Earth science curriculum tailored to fit wavering fundamentalists

Of all the inputs I have considered, participation numbers and ease of communication would certainly seem to me to be the overwhelming drivers of progress. Certainly, even great participation doesn't do much good with that large group being able to communicate so I think I would have to go with your observation as the primary driver.JB

Well as you know, they apply the same level of logic to those statement as they do to flood geology so it's not that they are true, it's that I have to overcome the programming that makes them simply believe they are true.Yes, there will be a quiz. Oh YES, that's information I can really use. THANKS!!JB

That is right on the mark with the Asimov essay and will be so helpful.Thanks
JB

I hope it's not uncool to steal from another thread, but herebedragons just made a post on Faith's thread that I though was incredibly relevant to what I'm up against. Message 121This is SO true for my situation. It doesn't serve me (or them) to just start arguing particulars and throwing facts at them. I have to start almost from scratch and educate them as to the value of the scientific method and common scientific terms, etc.I'll give an example I found regarding the use of the term "experimental error":Doug Batchelor prominent SDA YEC 'oracle'(LINK) uses the term when talking about Willard Libby and Carbon Dating:

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In science experiments, assumptions are critical. But if the starting assumption is false, the ensuing experiment will lead a scientist to draw a flawed conclusion, even if his calculations appear correct. Willard Libby, the developer of carbon dating, drew his conclusions based on the assumption that the earth was millions of years old. He calculated that it would take about 30,000 years for an atmosphere’s 14C/12C ratio to reach equilibrium. When he discovered that earth’s ratio was not in equilibrium, meaning it must be younger than 30,000 years, he dismissed it as an experimental error!

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Now the way he uses the term "experimental error" and the way his audience hears that term is TOTALLY different from the way Libby is using the term in his book. When through the curve of knowns he discovered that the earth's ratio was not in equilibrium , he did NOT dismiss it as in "Oh, that's BS and just an error caused by the experiment so I'll ignore it.", though that is how Batchelor means it and that is how the audience hears it. What Libby says is that when this is discovered they didn't worry about it much because it fell *well within* the range of the experimental error rate of the method (+/-10% at the time).It's a bit like the English Lit student trying to school Azimov on science -- don't try to talk science until you've learned just a BIT of the language. I have to teach kids the language before almost anything else.JB

Great point and it highlights something I said earlier in the thread (I believe it was to Faith). My goal is to actually teach my family how to question and learn. I'll ask them "Why did you believe that?" And they answer ... "I don't know ... it's just what they told us."In the fundamentalist world, hierarchy is everything and at every level those below are not to question those above. At the very bottom of the list are children who aren't allowed to question ANYONE. If they are female, this continues your entire life as you are married off to a man who is the dictatorial head of the household.As it happens, all 4 of the family members who are open to learning from me are woman and I can see this "question me until you are satisfied" is a strange new world for them. I don't want them to just believe me - that's no better than what they are coming from.Thanks for reminding me of how I need to think of how to work that in.JB

Excellent suggestion.Thanks
JB

Another excellent suggestion. Precision vs accuracy was very near and dear to my heart in my previous line of work (object tracking)JB

Yes, it's a version of the same sort of things I'm working on. A curriculum for a one time meeting Personally, I'm coming to like the salt bed question if going for the best one shot. jar does it well right here Message 64.I would emphasize in the question how we can see the layers of clay, grit and other pollutants over and over (and over) horizontally between the salt. Describe how easy it is to just Google image search "salt mine" and see these layers in picture after picture. This will preemptively answer the response you may get regarding the nonsense that Stef Hereema puts out.Stef argues that you don't see pollutants such as these and it's' patently false. He argues that you don't find fossils and we would hardly expect to find much life in and over such broad expanses of dead salt.Pictures tell the story.Good luck.
JBEDIT: Oh, and since I'm intimately familiar with the theology you're dealing with, make sure and mention there are plenty of fossils in the layers *below* the salt beds. To them this means that what happened had to happen after "the fall".Edited by ThinAirDesigns, : No reason given.

If you look at it based on the response of the people who run the church, I couldn't agree with you more. He will have to decide if his questions/statements are of enough value to offset the rather obvious responses by the leaders (and perhaps his wife).The value *may* come however from an alternate view being presented in front of a younger generation that isn't quite as enamored with the status quo as the older crowd. Standing up to nonsense can bring disdain from one group while raising credibility with another more receptive group.And beyond that hypothetical, I have zero ability to suggest the wisdom (or lack of) in presenting an alternate view while in the lions den.JB

I haven't had any time yet to research this one, but I've always felt that it could be a great thing to have in my curriculum simply because limestone caves are SO accessible in this part of the south. Thanks for reminding me to look into those processes.Of course the hammer gives the boot to the theory that it takes a long time accomplish such.JB

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There are several important things to note about these results. First, the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods were defined by geologists in the early 1800s. The boundary between these periods (the K-T boundary) is marked by an abrupt change in fossils found in sedimentary rocks worldwide. Its exact location in the stratigraphic column at any locality has nothing to do with radiometric dating it is located by careful study of the fossils and the rocks that contain them, and nothing more. Second, the radiometric age measurements, 187 of them, were made on 3 different minerals and on glass by 3 distinctly different dating methods (K-Ar and 40Ar/39Ar are technical variations that use the same parent-daughter decay scheme), each involving different elements with different half-lives. Furthermore, the dating was done in 6 different laboratories and the materials were collected from 5 different locations in the Western Hemisphere. And yet the results are the same within analytical error. If radiometric dating didn’t work then such beautifully consistent results would not be possible.
Radiometric Dating Does Work! | National Center for Science Education

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I know I have mentioned this before, but one of the key things I'm searching for is a way to illustrate the convergence of all this evidence. Here you have a relative dating system devised by the science of the day near two centuries ago showing that the Cretaceous layers were older than the Tertiary layers. This conclusion is still sound even with no other methods of confirmation. But along comes radiometric dating and what do you know? -- multiple other independent dating systems tested over and over and over come to the same conclusion. Convergence of the evidence is powerful.It's so interesting the way "it's all speculation" is thrown around by the YEC crowd. They act as if the 'speculations' of someone who hasn't been to the field and studied thinks like the Grand Canyon or thousands of other sites but is a keyboard warrior should somehow hold the same scientific weight of the countless thousands of scientists who have spent their lives tramping around, digging, observing, drilling, comparing and testing.It's like this argument: "Hey, I can kick Floyd Mayweather's butt - I can. I can also return serve on Federer, leave Lewis Hamilton in the dust and throw fastballs past Mike Trout all day long -- and if I can get time off from my job as assistant night manager at 7-11 I'll show you." Now, I think you're full of BS -- but hey, it's all just speculation. You're speculation is as good as mine, right?No, all speculation is NOT the same.We have decades and centuries of evidence that:
A: you can't dominate in all sports at once - there simply isn't enough time in the day practice everything
B: you almost assuredly can't dominate even in *one* sport while holding down a non-field related job and then spending the rest of your time bragging about yourself.My speculation has a TON of evidence behind it - your speculation, not so much.JB

I share both your lack of belief in their version of God, and your sadness that the results of good science is considered a test of faith.

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Nothing physical which demonstrations prove to us, ought to be called in question much less condemned upon the testimony of biblical passages which may have some different meaning beneath their words. For I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. -- Galileo

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While I greatly appreciate those links and in fact find them extremely compelling, I'm afraid that initially my audience will just turn them right off. I must somehow get them to recognize the *principle* of converging evidence before they will give any credence to a list like that. I'm trying to think of some way to illustrate the principle using things they already agree with as this would allow them to absorb the lesson without tripping straight into cog dis.When it comes to forms of reasoning and inference, I literally have to start at something like a grade school level. Even though they USE those on a daily basis (we could hardly survive without them), they aren't aware of it and have never been taught how valuable their rigorous application can be.Here's an idea I've come up with and I'll present it in as short a version as I can (it will still be long so bear with me). It's a bit of a little hypothetical game where one uses a series of "helpers" to win a prize. Initially you have no clue how reliable your helpers are, nor do you have any idea what methods they are employing to accomplish their tasks. You just know that you have no hope of winning without their assistance and to be successful you must use inductive reasoning from observations of their actions to step by step strengthen inferences.I'll write up an abbreviated version of the rules and post them in a bit for people to critique and improve (or suggest a totally different method of teaching the principles)ThanksJB

Thanks pollux, I hadn't found that paper. I'll be sure and read it.Here is one from Robert Brown (he was the Director of GRI) laying waste to Robert Gentry's halo claims. This one has been very valuable since it's written by the top SDA creation science dog.Geoscience Research Institute | I think we need more research on that...After they tell me how mainstream old earth science is biased and Gentry was silenced and never got a fair shake, I read them the key points of that article without telling them who wrote it. They then generally respond with "Yeah, sure, but that's just what traditional science is going to do -- reject it because they don't want the truth out." I just turn the laptop around and show that it was researched and written by their very own church's organization, tasked for near 70 years with proving what Gentry is trying to prove. It catches them off guard and makes a dent.I try to use Gentry next to Einstein (crazy huh?) to make a point with them -- science welcomes dissent and new ideas and will make you a hero if you go against common wisdom, but you MUST BE RIGHT! If you are wrong and insist you are right, you're just another schmuck among millions who didn't do their homework.JB

Perhaps I'm using the term "unconformities" incorrectly in the following question, but as I have just learned the term, please bear with me.One of the things that is very strong evidence for evolution (or at least evidence *against* the 6 day, ex nihilo creation story) is the remarkable consistency of the fossil record. Bottom to top, less advanced to more advanced. I do know however that there are areas where the layers are considered not to be in their original order. From threads here I have picked up (hopefully correctly) that the word to describe this is 'unconformity'.I do understand that there are reasonable explanations for these unconformities (plates colliding etc.), but I have a question about them: Just how common are these areas? Are we talking 3% of the earth's surface, or 30% of the earth's surface?I'm not expecting a hard number answer, just an informed approximation.Thanks
JB