Teacher Fired for Disagreeing With Literal Interpretation of Bible

The flood might be true, but if it is, why did your deity see to it that all evidence for it was magically erased and that all science would argue against it rather than for it? Seems a rather large step to ensure that believers believe. Would have been so much simpler to kill the planet off in a different and easier way.

It isn't even about evolution. Comparatively, few fossils are found in sediments that were laid down in floods. We know what rocks are flood deposits and what ones are not. People go on about how geology and paleontology are simply historical sciences and that all the evidence is observation-based and that no experiments are ever done in either discipline. This is simply untrue. We do lots of actual experiments on things like how sand grains settle or calcite precipitates out of water columns and carcasses degrade and break down and get introduced into the local environment, etc. Also, because many many sedimentary processes operate at temperatures and pressures we live in (unlike, say, magma cooling into granite 20km below the surface), they can be directly observed (e.g., you can go to a beach and watch the beds form). People who say things like "we don't really know how rocks form" and that "no one was there when it happened" and "all the evidence is indirect and based on guesses from the past" are making statements that are as untrue as "there is no such thing as a car." We do absolutely infer present processes to have happened in the past in the same ways, but unless some deity decided to entirely change physics just when geologists started looking at sediments in a rigorous way, then we know a great deal about how sedimentary rocks form and in what paleoenvironments. Statements to the contrary (like "all sediments are laid down in water" or "the Grand Canyon records an epic global flood") are just simply untrue. They just are. You don't get to just wave away 300+ years of direct observation and experimentation on how sedimentary bodies form and assert that it happened another way for which there is no evidence. Especially when you do things like use petroleum (sedimentology is one of the disciplines that is central to finding petroleum--the science works...we find oil). Of the known fossil record, comparatively few fossils are found in flood deposits. By far most fossils are found in rocks deposited under marine conditions (stuff that might not have been on the ark at all). These creatures show an orderly progression through the rock record that is absolutely inconsistent with a single event. But even if you ignore the fossils completely, there is no evidence for a global worldwide catastrophic flood in the rock record. In fact, the geology flatly contradicts this having happened. We can go into detail if you like, but basically, there isn't any evidence for the event described in Genesis. Again, the flood might be true, but why did God go through so much trouble to erase the evidence?

Beretta wrote (about ToE): 1. I'm ignoring my issues with your assertion here that ToE is a philosophy (dealt with elsewhere).2. To teach ToE as a fact is wrong, I agree. This is because ToE is not a fact. ToE serves to explain facts (observations with error). If teachers teach ToE as a fact they aren't doing their students a service, but that is because they (the teachers) apparently don't understand how science works, NOT because of any supposed problems with ToE.3. If we're going to teach alternative creation myths with ToE (also ignoring here that abiogenesis and ToE are different), WHICH creation myth do we teach (I'm a pretty big fan of the Hopi one myself)? How much time do we have to give each one? We could spend less time on the Lakota one and the Maori one than those put forth in the Abrahamic faiths because they are less detailed, but if we did so isn't that tacitly implying greater trust in one of the Abrahamic ones?

Sigh...one might logically think that...

Is he really? That's odd considering how much of his work I had to read in graduate school. He wasn't "right" all the time to be sure (show me one scientist that is), but calling him a discredited idiot is kind of foolish. Actually that isn't really what he said at all. He was looking for ways to explain supposed gaps in the fossil record when the effects of taphonomy are removed. No. Actually it's not. It is a really nice example of a very basal bird and it is a great example of how evolution works (if you look at it in context), but let's not make it into something it isn't. It is not a perfect example of a transitional species between birds and reptilian dinosaurs (I presume you mean non-avian dinosaurs). You need to look at non-avian taxa to find such an animal because you're already into birds with this one--they exist, but Archaeopteryx isn't one of them. Although your last statement in this paragraph is accurate, I'm pretty sure Gould not once ever demanded that. I'm going to call BS and ask that you provide a reference.

Yeah...sorry about that. Totally didn't realize it until you pointed it out.