cryptozoology, creationism’s new friend

Unable to come up with any proof that today’s models of evolutionary biology are wrong in the natural world, it seems that American fundamentalists who publish textbooks for private Christian schools in the UK turned to fanciful tales of cryptozoology, specifically the Loch Ness monster.

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. Could a fish have developed into a dinosaur?

Unless I missed the discovery of the century, we don’t actually have any solid proof that the Loch Ness monster really exists. Eyewitness accounts and fuzzy photographs of strange waves don’t mean much unless they’re accompanied by a carcass or a live specimen that could be studied by experts. The idea that a fish became a dinosaur in a Scottish lake is not backed up by any physical evidence and goes against existing data, which means that unless creationists come up with Nessie and fossil evidence of its lineage, this is just wishful thinking. Of course the books don’t stop with imaginary creatures trying to debunk evolution. Immediately afterwards, they throw out this glowing gem of ignorance.

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 [...]

Besides the weasel words and the “evolutionist” slur of fundamentalist circles, we have a claim that’s an outright lie. We have transitional fossils. Thousands of them. The evolution of some fish into amphibians and some amphibians into reptiles is well documented. They’re literally telling students that the sky is orange rather than blue. Under normal circumstances, someone telling you that there are no such things as houses would be dismissed as a crank. But when he holds up a Bible, we suddenly bend over backwards to not only let him live in his fantasy world, we’re supposed to allow him to preach these obvious inanities to children. And that’s exactly what the UK is doing.

The National Recognition Information Centre (Naric) in Cheltenham, which advises universities and employers on the rigour of lesser-known qualifications, has ruled that the International Certificate of Christian Education (ICCE) is comparable to courses such as international A-levels, the Times Education Supplement has found.

Oh terrific! Now you can literally write “God did it” on the exam, get an A and formally claim that you’re not sacrificing knowledge for the sake of advancing ancient traditions written by people we don’t know in the days when the universe was thought to end a few thousand miles above the Earth. This is a case when religious beliefs are being used to retard public education and they’re being given a free pass to do it. And after another decade of allowing teachers and professors to indoctrinate their students with this tripe, people are going to wonder why half of the public is scientifically illiterate.