Tina Dupuy had a good op-ed published in the Sedalia, Missouri newspaper, titled “Teaching creationism hurts kids, undermines educational system“. Yeah, it does: it prompted some rebuttals that made her case even more strongly. John Nail has some complaints:
Writer had it dead wrong on debate over teaching creationism
In response to Tina Dupuy column in the April 15 paper entitled “Teaching creationism hurts kids, undermines education system,” I’d like to say, “Phooey!”
From the article it sounds like she has some real issues with her mother. [Cheap shot. Dupuy’s article had issues with her mother’s fundamentalist dogmatism…just like Nail’s] It may be good therapy for her to vent in the column, however she submits NO scientific evidence of the evolution theory [The piece is about how creationism kept her ignorant of science; it’s not a scientific treatise]. The only item she mentioned was when she wrote, “There’s plenty of self-evident evidence (see: the flu virus). …”. A virus is not even a living organism. [And yet…they evolve!]
From the Answers in Genesis website (answersingenesis.org/articles/aid/v1/n1/has-it-evolved) [Uh-oh. Not a trustworthy source at all]: “So what should one say if asked, “Is the ‘bird flu’ evolving”? It could be said that the avian influenza genome is evolving only in the sense that it’s continually changing and modifying [Uh, yes? That’s evolution!], and not in the sense that it will someday be something other than an influenza virus [It will become a different kind of virus, with different properties. It will not become a chicken, nor does evolution predict that it will]. Yes, influenza viruses do possess a certain degree of variability; however, the amount of genetic information which a virus can carry is vastly limited[So? So’s the amount of information in your genome, John Nail — that we don’t have infinite genomes is not an argument against evolution], and so are the changes which can be made to its genome before it can no longer function[Again, limits are what we expect in the real world; show me a system with an absence of limitations on its behavior and maybe I’ll start believing in your god].”
“Scientists”[The only “scientists” who deserve scare quotes are the shabby charlatans that Nail cites] tell us the moon is 4.6 billion years old. If it were then the Apollo 11 astronauts should have stepped off into several feet of space dust instead of the inches they did. Based on the accumulation of dust (which is measured by “scientists”) the moon would be 7-10,000 year old [Oh, please. Seriously? The Moon Dust argument? Even Answers in Genesis, Nail’s favorite source, rejects that claim!].
The word dinosaur means “large lizard”[No, actually, it means “terrible lizard”] — Ms. Dupuy, we still have large lizards [So? “Dinosaur” is a specific name referring to a specific clade with specific features in their anatomy that are distinct from those of extant lizards—the argument from word roots is irrelevant to the biological reality. I could call John Nail an ass, but that doesn’t mean he’ll sprout long ears and a tail and start braying (oops, well, he is doing that last bit already)]. In fact, large lizards were small when they were young. Noah could have easily had immature “dinosaurs” on the Ark [He could have also packed in every species in the planet as gametes stored in liquid nitrogen, with the temperature maintained by giant refrigerators driven by a nuclear power plant. Your fantasy about what ‘coulda’ happened isn’t evidence of reality]. Natural Science museums do not show the rabbits, squirrels and other currently known animals whose bones were found with the dinosaur bones[Say what? Rabbits found in the Cretaceous would be amazing. Too bad they aren’t — John is just making shit up]. It would be to hard to explain why they were living together in the same times[Yes it would. But they haven’t.].
When I was in school in the 60s we learned about the cavemen: The Peking man, the Java man and others. When they were exposed as hoaxes, they were not removed from the textbooks [Because those are all examples of Homo erectus. They were not exposed as hoaxes, by any means — rather, many more fossil examples have been found].
I could list many scientific reasons that macro-evolution makes no sense but we believe what we want to believe[If they’re of the same quality as the reasons given so far, no need to bother]. As an ancient text says, “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness. And again, The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain.”[I think it was in the best interests of the authors of the Bible to claim that wisdom is foolishness, to make their foolishness look wise.]
I have taught[Fuck, no!] in a Christian school (St. Paul’s Lutheran)[Unsurprising] for the past fifteen years. We look at both sides of the argument[Liar. We can see already that he knows nothing of the science]. The government schools only look at one side so who is getting a “better” science education? [The kids in schools that actually teach the evidence, and how it was determined, and who are not getting prepackaged superstition in the guise of science] We are not afraid of the scientific discoveries[Because you will readily distort them to fit your agenda]. They prove the Bible true! [Seven day creation, zombies invading Jerusalem, genetics determined by striped sticks, self-serving ahistorical bullshit, all of that? Nope.] The Bible is not a bunch of “stories.”[Actually, it is largely the mythology of a tribe of pastoral, patriarchal jerks who successfully murdered and enslaved their way to a small niche in the Middle East, and then frantically invented a legendary triumphal history to prop up their egos when they were serially crushed by stronger tribes] It is a record of God moving in the history of mankind [Yeah, right, and Star Trek: The Next Generation is about an all-powerful psychopath named Q…but that doesn’t make it true]. We cannot prove that God created the earth and everything in it in 6 days, no one we know was there to see it[But we can look at the scientific evidence and disprove your myth]. Neither can we prove that a spark started life billions of years ago. No one was there either[A true acolyte of the frauds at AiG: “Were you there?” Nope, but there’s more to evidence than just eyewitness testimony…which is actually a miserably poor form of evidence]. And we certainly cannot replicate either in a lab[Actually, yes, we can replicate pieces of the chemistry in the lab. We can’t replicate magical beings poofing things into existence]. So, Ms. Dupuy, it all comes down to what we want to believe[I want to believe I’m a billionaire who can fly by flapping my arms. Is it true?]. I understand that if you do not believe that God created the world in six days[Because it is contradicted by the evidence] then you probably have a difficult time in believing the account of God’s amazing work in the lives of people then and now [Which is unsupported by any credible evidence]. My prayer is that God would touch your life in a mighty way so that you will know with certainty that God is real [What an evil wish: the one thing we learn from the Bible is that their imaginary deity is a vicious amoral thug. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, not even John Nail].
Just to put the icing on the cake, John Nail actually is a teacher (kindergarten through 5th grade) and principal at St. Paul’s Lutheran School in Sedalia. I feel so much pity for the kids being sent to that undoubtedly awful school.