Article 27923 of talk.origins:
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: tlode@isis.cs.du.edu (trygve lode)
Subject: Cretinism
Message-ID: <1992Jun25.054317.17314@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu>
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Date: Thu, 25 Jun 92 05:43:17 GMT
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Ooops, I meant to say, "creationism."
 
I originally posted the following message back in March of 1991 and it's
probably at least tacky to repeat oneself like this on the net, but
then, that hasn't dissuaded anyone else on talk.origins. (Plus a lot of
the same things are being said by new faces, so maybe this isn't quite
so bad a faux pas.)  Anyway, where was I?  Oh, yeah....
 
                              * * *
 
I've only been reading this newsgroup for a week, but that's been time
to explore the depths of the creationism/evolutionism argument and
realize that there is truth to one of the main points of creationism's
defenders:  that the two are, in all honesty, theories and neither can
be proven with absolute certainty.
 
So I think it's unconscionable that a minority of scientists and others
familliar with the evidence should be forcing their opinions down the
throats of the rest of us and teaching them exclusively in the schools.
Their opinions are, after all, just opinions, just like the opinions of
those who base theirs on faith.
 
Indeed, it's an intellectual crime to be failing to give all origin
theories equal time in the schools.  I've noticed, at least for the past
several hundred years or so, the Norse Creation Theory (NCT) has been
all but ignored by the bastions of higher education.  Now, I'll be the
first to admit that, yes, this is also a theory and no more subject to
absolute proof than either evolution or Christian creation myths, so I
don't think that it should be taught exclusively in the schools;
instead, equal time should be given to Norse, Christian, and scientific
theories and the students should be allowed to decide their own
conscience.
 
For those of you not familliar with this venerable theory of creation,
it states that the world as we see it is made up of the fragments of the
dead giant Ymir--his blood forms the oceans, his shattered bones the
mountains and rocks, his skullcap the sky above, and levitating
fragments of his brain tissue form the clouds.
 
The evidence for this theory is quite compelling--just for one example,
the salinity of seawater is, well, no more than an order of magnitude
different than that of human blood and lots of the trace elements found
in seawater are also to be found in human blood.  Of course, if human
blood is deficient in an important component of seawater--like, for
example, squid--it should be noted that Ymir was a supernatural being
(and a pretty big one, to boot) so he could probably have anything in
his blood that he liked.
 
The Christian creation myth's greatest strength is that, instead of
relying on mere observed facts and the correlation of current phenomena
with physical evidence of past events, all interpreted by fallible human
beings, it has the full force of the word of God behind it.  From a
theological standpoint, NCT is even more robust, being the word of not
one God, but literally dozens of them--and not mamby-pamby Gods who
couldn't make up their minds about how many legs a grasshopper has or
had trouble figuring out pi to more than one significant figure, but
tough, non-nonsense Gods with no qualms about beaning frost giants with
a hammer or drinking the ocean on a dare.
 
Some nonbelievers might try to foist upon you some "evidence" against
this theory--for example, the space program, which many claim would have
been severely hampered by the presence of a thick skull-like layer of
bone surrouning the earth.  Of course, this so-called "evidence" is just
manufactured by a global conspiracy dedicated to suppressing the truth
to support their non-skull view of the sky.
 
To be truly fair, it would be essential that meteorologists be given
equal training in the clouds-are-water-droplets theory and the
clouds-are-bits-of-brain-stuff theory which, I think, will probably not
have much affect on weather forecasting anyway.  Geologists ought to be
spending equal time studying plate tectonics and the physics of gigantic
bones, and astronomers ought to divide their time equally between
looking at the so-called "stars" and trying to figure out what Ymir's
brain must have looked like originally from the configuration of what's
left of his skull.
 
I was going to say something about the unfairness of teaching physicians
exclusively the germ theory of disease (note:  just a theory) and
completely ignoring the substantial body of research associated with the
theory that disease is caused by an imbalance of bodilly humours (best
treated by bleeding) or by witchcraft (best treated by burning the
neighbors), but I've got to run now and once again test the questionable
internal combustion theory of car operation, so that'll have to wait for
another time.
 
                                        Trygve Lode
                                        (tlode@nyx.cs.du.edu)