During the month of May 1998, the Grays Harbor county public school district erupted in controversy when a local high school invited creationist Walt Brown to deliver a lecture on the "problems of evolution." Despite protests from individuals and groups including the ACLU, the schoolboard went ahead with the lecture and put out an open invitation for a rebuttal lecture.
Dr. David Milne of Evergreen State College immediately volunteered and a summary of his lecture can be read below in the Notes section.
No known organizations are active in this county.
It has been learned that Walt Brown lectured in one or more churches in Grays Harbor county just prior to his public school lecture. But we do not have specific information as to the identity of these churches.
The following is a summary of Dr. David Milne's lecture to the public school students of Grays Harbor County...
---------- Forwarded message ----------
I had planned on giving a lot of careful thought to my description of the
Great Elma Shootout -- but there will NEVER be time for that, so here is
the official description!
1) I planned on talking for only an hour. Brown spoke for 2; that's too
much for HS students. I offered to return and spend another hour doing
nothing but answering questions, for "equal time" -- no takers so far.
2) I reviewed the Brown videotape. I also ordered his book by priority
mail and studied as much of it as I could during the week or so available
for crafting a reply. I felt that part of my talk HAD to address
something he talked about, otherwise I would be perceived as dodging the
issue.
3) The outline of my talk is as follows. (I told the students that this
was how I'd approach it, using the "tell 'em what you're going to tell
'em, then tell 'em, then tell 'em what you told 'em" approach.)
A. Give ONE REALLY GOOD EXAMPLE of how the fossil record shows
evolution, and tell the students that there are many more where that came
from. In so doing, also tell how the creationists deal with that
specific example.
B. Give ONE REALLY GOOD EXAMPLE of how bad creationist science is, and
tell the students that ALL creationist science is that bad. and not to
just take my word for it, check it out for themselves.
C. Tackle one of the creationist speaker's examples head on. Repeat
what he said, what he didn't say (ie, present the creation model that
they are embarrassed to reveal in broad daylight), then show why he's wrong.
D. Conclude. Tell 'em what you told 'em, tell them that creationists
will always tell them that mainstream science is wrong about everything,
don't believe them, check it out for yourself.
E. As part of my conclusion, I tried something that I hoped would make
the creationist science teachers cringe -- I actually gave the students
an assignment (without asking if that would be okay) comparing the
evidence given by me and the other speaker and judging which seemed to be
more credible. ( This is the reason they all claim to want creationist
speakers, right? Well, back in your face ...)
My specific examples were ...
Evolution. The fossil connection between Ichthyostega and Eusthenopteron
-- lots of slides. I told them that they were seeing on the screen
something that creationists say doesn't exist -- a transitional fossil
exactly intermediate between two major groups --fish & amphibians -- and
an example of macroevolution demonstrated in the fossil record. How do
creationists deal with it? Brown -- doesn't even mention it. Gish -- I
showed the fraudulent illustration from his earlier book presenting
Eryops as Ichthyostega, and also the original figure in Simpson's Life of
the Past from which it was lifted, and in which the caption clearly states
that the transition shown does NOT represent the genera involved, only
the classes. I also showed them the sum total treatment of the
Eusth/Ichthy transition as presented ina creationist "balanced treatment"
book -- a vague picture that shows nothing & a statement that says "some
features are similar, some are different" [not sic]. I asked the
students to mentally compare the detail I'd given them with the
creationist treatment and suggested that the creationists really didn't
want them to know the facts of this case.
This example took about 20 minutes. It hit like an A-bomb. The students
were fascinated by the story, even to repeating the names of the fossil
critters during the ensuing question period. The creationists in the
crowd hated it; they sat there with frozen grins mentally cursing every
moment that this appalling example was on the screen in front of their
students, accompanied by my straight-on no-punches-pulled comments about
creationist denial & obfuscation.
B. My example of bad creationist science was the one about Morris's
calculation of the age of the Earth from carefully selected human
population growth data -- human population from abou 1650-1800 AD, as I
recall. I told the students that creationists typically take some trend
in something & calculate back to when that something must have been zero,
or impossibly large, and figure the Earth must have started at that
time. By good luck, I hit on something that really made that point. i
told them that the tide was rising that morning at about 2 feet per
hour. If the average ocean depth is 12,000 feet, then that means that
6000 hours ago, there was no water in the ocean at all, therefore the
ocean was created at that time. I then went through Morris's population
calculation which shows by backtracking that there must have only been
two people in the world about 4000 years before 1800. Interesting, but
how does it square with everything else we know? The implication is
that, since the Great Pyramid was built around 2600 BC, Morris's math
gives no more than 600 people in the entire world to build it. I
mentioned that in general, creationist math showing a young Earth starts
with unwarranted assumptions [namely that the phenomenon has never
exhibited an oscillating behavior, LIKE THE TIDES -- this is where that
example really came full turn & helped], that it always leads to some
ridiculous conclusion when you try to square it with other stuff we know,
and that the creationist calculation of helium accumulation in the air,
supposed shrinkage of the sun, accumulation of salt in the sea,decline in
magnetic field, etc were all examples of this kind of faulty calculation.
This example wasn't as powerful as the first one. The main value was
that it showed that I was willing to tackle creationist "science" head on
and proclaim it bad, for reasons that were quite obvious, and to
generalize it to all such calculations. I do believe that they were
still in shock from the evolution example, however, when we went through
this one.
C. I tackled Walt's claim that the Grand Canyon was carved within a
year, by a flash flood, with an intro to the effect that there is no
evidence to support his view. In this, I couldn't have done it, had not
Richard and Dorothy Norton at Science Graphics UPS-ed me a full set of
Grand Canyon teaching slides; these were the centerpiece of this
counterattack. First -- a quick series of slides showing the erosion and
deposition that stacked up the rock layers. [can be done fast and very
effectively. how? just tell the students "keep your eye on the red
layer ... the green layer ..." etc, so that after half a dozen slides
have flashed by & the Canyon is finished, they can see in the final
product the tilts, colors, etc that accumulated over vast time.] Then,
focus on one layer -- the Cocconino sandstone. Show a slide showing
fossil footprints in it -- amphibians and spiders ... [this one obtained
from another source, not Science Graphics]. Show/describe cross bedding,
features that strongly suggest it was formed on shore (not underwater),
call attention to the fact that layers ABOVE & BELOW contain marine fossils.
Then ... I showed the creationist model, mentioning that, while Walt had
talked about carving the canyon, he'd neglected to show how the layers
were formed. Using three home-made slides, i showed (1) a mile of water
containing plesiosaurs, whales, trilobites, crabs, etc starting the
deposition of the Cocconino sandstone, piling it up at about 15 feet per
day without depositing a single marine fossil. [this brought out that
creationists claim all marine species lived at the same time.] Slide 2
-- the next day -- the mile of water is gone, the sun has dried
everything out, and amphibians and spiders are running across it. Slide
3 -- a day later, the mile of water is back, this time with guys in
armor, cactuses, tyrannosauruses, chariots, rabbits, etc, continuing the
deposition of the Cocconino sandstone at 15 feet per day, fossilizing the
footprints but not depositing any other fossils. [this one pointed out
that all land species are claimed by creationists to have been present at
the same time, and I think Morris mentions a world human population of 25
billion, pre-Flood.] I then wanted to flash back and forth -- dry,
running amphibians, mile of water depositing sand like crazy but no
fossils, dry, wet, dry, wet etc to give the full creation model of the
formation of the cocconino sandstone, but I was running out of time and
didn't really need to.
Following that -- I showed slides that demonstrate that, where there
REALLY WAS a flood, the landscape shows it. (1) the rippled landscape in
eastern Washington, where the gigantic Spokane floods roared by a few
thousand years ago; (2) wave-cut terraces over Missoula, Montana, where
the lake that unleashed the flood once stood; (3) huge braided
cross-country channels in eastern Washington, visible by satellite. What
followed was, i think, my most effective pair of slides of the entire
presentation. (4) a teardrop shaped butte, obviously formed by a vast
quantity of water rushing past ... (5) Mars -- site of the butte -- which
I told the students was such compelling evidence of the passage of water
that planet scientists conclude that there must once have been water on
mars, even though there is none at all there, today. Mars stayed on the
screen while I said that there are no braided channels, no rippled
landscape, no wave cut terraces, and no teardrop shaped buttes alongside,
downstream, upstream, anywhere near the Grand Canyon. That is ... there
is no evidence that it was formed by a flood.
This story built slowly but surely, but the climax was truly stupendous.
Everyone sat staring at Mars thnking how obvious the marks were of the
passage of the Spokane Flood and of the flood on Mars -- and realizing, I
think, that Walt had showed them no such things near the Grand Canyon.
Well. This has gotten longer than I planned! In retrospect, I cannot
imagine how this could have gone better. The keys were, know what the
creationist said and address that, attack (with an example of evolution
and an example of how bad creation science is), don't let what the
creationist said determine your whole agenda, address something big
claimed by the creationist speaker head on, and give the creation model
details that the creationist will always avoid.
wow ... well, does that help?
whew. I'd go on the road and do this for a living, if only someone would
pay me. Any wealthy eccentrics with a twisted sense of humor out there?
cheers, best wishes dave
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Date: Thu, 28 May 1998 12:28:30 -0700 (PDT)
From: Dave Milne
Subject: Re: FW: How did it go?
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