“Many miles away Something crawls to the surface Of a dark Scottish loch” -Sting

This is almost painful to read. The Scotland Herald has a story on the arrival of school children from the great state of Louisiana who are being taught that the actual existence of the Loch Ness Monster is proof that evolution has never happened. Rachel Loxton reports:

Thousands of children in the southern state will receive publicly-funded vouchers for the next school year to attend private schools where Scotland's most famous mythological beast will be taught as a real living creature.

These private schools follow a fundamentalist curriculum including the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) programme to teach controversial religious beliefs aimed at disproving evolution and proving creationism.

and a bit later:

One ACE textbook – Biology 1099, Accelerated Christian Education Inc – reads: "Are dinosaurs alive today? Scientists are becoming more convinced of their existence. Have you heard of the 'Loch Ness Monster' in Scotland? 'Nessie' for short has been recorded on sonar from a small submarine, described by eyewitnesses, and photographed by others. Nessie appears to be a plesiosaur."

The bit about the private schools getting vouchers is true. That is here. Salon.com did a piece on the ACE textbooks. They fill in the remainder of the above quote:

“Could a fish have developed into a dinosaur? As astonishing as it may seem, many evolutionists theorize that fish evolved into amphibians and amphibians into reptiles. This gradual change from fish to reptiles has no scientific basis. No transitional fossils have been or ever will be discovered because God created each type of fish, amphibian, and reptile as separate, unique animals. Any similarities that exist among them are due to the fact that one Master Craftsmen fashioned them all.”

I have written on the apologia textbooks before but these books seem to be every bit as bad. It is nothing short of astounding that the authors of the ACE textbooks, in their zeal to disprove evolution, have settled upon an animal for which No Credible Evidence Exists. It is not just bad science, it is cryptozoology of the worst sort. What is next? Evolution can't be true because of if it were, how would it produce the regular octopus and the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus? Humans could not have evolved from lower ape forms because Bigfoot still roams the earth?

The second quote is just standard young earth creationist nonsense, continually perpetrated by Answers in Genesis and the like and has been rebutted so many times that the arguments can now reasonably be classified as lies.

Karl Giberson once said:

“Ken Ham and his Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY are becoming less relevant, as they speak for - and to - an increasingly smaller band of hyper-conservative biblical literalists. Ham's followers, ironically, are what (we've been warned about): a cult, with their own separate science.”

I have resisted calling young earth creationism a cult. Stories like this one make it increasingly difficult to do so.

Jeff Meldrum on Taking Sasquatch Seriously

Jeff Meldrum, associate professor of Biological Sciences at Idaho State University is presenting a talk in Montpelier, Idaho on June 2 called “Sasquatch on the Oregon Trail.” He writes:

Ancient tribal artists of the Intermountain West were not overt in their depiction of these creatures, but cryptic petroglyphs from the red sandstone cliffs of Wyoming to the basalt columns of the Snake River Plain depict footprints and caricatures of the wildman of the woods. Modern tribal artists, such as Willie Preacher of Fort Hall, depict traditional stories with oil and canvas.

Once the pioneers arrived in Oregon’s verdant Willamette Valley flanked by the Cascade and Coastal ranges, or the mountain-surrounded gold fields of northern California, they would hear more stories of mountain devils and giant hairy man-like monsters. It would be a century later before footprint casts and films and photos would introduce the world to the Pacific Northwest’s wildman of the woods – Bigfoot or sasquatch; yet an additional half century before science would begin to consider the evidence seriously.

Ah, the power of the local story...it doesn't matter that there is not and has never been a shred of physical evidence of these creatures anywhere on the planet in recent memory. If these creatures were shot at by Lewis and Clark and chased by the Shoshone Indians, we would have remains. We do not. If they had any time depth to the region, we would have remains. We do not. Remember the big rubber suit from last year?

These are nothing but stories that have migrated east from fossil sightings of Gigantopithecus in China and Vietnam. There hasn't been anything around like this for five hundred thousand years.

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