...so his boss could help him find and fix a leak in our basement.
His wife sat upstairs with me and made conversation.
They are über Christian repubs so I muted MSNBC and started a conversation about kids and school, a topic I thought would be harmless.
I have a daughter that is doing online school this year b/c of her ADHD and so Mrs. Boss was telling me about homeschooling her kids. She was saying that when the state sent her the books she just threw them out and used the Christian based ones she bought from Florida.
Silly me had to ask what the difference was and the exchange went like this:
Mrs. Boss: well, they (the Florida books) teach intelligent design.
Me: so you didn't teach them about evolution?
Mrs. Boss: No, I taught them about the creation.
Me: But creation doesn't say HOW things were created, just by WHOM they were created.
Mrs boss: Yes it does, it said God spoke everything into being.
Me: yes, but then HOW did it happen, the bible is silent on the actual mechanism god used.
Mrs. Boss: I'm sorry, I just don't believe in evolution.
Me: what about it makes it unbelievable to you.
Mrs. Boss: well, there are no fossils that show one creature becoming another.
Me: you mean like archaeopteryx?
Mrs. Boss: What is archaeopteryx?

It was all I could do not to litteraly facepalm myself at that moment.
It went down hill from there as she tried every tearjerking anecdote in her repertoire to convince me of the magical powers of her favorite Jewish zombie.
I think I may have gone to far when, after her moving testimony about how jesus saved her dad from committing suicide, I told her that I think she should give her dad the credit for making the hard choices to turn his life around.
Her point had been that she had seen how much better Jesus made ppls lives. Then I asked her to explain why some ppls live improve after leaving jesus. She didn't have an answer.

When dh came up from the basement and found me in my Hitchensesque debate mode, he groaned and said,"I asked you not to talk about politics and you went to religion!?"
(he was half joking, and concerned for Mrs. Boss who had just unleashes the well informed atheist kraken.)

I pulled up short and appologized to her for getting carried away and told her that I sincerely hope she didn't find me too offensive.
The they left. Oh to be a fly in their car on the drive home.
I hope dh's Monday will go smoothly.

I didn't know what archaeopteryx was - I had to look it up. Maybe she will, too (if you spell it for her).

BTW, did they find/repair the leak in the basement?

Ugh. I tend to be tactful and kind in my debating... but when someone starts in full egregious mode (i.e. screw school/state rules, I'll use the bible), I tend to get pissy.

...So, I think you did exceptionally well not outright telling that woman, "Your incompetence is really justafiable given your lack of information. At least your homeschooled children will have the same excuse as inept adults because of your choice in non-standardized and under-informative literature."

I guess my frustration was that she educated all of her kids at home but had not even cracked a science book.
Maybe the average person doesn't know what archaeopteryx is or about transitional fossils, but a woman who homeschooled 5 kids is not the average person.
She literally had not taken her kids to a single museum, and believes that the world is 6000 years old.

Hopefully she will look it up, but I doubt it.
Her kids will get a shock when/if they go to colledge.

Yes, they found the leak. Thanx for asking!:-)

The average person may not know a SPECIFIC transitional fossil, but I think the average person knows about fossils & knows that several are VERY similar to each other.

Maybe I'm over-estimating average... but I don't think so.

This is why I have a hard time not viewing all homeschooling as crap.

My own experience with anti-science home school textbooks can only have harmed my mental development as much as the fact that my parents didn't actually teach.

Wow, hadn't realized how angry I am about that...

Your husband's boss and his wife?
Yikes.

It would be cheaper to hire someone to help your husband.

Maybe this is an extreme reaction, but that's child abuse/neglect to me. To deny your children a decent education in the name of religion is horrible.

She better hope that the state doesn't pry into her "teaching."

Ironically, in one of the places they were stationed a neighbor had called DHS on them b/c there was no home school provision in that state. They were ordered by the CO to send their kids to school for the remaining 6mo they were stationed there.
Then they moved and went right back to home schooling.

This exchange, "Me: you mean like archaeopteryx?
Mrs. Boss: What is archaeopteryx?"

Made me choke on my peanut brittle from laughing. My kids are homeschooled and we talk at length about archaeopteryx and other such in between species. We have a pet bird and discuss the features he has in common with therapods (like t rex). My hubby and I talk about how chickens are sort of like little dinosaurs running around, every time we see them. My son finds it fascinating. There is a cool documentary on how whales evolved from hyena-like land mammals, fossil record is very clear on it.

Teaching them about archaeology and paleontology helps me sleep better at night, I think they are much less at risk for cult indoctrination (be it Mormon or otherwise.) Secular homeschooling is great, religious homeschooling is a slippery slope in my opinion.

Anyways, how naughty of you to harass Boss'Wife! Atheist Kraken would make a great screen name :P

Lol, thanx Southern.
I feel like I've outgrown 'Gullible's Travels' so maybe I will go with 'Atheist Kraken'.

Did u see the show where they were 'making' a dinosaur by turning the teeth and tail genes on in chickens?

R. Dawkins book, 'The Greatest Show on Earth' and the YouTube videos of him teaching, from the 80's I think, are some of the best resources to help kids and adults wrap their heads around the wonder that is evolution by natural selection.

Embryonics is the easiest evidence of evolution IMHO.

If god created us perfectly, then how come our embryos develop things, and then discard them before they were of ANY use?

I mean our skeletons are similar to apes, and even quadrupeds... but "intelligent design" rationalizes that away with "it's just a good design for all things, not just us. Why not reuse good design?"

But our embrios literally have tails & gills, and then they just get grown over, and certain parts of our embryo literally just die & wither because we don't need them (easiest example is the formation of fingers and toes in embryo form)

That's why embryonics comes straight from the Pit of Hell!

I know it's apocryphal but I love the J.B.S. quote

Woman Skeptic: Professor Haldane, even given the billions of years that you say were available for evolution, I simply cannot believe it is possible to go from a single cell to a complicated human body with its trillions of cells organized into bones and muscle and nerves, a heart that pumps without ceasing for decades, miles and miles of blood vessels and kidney tubules, and a brain capable of thinking and feeling.

Haldane: But Madam, you did it yourself! And it only took nine months.

------

That always makes me laugh. Besides we all know that mutations in human development NEVER, EVER happen. Now if you'll excuse me my daughter with Down syndrome needs some help fixing lunch.

What's even funnier is that evolutionists now kind of cringe when archaeopteryx is brought up as an "intermediate." Not because it isn't a good example but because we (as in the global community) now have so many intermediate fossils that when new ones are discovered scientists will literally argue if it should be thought of as a "mammal-like reptile" or "reptile-like mammal". In other words there really is no such thing as an intermediate anymore, just a long chain of fossils that show evolution happening over time, showing animals changing little by little. That's literally how many we have.

So a reptile never gave birth to a mammal, each offspring looked pretty much like it's parents but over time little by little evolution changes them until a few thousand years later an animal looked nothing like it's predecessor but but if you looked back over the course of that line you wouldn't see many "big" changes. And we literally have the fossil record to back that up.

I'm not trying to point out that you were wrong to use archaeopteryx, you were absolutely right. I just think it's even more funny, given what she asked, in the light of where science is today. The fossil record showing evolution across species has hundreds of thousands of examples now. And more are found each day. It's sad people like her don't keep up with science. When creationists say "where are the intermediates" the answer is increasingly, "well, we have so many they are filling museums the world over, we honestly don't have room to show them all off anymore".

I absolutely agree.
It's just a good place to start.
We have a laminated evolution chart in my office. At one point in the conversation I got it and unrolled it on the coffee table.
She looked at it like it was a snake about to bite her, but she did quit trying to argue that there was no evidence for evolution.

I finally asked her what evidence she would need to see to prove evolution and she said there was no evidence that would convince her.

Oh, and she also didn't believe dogs came from wolves. She literally thought chihuahuas were in Eden.

Does she believe that labradoodles were there too? And Munchkin cats?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/28/2012 02:35PM by Itzpapalotl.

But....but...but.... *head explodes*

Obviously this woman has never watched Animal Planet lol. Just five minutes of Dogs 101 and her creationist theory would be shot :P (although I myself have a hard time believing my fat chiweenie could in any way be descended from the noble wolf!)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/28/2012 02:36PM by biblebeltbetsy.

What!?!?!???

I have never heard of ANYONE claiming that BREEDS were also god-created things. Ugh. This woman is impossible.

We don't even have to derive breeds from any sort of scientific deduction- because it was so recent & the people that MADE the breeds were so proud of them.

Wow. I'm sorry you had to have a discussion with this woman.

I think people like that will only believe it when someone sits and watches evolution for a few million years.

In other words, never.

edit: moving to end of thread, not sure how this got here!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/28/2012 03:24PM by hexalm.

Ugh, I've seen those "florida books" (if they are the same ones). The ones that are put out by an arm of Pensacola Christian College/Abeeka books (or akeeba?). They are mind meltingly idiotic. Well, you can just imagine what would come out of the Pensacola Christian College think tank! They are also the books the Duggars used to use and endorse before ATI (bill gothard's institute) came out with their own.

Chihuahuas in the garden of eden. That might be the funniest thing I've heard all week.

This is something I've never understood. The ability to stand by a belief, i.e. creationism when the evidence isn't just obvious or in a museum but right smack dab in front of your face. I've been wrong many times before, held beliefs that turned out to be wrong and made me look silly and I just said, well I was wrong. Lets look at this evidence and learn the truth now.

I mean there are several, SEVERAL, dog breeds that have only been developed in the last few decades. In her lifetime! How on earth would she explain that?

LOL, it's only mutations, not evolution!

She probably also gets a flu shot every year and doesn't realize that the reason she needs a new one each year isn't because the previous one wore off but because each year the virus has mutated. But of course that's not "evolution" to her.

It's sad to me that people don't realize how much of our modern medicine is based on the germ theory of disease and the theory of evolution. And yet they benefit from it.

Maybe we should say to people: Oh you don't believe in evolution? Well then I'm sorry we can't treat you. Here's a tincture of mercury, have a nice day.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/28/2012 02:52PM by shadowspade.

Hey germ theory is ONLY a theory.
Please keep your opinons on "germs" "gravity" & "evolution" to yourself kindly.
</sarcasm>

Yes, I'm so sorry. I will try to remember that and be more respectful next time.
</I love sarcasm, thanks for the laugh>

Not to mention a million other things.

It's funny though, like the whole micro vs macro evolution, as if there's some kind of limit to the result you get after enough mutations happen that prevents speciation.

I need to come up with a better term than "believe" in evolution. Evolution isn't something we believe or don't believe in. No one "believes" in gravity.

Understand maybe?

Support?

What word am I looking for?

Oh and in case we needed further proof of the stupidity of humans there is this (granted this is from Wikipedia so take it for what it's worth): According to surveys conducted in 1999 and again in 2006 about 1 in 5 Americans believes the Sun revolves around the Earth. ONE IN FIVE!

I used to describe humans as just a bunch of really smart apes walking around looking around. Maybe I should drop the "really smart" from that description.

She had recently had knee surgery (I know, the irony kills me too)and I tried to explain to her how evolutionary biology is what was used to create the antibiotics she was given during surgery. I explained what antibiotic resistance was and everything...
I've had debates with creationists before, but they at least could concede that micro evolution was a fact, so this was a new one for me.
To the poster whos head exploded; I feel u. We've been picking my scull fragments and grey matter out of the couch cushions for a couple of days now.

ALL species are transitional species !

WTF is wrong with these morons !!!

You are exactly right Dave. I should have said something like that. I was trying to get there but you said it much more succinctly and more accurately.

IMO, home-schooled kids miss out on normal socialization. This is almost as important to a future career as is general knowledge. No, they probably will never qualify for college. They will think any kind of degree is just a piece of paper. But, they probably won't get along well enough with their co-workers to hold down a job that requires team effort, or a cooperative personality, such as most blue-collar jobs.

As for arguing/debating with people you don't know well. Selfishly, it is more interesting to me to approach conversations with curiosity. I already know my own opinions. I want to hear something new. I would have asked that person more about home schooling, to see it she could have changed my mind on the subject. Instead of being upset at her ignorance, you might have learned something new, yourself. Everybody would have been happier. There's always the option of changing the subject....

I think belief still applies to evolution.

Most of us who believe that evolution is fact/believe the results of the science don't really understand it very much. Even scientists studying it can only know a small slice of the pie in depth.

I have a degree in physics and understand gravity somewhat (what we know of it).

But there is an element of belief to that--while gravity can be considered an easily observable phenomenon, the current theory of gravity doesn't follow obviously from the fact that things fall to the ground. Consider how long it took from our hominid ancestors in the Savannah until Einstein formulated special relativity, but those early hominids surely knew that things fell down (as did their arboreal predecessors, and hell, probably most dinosaurs).

It's harder to deny than a process that takes eons to result in the everyday variety we see (above microscale), but you could easily state that it's not what scientists say, it's just God's love holding the universe together or some such excuse.

It's just not belief comparable to believing in things you can't observe evidence of.