“Ken Smith” wrote in message . <> The formation of the Creation Science Foundation goes back to around 1977 if my memory is correct. It was certainly well under way by the beginning of 1981. In my first lecture to students in MA100, Introduction to Applied Mathematics, that year I mentioned that we would be using Newton’s mechanics, even though we now know that Einstein was more accurate. In passing I mentioned that relativity was based on the constancy of the speed of light for which there was ample scientific evidence. Immediately following the lecture I was tackled by two students (both male) who wanted to know whether I was aware that it had been shown that the speed of light was not a constant. I looked at them in some perplexity, since derivation of the wave equation for electromagnetis waves was part of another course I was giving. They referred me to the recent issue of “Ex Nihilo” in which Barry Setterfield claimed to show that the speed of light had changed.

I got hold of a copy, knew immediately that Setterfield was up the creek, and invited the students to check for themselves just what the references Setterfield cited actually contained. They were both very shaken to discover misquotations. And when I pointed to Setterfield’s words about points lying exactly on the curve, besida a diagram where the points clearly did *not* lie on the curve, their ideas about the integrity of whoever passed the article for publication received another shock.

But that’s all part of “par for the course” when you investigate creationist writings. <> Salaam Ken Smith

(Tangential to this thread… hey, no it isn’t. This is what happens when literalism is taken to absurd extremes 🙂

This story brings to my memory of a Mormon student who bailed me up after a talk I gave in the 1970s in a Brisbane Teachers’ College.

She: ‘Didn’t you know God was male, and we’ve measured his size?’

I: ‘Interesting. How’d they do that?’

She: ‘Well the Bible says God walks on the mountains. So we asked “What mountains?” Answer: the mountains of Judea. So with the help of some trigonometry we figured out how big God would have to be to walk across the parallel ranges of the Judean mountains.’

I: ‘Interesting. So God is male, and so big. When you draw God do you put wings on him?’

She: ‘No, of course not. I said God is a giant male.’

I: ‘But your Bible says he hides us under his wings!’

She experienced a severe attack of cognitive dissonance; her face fell; she went white. I have hopes she might have been cured of her literalistic nonsense at that point.

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Shalom!

Rowland Croucher