WORD ‘N’ PICTURES: Electricity is Still a Mystery?!

A quick follow-up to Kurt Busiek’s awesome Tweet yesterday, from a 1990 faith-based “science” textbook.

Here, I’ll show it again:

Now, putting on our Comics Helmets, which help explain the juxtaposition between the words and picture, what can we infer from this page?

There is no attempt at explaining what we know about electricity. It just says that we can’t see it, and therefore it’s mysterious. And, oh look, a convenient Bible quote: could this be a subtle suggestion that God makes electricity? WHY YES I THINK IT IS!

So Busiek later Tweeted a follow-up: the publisher actually responded to this nonsense with (wait for it) more nonsense!

Go ahead and click and read it; I’ll wait…

So, what have we learned, kids?

– the publisher thinks 4th-graders are dumb and can’t handle the most basic concepts of electricity

– the publisher is happy to cherry-pick ideas to support their baseless claims

– the publisher uses quotes that do nothing to support its flimsy argument, but (like the above Bible quote) imply that they know what they’re talking about

– the publisher wants us to think that Christians are open-minded about not being able to know everything about everything, while those mean ol’ scientists are out to convince us that it is possible to know everything. This is such a massive misunderstanding of science that it makes me want to hate all religion and religious people, but I’m open-minded enough to know that not everyone is this dumb.

Y’see, BJU Press, the entire scientific approach is based on the notion of Doubt. That what we think we know could be wrong. And that the only way to prove what we know is to conduct verifiable, repeatable experiments. Electricity can’t be seen with the naked eye, but if that’s as far as you want to take it, you’re not teaching education, you’re preaching ignorance.

Religion and faith are based around the notion of belief without evidence. That what we don’t know is simply a mystery, an impossibility, so let’s all just say it’s God and forget about it. Why bother learning anything new at all?

I’m not trying to bash Christians here, or religion in general, but this publisher either has the brains of Karl Pilkington or is deliberately trying to use deception and create confusion to support its predetermined conclusion: that God is the answer, period. And that’s not how science and logic work. Period.

EFFIN’ MAGNETS: HOW DO THEY WORK?

Finally, Busiek Tweeted a quote today that I think fits this situation perfectly:

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” —Upton Sinclair

‘Nuff said.

 

What do you readers think?