11 Points Reads a Creationist Science Textbook

Sam, the blogger at 11 Points.com ("Because Top Ten Lists are for Cowards") read a creationist science textbook and posted 11 highlights. Most of them are what you would expect, but then there is this:

This paragraph is weird on an entirely different level from plain vanilla creationism. Nobody has ever felt electricity? I wager that, in fact, everyone who reads this post has felt electricity, either in the form of the static discharge you get from rubbing your feet on dry carpet, or the 110-volt kind in your outlets that hurts like hell. If, like me, you spend a lot of time on farms, you probably know why cows avoid electric fences.

Electricity comes from the sun? Huh?

Where did they find that picture?

As to whether it is a mystery, well, that depends on what you mean. We know a very great deal about how to control electricity, and we have equations that describe its behavior very precisely. (You can get them on a t-shirt). We can also define electricity in a short sentence, viz., "the flow of charge." Start charged particles moving from one place to another, and you have electricity. But that just changes the question from "what is electricity?" to "what is charge?", and that really is something of a mystery. Charge is a fundamental property of matter, part of the warp and weft of the cosmos. We have, again, very precise equations (quantum electrodynamics) to describe everything charge does, but as to where it comes from, well, it sort of just is. (It doesn't come from the sun, that's for sure.) If I wanted to insert God into a science text book, that would be the place.

The point of this page seems to be mystification for its own sake. "The world is so big and weird that you should forget about understanding it and just have faith," or something like that. You should, in other words, turn off the thinking part of your brain.

And that, if you ask me, is the whole point of creationist education. It is not possible to fully employ your rational brain and end up accepting creation "science." So to believe in the literal word of the Bible, you have to shut off those pesky inquiring, rational centers. Textbooks like this one are designed to help.