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Royal Society and Creationism In Science Classes
An anonymous reader writes "The Reverend Professor Michael Reiss, a biologist and Anglican priest, is the education director for the Royal Society, the venerable British science institution. He recently called for creationism to be discussed in science classes, not just in religion or philosophy classes. Science journals reacted with a world of 'WTF' and the Royal Society backpedaled furiously. Now Nobel laureates are gathering to get him fired: 'The thing the Royal Society does not appreciate is the true nature of the forces arrayed against it and the Enlightenment for which the Royal Society should be the last champion.' The blogs, of course, are loving it."
I have no problem with students being shown the difference between science and "creationism". One is the very antithesis of the other. How can the average student be expected to argue against this nonsense if they don't understand what it is and why it is not science?
I thought you were better than this. This is one American import I hope you don't accept.
Creationism is not science. Period.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
This is a great class to teach kids about what science is, and what the differences between scientific theories, and a non-scientific theory is.
For example, in science a theory is supposed to be able to make predictions: I throw the apple up, and gravity accelerates the apple back down etc. Have the kids then try to explain what predictive qualities Evolution has, and what predictive qualities Creationism has.
It could be a great teaching tool IMHO.
Embrace, and extinguish. ;)
Creationisum is an insult to the glory of God. How dare people say that God, being all knowing and all powerful, could not design and impliment a dynamic system but had to settle for a simple static one.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Because then you would be perpetuating the error you just made.
A "theory" in science has evidence to support it.
Where is the evidence to support Creationism?
But people are trying to get him fired over it? That's bullshit. The guy can hold his opinion, and as long as he sticks to the curriculum without creationism, why get him fired over his goddamned opinion? These Nobel laureates aren't the ones being taught in his class and have very little to do with him, but they'll gang up anyway. The theist/antitheist sword cuts both ways. Both sides are capable of being intolerant assholes, and this is just more proof.
Again, a scientific theory has evidence to support it. It is falsifiable. It can be tested.
Yet you keep using the same word to describe evolution and Creationism.
It is that exact error that is the reason against teaching Creationism.
Please point out the credible evidence for creationism. It's not science. Creationism isn't a Theory in the scientific sense. Just in a layman's sense.
The columns seem reasonable. Creationism should not be taught in science class as science, but it certainly is part of the context in which the theory evolution came about. One could hardly teach about Copernicus without mentioning Heliocentrism, or Pasteur without Spontaneous Generation.
There is no more evidence for creationism than there is for absurd theories like the IPU (may Her Grace forgive me) and the FSM, I'm afraid. I've read their materials, their textbooks. They are full of misinterpretations, science that was current two decades ago, and outright false facts presented as truth.
A fact which contradicts natural selection is not the same as a fact which supports creationism. That is the product of a false dichotomy.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
I think creationism is nonsensical, but the reaction over this is reminiscent of the Inquisition. Calling for firing someone for voicing a heterodox opinion is getting uncomfortably close to a modern-day auto da fe.
Creationism / Intelligent Design isn't a theory. The only "evidence" for it is some text in a book and some fake photoshopped pictures of digs of four meter tall humanoid skeletons.
It is not reasonable to present both evolution by natural selection, which has mountains of evidence behind it, and creationism / ID as equally plausible scientific theories. The only role Creationism / ID should play in a science class is as an example of a nonscientific explanation of how we came to be here.
What missing links are you talking about? More fossils are unearthed every day, and regularly, they discover a new species of hominid that fits in between two known species. Then you'll just whine about the missing links between the older known species and the newly discovered ones, ad infinitum. Take the real numbers: there's an infinite amount of them between any two integers. The "missing link" between 1 and 2 would be e.g. 1.5, and that would give rise to two new "missing links" -- one between 1 and 1.5, and the other between 1.5 and 2. This could go on and on forever (no barrel-throwing monkeys at the end, though).
Of course they should not let students be ignorant of the fact that many people prefer to believe some old book instead of a theory that's been debated and improved for 150 years by thousands of very smart and diligent scientists, all trying to disprove (parts of) it, and replace it with new ideas -- that would make them very famous and allow them to hold a speech in Stockholm. There is no conspiracy to push evolution by scientists who are afraid of religion or something like that. It would require thousands of intelligent and ambitious people to willfully forego their chance at the Nobel Prize. Never gonna happen.
It comes down to this: evolution by natural selection is a good theory that explains the wide variety of life found on this rock, and which makes biology make sense, and creationism and ID are just the LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU yelling of desperate religious people.
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
You sir, are an extreme moderate.
No worries though, I also make an attempt to stand between the darkness and the light. It's an impossible goal that is worth pursuing.
Karma: Incomprehensible (Mostly affected by posting at +5, reading at -1, and metamoderating everything unfair.)
Now imagine a class with 10 Creationist students in it.
All arguing their latest talking points with the teacher.
All demanding that books X, Y and Z be read to show the "facts" of Creationism.
All saying that authors A, B and C have "disproven" evolution.
All claiming that evolution is a religion.
Fuck that. Put Creationism in a World Religions class and just save the time and arguments. As can be seen from the comments here, even self described "nerds" have trouble understanding what science is (and is not). Why bother with the confusion and the arguments?
Which amuses me that they would waste so much of their lives dedicated to proving a negative that, according to them, has absolutely no impact on their lives anyways.
I'm not sure what world you live in, but in my world, the existence of religion has a *very* significant effect on *everyone's* life, whether they want it to or not. If only we had a world where belief in religion only affected that individual, and their actions were completely independent of whatever superstitions they wanted to embrace.
But I agree with the other poster. I've never seen any atheist or agnostic claim to "prove" God didn't exist, which is logically impossible. Overwhelmingly convincing evidence, yes. Proof, no.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
This isn't about "teaching them both sides" or "balance". It's about pushing religion into science class because of a religious culture which is hostile to the very idea of science. Creationism, Scientific Creationism, Intelligent Design or whatever they're calling it today is not science. It is dogma which borrows a few scientific words. At best it's cargo-cult science. Mostly it's a fraud. We might as well teach "the other side" in Astronomy and invite in the Flat-Earthers and geoncentricists. It would make just as much sense to say that there's a "controversy" about Pasteur and say that since the germ theory is "just a theory" we need to let students make up their own minds and give equal time to vitalism, the four humors and spontaneous generation. The Royal Society stepped on its collective tallywhacker making this guy a spokesman. Let's see if they shoot themselves in the foot with their response.
The man who never alters his opinion is like the stagnant water and breeds Reptiles of the Mind -- William Blake
Sure, why not. While we're at it, let's teach Holocaust denial in History class, and Ebonics in English lit. Also, we'll make sure to cover Alchemy in chemistry class, and our Geography teachers MUST give equal time to the idea that the world is flat!
I mean seriously, how DARE you people use logic and critical thinking when deciding what should be taught in school? Clearly we should teach every fantasy that's ever popped into anyones head - only that way can we ensure that nobodies feelings are hurt, and that all ideas get a fair hearing!
why should my kids be deprived of a real science education just because someone else indoctrinated their children with specious non-scientific beliefs?
if a kid raises creationist objections to evolutionary theory, the teacher should kindly say to him "that is religious mythology, not science," and end the discussion there. pseudoscience is pseudoscience, and there's no reason to make special allowances for discussing pseudoscience in a science class just because it's based on a popular religion.
As a teacher, I believe it is vital that we take the time to explain why creationism is not science, so that the students have a solid understanding of the issue to debate and defend their positions. Your approach is asking the students to accept your statement on faith, which will not help them learn science.
Creationism's Foundation: "God Isn't Infinite Enough..."
"God Isn't Infinite Enough to have created a balanced, self-sustaining, self-correcting Universe."
"God Isn't Infinite Enough to have created billions of years, instead having to fake it."
"God Isn't Infinite Enough to have created evolution, instead having to meddle endlessly to compensate."
Point out, forcefully absolutely & relentlessly, that creationism insists that god is incompetent, and that if god were REALLY infinite, then "god's hand" would be un-findable through physical evidence, and only perceivable through spiritual instruments/experiments.
Wow. WTB mod points! The bottom line here is- science is evidence seeking a conclusion. Creationism is a conclusion seeking evidence. That is why it should not be taught in science classes.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
This post is not insightful. Gravity and electricity can be demonstrated to any idiot, within seconds, and explained.
Evolution requires a little more thought and a little more time. This leaves it at the mercy of idiots who refuse to see this evidence as it takes too long - hence "It's UNPROVABLE!!"
Scientists are facing a fight with this one, and the creationists (who are plainly, outright WRONG) seem to be better funded. It is wholly right that the education director for the Royal Society be fired for such outlandish claims.
IAAST (I am a science teacher) and I would quit if I had to teach creationsim and frankly I expose them for the lunatics that they are whenever that 'view' is asked about in my classes.
Evolution is supported with scientific experiments. Creationism and Intelligent design are based on faith and cannot be tested using the scientific method. Therefore there is no place for them in science class. They would fit just fine in a class called "religion." Or maybe a philosophy class debating what we are in this world.
Teaching creationism in a Science class as Science is like teaching Spanish in and English class as English. Creationism is no more Science than Astrology. It should be discussed as a different branch of Philosophy as an alternative to Science, along with Astrology and Ghost-Hunting.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
You'd be aware that Bugs Bunny is God,
and the Earth is shaped like a carrot.
Now begone with your novel speculations, knave.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
It's not a question of punishment. The problem here is that this individual occupies an extremely important position in a major scientific organization. It'd be akin to the head of PETA saying "You know, I see nothing wrong with torturing puppies and then eating them for breakfast". Sure, he's entitled to speak freely, but we're also entitled to question his qualification to hold that position.
With that said, it seems his actual statement may have been misrepresented. Based on his correction, I certainly wouldn't be in favor of firing him. It seems that the whole uproar might have been a wee bit of an overreaction.
Evolution has no proof. An overwhelming pile of evidence is not proof. Evolution may be the closest thing to actual truth, but proof, there will be none. Only an all seeing, all knowing, being would be able to show proof.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Evidence has a place in science classes, but what should really be taught is the scientific method. Teach creationism in science classes, by all means! It is a fabulous example of a scientific theory that makes all possible predictions and is therefore scientific crap. Teach it, and teach why it is junk. Science class should be about teaching a thought process, not a bunch of facts.
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
"Exactly - the reason we can teach about alchemy in chemistry class is because nobody takes alchemy seriously any more."
But we do teach Alchemy now. We just don't call it that anymore, because "Alchemy" is nothing but the idea that one element could be turned into another. What was once ludicrous fantasy and fiction is now science. We see Alchemy happening every day. The Sun turns Hydrogen into Helium constantly, and our earliest nuclear scientists practiced Alchemy, when you get right down to it. Modern Chemistry and Physics very much includes fields that were once considered Alchemy.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
While a very good description of "science" indeed, you should look into the personal lives and believes of several of the "greatest evolutionist" through history. Terribly many of them haven't merely been "noble scientists", on the search for "thruth", ready to accept whatever that might be, but rather been die-hard anti-christians, searching for something to justify their believes, (and having realized better than most christians where to best attack Christendom.)
(On a side note, of course Creationism isn't "science", by science' definition. The Bible says there is a spiritual realm as well as a physical one. But science can't deal with anything beyond the physical one. As a result scientist easily conclude that as they can't "put God in a box", He cannot exist.)
As a software engineer, as part of my education we often examined code that was faulty. That doesn't mean defect-ridden code should be taught in schools, just that it was seen, discussed, dissected and its flaws revealed to the world.
It's good teaching practice. And what's more, once you learn to spot flaws in the bad code you might start finding flaws in the stuff that's supposed to be good. I think that applies to the scientific method, too. If you understand the how and why the scientific method works you can get an understanding of its limitations (as I mentioned earlier, it's based on the assumptions that there really is a world that we're observing and that rules that have applied in the past will continue to apply for instance. Both very good assumptions for getting on with life, but it's important to understand that they're pragmatic rather than strictly rational -- that way you get people who believe in science, not in scientism).
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The problem is that in I.D., the intelligence that interacts with the natural world is supernatural in nature and beyond the scope of science. That doesn't make I.D. notions meaningless, but it does make scientific discussion of I.D. meaningless and a waste of time.
If human intelligence is 100% natural in nature then Science has hope of someday explaining how it arises... but rather if human intelligence has a supernatural component, i.e. a soul, then science will not ever be able to explain intelligence.
If the Intelligence in I.D. is natural rather than super-natural then the existence of this intelligence can be tested via Scientific methods. However, such a test comes awfully close to proving or disproving the existence of God. That is why God is to be considered supernatural and beyond the natural world and the realm of Science. An Atheist would be one who discounts the supernatural and a Theist would be one who believes in some notion of the Supernatural. An Atheist is therefore forced to accept Science, but a Theist is forced to neither accept nor reject Science.
<ok enough being polite... now I'm going to go into a Palin-induced rant-mode>
This is the philosophical framework of Science laid down by DesCartes. Proponents of I.D. are at best ignorant of what the word "Science" actually means, and at worst they are dishonest in their attempts to proselytize their religious views under the guise of pseudo-science.
We would be well to remember that the current scientific enlightenment that brings us the many benefits of modernity is but a small blip in human history. To protect our children from the brutish lives more typical of humanities 20,000+ year history, we must stand steadfast in our opposition to the mindless minions of conformity and orthodoxy who would force-feed us knowledge based on tradition and authority over knowledge based on reason, questioning, and experiment.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
You sir, by denying the very first verse of the Bible, deny Christianity and are I contend are NOT a Christian.
You, sir, by arrogantly presuming the spiritual and scriptural authority to excommunicate someone based on a slashdot post, ARE a douchebag.
Correct. For those screaming about how closed-minded discussing ID or creationism is they are themselves being closed-minded and not getting the point.
Step 1: Put down The God Delusion.
Step 2: Think for yourself. Mr Dawkins is terribly clever, yes, but you too have a brain. And being clever does not make him right about everything.
Step 3. Read Reiss' article. It won't hurt. You might even learn something.
Let's face it, there are contradictions throughout the bible to easily make this seem like a silly topic.
Genesis (which I've read in several interprettations as well as in hebrew as b'rashit) and even when I was younger and willing to believe what my parents believed and I hadn't even heard of evolution as of yet, I had many questions regarding the logic behind it. After all, it seemed very unrealistic to me that everythe was created so quickly.
This didn't change my faith. It just struck me as if God had provided us with a VERY short answer to a question that he himself didn't consider to be the important to what he was attempting to accomplish. He described it in a way that people who lacked education could be pasified and if you wanted the real answer, you can look deeper and figure it out. What Genesis was saying was that God created it all. He provided something similar to a childrens book version of what he did and moved on.
So, now that I'm enlightened and no longer believe in fairy tales like God, I am forced to wonder why creationism is taken so literally by religion. They constantly try to tell us that it is not our job to question Gods motives but instead to accept what he did was for our best interests in the greater picture. Yet, they can't accept that a story of creation fed to Mose's flocks might have been an extremely simplified version of what happened and that the real deal could in fact be a process that took him 13 billion years to accomplish.
So, why is the literal interprettation of Genesis so important to them? I mean really... they talk about Intelligent Design to try and make science accept the literal translation of Genesis. Why can't they assume that maybe the scientists have simply finally figured out what their God did and take credit for that instead?
After all, who would want to pray to an ever eternal God that has existed infinately, who considers a billion years to be little more that how we see waiting 5 minutes for a bus that slapped all this shit together in 7 days? I mean really, if God loves us nearly as much as they say he does, wouldn't he have spent the equivilent of one of our hours (about 13 billion years hehe) trying to actually get it right?
Who has suggested giving equal time to Creationism? Anyone can knock down straw men, but reading the discussion and responding to the points made needs a bit of thought something too many folks here seem to struggle with whenever anybody mentions religion.
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"Crush religious expression", eh? So you don't have the confidence in your own viewpoint to let it stand up to intelligent debate; other viewpoints need to be "crushed"? If you "crush" religious expression in the classroom, religious parents will just take their kids out of the state system and the kids will get exposure to no alternative viewpoint. Way to defuse religious/secular tensions!
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how on earth Science could have developed out of religion. Every religion and its teaching has multiple interpretation depending on whom you ask and in which era you ask .
That is the present situation, yes. It wasn't the historical situation; for much of recorded history there was a religious powerbase that dictated one specific interpretation of religious questions.
Thats not the case with science , basic premise remain the same in science whenever you find a "verifiable" evidence that premise is wrong or fail at some point we correct our theory by integrating the newly acquired knowledge to our existing framework .
Again, that's the situation now, but it's a view of science that emerged in the second half of the 20th century, with the development of logical positivism and Popper's idea of falsifiability. Newton did great stuff that we have been able to build on, but he didn't work according to the modern scientific method (which is why you find so much mysticism and alchemy in his writings; it's embarrasing to those who see a black-and-white "science always right, mysticism always wrong" that a religious mystic like Newton could get so much right.
A lot of the acrimony in the science v. religion arguments comes from a lack of awareness of our history. Scientists assume that the modern view of science is the way it's always been, but it's a 20th century development. Religious fundamentalists think that they're going back 2000 years but their ideas only go back to the 19th century. Reading up on the philosophy of science and its history can be really valuable. It won't change your ideas of who is right and who is wrong, but it should show you that the lines are not as crisply drawn as the Dawkins brigade would have us believe.
thats not the case with religon . so i guess its unlikely that science has anything to do with religon at all . there is hardly any common ground
If there were hardly any common ground there would be hardly any territory to fight over -- Stephen Jay Gould's "Non-overlapping Magisteria". I agree that there's a lot of ground that is not common -- everything metaphysical (unfortunately we need metaphysics -- even the scientific method has metaphisical foundations -- and nobody -- not the scientific, not the religious, not the philosophical -- has yet come up with a dependable way of dealing with it). But all religions that teach interventionist deities are teaching that there is common ground, if not common methodology, between science and religion and so come within the scope of scientific investigation.
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Death penalty for thought crime, eh? Welcome to the brave new totalitarian world. If you want to kill anybody who disagrees with your beliefs, in my book that makes your beliefs a religion. Hope you remember to add yourself to your own list.
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