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UK Government Mandates the Teaching of Evolution As Scientific Fact
An anonymous reader writes "A story at the BBC explains how the UK government has put an extra clause into a funding bill to ensure that any new 'free schools' (independent schools run by groups of parents or organizations, but publicly-funded) must teach evolution rather than creationism or potentially lose their funding. 'The new rules state that from 2013, all free schools in England must teach evolution as a 'comprehensive and coherent scientific theory.' The move follows scientists's concerns that free schools run by creationists might avoid teaching evolution. Sir Paul Nurse, president of the Royal Society, said it was 'delighted.' Sir Paul told BBC News the previous rules on free schools and the teaching of evolution versus creationism had been 'not tight enough.'"
BTW, as to the Communist states under Stalin and Mao - they also explicitly rejected neo-Darwinian evolution and embraced (and enforced) Lysenkoism instead. The resulting crop failures when reality failed to match up to "worker's science" killed a huge fraction - possibly the majority - of the millions who died under those regimes.
Ironically, the people under Hitler, Stalin, and Mao would have been better off if their leaders had accepted neo-Darwinian evolution.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
The new theory would still have to explain all currently observed evidence as well as any new evidence not explained by current theory. If there is no new evidence, then the new theory would need to be an even simpler explanation of all current evidence, and also have predictive power.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
No, bad.
Just because it is the supported theory, and all the archeological evidence does support it, and we of the scientific community hold that it is the 99% best supported explanation, it is not a fact.
If it was truly a fact, then no more resources would be spent studying evolution. And, it is way too soon to close that checkbook.
I really think it is bad when politicians and fools get involved with science.
and that's why you at least read the summary, instead of the terribly written title:
"...all free schools in England must teach evolution as a 'comprehensive and coherent scientific theory.'"
They aren't required to teach it as fact, they are simply required to actually teach it (no hand waving or "the evil overlords that oppose us require us to tell you about their lies").
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
Firstly, explanatory power alone does not make a scientific theory. Personally I'm a big fan of the various multiverse theories, they provide a very elegant solution to the fine tuning problem and various other issues, but the problem is they explain EVERYTHING. Want to know why a bug flew in your mouth last week? Multiverse theory. The problem is that it makes no testable predictions, and as such is not yet science.
Secondly, yes, absolutely, if something we teach in schools is shown to be wrong then we should change it, and there is no shame in this. Physics education does this a lot - age 15 you get Newton's Laws, then at 16 the teacher explains that this isn't really what's going on and it's just a limiting case, then you get Relativity. Darwin's original theory is viewed in much the same way as Newton's Laws anyway, it's a few-hundred-year-old theory which doesn't stand up to very deep scrutiny, but DOES have a modern descendant which has had a few of the wrinkles ironed out.
Backing down and admitting you're wrong when faced with evidence isn't bad for science, it IS science.
Aside: for any non-UK Slashdotters wondering about UK politics and religion, we tend to keep the two separate. You'll sometimes hear a politician refer to god (as Blair somewhat infamously did over Iraq), and there is a lot of "god" in our legal and political oaths etc, but the electorate (even the religious ones) don't much care for "I'm voting like this because god says so", we prefer our leaders to keep their faith in a place of worship and their politics in the House of Commons.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
Your kidding right? Evolution as a process, like most scientific theories it has predictive and explanatory power. We see that evolution happens, take drug resistant bacteria. We see how with selective breeding in just a few thousand years we can have widely divergent dog breeds and types of plants. In our world of computers, Genetic algorithms can solve difficult problems by just following those parts of genetics that combine parts of solutions and introduces mutations and a survival rule that culls the herd. It works, I have done that. I have come up with 'intelligent' answers to problems that the only driving principle was survival, not some unseen intelligent force. So we know that the process of Evolution is a fact and practical. The teaching of creationism on the other hand is a cop out. They claim the world is 6000 years old, they claim dinosaurs co-existed with man (and woman), that man (and woman) suddenly appeared full sized and full figured in God's image (he must have been a Black Man then). That the scientists have it all wrong about radioactive decay and tree rings and layers of sediment to show when things happened. They are much like some segments of the political parties that have no problem of making up facts to fit their theories. And also we know they think that Rape is part of God's design.
I'm sorry but there is no equivalence here. None. It is the same equivalence that is being drawn by those in politics that say that both political parties are the same. A little rational thought is in order.
I think the problem is a unique one. Well, almost unique. There are (too many) people out there who not just deny evolution exists, but rabidly so. They go so far as to try to get local education ministries to change their curriculum to suit their own twisted world view.
You mention Newton's laws, but that's not comparable. There are no groups of people roaming the countryside with placards in hand trying to deny that gravity exists and insisting that schools teach students that an big invisible hand is coming out of the sky and pushing things down towards the ground.
There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the state of science education itself. The problem is all the whackjob morons out there that *think* they know better, trying to undermine the efforts of said education.
This is evolution we're talking about. It is an indisputable fact. If they were trying to pass legislation demanding that, say, pre-birth fetuses are actually parasitic organisms, then I can see it being a controversy. But to mandate that everyone is required to teach a fundamental, indisputable fact of our reality, to me makes sense, in the same way that teaching mathematics as defined by mathematicians (ie: NOT 2+2=67) makes sense.
I see it as an attempt to nip a potentially massive source of bullshit and future headaches in the bud.