NON-SCIENCE IN SCHOOL TEXTBOOKS

Reference Information from Kent Hovind

(Compiled and Comments by Harold M. Lind)

 

 

There are Laws and Codes to protect against inaccurate material in textbooks.  The problem is that these laws are not enforced, and there are many textbooks that have out-dated information in them.  Some evolution “proofs” that were proven false, or hoaxes, are still in the textbooks.  Other “facts” are just plain lies.  Here are a few Laws that should protect the school system from getting books that have inaccuracies and lies in them:

 

  1. Wisconsin Administrative Code 361 Role:  The criteria for selection of textbooks shall be:  Factual accuracy.

 

  1. Alabama Code 1975, Section 16-36-70 “Adequate textbooks” – provides:  “(b) All students in the public schools shall be provided with adequate and current textbooks…”  One might argue that textbooks that contain statements and examples that are proven to be false and fraudulent are neither adequate nor current.

 

  1. Texas Administrative Code Title 19-Education 66.66 (I)  “Instructional materials shall present the most factual information accurately and objectively without editorial opinion or bias by the authors.  Theories shall be clearly distinguished from facts and presented in an objective manner.

 

  1. Florida Statute 223.09 (e)  “All instructional materials recommended by each counsel for use in the schools shall be to the satisfaction of each counsel, accurate, objective and current.”

 

  1. California Education Code 60200 (c3)  “California Textbooks shall be factually accurate and incorporate principles of instruction reflective of current and confirmed research.”

 

  1. 8700.7500 Code of Ethics for Minnesota Teachers, Subpart 2.  Standards of Professional Conduct.  G.  “A teacher shall not deliberately suppress or distort subject matter.”

 

The website Text Book Reviews has reviews and rankings of school textbooks based on how much inaccurate information they have.

 

Here are some inaccuracies and down right lies in many of the science books that children at all grade levels are being taught:

 

  1. The Earth is 4.5 billion years old.  There is no factual evidence of this, and a lot against it.  See The Age of the Universe

 

  1. The Universe began about 16.5 billion years ago.  Again, no proof.  See link on #1.

 

  1. Life evolved over a long period of time.  There is absolutely no evidence that life has evolved, which is to say that one kind of animal became another kind (like a dog becoming a non-dog).  See The Facts About Evolution

 

  1. “Over millions of years, the Colorado River has carved out the Grand Canyon from solid rock.” – The Grand Canyon is a breech in a giant dam, called the Kaibab uplift.  The top of the canyon is about 6,900 feet above sea level.  The river that supposedly made it over millions of years, enters the canyon at 2800 feet.  This is 4,000 feet lower than the top of the canyon.  So the Colorado River could not possibly have created the Grand Canyon.

 

  1. There is such a thing as the “geologic column”.  All evolution thinking is based on the geologic column.  This is where the problem started in 1830.  If the layers of the earth are really different ages, then why are there no erosion marks between the layers?  (Merrill Earth Science 1993 p. 149).  It should have rained many times in 10 million years, and caused erosion.  A better explanation of the layers would be that they formed rapidly during and after the world wire flood of Noah.  An example of this would be to take a pile of dirt and put it in a glass.  Shake it up and set it down.  After a while you will find that the dirt has settled in layers.  This is known as “hydrologic sorting”.  80 to 85 percent of Earth’s land surface does not have even 3 geologic periods appearing in “correct” consecutive order.  It becomes an overall exercise of gargantuan special pleading and imagination for the evolutionary-uniformitarian paradigm to maintain that there ever were geologic periods.”  (Dr. John Woodmorappe, geologist “The Essential Non-Existence of the Evolutionary Uniformitarian Geologic Column” CRSQ Vol. 18 No. 1 June 1981, pp. 46-71).

 

  1. Dating fossils by rock layers, and rock layers by the fossils found in them is circular reasoning, and is not true.  They don’t know how old the fossils or the rocks are.  They are making up the ages.

 

  1. There is such a thing as “index fossils”.  This is part of the circular reasoning that is used along with the geologic column to date rocks and fossils.  The index fossils date the rocks, and the rocks date the index fossils.  Circular reasoning, which is false.  Many “index” fossils have been found still alive today, like the Coelacanth (supposedly 325-410 million years old), and Graptolites, which are 410 million years old.  Instead of realizing that maybe there is something wrong with index fossils and the geologic column, scientists will instead be amazed that these “index fossils” have survived for 400 million years.

 

  1. Animals and plants are related.  There is no proof of this.  There are variations within a “kind”, like different dogs (Great Danes, Cocker Spaniels, Pugs, etc.), but this is variation within the species, not evolution.

 

  1. In order to get kids to believe in evolution, they present microevolution where you have variations within a kind (like Great Danes, Pugs, Retrievers, Blood hounds, etc.).  Then they tell you that macroevolution happens because microevolution happens:  Prentice Hall Earth Science 1999, p. 627 says: “Earth and its inhabitants have changed over long periods of time”.  Then they make it more specific:  “In other words, there is no doubt that living things have changed over time”.  They have now skipped the first four stages of “evolution”.  Lastly, they tell you:  “Evolution can be defined as a change in species over time.”  So they take the provable microevolution, and lead you to “assume” that it applies to the other 5 types of evolution in one package.  And this without any probable evidence.  This is also known as “bait and switch”.  Sometimes other names are used to try to trick you into believing that microevolution is equivalent to macroevolution:  “The method of evolution in which a variety of species evolve from a common ancestor is called adaptive radiation (or divergent evolution).  This is the way in which all modern domestic dogs have evolved form ancestral wolves.  (Irish Textbook, p. 256).  Notice, that the common ancestor was still a “dog”.

 

  1. Mutations cause Evolution.  This is not true.  “No matter how numerous they may be, mutations do not produce any kind of evolution.”  (Pierre-Paul Grasse, Evolution of Living Organisms 1977, p. 88).  Mutations rearrange existing information but do not increase genetic complexity.  Examples would be a bull with 5 legs, which adds no new genetic information, since the genes already knew how to make a leg; they just made it in the wrong place.  Another example is a short-legged sheep, which may have been useful to sheepherders, but would have been the first one the wolf caught in the wild.  Textbooks have to use bait and switch to convince children that mutations are beneficial and cause evolution:  In Biology, 1996, p. 324 it says:  “Normal fruit flies have two wings.  Some mutations have had four wings.  This rare mutation, like most mutations, is harmful (the fly could not fly).  Beneficial mutations are the raw material for natural selection.”  So basically, the bait is that they show an example of a harmful mutation, and then switch it and say “beneficial mutations are the raw material for natural selection, a.k.a. evolution.”  They don’t give examples of beneficial mutations, because there aren’t any.  It doesn’t happen.  A test was performed on fruit flies in an attempt to cause mutations from radiation.  This produced flies with curved wings, no wings, more wings, red eyes, white eyes, etc.  The conclusion from the experiment was that all of the mutations produced flies that were inferior to the original fly.  As a result of this, they said that the fly had evolved as far as it could.  There is no evidence of this.  They have come to the wrong conclusion.

 

  1. Natural Selection causes Evolution.  This is not true, natural selection has a stabilizing affect on a species; it doesn’t create another “kind” of animal.  It is like quality control.

 

  1. Peppered Moth is evidence for Evolution.  Moths were counted on trees in England.  The trees were white, and they found that 95% of the moths on the trees were also white.  During the Industrial Revolution, with all the soot going into the air, the trees all turned black.  They also found that the moths were now 95% black.  This was given as evidence for natural selection causing evolution.  The rational was that the white moths on white trees were camouflaged.  When the trees turned black, the white moths got eaten, and only the black moths survived.  Proof of evolution.  Here is the real story:  Only 2 moths were actually seen on trees in 40 years of research.  This story was faked, with dead moths glued on the trees and pictures taken.  It was a hoax.  This was not evidence of evolution.  Even if it was true, it doesn’t prove macroevolution.  If a white moth turned into a black moth, it is still a moth.  This story was proven false in 1990, yet in textbooks as recent as 2001, the “evidence” is still in there.

 

  1. Similar bone structures between animals and man prove a common ancestor (comparative anatomy).  This is not true.  Each bone develops from different genes in different organisms.  Evolutionists don’t tell you this, because they cannot explain it.  The “similar” bone structures are better proof that there was a common designer, than a common ancestor.

 

  1. The Appendix is vestigial (meaning that it does not have a purpose anymore).  This is a lie.  The appendix is part of the immune system:  “Long regarded as a vestigial organ with no function in the human body, the appendix is now thought to be one of the sites where immune responses are initiated.”    (Roy Hartenstein, Grolier Encyclopedia, 1998).  “Its removal also increases a persons susceptibility to leukemia, Hodgkin’s disease, cancer of the colon, and cancer of the ovaries.”  (In The Beginning, Walt Brown, p. 18).  There are no vestigial organs, and even if there were, it wouldn’t prove evolution.  It is the opposite of evolution; loosing, not gaining.

 

  1. “The Whale retains pelvic and leg bones as useless vestiges.”  (Biology, Curtis and Barnes, 1989, p. 969).  They say that this structure has no apparent structure.  They say that they were once legs.  This is not true.  These bones are actually anchors for muscle tissue that is used in reproduction.  If the whale did not have these bones, it couldn’t reproduce.  Large snakes also have bones similar to whale’s.  These are also for reproduction

 

  1. “Humans have a tailbone that is of no apparent use (vestigial).”  (Holt Biology, 1989).  “The coccyx is a small bone at the end of the human vertebral column.  It has no present function and is thought to be the remainder of bones that once occupied the long tail of a tree-living ancestor.”  (Health Biology 1991, p. 264).  In fact, there are 9 muscles that attach to the “tailbone”, that have very important functions (like whales and snakes).

 

  1. “The complex structure of the human eye may be the product of millions of years of evolution.”  (Merrill Biology, 1983, p. 202).  The eye very complex with 6 different structures some of which are in the brain that would have had to “evolve” simultaneously.  This is called “irreducible complexity”, and cannot happen according to the theory of evolution.  “The retina of your eye is less than 1 square inch yet contains over 137,000,000 light sensitive cells.”  (Photo-Creation Magazine March-May, 1996, p. 39).  Science books trying to tell you how the eye “evolved”, tell you to “imagine” how it happened.  This is not proof for evolution; it is pure fantasy.

 

  1. “Bacteria are simple organisms that we evolved from.”  This is simply not true.  Even the “simplest” bacteria are more complex than anything man has ever created.  With motors called flagellum so small that 8 million could fit in the cross section of a human hair, they are just as complex and amazing as the cells in the human body.

 

  1. “In the 1950’s Stanley Miller and Harold Urey wanted to know how the earth and solar system had come to be.  They studied the chemical reactions of gases that existed in Earth’s primitive atmosphere, and were the first to show that amino acids could have formed in the atmosphere.  Although he never proved how life originated, he did add evidence to the theory that life could have started by itself on the primitive earth.”  Here is what really happened:  Miller took gases in a system of tubes and circulated them around while producing electric sparks.  The gases used were Nitrogen, Methane, Hydrogen and Ammonia (No oxygen).  Textbooks say that he got a solution that was “rich in amino acids”.  This was not really true, or even representative of the “way it was” long ago.  First of all, he excluded oxygen, knowing that it would oxidize everything and kill it.  Life cannot evolve with oxygen present.  Yet 20% of our atmosphere is oxygen.  Amino acids would be destroyed in oxygen.  Miller said that the early atmosphere did not have oxygen.  The problem here is without oxygen, you have no ozone, which means that ultra violet radiation would come in and destroy the ammonia, not to mention the amino acids.  We also know that the earth has always had oxygen.  Oxygen is found in the lowest rocks, and in higher concentrations.  “What is the evidence for a primitive methane-ammonia atmosphere on earth?  The answer is that there is no evidence for it, but much against it.  (Philip H. Abelson, “Chemical Events on the Primitive Earth”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 55 June 1966, p. 1365).  “In general, we find no evidence in the sedimentary distribution of carbon, sulfur, uranium, or iron, that an oxygen-free atmosphere has existed at any time during the span of geological history recorded in well preserved sedimentary rocks.”  (Erich Dimroth and Michael M. Kimberly, “Precambrian Atmospheric Oxygen: Evidence in the sedimentary Distributions of Carbon, Sulfur, Uranium, and Iron”, Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, Vol. 13, No. 9, September 1976, p. 1161).  Also, 85% of the “soup” that Miller made was tar, and 13% was carboxylic acid, both of which was poisonous to any kind of life.  Also, only 2 out of the 20 needed for life were produced.  They also bond very quickly with water and tar.  Also, half of the amino acids he produced were left handed and half right handed.  This is a problem because even the smallest proteins have 70-100 amino acids in precise order and they are all left-handed.  Since amino acids bond readily with water, they will do this faster than they will bond with each other.  So they couldn’t have made proteins while they were in water.

 

  1. “Smaller is less complex, such as unicellular organisms”.  Smaller is not less complex, smaller is more complex.  Even the brain of a honeybee is hundreds of times more complex than a Cray Supercomputer (ymp-90).  And the human brain is millions of times more complex than a honeybee’s.  The human brain has more electrical connections than all connections made by man in the history since man has been making electric/electronic devices.

 

  1. “DNA proves evolution in the percentage of sequences that different species have in common.  Darwin speculated that all forms of life are related through descent with modification from earliest organisms.  This speculation has been verified as we have learned more about molecular biology.”  This is not true.  No evidence for evolution has ever been verified by DNA.  DNA is the most complex molecule in the universe.  Humans have 50-100 trillion cells.  Each has DNA.  This total DNA would only fill 2 tablespoons, yet it would stretch end-to-end from earth to the moon and back 5 million times.  The code in the chromosomes is more complex and holds more information than all the computer programs ever written by man combined.  If DNA were printed in books, they would fill the Grand Canyon 40 times.  “Even with DNA sequence data, we have no direct access to the process of evolution, so objective reconstruction of the vanished past can be achieved only by creative imagination.”  (N. Takahata, “A Genetic Perspective on the Origin and History of Humans,” Annual Review of Ecology and Systems Atics, 1995).

 

  1. “Man must have evolved from Chimpanzees because their DNA is 98.2% similar to humans.”  Scientists have only determined the function of 1% of human DNA.  Having DNA that is 98% similar proves nothing.  Similar DNA codes prove the same designer wrote the codes, not evolution.  Dr. Barney Maddox, the leading genetic genome researcher, said, concerning these genetic differences, “Now the genetic difference between human and his nearest relative, the chimpanzee, is at least 1.6%.  That doesn’t sound like much, but calculated out, that is a gap of at least 48,000,000 nucleotides, and a change of only 3 nucleotides is fatal to an animal; there is no possibility of change.”  (Human Genome Project, Quantitative A Disproof of Evolution).

 

  1. “Fossils prove Evolution.”  This is not true.  Scientists cannot prove that a given fossil had ever reproduced.  Or that the offspring lived, or that they were different, which means they would have evolved into a different “kind”.  Darwin said, “If my theory be true, numberless intermediate varieties (missing links) must assuredly have existed.”  Yet we haven’t found even one.  So fossils don’t prove anything about evolution.

 

  1. “Horse Evolution”.  This is fabricated based on now someone believed the different types of horses could have evolved.  What they do not tell you is that the different horses have different pairs of ribs, which for from 18, to 15, to 19, then back to 18.  They are not related; they are different types.  “Other examples, including the much repeated ‘gradual’ evolution of the modern horse, have not held up under close examination.”  (Biology The Unity and Diversity of Life, Wadsworth 1992, p. 304).  “Many examples commonly cited, such as the evolution of the horse family or of sabertooth ‘tigers’ can be readily shown to have been unintentionally falsified (they lied) and not to be really orthogenetic.”  (George G. Sympson, “Evolutionary Determinism and the Fossil Record”. Scientific Monthly, Vol. 71 October 1950, p. 264).  Problems with horse evolution:  1.  Made up by Othniel C. Marsh in 1874 from fossils scattered across the world, not from the same location.  2.  Modern horses are found in layers with and lower than “ancient horses”.  (Yu Kruzhilin and V. Ovcharov, “A Horse from the Dinosaur Epoch?”).  The ancient horse called a hyrax was actually found in Turkey and East Africa alive.  And in South America, they have found the horse fossils in reverse order, which they don’t bother to mention.  The fossils have never been found in the order presented in the textbooks.

 

  1. “Dinosaurs evolved into birds.”  This was based on a “fossil” of a reptile with feathers from China.  This was later proved to be a hoax; it was assembled from different fossils to make some money.  Archaeopteryx was another reptile-bird purported to be proof of evolution from reptile to bird.  Alan Feduccia says, “Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth bound feathered dinosaur.  But it’s not.  It is a bird, a perching bird.  And no amount of ‘paleobable’ is going to change that.”  (Alan Feduccia – a world authority on birds from UNC Chapel Hill, quoted in “Archaeopteryx: Early Bird Catches a Can of Worms”, Science, February 5, 1994, pp. 764-765).  Other so-called proofs are that they had claws on their wings.  Although so do Ostrich’s and at least 11 other birds.  That they had teeth, but so do some birds and fish for that matter.  It was finally determined that Archaeopteryx is also a fraud:  “Honest disagreement as to whether Archaeopteryx was or was not a forgery was possible until 1986, when a definitive test was performed.  An X-ray resonance spectrograph of the British Museum fossil showed that the material containing the feather impressions differed significantly from the rest of the fossil slab.  The chemistry of this “amorphous paste” also differed from the crystalline rock in the famous fossil quarry in Germany where Archaeopteryx supposedly was found.  Few responses have been made to this attest, and probably conclusive, evidence.”