Science Fair for Creationist Students

[Cleopatra7]

Sigh, I'm really losing faith in this world...

tccsa.tc/fair/index.html

The site indicates that you don't have to be homeschooled to enter, but it helps.

[sparkles]

Science and creationism are pretty much mutually exclusive terms, no? Epic fail right there.

[bean]

Hey - this is happening right in my neck of the woods! I would go check it out, but I would rather eat yellow snow. Plus I have to bring my dog to the groomers for a bath. Priorities.

I loved the intro: Unlike Many Secular Educators We Teach The Scientific Method!

Um, really?

[mpheels]

This is just silly. I think creationism is a joke, but there are plenty of fields in the sciences that don't conflict with creationist beliefs. I know a couple of chemists who are creationists, and I'm sure there are physicists as well. Biology and related fields are the only ones that would be truly impossible for a creationist to make it in mainstream academia. Thinking back to my science fair days, I can't recall any projects that would offend the sensibilities of a creationist.

[CynicMom]

I love that link so much. What should students be prepared to remember?

Pray your exhibit will witness to non-Christian visitors.

What is a tip from previous judges?

please include your Bible verse on the poster, not just in your report.

Don't forget!

Each exhibit MUST include a Scripture reference. Some ideas are not specifically mentioned in the Bible, but there are verses that develop principles that can be related to your project. The intent is to relate all areas of science to the Creator of the universe.

Oh, and don't get any funny ideas, because:

The Science Fair Board retains the right to reject any unsafe or inappropriate project.

You're also allowed to have a "non-experimental project". What the heck is that??

There are five judging criteria, and AGAIN they state that "Biblical Application/Illustration" will be given equal weight as "Knowledge" or "Visual Display".

Minor Nitpick: They state that the students should do experiments that "prove" or "disprove" their hypothesis. Hypothesis usually aren't proved, just not disproved.

The pictures are also interesting. Most of them are your traditional science fair stuff: Pop + Mentos, electricity from food, etc. But some of these seem NUTS. "Is oil pulling an effective health treatment", "Does it really take millions, and millions of years for stalactites to form?", "Whirley Bird vs. Whaley Bird"

Do they award extra points for crazy?

[doggie]

if you have to claim you are the only true the only real then you are not. And yogurt experiments are not exactly important to science. watch out for flood of converted fake scientists.

[browngrl]

What is the point? The creationist answer to each and every science question is : because God (or Jesus).

[DifferentGurl]

Jeez...even the science fairs that my private school held did not try to shove creationism down your throat as hard as this fair.

[doggie]

I think this is more of a prove how good of a christian you are thing. You can't be creative all of it has to conform to the bible.

There can be no real science in the bible because science requires testing and others being able to reproduce what you do. no way creationist scientists can agree with each other.

[GeoBQn]

7. Approximately 3rd Weekend in February: our science fair presentation at Har-Mar Mall in a public-secular setting for three reasons:

a) To promote home schools,

b) To show that Homeschool students can do good science.

c) To present our science fair project to non-Christian people. This should be a great Gospel outreach.

We heard about one lady who saw the Science Fair displays at the Mall. She began to read some of the verses on the displays and was convicted to start attending church and get right with God. There are probably other stories like this we have not heard but it shows the power of God's Word through our program.

Anecdotes? Come on, this is a science fair! How about someone do an experiment showing how many people convert to Christianity based on a line of Scripture glued to a "science" fair poster. I hypothesize that the answer is zero.

[August]

This is just silly. I think creationism is a joke, but there are plenty of fields in the sciences that don't conflict with creationist beliefs. I know a couple of chemists who are creationists, and I'm sure there are physicists as well. Biology and related fields are the only ones that would be truly impossible for a creationist to make it in mainstream academia. Thinking back to my science fair days, I can't recall any projects that would offend the sensibilities of a creationist.

Physics and creationism are incompatible. The speed of light really needs to be constant for physics to work. Same goes for chemistry.

[Stephanie66]

A few need to learn the difference between "affect" and "effect". I know, it's tough.

Also, this is in Minneapolis? But they have great public schools there! Argh.

[artdecades]

I am looking at the ones from last year, and some of these are not just non-experiments (which is allowed), but they don't even seem related to science.

One of them is on shooting targets with a gun, for real.

one is on "oil pulling". WTF is oil pulling

one poster just says "CRANBERRIES" and seems to have a lot pictures of cranberries

this may be a fund project to do with kids except you know the intent is to show that the world is only 6000 years old tccsa.tc/fair/2013/DSCN0564.jpg

If they want to prove that homeschool kids can do science as good as those in traditional schools, they are failing.

[doggie]

the how wood floats is a tough one. wonder if I read the fine print it was god holding it up? the what dinosaurs are alive today. Man that is just too much.

[julie paradox]

Ha!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_pulling

Oil pulling is Ayurvedic ;-)

[browngrl]

Thought I'd google who the winners in non- creationist/SOTDRT science fair winners were - I only looked at the front page just as I only looked at the front page of the creationist science fair:

googleblog.blogspot.ca/2013/09/and-winner-of-2013-google-science-fair.html

the winner in the 13 - 14 category: looked for new ways to to provide drivers with more notice when an emergency vehicle is approaching

the winner in the 15 - 16 category: Using Peltier tiles and the temperature difference between the palm of the hand and ambient air, Ann designed a flashlight that provides bright light without batteries or moving parts.

the winner in the 17 - 18 category: Computer-aided Discovery of Novel Influenza Endonuclease Inhibitors to Combat Flu Pandemic. Combining computer modeling and biological studies, Eric’s project looks at influenza endonuclease inhibitors as leads for a new type of anti-flu medicine, effective against all influenza viruses including pandemic strains.

the entries in this science fair : cranberries, "oil pulling", floating wood etc

And there it is. The difference in not just the godliness shining out of the cranberries (and I am dead curious to know what bible verse backed up cranberries) but the difference is what you can come up with when you combine intelligence and curiosity with good teachers and education and what you come up with when you combine obedience/submission and the SOTDRT

[mpheels]

Physics and creationism are incompatible. The speed of light really needs to be constant for physics to work. Same goes for chemistry.

The speed of light is only an issue for young Earth creationists. Like I said, I'm not a creationist (not even intelligent design), but I know several chemists who are. One of my chem professors from college is, and he's tenured faculty in one of the best chemistry departments in the US. I know this from private conversation outside of class, and his beliefs fall in the gap creationist bucket. At many schools, it's entirely possible to earn a bachelors in chemistry of physics without ever setting foot in a biology classroom, so old earth creationists don't even have to think about it. Even young earth creationists can probably live with the cognitive dissonance of the light speed problem if they're working at the bachelor's degree, applied science level. They may not ever think about it, unless they take an astronomy class.

[StacyW]

Sort of related, the famous Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould had a PhD student, Kurt Wise, who is a creationist. Here's a link, but here are probably better ones: http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2009/01 ... ation.html

[twinmama]

our science fair presentation at Har-Mar Mall

I like that it is at the Har Har Mall. Even the venue is laughing at them. Edited because I just realized it says Har- MAR. Oops. Maybe its just a confused laughing mall.

[docmom]

Thought I'd google who the winners in non- creationist/SOTDRT science fair winners were - I only looked at the front page just as I only looked at the front page of the creationist science fair:

googleblog.blogspot.ca/2013/09/and-winner-of-2013-google-science-fair.html

the winner in the 13 - 14 category: looked for new ways to to provide drivers with more notice when an emergency vehicle is approaching

the winner in the 15 - 16 category: Using Peltier tiles and the temperature difference between the palm of the hand and ambient air, Ann designed a flashlight that provides bright light without batteries or moving parts.

the winner in the 17 - 18 category: Computer-aided Discovery of Novel Influenza Endonuclease Inhibitors to Combat Flu Pandemic. Combining computer modeling and biological studies, Eric’s project looks at influenza endonuclease inhibitors as leads for a new type of anti-flu medicine, effective against all influenza viruses including pandemic strains.

the entries in this science fair : cranberries, "oil pulling", floating wood etc

And there it is. The difference in not just the godliness shining out of the cranberries (and I am dead curious to know what bible verse backed up cranberries) but the difference is what you can come up with when you combine intelligence and curiosity with good teachers and education and what you come up with when you combine obedience/submission and the SOTDRT

The 17-18 year old winner's project would be completely unnecessary in a creationist world, because without evolution, there are no changes in influenza viruses and no pandemics.

On a related subject I wonder which bible verse fits my son's project- Does the color of light affect bean plant growth?

[Mango]

rright, I need a home school student who wants to enter this that I can help sponsor. we're gonna figure out the size of the ark based on how much poop it had to hold and still float. because these people are great at dealing in large quantities of bullshit.....

[chaotic life]

Except I've never met a YEC who understood that micro-evolution is part and parcel of evolution. They don't "believe" in evolution, but if you query on whether individual species evolve over time, they accept that they do. They also usually believe in survival of the fittest. They just don't have any concept that both are tenets of evolution, because afterall 'evolution is a theory and has never been proven' and they don't understand that a scientific theory is not the same as the definition they are using. They just accept most of the tenets of evolution without grasping that it's evolution, because they only recognize macro-evolution as the big, bad evolution.

I have a friend who was a YEC when she earned her Biology degree and says that it never even came up, because she avoided all learning of 'evolution' but accepted all of the tenets except macro-evolution. It wasn't until years later when she became an atheist that she just shook her head and wondered what the heck she was thinking back when earning her degree.

According to Ken Ham, the confusion on how the speed of light stands up to YEC explanations is simply that the rules of physics manifest differently today than they did historically, so what we see NOW simply didn't exist in the past, and therefore we cannot utilize anything of what our sense, knowledge and experiments tell us TODAY to extrapolate anything about the past, and we should therefore use the Bible to explain the past because we don't know how physics worked in that past to understand how to interpret our findings.

Basically, I believe in what science an observation tells me *today* and as far back as I am forced to accept the human record of observations. However, once I get beyond reliable human observations, I just assume that what I know didn't actually exist so science simply has nothing to do with the past. I can then make up any story I WANT to explain that past and I choose to use the literal Biblical explanation of six days a merely couple of thousand years ago. But yeah, it's beyond the point when humans were recording their observations and I negate that science operated as we know it does today, so you cannot disprove my fairy tale with logic nor science.

[SpeakNow]

Why is the speed of light a problem for young earth creationists?

[bekkah]

Do I go? This will literally be a 10 minute drive at the most?

The college that is hosting it is very christian. I think its assemblies of God. unwsp.edu/ Still can't find their affiliation. One of my friends went there and I think she was AOG.

[RachelB]

Do I go? This will literally be a 10 minute drive at the most?

The college that is hosting it is very christian. I think its assemblies of God. unwsp.edu/ Still can't find their affiliation. One of my friends went there and I think she was AOG.

Wikipedia calls it non-denominational (and conservative Christian). It was founded by a Baptist who also founded the Anti-Evolution League of Minnesota.