![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ebonlockIf someone can explain the difference between this sort of fundie indoctrination of young kids and brain washing, I'd dearly love to hear it:
Evangelist Ken Ham smiled at the 2,300 elementary students packed into pews, their faces rapt. With dinosaur puppets and silly cartoons, he was training them to reject much of geology, paleontology and evolutionary biology as a sinister tangle of lies.
"Boys and girls," Ham said. If a teacher so much as mentions evolution, or the Big Bang, or an era when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, "you put your hand up and you say, 'Excuse me, were you there?' Can you remember that?"
The children roared their assent.
"Sometimes people will answer, 'No, but you weren't there either,' " Ham told them. "Then you say, 'No, I wasn't, but I know someone who was, and I have his book about the history of the world.' " He waved his Bible in the air.
Read More...
"Who's the only one who's always been there?" Ham asked.
"God!" the boys and girls shouted.
"Who's the only one who knows everything?"
"God!"
"So who should you always trust, God or the scientists?"
The children answered with a thundering: "God!"
Wow...
Evangelist Ken Ham smiled at the 2,300 elementary students packed into pews, their faces rapt. With dinosaur puppets and silly cartoons, he was training them to reject much of geology, paleontology and evolutionary biology as a sinister tangle of lies.
"Boys and girls," Ham said. If a teacher so much as mentions evolution, or the Big Bang, or an era when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, "you put your hand up and you say, 'Excuse me, were you there?' Can you remember that?"
The children roared their assent.
"Sometimes people will answer, 'No, but you weren't there either,' " Ham told them. "Then you say, 'No, I wasn't, but I know someone who was, and I have his book about the history of the world.' " He waved his Bible in the air.
Read More...
"Who's the only one who's always been there?" Ham asked.
"God!" the boys and girls shouted.
"Who's the only one who knows everything?"
"God!"
"So who should you always trust, God or the scientists?"
The children answered with a thundering: "God!"
Wow...
no subject
Date: 2006-02-13 11:42 pm (UTC)However, if a kid asked me that question, my response would be to say, "Great question. How do we know things that happened before we had recorded history?" And then give a basic lecture on things like fossil records, radioactivity, and carbon dating. I think you could get kids to get the general idea. And definitely point out that we don't know the answer to every question, but that doesn't mean we won't figure it out someday, and maybe some of them will figure out a way if they grow up to be scientists!
I think a lot of people really don't know why scientists believe what they believe, that it actually comes from observation, and that carries some weight.
There's certainly plenty of room for Christianity that's respectful of such things.