Slashdot Mirror
Science Wins Over Creationism In South Korea
ananyo writes "South Korea's government has urged textbook publishers to ignore calls to remove two examples of evolution from high-school textbooks. The move marks a change of heart for the government, which had earlier forwarded a petition from the 'Society for Textbook Revise' to publishers and told them to make their own minds up about the demands. The petition called for details about the evolution of the horse and of the avian ancestor Archaeopteryx to be removed from the books. In May, news emerged that publishers were planning to drop the offending sections, sparking outrage among some scientists. The resulting furor prompted the government to set up an 11-member panel, led by the Korean Academy of Science and Technology. On 5 September, the panel concluded that Archaeopteryx must be included in Korean science textbooks. And, while accepting that the textbooks' explanation of the evolution of the horse was too simplistic, the panel said the entry should be revised rather than removed or replaced with a different example, such as the evolution of whales."
Wow, I'd like the US to resemble your comments. But here, it seems that organized religion keeps trying to worm its way more and more into the government. You can't get elected to any national office unless you are religious (this is not a rule, but many surveys even reported here on slashdot show that a majority of people don't trust, and won't vote for, atheists). I'd love to see theism die out, but in the US it is hardly on its last legs. It seems poised to keep on destroying lives and practicing exclusionism in the name of rules supposedly handed down by an invisible friend.
Woppa science style!
The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.
ACK
Wow, if Korea turned against evolution, how would Zerg do their upgrades?
It was a Catholic priest, Georges Lemaître, that most pushed for the big ban theory, which was advanced science in that day. It was the atheists that were anti-science then, with their now-debunked "Static" theory.
Actually, until 80-90 years ago no one knew that there was anything in the universe beyond our galaxy. (Hubble was the first to show the distances to objects outside our galaxy, before he showed that they were receding; Einstein's "big mistake" was made before we understood the basic nature of the universe.) Lemaître was the first to grok the implications of of an expanding universe. Religionists like to claim that scientists booed him down as a creationist, but the only scientist I have found that did that was Hoyle, who I suspect was just slinging mud in hope of defending his pet continuous-creation theory. (Which, IIRC, he was still clinging to 20 years after the big bang was obvious to everyone else.)
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I think it's worth reposting this:
No Evolution in Korea?
"What STR did manage to pull off with three textbook publishers was this: STR convinced those publishers that two diagrams in their books -- one about the evolution of horses, and the other about archeopteryx -- and the text accompanying them were scientifically incorrect. Notice the claim here: the claim was not that the diagrams were against creationism. The claim was that the diagrams were scientifically incorrect."
"And you know what? Technically, they were right! The diagram above showing the evolution of horses is horribly outdated, and the pictures no longer comport with the current scientific consensus. The text accompanying archeopteryx said archeopteryx is the middle step between dinosaurs and birds, which is also technically incorrect -- archeopteryx is considered a close relative to the true ancestral birds, not itself a true ancestral bird. So the three textbook companies decided that they would drop the two diagrams in the next edition of their textbooks."
"Pay close attention to what actually happened here. What got dropped was two diagrams and the accompanying texts about evolution that were scientifically incorrect -- not the theory of evolution. It is not possible for the textbook publishers to drop the discussion about the theory of evolution, because that would violate MEST guidelines. Further, not even the decision to drop the two diagrams was final, because MEST still had to approve the new textbooks that the publishers proposed to make."
"But of course, STR nutcases thought they scored a huge victory for creationism, and started trumpeting their "victory." By and large, Korean media yawned -- exactly one national newspaper (and a relatively minor one at that) covered the story, and even that story made it quite clear that all that got dropped were diagrams. But the Nature magazine decided to run with the story, with a sensational headline that read: "South Korea surrenders to creationist demands," and here we are -- Korea is branded as a dumb country that doesn't believe in evolution."
Basically, it didn't become a problem until foreigners misunderstood what happened and trumpeted it as the beginning of creationism in Korea. The Korean government responded not because of creeping creationism but to save face in front of the international community. If anything, this whole misunderstanding may in fact work in favor of creationists in Korea because now it has drawn attention to what had been a fringe, ignored cause from other creationist movements overseas.
As a homeschooling parent, I can back this up. Luckily, the internet opens up a world of information beyond creepy textbooks that say that you will to go to a lake of fire if you think that the earth is more than 6000 years old (I am not making that up).