Arizona State Senator Sylvia Allen sits on the state’s Education Accountability and Reform Committee as well as the Natural Resources Committee. So, it was a bit scary to hear Allen display her knowledge of science and geology recently during her call for uranium mining. In the clip below, Allen casually explains that the Earth is 6000 years old and that it has done just fine without environmental laws of any kind for most of that time. She represents Snowflake, Arizona.
Of course, even if one defines the age of the Earth by the existence of man, she is roughly 194,000 years off from the first evidence of DNA of the modern human. I particularly love the idea that the absence of environmental laws during the last 6000 years as evidence of the lack of any need for such laws. Since this period would start when the entire human population of the entire Earth was less than the current population of Texas.
Of course, creationists believe that the population at that time was two people, here — which would certainly explain why no environmental laws were needed. That is, unless one counts God’s prohibition on eating the forbidden fruit as an early environmental law. Allen may be counting (Genesis 2-3 as the first agricultural law. (“but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”)
Allen’s science lesson is reminiscent of the Republican Presidential debate when three out of ten candidates proudly announced that they do not believe in evolution, here. She, of course, has a study buddy in Sarah Palin who reportedly believes that dinosaurs and man walked the Earth at the same time, here.
It is perhaps Allen’s obvious ignorance of science when coupled with her advocacy of uranium mining that is most off-putting. It comes across like a Cro-Magnon saying “Me Like Uranium, It Make Big Boom.” There should be a law that you cannot toy around with uranium until you pass high school science classes like a driver’s education class for legislators. Of course, Allen herself may be the greatest case against the concept of evolution of the human species. Then again, the world’s science community may be the one with pre-historic egg on their faces when Allen reveals cave drawings of a Neanderthal riding an Anchiceratops while carrying bags of uranium ore.
This fierce ignorance of science was on display when some god-fearing, science-avoiding folks in Waco attacked Bill Nye the Science Guy over his statement that the Moon did not generate its own light, here.
Just as a matter of trivia, in case anyone was wondering about snowflake as a name for a town in Arizona, it was named after its founders in 1878: Mormon pioneers William Jordan Flake and Erastus Snow.
The great thing about the world according to Allen is that, if open yourself to uranium mining, “you will never know the mine was there when they’re done” — much like science classes in Snowflake it appears.
For the story, click
here.
“To act as if anyone who disagrees with leftist thinking is a neanderthal is the worst kind of intolerance.”
Scientists are leftist thinkers now? Just like you believe after reading the Gospels that Christianity and Jesus were Right Wingers. A lot of true Christians over the last 2,000 years would think you daft and in truth you are. Stupid man don’t you get that evolution and Genesis are easily reconciled, if you so desire. Unfortunately, since I assume you are of a Protestant denomination, you didn’t get that Marin Luther was saying that everyone needed to come to their own understanding of scripture. I bet you don’t even know who Martin Luther is and couldn’t care less that your version of Christianity would have scandalized Jesus.
Donny, there is in fact no science to support young earth ideas. None. Zip. Nada. Although carbon dating is admittedly inaccurate beyond a certain time period, it is certainly reliable for measurements up to between 40,000 and 50,000 years. In addition, there are alternative dating methods, all of which establish that the earth is far older than acknowledged by those who espouse so-called “creation” science. Indeed, every time we improve the ability to measure the distant past, our estimates of the age of the earth increase.
Allen is absolutely correct. Carbon dating is unreliable, and there is credible science on the young earth. To act as if anyone who disagrees with leftist thinking is a neanderthal is the worst kind of intolerance. It takes more faith than one can reasonably expect to conjure up to believe in something as far-fetched as the agenda-driven “science” that passes for “education” now days. And Cro-Magnon? That descriptor aptly fits those who are guilty of closed-minded, narrow-minded groupthink: if you disagree with me, you surely cannot be as enlightened as those of us who “evolved” from monkeys.
Yet another idiot bleats. Gawd Blass Amurka !
Land of the moron and the home of the enslaved.
Ken, the Arizona Republican Party can’t be run by Neanderthals. They died out more than 6,000 years ago.
oh dear god…”education accountability and reform” means just what allen said…reform it to a theocratic religious ideas of mormons
i am not surprised by this statement…a mormon missionary said to me that if i didn’t become a mormon i would be in the lowest class in the afterlife which is like a faint star in the night sky..
the mormons have 3 classes of afterlife…one that is considered like the sun where all the mormon believers in that they are the only ones to the right of prophethood from moses…then, those who just believe in jesus are in the second class which is like the moon (cause it has it’s own light)… the last class is those who don’t believe in anything and are like a star one can barely see in the sky…
first of all…i believe in Jesus or Emmanuel ( which is another subject in the mormon religion if not all of christianity)…so, i informed this missionary from ARIZONA…whose family is high up in the church…i told him that a faint star can be a star that is from the begining of the universe and so far away that it can hardly be seen…or it could be a glaxy that we only see it from the side view and even if it is a star that is dying it would pulse and not really be faint…
so, the lesson is the mormons’ believe the religious test is after one of their leaders becomes the president…until then their is no religious test for becoming president…
as far as i care they want to pay the United States back for the loss of the war which resulted in the state of Utah!!!
What you have to understand about Sylvia Allen is that she’s plain stupid. Not just stupid, but stone age stupid. We get a lot of that, especially coming from Snowflake and Prescott. The republican party in this state is run by ignorant neanderthals, and the republican party runs the state. There’s a reason we’ve been unable to get a realistic budget in this state.
Wow! Just plain, Wow!
Well I do have some manners. Not many and sometimes few and far between.
AY,
I think you hit the nail on the head, although I was thinking the A stood for something else.
rafflaw 1, July 7, 2009 at 7:27 pm
I think that this Arizona expert must be an Aunt of Sarah Palin. They have a similar level of scientific knowledge. Doesn’t the SAT or ACT test in science in Alaska and Arizona?
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Yes but the SAT in these states as well Texas stands for Side Arm Tactic and the ACT means Axe Chopping Tree.
I think that this Arizona expert must be an Aunt of Sarah Palin. They have a similar level of scientific knowledge. Doesn’t the SAT or ACT test in science in Alaska and Arizona?
Jill,
It isn’t arsenic poisoning that got to her, it was the waste products of all of the leftover apples from the Garden of Eden that she probably thinks was in Arizona.
thought that pizza ovens only got to about 600 degrees F
WHOOLIEB:
I
Bob,Esq.
Why is it that you can’t accept the government story that most pizza oven’s can melt structural steel? As you are well aware, most pizza ovens cook at 2066F. LOL
Gyges:
point taken.
IS,
If it was a one time thing, I’d probably buy that. However your history of posting non sequiturs in an obviously provoking manner establishes a clear pattern.
I’ve been wrong before, and would like to be wrong now. If you are sincere in wanting to have a conversation, tone down “Stupid progressives” rhetoric, and maybe you’ll get people to take you seriously.
Gyges:
I am not trying to illicit an angry response, I am trying to say that everyone has some goofy beliefs.
This woman is obviously misguided and is in dire need of an earth science class. I dont really understand why they think a belief in God precludes embracing science. Or that if you believe science it will somehow eliminate God. For Christ sake 11th century scholars were asking those sorts of questions. I would think Christianity would have moved ahead somewhat in a 1000 years.
But on the flip side many on this site think that government spending leads to economic prosperity or that high taxes are good for the economy. They are as dogmatic in this belief as this woman is in hers.
IS,
Now you’ve just hit bottom. 1/10 for this Troll.
Mike,
Willingness to engage doesn’t mean one’s not a troll, it just means that one’s a troll with a longer attention span. It’s the posting things just to get angry responses that makes the troll.
Why are all of you making fun of this poor woman? Her view is no sillier than your views that government spending produces a booming economy or that high taxes lead to prosperity or that by going “green” we can create jobs.
I would believe the earth is 6,000 years old before I would believe that high taxes lead to prosperity.