should creationism be on the science syllabus

[zippitippitoes]

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

MP, it is not a scientific theory. It just isn't. Not by any definition of science that a scientist would agree with. It's a religious belief. The two have nothing to say about each other.

Hunker, don't you go dissing my beliefs!

(Pruni sees the light upon reading hunker's post.)

It's a theory which vast numbers of people believe is what should be taught as science (as is, in some parts of America). Therefore I think it's important to teach it and explain why it's wrong. It's hardly going to take a whole term!! I think it's really important to teach taking into context the world around us and this is a hugely important debate - it would be a shame to miss the chance of teaching children something which is actually interesting and pertains to current affairs. It's a far more important scientic issue than spending an afternoon peeling the outer skin off an onion in order to find out that - SHOCK - it's made from cells.

It just isn't a scientific issue, though I do agree - up to a point - with the other points in your post. I'd say 'teach' is the wrong word because it implies to me an imparting of knowledge. How about acknowledge that some people believe this, and here are any number of reasons why it's irrelevant to scientific endeavour that they do? Political issues aside.

and doubtless we should next be teaching the children that man was formed by god, from a clot of blood, which a belief held by millions of Muslims.

That doesn't make it science andy mor than creationism is science.

It isn;t science. It sn't testable. It doesn't make predictions that can explain key observations. It s abelief system. Teach it as that.

Some people think the world is flat, is that next?

It is like saying you have to teach French in a german lesson and insist of tellign the kids that it is really German

I have no issue in exing it as an example of what is not science* BTW. In the same way that we use the Ptolomaeic Solar system as a lead in to copernicus et al.

But ID is no scinec

MB is a friendly PARP in order?

hunker
I like your dog/custard theory
very much
let's start a cult
go on it will be fun
mostly the founders of cults get to have the pick of the followers

HC spouting that theory on www.toohotforchurch.com would be a good starting point.

I have been parping myself all day

must have been the lentils

Stick in in RE or whatever its called thee days.

So pmsl at intelligent falling.

My DH did the philosophy of science when he did his physics degree and it went over his head at the age of 21. For a child that could be very confusing. I would stick to creation in religion which they learn anyway in most schools and very little evolution is done in science but where the facts can be proved it should go in there. Science is based on facts and I struggle to see how creationalism would fit in with that. Even parts of evolution are speculation and they should not be in science either.

HC, yes, let's start a cult. I shall be Vernon (for the Bill Hicks fans...).

if you don't know Bill Hicks here is an \link{http://dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=13287an intro}

or even \link{http://dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=13287\here}

I'm all for discussing defective scientific theories. There's lots of this already.

But are science teachers going to be allowed to say it's rubbish ?
Wont' we get superstitious parents screaming that their beliefs are being attacked ?

Look at RE, there is no attempt to pass any notion of criticism there. Should there be ?
Maybe, but it won't happen.

Please don't tell me Bush believes in creationism. That really is the most depressing thing i've heard all day. God help the world.

Actually I don't know if Bush believes in Creationism, though politically he is supportive of it. That's not quite the same thing.

After years of chemical abuse gis symptoms seem to have left his brain prematurely aged, and we know that the ability to learn new things is vulnerable to both age and drugs.
Thus he may not be capable of believing in Creationism/ID since he probably wasn't taught it as a child.

Something I expect to teacha s an RE teacher, as it forms part of one of the many 'belief' systems,a nd hence what I am to be qualified as teaching. With a Religion degree, I will now lots of forms of religious creationism / creationist philosophy (eg Hindu which is vastly different) and a Science teacher wouldn't. I would also be in a better position to facillitate accepting debate, since this is also part of the Re remit.

Not all scientists are ignorent you know!

Agree that the RE staff should teach it....it is your area of expertise, not ours

Of course not- but you haven't done the three years have you? Much as I am not ignorant of Bio, having nursed / done an a-level, but could not teach it. (Or remember it- )

Anyway not sure how you could teach Hinduism / The Bible etc without including creation stories.

There is a difference between the idea of creation common to most relgions and Creationism & "Intelligent" Design.

They purport to be scientific theories, not religious beliefs. Thus the Christians have managed to get it inserted into both British & American science curricula, even though it is laughably stupid.
But stupid is not the same as wrong.

Lots of science turn out to be wrong, or more often only approximatley right. Newtonian physics like force = mass * acceleration is simply not correct.
But part of the way that science helps you to learn how to think is that this is a good enough approximation for (say) car travel or even landing a man on the Moon. Science is about competing models. If you used Newton to try and handle the movement of the electrons in this laptop the results would be junk. Science also embeds the idea that you test and argue over things.

Some science teachers have expressed to me their doubts over aspects core mainstream science like relativity and quantum theory. How can you do this with Creationism without offending superstitious parents ? It will be easier to teach it as "fact" rather than debate it.
Maybe Creationism has a place in the biology curriculum under dysfunction ofr the brain, but that's it.

I don't see how an RE teacher can handle this either, since the point of Creationism is an attack on parts of maths physics most people don't do until university, and RE teachers don't do probability or thermodynamics do they ?

RE teachers are supposed to teach different theories eqiually in chunks the kids can understand. So creationism has a very important place on the syllabus, you might not get to teach every aspect but it needs to be there. The same with other religious creation stories.
The point of RE (IMO) is to help kids develop their personal social and emotional sides / moral development whilst givingt hem a fighting knowledge and understanding of world faihs and world issues. creationism is a world issue, esp. at the moment.

I might not be able to teach the maths physics side but then i'm not going to be teaching sufism or tantric buddhism either. It's an introduction: the kids who want to know more can go pick up a book / do a degree.

OK, one of the aspects of Creationism is the notion that humans are extremely improbable.

That's just rubbish in straight mathematical terms, before we go anywhere near biology.

But when I say "rubbish", it's not obvious rubbish. Anyone who's done degree level maths will spot the obvious hole, even if they studied in Britain.

But how can an RE teacher handle that, given few have A level maths, and most syllabi for the dumbed down version we have these days doesn't do this sort of probability ?

For those who haven't done probability it goes like this.
There are actually more than one type of probability. For instance I may see a preganant woman, and from my point of view it's 50/50 that she's carrying a boy. But of course from the baby's point of view there is no uncertainty at all.
Probability is a measure of our ignorance. So when I hit a golf ball into a field it may hit any one of a million blades of grass (or in my case trees, cows, or quite likely not move at all).
Thus before I hit my ignorance says the chances of hitting this particular blade of grass is one in a million, certainly that's the number of times I'd have to hit the ball to hit that stalk.

But once I've hit some blade of grass, the probability that I actually hit it is 100%.

Once the experiment is over the result is 100% what it is.
Thus even if your ignorance of physics is so profound that you think the emergence of intelligent life by purely natural processes is extravagantly improbable, it doesn't matter. We're after the time it happened, therefore the probability is 100%. The chances of the particular combination of football scores we see today in the 4 divisions is trillons to one against. But we do have this set now. To say it's improbable that A beat B , C drew with D etc is meaninigless because we are after the event.

Thus the point of teaching Creationism is that it's bollocks, not an item of faith.

Been a long time since I had an RE lesson, but I'm pretty sure that you're not allowed to say "Jews/Sikhs/Moslems/JWs believe this but it's so stupid you havd to wonder how these people cross the road without getting lost".