THEY have lots of creationism on the underside of the flat earth, especially in the Australian state of Queensland. Our last post on the situation down there was Australian Creationism: Queensland To Teach ID? in which we reported a story that said:
In Queensland schools, creationism will be offered for discussion in the subject of ancient history, under the topic of “controversies”.
Well, it’s happening. At the website NEWScom.au located in Sydney, the largest city in Australia, we read Creationists hijack lessons and teach schoolkids man and dinosaurs walked together. Here are some excerpts, with bold added by us:
PRIMARY school students are being taught that man and dinosaurs walked the Earth together and that there is fossil evidence to prove it.
Fundamentalist Christians are hijacking Religious Instruction (RI) classes in Queensland despite education experts saying Creationism and attempts to convert children to Christianity have no place in state schools.
Students have been told Noah collected dinosaur eggs to bring on the Ark, and Adam and Eve were not eaten by dinosaurs because they were under a protective spell.
Protective spell. That’s good! Let’s read on:
Critics are calling for the RI program to be scrapped after claims emerged Christian lay people are feeding children misinformation. About 80 per cent of children at state primary schools attend one half-hour instruction a week, open to any interested lay person to conduct. Many of the instructors are from Pentecostal churches.
That’s great! About 80% of the kids are getting this instruction. We continue:
In many cases, the RI lay people were not supervised by teachers.
[…]
Set Free Christian Church’s Tim McKenzie said when students questioned him why dinosaur fossils carbon dated as earlier than man, he replied that the great flood must have skewed the data.
They’re carbon-dating dinosaur fossils? Who knew Australia was so advanced? And water will mess such things up? Sure — in Australia. Here’s more:
Buddhist Council of Queensland president Jim Ferguson said he was so disturbed that Creationism was being aired in state school classrooms that he would bring it up at the next meeting of the Religious Education Advisory Committee, part of Education Queensland. He said RI was supposed to be a forum for multi-faith discussion.
Maybe the Buddhists will clean up this mess. Moving along:
PhD researcher Cathy Byrne found in a NSW-based survey that scripture teachers tended to discourage questioning, emphasised submission to authority and excluded different beliefs. She said 70 per cent of scripture teachers thought children should be taught the Bible as historical fact.
What’s wrong with that? Another excerpt:
A parent of a Year 5 student on the Sunshine Coast said his daughter was ostracised to the library after arguing with her scripture teacher about DNA. “The scripture teacher told the class that all people were descended from Adam and Eve,” he said.
What did his daughter do?
“My daughter rightly pointed out, as I had been teaching her about DNA and science, that ‘wouldn’t they all be inbred’?
“But the teacher replied that DNA wasn’t invented then.”
Wow! They’ve got all the answers. Here’s the end of the article. It tells what happened to the girl:
After the parent complained, the girl spent the rest of the year’s classes in the library.
She was lucky they didn’t burn her as a witch. Anyway, that’s the news from down under. Think of it as a precursor to the way things are going to be in Louisiana. And Texas. And then everywhere!
Copyright © 2010. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
“But the teacher replied that DNA wasn’t invented then.”
Damn glad I wasn’t taking a sip of coffee when I read this!
Over my dead body.
Argh… I was hoping you’d miss this one Curmy, I didn’t want you to get the impression that all we Queenslanders are bat sh*% crazy.
I do feel the need to come to the defence of my state.
This is Religious Education, the crazies don’t get to have a go at the kiddies during science class or anything else.
Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t something to be happy about. I remember a couple of my religious education classes when was just a wee tacker and the (Anglican, Episcipalian to you chaps) priest told us all, that he didn’t believe the Earth was made in 6 days or any of that rot. That sort of made it impossible for me to believe in creationism from that point on!!
Richard says:
That is good to emphasize. Yes, it’s definitely a factor on the “plus” side (the only positive thing that can be said about this situation). And as long as they’re focused on RE (or RI in Queensland), maybe they’ll stay out of science class.
DNA was not invented then. Huh? So this “teacher” thinks who invented DNA? Noah? Moses? Jesus? Does she not know the difference between invented and discovered? Hey, I wonder what our DI or AIG guys are going to say about that. That Adam and Eve did not possess DNA but their descendants did? I cannot wait.