[WorldMaker]

I had a teacher get in trouble for discussing plate tectonics in the 1990s, in a public school. Turns out it still upsets a lot of religious groups and also was tied to some peculiar schools of climate change denialists in the 90s. I still don't entirely know how denying plate tectonics was useful for climate change denial that decade, I just remember how weird it was for the teacher to suggest to forget a whole science lecture because people didn't want us to know it. Come to think of it, that probably also was around the time we watched Jurassic Park in class.

[dylan604]

Did the Streisand Effect kick in making you (and/or other students) unable to forget it? "Whoa, teacher says to forget it, so I'm really going to remember it now!"

Come to think of it, if a teacher said to remember something because it will be on a test versus forget something because religious types are upset, I know I'd remember the thing I was just told to forget knowing it now would not be on a test. Then again, as a teen, I was really starting to question the religious part of my upbringing in light of science.

[WorldMaker]

That effect certainly kicked in for me. Led me down several science rabbit holes at a precocious age that I don't think I would have if it was test required.

[Apocryphon]

That is wild, did they believe in this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catastrophism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diluvium

[WorldMaker]

On the religious side, I know several megachurches in my city got directly infected by Ken Ham [1] himself. (A person to which I have negative respect, including his massive wastes of state tax incentives that affect my own tax dollars.) One of his schticks was the the "Earth is only 6000 years old because the bible says so". I spent a lot of time in High School (private, years after the public school incident above) rolling my eyes through arguments using another of his schticks used to "combat" things like tectonic theory, the simplistic argument fallacy "Were you there?" I still have so much hate for that anti-science tactic.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Ham

[dylan604]

> "Were you there?"

Was he there when the Red Sea parted, or is he only using one source for evidence? Noah's Ark? Sodom and Gomorrah and Lot's salt pillar wife? No, then it's not proven. Even back then, that was my equally lame retort, but it tended to make someone take a pause when they (if) they realized the limb they were standing one wasn't very strong

[WorldMaker]

The programmed response back was "No, but God was there and he wrote the bible through his prophets." If I tried to get into the arguments that the bible was fallible they'd weasel out of it. Biblical literalism is the hill they all want to die on, for better and much worse for society.