be able to distinguish operational vs historical science as well as be able to articulate the evolutionary beliefs correctly while being able to refute them biblically and scientifically. The teacher must also have a good understanding of AiGs presuppositional apologetic approach and know how to incorporate it in the classroom.

The teacher shall be one who feels called of God to the teaching profession. The teacher must maintain a teachable spirit while demonstrating patience, humility, integrity, and kindness while performing his/her day-to-day duties. He/she must be devoted to prayerfully work with administration, faculty, students, and parents to develop and maintain a school which is thoroughly Christian and academically exceptional. The teacher shall prayerfully help students learn attitudes, skills, and subject matter that will contribute to their development as mature, able, and responsible Christians to the glory of God.

I don’t meet the requirements in a single sentence of that summary. Of course, nowhere in there does it say anything about degrees or training or experience, all that matters is conformity to the peculiar notion of science held by AiG.

Oh, at the end of the long list of detailed stuff, almost every bit of it about theological purity, there is a passing mention of what I might expect for qualifications of a real teaching position.

It is expected for the teacher to:

  • Hold a minimum of a bachelors degree or equivalent in related field
  • Have completed student teaching and/or other educational field experience.

It is preferred (but not necessary) for the teacher to:

  • Have two or more years of classroom teaching experience.
  • Have a current teaching certificate from a Christian school association and/or State Teaching Certificate in Education.
  • Have a masters degree in education or a science field.

Did you finish Bible school? Did you teach Sunday school? You’re qualified. (I’ve done neither.)

Comments

  1. stuffin says

    They don’t want a teacher, they want a religious advocate. They want religion to be the focus, not teachable science.

  2. says

    I was thinking maybe just for fun, I could copy the text into a Word document, run a find & replace, replacing teacher with brain surgeon, student with patient, and school with hospital. But it’s Saturday morning and that’s far too much work.
    Easier to replace science with “science.”

  3. raven says

    The qualified individual must be an evangelical Christian committed to living a biblical lifestyle in all areas and in full agreement with the schools statement of faith.

    Meaningless drivel.

    Anyone who is living a real biblical lifestyle would be doing multiple life sentences in prison.

    It’s OK in the bible to marry as many women as you can chase down and buy as many sex slaves (concubines) as you can afford.

    Slavery is legal, common, and acceptable.
    In fact, Exodus says if you need a few extra dollars, you can sell your kids as slaves.

    Disobedient children, nonvirgin brides, adulterers, and apostates are all supposed to be stoned to death.

    It gets worse. According to the people who actually wrote the bible, there are 613 commandments in the Old Testament alone.
    Wikipedia: Although the number 613 is mentioned in the Talmud, its real significance increased in later medieval rabbinic literature, including many works listing or arranged by the mitzvot. The most famous of these was an enumeration of the 613 commandments by Maimonides.

  4. raven says

    He/she must be devoted to prayerfully work with administration, faculty, students, and parents
    to develop and maintain a school which is thoroughly Christian and academically exceptional.

    You can’t get there from here. This is a contradiction.

    A school which is thoroughly Christian in Ken Ham’s cuckoo world is also one that is an academic wasteland producing brainwashed Zombies.

  5. StevoR says

    The teacher must also be able to distinguish operational vs historical science as well as be able to articulate the evolutionary beliefs correctly while being able to refute them biblically and scientifically.

    Emphasis added.

    Talk about asking fro the impossible!

    They cannot and have not despite decades of effort refute evolutionary beliefs – ie known confirmed by multiple liens ofevidnece and oevrwhelming peer review science – “scientifically”depsite lying otherwise.

    Didn’t the Dover case and even others show that legally? Are those safe from Trump’s Treason SCOTUS?

  6. Sphinx of Black Quartz says

    The teacher must also be able… to articulate the evolutionary beliefs correctly

    Good luck with that, because I’ve never talked to a single creationist who could. Ask them to describe evolutionary biology and they start ranting about “Atheistic scientists think a dinosaur fell out of a tree, so it grew wings and became a chicken.”

  7. azpaul3 says

    Realize, Dr. M, that you qualify for this position hands down on the 5 teaching/experience things. That means the only impediment to you getting this job is your attitude. Fix that and the job is yours.
    Your grad assistants could do most of the day-to-day lectures, testing, grading. You show up once a week to read some scripture and collect a paycheck.
    You will probably have to pay the grad students a bit more than their assistantship stipends but you can achieve this goal if you want it.

  8. Larry says

    Get hired to “teach” at an AiG school and you’ve pretty much dictated your academic career path. You’ll never be hired at a real school once your resume passes across the desk and straight into the waste basket.

  9. Matt G says

    I’m actually a science teacher in search of a new position! Is it ethical to apply as a gag?

  10. Erp says

    To want a high school teacher means they have a high school. In this case “Answers Academy” established in 2017
    High School academics includes archaeology (“how archaeology confirms Scripture”), comparative religions (“refuting all four divisions of false religions”),
    Much of the curriculum is based on Bob Jones University material (or Abeka)
    https://answersacademy.org/high-school

    World history is another interesting area of contortion. When was the Great Pyramid of Egypt built? The usual young earth answer seems to be to compress ancient Egyptian history.. AiG has the Great Pyramid built around 1900 BCE and contemporary with Abraham. Modern research puts it at about 2500 BCE or a bit older.
    AiG chronology
    https://answersingenesis.org/archaeology/ancient-egypt/a-correct-chronology/
    dynasties 5 and 6 are limited to less than 90 years (modern scholars put the fifth as lasting 150 years and the sixth as about 140 years), dynasties 7-10 are dropped completely (modern scholars also consider 7 as dubious, 8, 9, 10 were each short and the overall modern description is ‘first intermediate period’). And so on. Akhenaten ruled about 824-804 BCE (modern scholars c. 1353–1336 BCE).

  11. says

    I must gently disagree with PZ. He says:

    I don’t meet the requirements in a single sentence of that summary.

    But one of those sentences is:

    The teacher must maintain a teachable spirit while demonstrating patience, humility, integrity, and kindness while performing his/her day-to-day duties.

    and I’d argue that this entire blog demonstrates compliance with that. His kindness to spiders demonstrates that if nothing else does!

    Depending, of course, on whether “teachable spirit” means what the English language indicates it means or whether those are private magic words meaning something else entirely. OK, this is Ken Ham, so maybe I’m being overoptimistic. Egregiously overoptimistic.

  12. Pierce R. Butler says

    The teacher is expected to be in alignment with the science and biblical positions held at Answers in Genesis…

    Which apparently includes blanket refusal to use apostrophes, don’tchaknow.

  13. nomdeplume says

    Change just a few words and the Taliban could use it as an advert for Afghanistan “schools” (and I use the term ironically in both cases).

  14. pacal says

    No. 13 Erp: You gave the url for Answers in Genesis’ Egyptian chronology.

    https://answersingenesis.org/archaeology/ancient-egypt/a-correct-chronology/

    It is a riot of silly. Among other things it clearly is based on Velikovsky’s revised chronology that is bluntly bogus.

    But among the nonsense is the following crap:

    The flood happened c. 2300 B.C.E. Just wrong all down the line.

    The First Dynasty starts just under 200 years after the flood. If excavations etc., are anything to go on the population of Egypt was at least 500,000 and probably a bit more han a million at the time. So just how did 8 people reproduce and grow at such an insane rate to say nothing of the populations outside Egypt!

    The first three dynasties only cover 159 years!; and the claim is made the Second and Third dynasties were at the same time. Utter nonsense. Oh and the First Dynasty seems to be given a time pereiod of 29 years!!

    The claim is made there was no First Intermidiate Period and we are in the dark about it. Utter nonsense.

    Dynaties 7-10 are the same has dynasties 15-16. Whatever.

    The rule of the Hyksos ended c. 1018 B.C.E. Yeah right! Right from Velikovsky.

    Queen Hatshepsut is the same has the Queen of Sheba. No evidence Hatshepsut ever left Egypt for Palstine and Sheba was in modern day Yemen!! More Velikovsky and more nonsense.

    Akhenaten ruled c. 824 B.C.E., Again Velikovsky again crap.

    The 19th Dynasty ended in c. 685 B.C.E. Crap.

    Dynasties 20-24 were contemporary with the above Dynasties. Nonsense.

    The 25th dynasty started in c. 690 B.C.E. It did not.

    There is more, much more wrong with this.

    Total Fail.

  15. StevoR says

    @ ^ pacal : “Queen Hatshepsut is the same has the Queen of Sheba. No evidence Hatshepsut ever left Egypt for Palstine and Sheba was in modern day Yemen!!”

    Hmm.. I thought the Queen of Sheba was Ethiopian?

    Lessee :

    The Queen of Sheba (Hebrew: מַלְכַּת שְׁבָא‎, romanized: Malkaṯ Səḇāʾ; Arabic: ملكة سبأ, romanized: Malikat Sabaʾ; Ge’ez: ንግሥተ ሳባ, romanized: Nəgśətä Saba) is a figure first mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. In the original story, she brings a caravan of valuable gifts for the Israelite King Solomon. This account has undergone extensive Jewish, Islamic, Yemenite[1][2] and Ethiopian elaborations, and it has become the subject of one of the most widespread and fertile cycles of legends in West Asia and East Africa.[3]

    Modern historians identify Sheba with the South Arabian kingdom of Saba in present-day Yemen and Ethiopia. The queen’s existence is disputed among historians.

    Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_of_Sheba

    &

    Described in the Bible as simply a Queen of the East, modern scholars believe she came from the Kingdom of Axum in Ethiopia, the Kingdom of Saba in Yemen, or both. Their main clue is that she brought bales of incense with her as a gift; frankincense only grows in these two areas. Both countries claim her as theirs. Given that they are separated by only 25 kilometers of water, both could be right.

    Source : https://www.pbs.org/mythsandheroes/myths_four_sheba.html#:~:text=The%20Queen%20of%20Sheba%20%7C%20PBS&text=The%20story%20of%20the%20Queen,Saba%20in%20Yemen%2C%20or%20both.

    Plus :

    An account of the encounter is tantalisingly referenced by the Roman Jewish author Flavius Josephus in the first century A.D. Composed in the seventh century, the Quran features a more elaborate version of the story, as does Jewish rabbinic literature. The Kebra Nagast, a 14th-century Ethiopian Christian epic, connects the Queen of Sheba with the founding of Ethiopia itself. According to this text, ancient Sheba is in Ethiopia. The queen and Solomon have a son who founds a dynasty that would rule Ethiopia until its last descendant, Haile Selassie, died in 1975. (Here’s what archaeology is telling us about King Solomon’s mines.)

    To date no archaeological evidence has been found to indicate definitively who the queen was and from where she came. She could be a composite of historical figures or entirely legendary. Even the location of Sheba itself is hotly debated among scholars. Some place it in Ethiopia, while others place it in the ancient kingdom of Saba in present-day Yemen.

    Source : https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/history-and-civilisation/2021/06/where-did-the-queen-of-sheba-rule-arabia-or-africa

    Seen a few TV docos that if memory serves say Sheba was in what’s modern day Ethiopia too – and that the Ark of the Covenant ended up there – y’know. before Indiana Jones got his hands on it after the whole nazi face melting episode!

    Looks like the short answer is dunno really & may all be myth. But of course myth does have kernals of truth at times e.g. Troy so.. yeah.

  16. brightmoon says

    @7 Ive also never been able to find a creationist who could explain evolution correctly

  17. birgerjohansson says

    Allow me to go off on a tangent a bit, to demonstrate the poverty of the creationist viewpoint compared to that of people watching the natural history unfold without preconcieved ideas.

    Werner Herzog has made many documentaries that allowed him to get across more than a dry transmission of data.
    His documentary about a vulcanologist couple really brings out the violence and the wonder of nature without the need for any religion.
    This is creation unfolding without gods.

    “When two filmmakers make the same movie ”
    https://youtu.be/2Wn-OJSgVQs
    As English is not my first language I cannot get across the emotional impact of really powerful phenomena like a volcanic eruption, but this impact can coexist with a rational worldview without mysticism. This is at odds with the claim that science somehow takes away something from the experience.

  18. birgerjohansson says

    I’ll wager the very bland and mild bible school we had the last two years of the 1960s in Sweden would not count.
    I never met anyone who took the talking snake business seriously.
    .
    OT
    Italy is suffering the worst drought in 70 years. Right now there are several thunderstorms across the peninsula indicatng Baal the storm-god is a better choice than El.

  19. Nemo says

    I bet you could do this one:

    The teacher must also have a good understanding of AiGs presuppositional apologetic approach and know how to incorporate it in the classroom.

    I feel like I have a pretty good understanding of presup myself. It’s crap, but I understand it. As for what to do with it in the classroom, well, you can guess.

  20. pacal says

    RE: 18 StevoR

    Where was the Queen of Sheba from? Yes later in history Ethiopians claimed that the Queen of Sheba came from Ethiopia.
    A account that is accepted by many to this day. There is a problem(s) with that.

    1) The Queen of Sheba, assuming she existed, would have lived c. 950 B.C.E. Do we have evidence of kingdom of Sheba or Saba in Ethiopia at that time? No we do not. In fact we have no evidence of kingdoms there at this time at all.

    2) We do have evidence both archeologically and in inscriptions of a kingdom of Saba in Yemen but just about no evidence that Saba ever included parts of Ethiopia. (I should also point out there were other kingdoms in Yemen at the time.) Further we have very little evidence that Saba existed in Yemen c. 950 C.E. to begin with. Evidence shows up later than that.

    3) We do have evidence that Semitic speakers migrated into, well before 1000 B.C.E., Ethiopia but again little evidence of an organized kingdom or kingdoms c. 1000 B.C.E.

    4) The earliest Kingdom in Ethiopia seems to have been called D’mt. We have a few inscriptions and it’s capital was apparently at Yeha not Axum. In legend the Queen of Sheba ruled from Axum which was not established until much later than 1000 B.C.E.

    D’mt lasted about 300-400 years it seems and was replaced by the early Axum kingdom.

    Dating the beginning of the Yeminite Kingdoms is problematic any date earlier than at most 800 B.C.E. is problematic to put it mildly and based on the notion that the kingdom must be earlier than the first secure dates for it.

    The same goes for D’mt. Some date it to the 10th century, (1000-900 B.C.E.), this again is based on the notion the kingdom must have existed centuries beforer secure dates from inscriptions and archeology. The kingdom probaly was actually established after 800 B.C.E.

    The Queeen of Sheba has become a nationistic touchstone between Yemen and Ethiopia both of which tend to view the Queen has their own and resent anyone dening it. However the bottom line is that we can quite securely base Sheba (Saba) in Yemen and not Ethiopia and we cannot securely, not by a long shot, have Sheba being in Ethiopia and Yemen. So if the Queen of Sheba belongs to anyone it is Yemen.

    Of course it is most likely that the Queen of Sheba is entirely a literary invention and never existed.

    Why? Because it seems the Biblical account hugely inflates the wealth and importance of Solomon. And later when the Biblical account was written the area now modern Yemen was known for it’s wealth in expensive spices and other luxuries and it was considered fairly exotic so to inflate the importance of Solomon a story about being visited by a very wealthy Queen from a far away kingdom would certainly help with that. (There are now a fair number of Biblical scholars and archeologists who doubt even the existence of Solomon.)

  21. DanDare says

    @Sphinx of Black Quartz

    When they say “know the theory of evolution correctly” they don’t nean correctly correctly, they mean Ham and AiGs correctly.

  22. says

    #13.
    Best example of AiG creationists making poop up in an effort to force history and archaeology to conform into their young earth fantasies.