I’m sorry to say that I didn’t make it to the Twin Cities Creation Science fair this weekend, and Greg Laden didn’t either, which must explain why the TCCSA wasn’t afraid to post photos of the 2008 Creation Science Fair this time around. One UM professor did stop by, though, and we have his personal account.
As a perfect example of ID inanity, one student demonstrated irreducible complexity by taking a motor apart and showing that it didn’t work any more. Thank you, Michael Behe, for trying to make your feeble “insight” a part of the science curriculum.
It was the usual mixed mess we get even in secular science fairs: a lot of clueless students who don’t know how to do science, exhibit failures of logic, and who don’t really understand what they are doing, mixed up with a few kids who have the potential to be real science stars. This particular event is especially depressing, though, because the organizers impose all kinds of bizarre unscientific constraints on the kids (A bible verse on every poster? Come on.) and it doesn’t really matter how much potential a kid has — it’s going to be poisoned and stunted by a carefully fostered environment of ignorance that favors the appearance of science over any attempt at genuine inquiry.
I tell myself every year that I should go see this thing. Every year I feel the same sad discouragement at the prospect — it’s like going to witness a famine of the mind, with young children as victims, and I don’t think I could bear it.