I’m interested in seeing how much got revised. For example, in the earlier version, Pastor Tim referenced Nebraska Man being used as evidence at the Scopes trial (it wasn’t) and being the tooth of a pig (it’s a tooth of a peccary, not the same thing). He referenced Archaeopteryx as being “really only a few bits and pieces of bone”. These exact same things are mentioned in this revised document.

The only “revision” that seems to have happened is that the section on thermodynamics was thrown out…

If anyone saved a copy of the original document, let us know?

“Creation science” is all about quoting, especially from obsolete sourrces. It’s about argument and appeal to authority. It’s not about questioning, testing, or the scientific method. Questions are not welcome in religion: it’s all about bowing down to authority.

Naturally, religious parents don’t want their children to get into the habit of questioning authority: independent thought will lead to Big Trouble as children ask about the symbolic cannibalism in the Eucharist, the dubious practice punishing an innocent scapegoat, and (eventually, if they can get past the sacred cow in our broadcast industry) the total lack of evidence that Jesus ever existed as a historical person and the persuasive textual evidence that he’s another example of a Hero Myth, along with Odin, Gilgamesh, and Buddha.

Although theists have had their crusades and inquistions and in fighting, the record seems to lie with the atheists. 100 MILLION died in the 20th century alone at the hands of practitioners of atheistic philosophies …

In one respect you are sort of correct: the real issue is not religion versus atheism, but dogma versus enlightenment. Communist, racist or nationalist dogma is no improvement whatever on religious dogma.

I suspect however that you are repeating the oft-made error of classifying Nazism as an “atheistic philosophy” – it was not. Hitler was a Catholic and did not renounce his belief in God. It is entirely possible, even probable, that his Catholic upbringing was the source of his anti-semitism.

And although there has been no destruction of religion, most of modern civilisation can thank its existence to religion being put in its place and losing the stifling influence it had until the seventeenth century.