This is like watching “Son of the Bride of Frankenstein Returns Again.” We last wrote about this guy more than a year ago, in Georgia Creationism: It’s Bob Staples Again. He was a familiar name even then. We said:
Last year we wrote Creationist Rumblings in Georgia. That was about good ol’ Bob Staples, a member of the Villa Rica Church of Christ, who went to a meeting of the Carroll County Board of Education and asked the Board to start teaching creationism because, in his words: “Evolution is a theory in crisis and harmful to our progress.”
In today’s news we learn — would you believe it? — the same thing that happened last year has happened again! Same guy, same school board, same issue.
Well, dear reader, good ol’ Bob Staples is in the news again. We found this at the website of WSB-TV in Atlanta, Georgia. Their headline is Church wants evolution theory out of science classes. Here are some excerpts, with bold font added by us:
A Carroll County church wants Georgia schools to stop teaching evolution as fact.
Educators across the country are now developing what’s called the “next generation of science standards.” A member of the Villa Rica Church of Christ told Channel 2’s Diana Davis evolution should not be a part of those standards.
They’ve got a picture of ol’ Bob at that website. He’s just what you’d expect. Let’s read on:
“It’s bad science, and it’s bad for the culture,” according to Villa Rica’s Church of Christ’s Bob Staples. Staples and his church are fighting for schools to include another view.
And, uh, what would that other view be? The story continues:
“What message are we sending to our children when they come away saying, ‘I’m an ape with less hair?'” asks the church pastor, Patrick Gray.
Now there’s a preacher with a firm grip on the subject. Here’s more:
Staples, who is a college math teacher, serves on a state committee that is working to develop science standards for education. More than 20 other states are part of the same group. In a letter to the state board science committee Staples said, “Presenting evolution as fact should be a concern to all Georgians. That evolution is not a fact of science and shouldn’t be taught.”
Committee meetings must be quite an experience. Moving along:
“To teach it as a fact is lying to people,” Staples told Davis. Staples told Davis he believes in the literal meaning of the Bible: That god created heaven and Earth.
Somehow, we thought that might be what Bob had in mind. Another excerpt:
He said people of faith can’t have it both ways. “You cannot read Genesis 1 and 2 and also agree with evolution. They are contrary to each other. They are contradictory,” Staples said.
Come to think of it, the man has a point. On with the article:
In his letter to the state science committee, he claims the teaching of evolution since the 1960s has contributed to what he sees as a decline in American morals. “The crime rate, child abuse, divorce. All of these things rose from a period following the implementation of teaching Darwinian Theory,” Staples said.
But something else happened in the 1960s. It was in 1961 that John Whitcomb and Henry Morris wrote The Genesis Flood, which was the start of “modern” young-earth creationism. Hey, Bob: Maybe that was the cause of society’s problems? The timing is suspicious!
Anyway, now we come to the end:
The public has until Friday to comment on the new science standards. They’re due to be finalized by the beginning of next year.
We certainly hope they get things straightened out. But with good ol’ Bob Staples on the job, there’s nothing to worry about.
Copyright © 2012. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
Bet he never considers why flesh eating bacteria was created by
his god. A student at the school he teaches is infected with it.
Or which human passenger on the Ark had gonorrhea.
His students aren’t giving him rave reviews, either.
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1353238&all=true
His students aren’t giving him rave reviews, either.
Poor fella. No chili pepper.
I wonder if he teaches that Pi = 3.0?
Ed: “I wonder if he teaches that Pi = 3.0?”
Probably not, and that’s not a compliment. Whether these people have Morton’s Demon or are in on the scam, they are always curiously selective in their apparent incredulity. They always know just what to leave out, whether deliberate or just parroted from some guru. Notice that he said absolutely nothing about which of the mutually contradictory interpretations of Genesis is the “fact.” Dollars to donuts if anyone confronts him on that, or on why he’s so obsessed about “Darwinism” instead of the “better” explanation, he’d backpedal and say they both require “faith.”
It’s unusually forthright in one of his ilk, to acknowledge that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are contradictory and contrary to each other.
His students aren’t giving him rave reviews, either.
I wouldn’t put much stock in that. If you are funny and have low expectations you’ll get good reviews, if you expect students to learn anything you get complaints.
In my time at WSU I learned who the good and the bad teachers were, but all of them got bad reviews from students in the introductory classes, who were all convinced they had the worst physics teacher ever.
The people I work with now are almost all fantastic teachers. It’s not a research university, so teaching is what they primarily do, and they are very good at it, better teachers than I ever had*. Yet they get the same reviews–the ones who are funny and have low expectations get good evaluations and the ones who expect the students to work get bad ones.
It makes me angry that the students don’t appreciate what they have. If they were better students and went to a more prestigious school, the teaching would not have been as good.
*I’m not knocking the people who taught me physics, whom I respect and admire, but they were physicists first, and those who were good at teaching had not made it the focus of their careers.
Gabriel Hanna says:
Are you quote-mining a creationist? No, not really. I guess you’re just taking him literally. That’s fair play.
Gabriel Hanna: “It’s unusually forthright in one of his ilk, to acknowledge that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are contradictory and contrary to each other.”
Does he say which one the independent evidence validates?
How on Earth did Staples, a math professor, get appointed to his state’s Next Generation Science Standards review committee? *Somebody* had to appoint him. Might be worth figuring out who did so.
A math professor’s input into science standards I’m sure would be valuable. Not THIS particular math professor, as it happens, given he’s a creationist.
But I often find with my friends in math that we’re often divided by a common language.