AiG Challenge 2007 winners

This is a really depressing thing to see. A lot of science bloggers are being very critical of the kids and their essays, but I can’t bring myself to look at it that way. To me it’s much worse than a few new essays full of lies; it’s a group of kids having their potential stolen from them.

These are good kids. They’re bright, intelligent, literate and motivated. As teenagers, they’re already planning and making provision for their college education. In short, they’re exactly the sort of kids we, as a species, want to be producing. But their chance of real achievement in life has been drastically reduced because they’ve been systematically lied to, to the point that they’re simply unable to maintain a world-view that’s in-line with reality. This contest will just be the latest example for most of them, but it’s instructive; they’re being rewarded, congratulated and made to feel special and important and clever for regurgitating the same spiel they’ve been fed since they were born. With this sort of positive re-enforcement for believing lies, how are any of these kids going to develop the ability to think critically?

We have no way of knowing what would have become of these winners if they hadn’t been conditioned to believe, but what I can say with some certainty is that now, because of the way they’ve been raised, they will all have a much harder time making anything of themselves. And that’s why I can’t bring myself to criticise them; they weren’t born creationists and they never asked to be brainwashed – it just happened to them, and they’re trying to make the best of themselves with the tools they have available.

The essays are dross though.