South Carolina Education Committee Removes Evolution From Standards 665
Toe, The writes "The South Carolina Education Oversight Committee approved new science standards for students except for one clause: the one that involves the use of the phrase 'natural selection.' Sen. Mike Fair, R-Greenville, argued against teaching natural selection as fact, when he believes there are other theories students deserve to learn. Fair argued South Carolina's students are learning the philosophy of natural selection but teachers are not calling it such. He said the best way for students to learn is for the schools to teach the controversy. Hopefully they're going to teach the controversy of gravity and valence bonds too. After all, they're just theories."
States Rights (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:States Rights (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:States Rights (Score:5, Insightful)
But those kids can not get that time back. The morons doing this won't suffer, the students will.
Re:States Rights (Score:4, Insightful)
As always, if you disagree with your state's laws, you can attempt to push a vote to change them or move to another state. That sounds dismissive, but it's good that it's an available option. If the law is national and therefore pushed from above, you have no way to get out from under it save moving to another country. Moving to another country is probably not appealing or easy.
Re: States Rights (Score:5, Informative)
Re: States Rights (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: States Rights (Score:4, Insightful)
>So we should teach every religions version of creation in schools
Absolutely. That would be in the "mythological literature" section of the curriculum, correct? It certainly shouldn't be *anywhere* near science class, because none of it stands up to scientific analysis.
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"move to another state"
Just enroll your child in the school district where your summer home is located.
Some religious schools teach science ... (Score:4, Informative)
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Or better yet, Jon Hamm increases his army of embarrassed, out of context, blackmailed and possibly manipulated 'scientists' to on video for his next disastrous debate.
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Or better yet, Jon Hamm increases his army of embarrassed, out of context, blackmailed and possibly manipulated 'scientists' to on video for his next disastrous debate.
You saw a debate featuring a guy known for being well-hung? [wikipedia.org] Are you sure it wasn't John Hamm? [wikipedia.org] Or the other John Hamm? [wikipedia.org] Perhaps Ken Ham? [wikipedia.org]
Re:States Rights (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:States Rights (Score:4, Interesting)
Okay, then why send them to school at all? If I have to sit them down to teach them all the of scientific/mathematical.grammatical/literary/etc, the why the hell have an "outsourced" education system at all?
The education system should be teaching a defined framework of information across the board. It should not matter if you live in SC or NY, you should be learning the same fundamentals such as math, science, history and literature.
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I will "get up off my ass" and help campaign to vote religious conservatives out of office though
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There is a constitutional separation of Church and state on state level ever since the 14th Amendment.
Re:States Rights (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, it will take the child until they are 20 or so to feel the full effects of being poorly educated, worse, being denied the tools of critical thought. At that point bringing that person up to the capability to deal with the technology of the workplace that will face them in 2030 will be nearly insurmountable.
The mere fact that someone should be able to assert that any old idea they have, has equal supportability because of what they assert semantics of words to be, is wrong at best, and megalomaniacal at worst. And we all know that this isn't about "alternate 'theories'" this is about attacking things that don't support the christian creation myth.
I challenge *any* "teach the controversy" supporter to lay out their syllabus and rubric for *ALL* alternative science theories. As it has been stated above, it would have to include astrology, and alchemy, probably phrenology, humors, and I guess demonic possession.
You cannot be honest in this "teach the controversy" thing and only do one piece. Doing so is really a lie to yourself, and everyone knows it.
Re:States Rights (Score:4)
Please explain to me how an understanding or lack thereof of evolution impacts my ability to program computers? To be a successful photographer? To be a lawyer? To be a nuclear engineer? Build a bridge? A writer? In fact, any profession other than 'scientist studying evolution'.
I have never in 10 years of being a very successfully software engineer ever needed to know how old the planet it or where people came from to do my job. It's just never come up. I don't need to know about evolution to build a database or a webpage or a high performance processing system. I have needed to go look up Keplar's equations, figure out how to convert from sidereal time to SI time, model the atmosphere, and parse proc. Age of the earth? Never comes up. Did human's evolve from monkeys? Never comes up. Is there a god? Never comes up.
Seriously. Get over yourselves. The origins of life are not critical knowledge to the vast majority of the population.
Are they learning basic math, physics, reading skills? Those are actually important and widely applicable skills.
Ah! But CRITICAL THINKING! Really? Evolution is the only theory that allows you to impart the skill of critical thinking onto children? Reading literature and building robots don't do this?
The more things you're ignorant of, the more people tend to think you're probably ignorant of your specialty as well.
You don't have to be an expert on topics like evolution, but if you're blatantly uninformed, the impression you project is extreme nerdiness. Boring, narrowly-focused, and limited.
In fact, some have defined one of the differences between being a genius and being a nerd as the breadth of their knowledge. Geniuses are interested in almost everything. They can spare the brainpower and they don't dismiss anything outside their specialty as unimportant. Einsten was a nuclear theorist, but he spent time thinking on why rivers meander, why wet sand underfoot behaves like it does, how yo-yo's work and much more.
Re:States Rights (Score:4, Interesting)
>By your logic if we didn't introduce kids to things like nuclear technology in high school, no one would go into that field in college.
No. By his logic- if you don't teach them basic physics, hardly any of them would (or could) go into nuclear technology. Evolution is to modern biology exactly as basic Newtonian physics is to Nuclear Technology - the gateway you need to learn in school the very bottom-layer fundamental pieces of knowledge without which you'll never be able to understand or learn the rest.
Not to mention - that - by YOUR logic, we may as well scrap art, literature and music programs entirely - after all, very few students will approach them as a career. Yet we keep them - because the one student in the entire history of the school who falls in love with stories and grows up to be a Tolkien or an Asimov or a Vonnegut is worth about a billion times more to society than the cost of having a literature teacher in every school. The one who grows up to be a Picasso or a Dali changes how people see the world for ever. The one in the lifetime of a school who may become a Ronnie James Dio or an Otep Shamaya are worth it all by themselves.
And the argument for evolution is much, much stronger than that: evolution the ground-work class that starts of nearly the entire supply of medical researchers, zoologists, doctors - hell damn near everybody who in anyway works with biology.
Scrap it and you will limit your supply of students in these fields almost entirely to private school kids who had the class - and the one or two outliers who read books about it on their own time because of personal interest.
I know - I live in a country where until almost the end of my high-school career there was no separation of church and state, I went through a school system where evolution was little more than a swear word - and I saw the country that did the world's first heart transplant turn into one that had to import doctors from Cuba just to raise it's healthcare system to the level of "terrible".
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So, if a State chooses to not teach their children what is accepted in the scientific community, should this be their prerogative? At the same time, a decade later, when their students do not fair well at college, or professionally, they should be comfortable with that aspect to their decisions.
Really now, what do you think the chances are that someone who grew up believing that the planet is 6,000 years old would choose a career in science? I'm all for colleges and universities requiring additional science tests for students from states that teach creationism, but I seriously doubt that a large chunk of those kids are going to decide that science is what they want to do with their lives. Unless they accidentally choose a scientific major thinking that they're going to learn about religion.
One o
Re:States Rights (Score:5, Insightful)
Before anyone makes any anti-rational assumptions about me while reading this post, let me be clear that I'm a staunch defender of evolutionary theory, and I've even defended it here a number of times before.
Really now, what do you think the chances are that someone who grew up believing that the planet is 6,000 years old would choose a career in science?
Well, Isaac Newton did, and he even wrote books about details of Biblical chronology [wikipedia.org].
And before you tell me, "Everyone believed in that stuff back then!" it isn't true. Newton was a wacko outlier in many ways, including his beliefs that he could show the detailed past chronology of the universe and calculate the date it would end. Many scientists of Newton's time had grave suspicions about those sorts of things, and they would certainly not consider it respectable "science" to write on such matters.
Nonetheless, Newton managed to come up with some of the greatest advances of all time in a number of areas of physics and mathematics.
I want to be clear: I don't think creationism should be taught in science classes in schools either, but your logic that no student with a religious upbringing would ever be curious enough about the world to want to study science is faulty.
In my experience, the reason people choose careers in science has little to do with whether they are religious or not. And unless they want a career in a small group of scientific disciplines, what they think of evolutionary biology is unlikely to play a major role in their work.
Now, of course, continuing to believe the earth is 6,000 years old -- that's a more difficult one to square with lots of scientific disciplines (from archeology and geology to cosmology), but there are lots and lots of people who are religious but who do not subscribe to that literal belief. Lots of scientists have qualms that evolution has "all the answers," but nevertheless function quite well.
Not every creationist is a "young earth" creationist (and in fact, I'm pretty sure the vast majority are NOT), and a detailed understanding of evolutionary theory is not required for most scientific study.
One of the best things that Bill Nye said in the recent debate was to encourage people to choose careers in science, and warning that the rash of anti-rationalism is going to have very negative consequences for the US. Those words might have fallen on deaf ears at the creationism museum in Kentucky, but it's the right idea.
I don't think you've spent a lot of time reading arguments by the "Creation science" crowd. I'd hardly call them "anti-rationalist" -- they have their brand of reason. They understand very well the way to put together a logical train of thought. They just don't begin with the same axioms as you do for that logical tree. Hence, they might be "anti-empiricist" to some degree.
I'm not trying to defend it. But regardless of those people, most Christians who just have "faith" in whatever creation story they subscribe to don't tend to think about such things in a "rational" manner. Heck, most humans don't tend to think or act "rationally" most of the time.
And many people are capable of constructing logical arguments in other areas of thought, even if they subscribe to weird axioms in another one.
I agree with Bill Nye on a lot of things, but the idea that religious beliefs are some sort of impediment to getting people to sign up to study science, or that such people must be "anti-rationalist" is just nonsense. People -- including even atheist scientists -- are irrational. If anything, it's people like Richard Dawkins and the militant atheist crowd who drive religious people away from studying science... not the religion itself.
The biggest impediments to getting students to study science in the U.S. probably have to do with stereotypes about "geeks" and "nerds," along with anti-intellectualism. Wanna get people to study science? Change those attitudes first.
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That's fantastic, truly. I wonder how Monseigneur Georges Lemaitre would feel if he found out that in 2014 that religious groups were actively seeking to have sound science removed from educational materials in favor of religion.
The Catholics and many Protestant denominations don't see a disagreement between scientific discoveries and religion. They believe science and religion answer different questions, how vs why, so one is not a substitute for the other. They teach science in their science class and religion in their religion class.
Re:States Rights (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it only fair that if they choose to leverage "State Rights" to give a sub-standard "Faith Based" Educations, then it should be only fair that the Federal Government cut off all forms of Financial Funding for Education and Unemployment.
Why should US Taxpayers support a bunch of backwards people that want to live in a Theocracy? In fact, I think we should cut Theocratic States off from the US entirely. Seriously, why don't we just end the Union already and let Jesustan and the rest of us go our separate ways?
Why should the educated, secular States continue to support these backwaters that are filled with racist illiterates that contribute next to nothing to our GDP while consuming a disproportionate amount of Tax dollars in the form of Federal Subsidies?
How will policies such as this do anything but cause South Carolina to require even greater amounts of Federal Subsidies to support their backward culture of bible banging red necks?
Which Creation? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have no problem with presenting creationism as an alternative, as long as you include ALL creation myths in the curriculum. It wouldn't be "teaching the controversy" unless you teach them all.
I mean, sure, we all really KNOW that the world began when Udu the Space Tortoise shat out the earth and His godly flatulence created the sun, but we have to let the kids decide for themselves.
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Except it is not an alternative. It has zero scientific merit.
Re:Which Creation? (Score:5, Funny)
HOW DARE YOU BLASPHEME UDU!
Re:Which Creation? (Score:5, Funny)
Tax the followers of Udu? Would you tax Udu for his shell? His shell that protects YOU from evil?
No, my fallen friend, you cannot tax the creator of the universe any more than you can tax sheltered offshore profits. They are beyond the reach of little people like you.
Come back to Udu and you will learn to protect your own "shell" as the followers of Udu protect their "shells" from the evils and tax collectors of the world.
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I have no problem with presenting creationism as an alternative, as long as you include ALL creation myths in the curriculum. It wouldn't be "teaching the controversy" unless you teach them all.
I mean, sure, we all really KNOW that the world began when Udu the Space Tortoise shat out the earth and His godly flatulence created the sun, but we have to let the kids decide for themselves.
I have no problem with what you are suggesting either. Just don't do it in a science classroom because none of these are science.
Re:Which Creation? (Score:4, Funny)
You will freeze in the frozen swamp of ice crocodiles for suggesting Udu isn't science, but hey, if you want to spend eternity that way instead of frolicking with 187 she-tortoises in the post-life, that's YOUR problem.
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Math? Udu also invented MATH! The numbers add up to what Udu says they add up to.
Fucking heretic.
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It is a silly theory. The followers of Udu know that there are no quanta. There are just smaller and smaller turtles that make up everything. And there is no limit to how small turtles can get.
SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid (Score:2)
Available here [youtube.com]
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Re:SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid (Score:4, Interesting)
law of gravity (Score:2)
Actually, it's the "law of gravity," not the "theory." As it should be with something that can be demonstrated by experiment, is reproducible and despite centuries of effort hasn't been refuted by experiment.
Please don't compare experimental science with historical evidence science. Their conclusions don't have the same level of confidence and shouldn't be taught as if they do.
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Indeed. And a lot of it, and only very little against it. That makes it a "well established" theory. Creationism, on th other hand, has basically no evidence for it and a lot against it. That makes it a "crackpot" theory.
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BTW, that's the case with the Theory of Evolution. Here's my favorite example [talkorigins.org]. (Some actual math here [talkorigins.org].) Interestingly, we know the Tre
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Well, there is also a theory of gravity, but that is the mathematical model. Completely different meaning. A mathematical theory is a set of axioms and all you can derive from them. As axioms are always true, any mathematical theory is always completely true. It does just not claim to relate to reality in any way, that only happens when the axioms have some close connection to observable reality.
It's both. (Score:2)
Sigh.
Theory's and laws are different things.
There is the law of gravity F=mg, and gravitational theory, aka the theory of gravity.
So yes, you have the law of gravity and the theory of gravity.
A law differs from a scientific theory in that it does not posit a mechanism or explanation of phenomena.
To teach creationism as an 'alternative theory of evolution' is the exact same as teaching magic pixie dust pulls things down.
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Actually, according to your reference there is both a theory of gravity and a law of gravity.
The law quantitatively documents what happens.
The theory attempts to explain why.
There is no law of evolution. We can't reliably quantify it. If that tells you nothing else, it should tell you to place much greater confidence in gravity than evolution. Which returns us to my thesis: that arguing equivalent confidence in evolution and gravity is as oafish as arguing equivalent confidence in creationism and evolution.
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Actually, according to your reference there is both a theory of gravity and a law of gravity.
The law quantitatively documents what happens.
The theory attempts to explain why.
Correct, and that's true whether the theory is proven or not. The point he was making is that theories don't become laws. They're separate concepts. That evolution happens is a fact, and an observable fact. The details of which mutations happened when, where exactly an extinct species lies in terms of being an ancestor to a current species of part of a failed branch closely related to the said ancestor, the role of epigenetics, these things can be revised. As scientists discover more evidence, they ref
Evolution is a theory, but not "just a theory". (Score:4, Insightful)
Anybody who says is is a fact is just as dishonest as theses people. Evolution is a very well supported theory, far in advance of any competition. It is incomplete, and there is a residual possibility of it being completely wrong, but anybody that has even a bit of understanding of Science will accept it as very likely true unless exceedingly strong evidence to the contrary shows up. As such evidence has not turned up so far, Evolution is the way to go.
Unfortunately, most people cannot deal with non-absolutes or very small probabilities. That is why so many hope to win the lottery or are afraid of being harmed by terrorists. Both events are so exceedingly unlikely that for all practical purposes they cannot happen to them. But there is a small, insignificant residual chance that they may happen and that confuses many, many people.
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Umm... speaking of absolutes...
A theory doesn't often get proven "completely wrong". Much more often it gets replaced with something that works better in fringe cases. For many practical purposes, the theory that the world is flat works just fine. It won't work for large distances, of course. But quite often I really don't need to worry too much that a triangle on a sphere actually summing up to more than 180 degrees. Again, Newtonian physics works just fine, indeed very well, for many purposes. It wa
Re:Evolution is a theory, but not "just a theory". (Score:5, Insightful)
Bill Nye: Show me evidence as to why I'm wrong.
Ken Ham: Nothing will ever change my mind. No amount of evidence will do so.
Re:Evolution is a theory, but not "just a theory". (Score:4, Interesting)
Cool. Ham directly says he is not interested in truth, just belief and hence does not qualify as rational.
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Ham makes a reasonably good living off of Creationism, so I posit that Ham is eminently rational; but completely immoral. You may call a con man a lot of things, but generally irrational isn't one of them.
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Well, that's the difference between reason and faith, isn't it? That's why those debates are so stupid. It's two people arguing across different dimensions.
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Ah, yes? Is there a problem here?
Excellent! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Excellent! (Score:4, Insightful)
And the round earth theory... (Score:2)
Check the evidence (Score:2)
Science should not be taught as fact. (Score:3)
To the Honorable Sen. Fair (Score:5, Insightful)
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Next week rage on falling STEM ranking (Score:4, Informative)
How Does the U.S. Compare to Other Countries in STEM Education?
The World Economic Forum ranks the United States 52nd in the quality of mathematics and science education, and 5th (and declining) in overall global competitiveness
The United States ranks 27th in developed nations in the proportion of college students receiving undergraduate degrees in science or engineering
There are more foreign students studying in U.S. graduate schools than the number of U.S. students [vii] and over 2/3 of the engineers who receive Ph.D.’s from United States universities are not United States citizens
And the government will wonder why?
I don't think gravity is a good counter example. (Score:4, Informative)
Up until a few decades there was a controversy around gravity. There were some discrepancies between the current model for gravity and observations. 2 leading hypotheses emerged. One proposed to change the model, Modified Newtonian Dynamics (or MOND), and the other proposed to change the observations, the existence of dark matter. In recent years it seems the dark matter hypothesis has the clear advantage.
The "controversy of gravity" is not *that* gravity exists, but rather with the correctness of the explanation for gravity as demonstrated by the ability to make accurate predictions. The dark matter hypothesis is currently "winning" because it is making better predictions than MOND in circumstances where the predictions of both models diverge (e.g. galaxy collisions).
I would also like to point out the difference between the two concepts of "evolution" (*that* life evolves), and "the theory of evolution by natural selection", originally proposed by Charles Darwin and later improved by others which is an explanation of *how* life evolved. There really isn't any controversy regarding "evolution" (*that* it happened). Evolution by natural selection is also on very firm ground, although there are lots of holes to fill in, to improve our understanding of the specifics of evolution by natural selection. Maybe there is some controversy somewhere in the study of evolution, but hypotheses that are unfalsifiable (e.g. creationism, and intelligent design, etc) are not valid as opposing hypotheses in any controversy.
So we should absolutely *not* "teach the controversy" of evolution in regards to intelligent design, because it is just fabricated. However, we should not attempt the reductio ad absurdum of "teaching the controversy of gravity", given that ther actually *was* a controversy regarding gravity in the recent past, and this controversy probably should have been taught given that it was legitimate.
Also, gravity is the last of the 4 primary forces yet to be made compatible with quantum mechanics. because of this, our understanding of gravity is currently known to be incomplete. There absolutely is controversy in our understanding of gravity, and I think teaching it would be a great way to show the scientific method in action.
If we're the 99% (Score:4, Funny)
does this make South Carolina the bottom 2%?
Do you believe in democracy, or not? (Score:3)
The real question is, do you want your children educated through a system designed by majority vote? (and/or designed by people elected by majority vote) Do you really want everyone in your community weighing in on your children's education or not?
If you really believe in democracy, I don't see how anyone can fault this. Personally, I do not believe in democracy, and think it's a terrible way to educate a child. But if you really believe in the whole electoral process, I don't think you have room to complain: you have to take the bad with the good, and vote for someone better next time.
Re:Do you believe in democracy, or not? (Score:4, Insightful)
We put all sorts of limits on democracy. You can't democratically decide to enslave all red haired people. Even if the popular will is that red haired people are subhumans who can be treated like cattle, there are constitutional protections against this kind of an abuse. In other words, in most Western countries, and most certainly in the United States, the constitutional framers were all to aware that pure democracy; or mobocracy if you will, is as vulnerable to abuses against individual liberties as are governments.
The same applies to public education. As public schools are a branch of the government, the Establishment Clause applies to them, and thus teaching Creationism, even in the watered down form of Intelligent Design, is a blatant attempt to use the organs of state to push a specific set of religious beliefs. That was the finding of the Kitzmiller v. Dover, and while the trial sadly doesn't apply universally, it, coupled with judgments like Edwards v. Aguillard create a compelling set of case law that will likely demolish just about every attempt to sneak Creationism into the class, or to somehow earmark evolution as being controversial.
But really, particularly at the state level, politicians don't give a flying fuck about constitutionality. They probably know in most cases that any pro-Creationism law they try to pass will ultimately get tossed, but that makes vote-getting legislation even better, as when it gets tossed, they can make a lot of noise about meddling activist courts, and the deluded idiots who lap this kind of performance up nod their heads in agreement. It's a win win for these politicians, although it does become a tragic waste of taxpayer money.
It Could Be Worse (Score:3)
Hey, it could be worse - they could be teaching Common Core.
sad_trombone.wav
Wrong argument (Score:3)
I'm about sick of people engaging in these debates with "Creationists" over evolution. Each and every time, the person supporting evolution argues the completely wrong argument. Instead of arguing the validity of Evolution, they instead try to argue that there is no God... or that Evolution means there is no God. Meanwhile the creationist simply has to lean on his Bible and say "Well see? It says right here... God did that bit, that's how!"
It's pretty much impossible to prove some omnipotent being didn't just make everything the way it is. How can you argue against that other than its statistical unlikelihood?
So, the correct argument... It's simply: There is nothing about Evolution that contradicts a belief in God. You can believe in Evolution and Believe God, just as a belief that Egg Noodles are tasty would have no baring on your belief in God either. The Bible doesn't mention egg noodles, but that doesn't mean they didn't exist at the time.
But oh! you say, the bible says the earth is 6000 years old, so obviously it contradicts Evolution.
Well, no, on all accounts. First off, we didn't decide the Bible is the word of God yet, there are lots of religions out there after all. But lets assume so... nowhere in the bible is the age of the earth mentioned. You'd think that if this was something God was particularly concerned about, he' have stated something like "The earth was created on January 1 3995 BC" but no... instead we have biblical scholars that have added up the dates between different events in the bible and declared the age of the earth as 6000 years. To me, this isn't at all clear. And don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to find flaws in the bible here, I'm trying to get things right. If the Bible is the real word of God and he really wanted us to be arguing over how old the earth really was... Don't you think he would have put it in there? He wasn't sneaky about Murder... or stealing... but the entire natural history of creation he made a riddle? That doesn't make sense to me.
There are lots of other facts and figures that are mixed up in the Bible. Again, I'm not looking for flaws. I personally believe in God and think the Christian bible is indeed his work. I just do not think the Bible is the white-papers for the earth. I think it's poetry (and in fact, a lot of it really is poetry) and like poetry needs to be accepted as a whole work, not dissected and fiddled with to find hidden meaning. The truth of the Bible is obvious. Those things that seem questionable, we should leave that way. Make your own decision about what they mean and don't force it on others.
Re:How is presenting all theories a problem? (Score:5, Informative)
Creationism is not a theory. They can discuss any issues with evolution as it currently stands (and any science course worth its salt will teach any student how to think critically)
Re:How is presenting all theories a problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Creationism is not a theory.
Sure it is. It just isn't a *scientific* theory.
A scientific theory makes testable predictions. Experiments can be devised whose results confirm or refute the predictions. Knowledge can be collected from the environment which either fits or refutes the predictions. That's what makes it science.
Creationism and it's stepchild Intelligent Design make no testable predictions. Therefore they are not science. Therefore they do not belong in a science curriculum.
Your point of view means nothing. (Score:5, Insightful)
The distinction between what is and is not "science" doesn't mean much to those who want to make sure that their kids are not taught lies in school.
Some people turn to religion to gain certainty where there is none. In order for this psychological device to work, they must honestly believe that the points of their religious teaching are inarguable fact, and that any evidence to the contrary is a result of either incompetence or deception. People who believe this don't give a hoot what is or is not "science," since they only care about what does or does not agree with their forgone conclusions.
"Teach the controversy," is the second-best stance that they take only because they know that "teach our religion as fact" is already a lost battle (but would still be the best option).
Trying to get logical consistency on these points is futile, since the basic motivation has nothing to do with challenging kids to think critically, and everything to do with ensuring that their kids don't lose their faith by going to school.
Re:Your point of view means nothing. (Score:4, Insightful)
creationism is a Judeo-Christian belief. hwat if you're not Christian? what if you're hindu? are hindu theories taught as well? surely they are just as valid as judeo chrisian theories from a neutral perspective.
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creationism is a Judeo-Christian belief. hwat if you're not Christian? what if you're hindu? are hindu theories taught as well? surely they are just as valid as judeo chrisian theories from a neutral perspective.
Creationism is pretty common among most world religions. Its just the details and deities that change. In Hinduism Vishnu commanded Brahma to grow the world out of an ocean via a lotus flower. Still creationism, just a very different version.
That's why they cling to "Intelligent Design". By doing that and leaving out the details they can at least not have their children taught something that directly contradicts what they learn in Sunday school.
As someone who is non-religious that grew up in a religious
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Re:How is presenting all theories a problem? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:How is presenting all theories a problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
First of all, evolution is simply the observation that the genetic makeup of a population changes over time. It is not an attempt to explain the origins of life, any more than geology attempts to explain the origin of planets or astronomy attempts to explain the Big Bang.
Second of all, evolution is testable by every meaningful scientific definition of test, and so is abiogenesis for that matter.
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This betrays are rather huge ignorance of what is meant by "testing" in science. Testing doesn't just mean having pictures or video of events. It means making predictions about what we ought to find if we go looking, and evolutionary theory makes predictions about what we should find in the fossil and molecular data.
And fuck, pal, even Darwin himself came up with a perfectly utilitarian theory of sexual selection. Read a fucking book by a fucking biologist and quit aping long debunked Creationist crap. It o
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Sure, we can't observe the early Earth (at least not until or unless we discover time travel.) But we can simulate conditions on the early Earth and see what happens. In fact, the Miller-Urey experiments [wikipedia.org] and others have done and are doing this, and they've found some very interesting results. It'll be interesting to see what would or will happen if such an experiment were done on a larger scale and left undisturbed for a longer period of time.
Re:How is presenting all theories a problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Creationism actually is a theory. It is just not supported by evidence at all and quite a few established facts contradict it. So it is a theory with a very low probability of being a model for reality and hence not worthy of study.
"Theory" does not equal "Hunch" in science (Score:5, Insightful)
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It was created as a method of control and manipulation over the masses.
There's no empirical evidence to back up this claim. Even those religions which were used as a form of control were usually not created for that reason. Sure, it could be argued that Confucianism fits your model, and probably a few others, but I sincerely doubt Jesus of Nazareth went around preaching about peace and love so Constantine could use his ideas as a form of control ~300 years later.
Religion is not a thing that was invented in one part of the world and spread from there. Many religions throughout
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And natural selection isn't a philosophy, any more than the inverse square law is a philosophy.
It goes to show you that just because you can pronounce a word does not bequeath upon you any understanding.
Pull your head out (Score:5, Insightful)
Teach religion in religion class and science in science class. If you can't test it, it's not science. If you CAN, even if it's something you find distasteful, it IS science...
There's no controversy here, merely people who don't like the fact that the sun doesn't come up in the south.
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You can teach Creationism as an example of a theory that is wrong with very high probability. But I guess that is not what these people want.
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Not really. Creationism doesn't lie within the realm of science, so science cannot make any meaningful comment about it, pro or con. It can only say "that's not science".
It would be useful for illustrating what makes something not a scientific theory, though.
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Re:How is presenting all theories a problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because there are no other competing scientific theories.
Do you have a scientific theory that explains what we see, makes prediction, and is factual verified 1000's of time?
No. This is a politician shoving religion down are throat under a very thin vale. He should be tossed out for violating the constitution.
Creationism is not science. Not my any stretch. It is a belief made on biblical literalism.
Maybe you should learn what science is?
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Re: How is presenting all theories a problem? (Score:2)
Teach the controversy, but define it first (Score:3)
The Controversy:
Fundamentalist religious people don't like the fact that natural selection (and the time frames required for evolution to have produced life on Earth) conflict with what the bible says. So they've made up a Creation 'science' to create 'controversy' about whether evolutionary science is in fact correct.
They've found scientists to amplify the aspects of evolution that we don't fully understand and then used that 'uncertainty' to pretend that it's evidence for their religious beliefs.
Any ques
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...oh. And fundamentalist religious people do indeed get to (and deserve to) vote. Unfortunately, this leads politicians to pander to them and introduce bogus science into school curricula. Perhaps if rational people spoke out (and voted in huge numbers), the politicians would pander to them, but contradicting religionists is a political and social minefield. Back to our biology lesson...
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They don't really have any scientists. They have 'scientists.' With the quote marks. Generally the prominant creationists either have no qualifications, have dubious qualifications from a very unreputable institution, or hold a respectable qualification but in an unrelated field. They do seem to score a lot of engineers - people who are trained to see everything in terms of design - but that's about it.
The Discovery Institute produced a list once of creation scientists. But even their search couldn't actual
Re: Teach the controversy, but define it first (Score:2)
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I honestly don't see the issue with presenting all sides of an issue. I think going all evolution and excluding creationism is as bad as forcing only creationism to the exclusion of evolution. That said, I can only hope they use the Darwin Awards as the best proof we have of natural selection.
I'll assume you're not a troll, and I'll also assume you understand the concept of the "scientific method": observations -> hypothesis -> new observations -> modified hypothesis, etc.
One (evolution/natural selection) is a theory based on multiple observations by many scientists in different fields over many years. It's the "best" explanation that fits all the observed data.
Creationism is based on what's written in a single book (which some consider "the word of God" and others consider a fai
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It is when one theory is exceedingly well supported by the available evidence and the other is really just a theory with no supporting evidence whatsoever.
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Finally... a platform for the Flat Earth Theory! (Score:2)
http://www.universetoday.com/4... [universetoday.com]
Sounds legit. Teach the Controversy!
Re:How is presenting all theories a problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
Only when there are other theories worthy of discussion. As far as scientific credibility goes, creationism is ridiculous. I'm all for silencing any discussion of creationism in schools - alongside astrology, palm-reading and other fields of nonsense.
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The government needs to get out of the business of policing ideas.
Get the government out of the public school system!!!
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My chemistry taught me alchemy, my biology teacher taught me creationism. They both said that there is no evidence whatsoever that any of that stuff is true, while they also taught me that evolution has strong evidences and that many alchemy "magic" can now be scientifically demonstrated by chemistry.
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There are plenty of jobs. For scientifically literate engineering and science professionals.
The controversy is why is science being attacked (Score:2)
If I were a teacher in a little town like Lord's Mudbucket, South Carolina, I'd teach the theory of evolution of religion, as a means of gaining insight into why there is a controversy in the face of overwhelming evidence.
Ref: "Evolution for Everyone" David Sloan Wilson"
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I agree - teach the contraversy. We have seen enough things fall by the wayside in the history of science that we should not consider anything with reverance, e.g. flat earth, sun circles the earth, etc.
Teach the scientific method and let the kids sort it out!
You do realize that all the theories you mentioned were originally held and taught by religious fanatics, right? Not sure if that was your point or not...
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Our current congress (at least the House) would probably vote to allow teaching creationism, so Congress should NOT get hands-on with standards.