(Tier 1) Adventures in Christianist Earth Science Education XXXVIII: Wherein We Are Deluged with Nonsense

Having made a complete hash of telling us the old-earth geologist’s story, the Earth Science Fourth Edition authors now proceed to tell us what the young-earth story is. It’s a very good thing I’m not in a classroom reading this book right now, because I’d be falling out of my chair laughing. Watching adults somberly relate the details of an ancient myth as Totally Tru Science Facts™ is too hilarious.

I mean, they even have this timeline of these old Bible men. They have actually printed this thing in all seriousness in a science textbook. I am dying.

Timeline has an X and Y axis. From the bottom left to the bottom right, Years After Creation are marked in increments of 200 starting from 0. The ages and dates of Noah's ancestors start from the top left, with black bars marking their lifespans. They are: Adam - 930 years. Seth - 912 years. Enos - 905 years. Mahalaleel - 895 years. Jared - 962 years. Enoch - 365 years. Methuselah - 969 years. Lamech - 777 years. Noah - 950 years.
Timeline from page 106

They talk about how “The Bible documents” God creating the earth and then it was so good, but then humans sinned, and God got so mad that he fucked everyone and everything’s shit up, including animals and “also the physical earth.” Then all the good times were gone, and it was “a struggle to simply survive in a world of weeds, thorns, and probably increasingly dangerous animals.”

I had to stop right there and collect myself, because all I could think of was the formerly-vegertarian T-Rex suddenly discovering the joys of raw meat.

Image shows an Edmontosaurus standing over a feathered Albertosaurus. The Albertosaurus is on its back, and the Edmontosaurus is biting its tail. They're against a black background. Caption says "When good dinosaurs go bad..." in red lava letters.
Original art by Durbed (CC BY-SA 3.0). Modified and caption added by moi.

(Okay, no, that’s not a T-Rex. It’s an Edmontosaurus taking down an Albertosaurus. But I don’t care because it is awesome. And yes, you’re free to use it for your own nefarious purposes as long as you credit me and Durbed.)

Despite sudden carnivores, humans did that whole be-fruitful-and-multiply thing, the authors tell us. But “the increasing violence in the world” caused God to be all Fuck it! I’m destroying everything!! Okay, no, my poor dear creationists. I can’t let you censor your own story like this. God was upset because his sons liked to boink human women. That’s where it started. Then he thought humans were all wicked and only thinking about evil all the time. He doesn’t mention violence at all. I’m pretty sure he wiped out most all of humanity, plus all but two of every species of animal on earth, because he wasn’t happy about their bedroom antics.

But whatever. Okay. So there’s this huge Flood that God uses to accomplish his genocide. The ES4 writers say that “All of recorded history not found in the Bible begins after the Flood.” I know of some Egyptian records that would beg to differ there.

They give a bulleted list of things happening in the Flood myth. It goes something like this: Noah’s 480 years old when God tells him he’s gonna end the world. Noah apparently waits twenty years to see what’s up, but then is all “Sod it” and starts siring sons. Eventually he and maybe his boys, possibly even some hired help, build the Ark. (I dunno, maybe Noah & Co. took 120 years to build the thing because he’s trying to give God time to cool off, but no luck. God’s still determined to destroy the world.) God orders them to get aboard. They get a week to load the ship, then God shuts them in and starts the Flood with rain and breaking the earth’s crust. For 40 days, it rains. The authors tell us that creationists figure “the bottom of the Ark was about 15 cubits deep,” so of course the Flood had to cover all the mountain summits by at least 15 cubits so it could float above them. That’s just science.

Then God made a mighty wind. The authors slyly slip in a bit of land rising and ocean basins falling, which isn’t actually in the Bible. They claim Mount Ararat is rising, but again, that’s not in the Bible. All of this shit they’re claiming happened to the shape of the earth isn’t in the myth they’re treating as an historical document. You’d think God would’ve thought to mention all of this tectonic activity somewhere in the account. Gosh. It’s like this is just a story told by people imagining how floods usually happen and making their mythic flood worldwide in scope without realizing the waters would have had nowhere to go.

Anyway. The ES4 writers faithfully recount Noah sending out birds and stuff. They even have a timeline of the whole thing.

Image is a simple timeline. There is an outlined bar in the middle showing a strip of numbers that represent Days in the Ark. Beneath it is a line of numbers and vertical lines representing Year and Month of Noah's Life. It starts at 600. At Day 0, Noah moves aboard Ark. Flooding starts shortly after. Flooding stops between 30 and 60 Days in the Ark, when Noah is 600 years, three months and a few weeks old. The Ark goes aground just after Day 150. Tops of mountains seen between 210 and 240 days. Noah sends out raven at 270 days, 1st dove a few days later, second dove; olive leaf between 270 and 300, 3rd dove shortly after. Noah opens Ark's roof at 601 years old, between 300 and 330 days. All leave Ark between days 360 and 390.
Timeline from page 108

Precious.

And finally, Noah et al get to leave the Ark. This is the first we hear of volcanoes (which aren’t actually mentioned in the Genesis story): “The skies were probably filled with clouds and dusty haze from innumerable volcanoes around the world.” Then they claim there were no trees.

Fuckers, you just got done telling us a dove brought Noah an olive leaf. That’s from a tree. Don’t give me this no-trees shit.

They talk about Noah et al looking down into a valley with a raging river full of sediment. Quote me chapter and verse, assholes. I guarantee you can’t do it.

Then they gently avoid at all mentioning that God had Noah et al burn a bunch of their rescue animals to death while he got high off the smoke and promised he wouldn’t murder all the living things again. Well, not all at once, anyway. Definitely not in a worldwide Flood. Here, have a rainbow to as a reminder.Because wouldn’t it suck if God forgot his promise? And isn’t it lovely to be regularly reminded of the world’s worst genocide?

They do enjoy stating that God reminded them of the Creation Mandate. It takes a lot of incest to repopulate the earth after God’s murdered nearly every single living being, you know.

An info box off to the side gives us a truly laughable speculation about what the Flood did to the earth’s rotation:

The Bible shows in the Flood story that the yearly calendar before the Flood was measured in twelve months of thirty days each. This could mean that Noah’s culture followed what we call today a lunar calendar, which added extra days every few years to match the seasons. But it is possible that the earth could have actually rotated slower prior to the Flood, giving a year of 360 days. Today’s longer solar calendar (365 days in the same amount of time) could have resulted from the massive geologic changes following the Flood causing the earth’s spin to increase.

Dude, no. Earth’s rotation was faster in the past. It’s slowing due to tidal interaction with the moon.

And then we are finished with the basic outline of the Flood events. Next, things are going to get pretty icy as creationists try to explain away the Ice Ages – with no biblical evidence to support them.

Not seeing any earth science here? That’s because there isn’t any. Yet they claim this is a textbook.

Image is split: top half shows a kitten with its mouth open, looking like it's laughing. Bottom shows the same kitten with its mouth closed. Caption reads, "Haha... No."

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(Tier 1) Adventures in Christianist Earth Science Education XXXVIII: Wherein We Are Deluged with Nonsense
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