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should creationism be on the science syllabus

179 replies

zippitippitoes · 10/03/2006 10:49

\link{http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2078747,00.html\ Interesting article}

OP posts:
zippitippitoes · 10/03/2006 12:17

so in a nutshell how are fossils explained

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WickedViperWitch · 10/03/2006 12:23

Isn't 'creationism' just another word for religion? And so isn't this sneaking religion into science? This is what is happening in America and one of the reasons they're getting away with it is because they've substituted the term creationism for religion. Haven't read the thread, will do now.

WickedViperWitch · 10/03/2006 12:24
Piffle · 10/03/2006 12:27

No
Any kind of evolution.creationism that teaches a superior being doing it, such as God or whomever the figure is should be taught under religious education.
It is not scientific I do think that teaching it sensibly under the right subject umbrella is to be encouraged, children should know all the differing views, if nothing so as to form their own views, or to have their owns views taught.

Actually what I really want to say is f* no, all religions are bollox, but you know Grin

Piffle · 10/03/2006 12:28

And after my ds twice being taught that giant laughing frogs created some giant lake of something
Eh?

Kathy1972 · 10/03/2006 12:32

giant laughing frogs Piffle? eh?

Piffle · 10/03/2006 12:40

Quite Kathy WTF????

Bugsy2 · 10/03/2006 12:45

Howling with laughter at some of the very funny posts on here.
I don't think that "creationism" is science!!!! Isn't it fairly well recognised that the world is billions of years old?
If you send your child to a faith school, they are going to get RE lessons about God as a creator, which can be interpreted in a number of different ways.
However, science is about proven facts & "creationism" is neither scientific or factual, well not as far as I can tell!

FairyMum · 10/03/2006 12:45

Absolutely not. Creationism belong in Religious education or even better it belongs in Sunday school.

DominiConnor · 10/03/2006 12:45

I'm in two minds about Creationism.
It is quite different from most other religious beliefs. Most of them cannot be disproved since they deal with things outside or before the physical universe.
However Creationism is laughably stupid, and thus is better seen as an attack on Christianity, though not of religion in general, as the God it descibes is clearly not the Christian one.

Creationists postulate a universe where God has set out to actively deceive us. Thus the universe is not how we perceive it, but rigged to look as if it's billions of years old, and to seem that life evolved rather than was created.
This of course may be true, and the idea is commonly used in both philosophy and theology. If you have an omnipotent God he can do this stuff, how could you tell ?

Their model of God also has him as an "intelligent designer". This is an interesting slander upon God.
Humans have several huge design flaws.
We have the gene to produce vitamin C. But it's broken, causing many humans to die of scutvy and other deficiencies.
Our windpipe and oesophagus are the "wrong" way round, and again thousands of people die each year through food going down the wrong way. Simply swapping their position would be a far better "design".
There are things like our appendix which serve no purpose whatsoever, but occasionaly burst causing a painful death unless treated.
Then there's the whole issue of kids heads being far too large. Without medical care, a large % of them would be born dead. The evolutionary position is that we've lived in groups long enough to get away with this.

Thus the Creationist/Intelligent design people see God as deceptive and frankly not very bright. This is not God as I was taught it at a Catholic school. We had another name for a great deciever, it was Satan. Though even then he was suppose to be smart. As Heinlein says, people rarely invent a God smarter than them, and given that we are dealing with evangelical Christians, that's a very low standard.
Intelligent Design has thus been denounced by the Catholic church as "ill founded", basically rubbish. If the Catholics say you're stupid and superstitious, and basically dishonest, that's like being outwitted by George Bush.

I would be quite happy for some dumb evangelical type to explain this to 2.0 and 2.1. If they fall for junk like that I've failed as a father, and I think I have a good case for getting my school fees back.

I do vaguely worry about what Christians will do next though.
The big hole in their position isn't biology, it's history.
Most European history contains all sorts of things that rather undermine their position that they are the good guys sponsored by a loving God.
Pictures of priests blessing Nazi bombers, the various inquisitions, assorted holocausts, "St" Thomas More burning peple for a living, priests taking money to forgive sins, witch burning, faked miracles, and the bloody wars over minor bits of doctine, all rather look bad.

The Crusades are particularly hurtful to them. Here's a bit of trivia for you. Which was the first country attacked by the Crusaders out of England ?
was it
a) Egypt
b) Portugal

Yep, b).

Actually the various Moslem states were about the 5th place they attacked, unless you count pillaging the occasional small European town, when they drop out of the first 20.

Also history is a bad subject, even if you skip the rather inconvenient facts. It teaches us to work out how things may have happened, and to balance different accounts of events, and from tentative conclusions based upon evidence.
That blows a big hole in Christianity and to a lesser extent Judiasm. Many of ther events in the Old Testament are radically at variance with archeology. Not just the flood, but the plagues and wars that are supposed to have happened seem inconveniently not to be mentioned by the the people involved.
Fundamentalists can't even get past Genesis, since there are serious problems about where the 2nd woman came from, any ideas ?
Jesus is a tricky one. You can't prove he didn't exist of course, but for someone who is supposed to have done so many large things ,and to have been the epicentre of large scale public disorder, you'd think there would be some mention in the Roman records ?

Kathy1972 · 10/03/2006 12:46

but what context Piffle? What lesson? I mean, did they think they were teaching them about aboriginal myths or something and just get a bit literal? What did your son make of it?

A friend of mine who grew up in rural Texas but with v intelligent family got taught about creation in school and was genuinely puzzled - he thought the teachers must have just not heard of evolution so he put his hand up and 'No, this is what happened, I read it in a book....'

Socci · 10/03/2006 12:49

I don't think it should be on the science syllabus either. Surely it would be like adding "some people think the world is flat"

In my experience the sort of people who believe in creationism are, well that's a whole other thread...

clerkKent · 10/03/2006 13:04

I remember reading in a popular science book a 19th Century theory that god created the dinosaurs in the rocks to make us think the world was older etc, and for every objection the theory had it that god did that as well... The science book (and the 19th century philosophers) pointed out that this theory is completely unprovable, therefore not scientific, and a complete waste of time.

NotQuiteCockney · 10/03/2006 13:07

A friend of mine met a Canadian lawyer who believed in creationism. She apparently thought the dinosaur fossils were actually just really big cows.

Nightynight · 10/03/2006 13:07

No No No....cant believe this suggestion is being made seriously.Shock
Consider alternatives or scientific improvements to evolution theory, yes. Or even, shock horror, admit that we don't know yet!
creationism, NO. It belongs in RE, where you can consider all the world's religions.

frogs · 10/03/2006 13:09

Enid, thanks for your contribution, am ROFL! Will print it off for dd1 (10) who just yesterday came home spitting tacks after a confrontation with a teacher which went something like:

dd1: But Miss, there's loads of scientific evidence that humans evolved from apes.
Teacher: You can believe that if you want, but I believe the Bible.

Aaaargh! And this is Y6 science! How can you help the kids understand scientific method and the nature of evidence if you present evolution as just another belief system?! Not only is it junk science, it's junk theology as well.

There's a lot of it about, though. A couple of years ago I borrowed a (real) skeleton from work and took it into school to show the kids. Someone asked, as they all do, whether it was male or female. Before I could launch into a spiel about the angle of the pelvis, blah blah, the teacher piled right in: "You can tell because women have one extra rib than men." wtf? Shock

NotQuiteCockney · 10/03/2006 13:09

To be fair, DC, the creationist's God, isn't that different from the Old Testament god. The sort of chap who'd put you in a garden, and say "hey, eat all the fruit, but not that tree, ok?", having created humans and knowing what we're like? He'd also create fake fossils to mess with us, wouldn't he?

Nightynight · 10/03/2006 13:10

frogsShock

NotQuiteCockney · 10/03/2006 13:11

frogs, are you in the UK? Ack.

I can see a point for discussing creationism as part of the history of science. But I think there are less-contentious false beliefs from the past that could be used in the same way, like phlogiston or something.

When we toured DS1's new school, which is CofE private, I did ask if they taught evolution, and got pretty much glared at for even daring to worry that they might not!

zippitippitoes · 10/03/2006 13:12

don't women have an extra rib

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Nightynight · 10/03/2006 13:12

arghhh - they dont even need to study history of science fgs!
they should be getting some decent scientific principles under their belts!!

NotQuiteCockney · 10/03/2006 13:14

No, women don't have an extra rib.

Hmm, I just think some basic history of science, with the basics of the scientific method, is useful, before uni. I'm not suggesting they read Popper (ok, I am, but I'm overly optimistic here, I know), just get the basic idea.

clerkKent · 10/03/2006 13:14

Why even bother with creationism in RE? Surely RE should concentrate on major belief systems? Or does creationism now have enough adherents in the US to count as major??? Surely not!

monkeytrousers · 10/03/2006 13:15

Science is constantly testing itself, trying to falsify it's findings if you like, while creationism/intelligent design uses all kinds of ad hock moves to shore up it's position in the face of counter evidence and never logically tests itself (because they would fail). In this way it's always difficult to get a precise answer to what creationism actually is, to define it's terms and parameters - as soon as you think you get it someone wil say, 'Oh, but I didn't mean that' and this is in itself a strategy, as a theory that isn't precicely formulated (as it must be in science) is therefore harder to falsify. "Science progresses by means of the construction and testing of bold, highly falsifiable hypotheses" and creationism simply cannot stand up to this kind of scrutiny.

It's true ad hock moves are sometimes made in science, like in Newtons 'mystery planet' hypothesis when it was observed that Uranus deviated from it's calculated gravitational path (the mystery planet causing the wobble was Neptune) but crucially this move included many more additional and independently testable consequences making it even more falsifiable than before. Ad hock moves in creationism, do not do this.

harpsichordcarrier · 10/03/2006 13:15

frogs !!! Shock
that's appalling
I once had what could be laughingly called a conversation with a very clever JW about creationism
which mainly consisted of me making points about evloution and him shaking his head and chortling in a jolly but patronising manner
he was lucky to escape alive, frankly
no place for this on the science syllabus, of course
no argument really as it is not actually science is it?

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