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Teaching Creationism As Science Now Banned In Britain's Schools
sandbagger sends this news from io9:
In what's being heralded as a secular triumph, the U.K. government has banned the teaching of creationism as science in all existing and future academies and free schools. The new clauses, which arrived with very little fanfare last week, state that the "requirement for every academy and free school to provide a broad and balanced curriculum in any case prevents the teaching of creationism as evidence based theory in any academy or free school." So, if an academy or free school teaches creationism as scientifically valid, it's breaking the funding agreement to provide a "broad and balanced curriculum." ... In addition to the new clauses, the UK government clarified the meaning of creationism, reminding everyone that it's a minority view even within the Church of England and the Catholic Church.
Because sometimes, just sometimes, we actually have a brain.
A beautiful victory for intelligence (as opposed to intelligent design (TM)(R)(C))
INB4 endless butthurt from Cretinists, er, Creationists.
You could just read TFA:
"[A]ny doctrine or theory which holds that natural biological processes cannot account for the history, diversity, and complexity of life on earth and therefore rejects the scientific theory of evolution."
Basically, if you claim that anything other than simple biology was at work in creating animals, then you lose your funding (and possibly right to call yourselves a school).
You can claim that God made biology possible by creating a universe in which biology could make them exist, but you can't claim that God "created" animals at all.
Actually, if I read the summery correct and it is actually representative of the article and life in reality, by creationism they mean scientific support of creation either all animals created at once or by God creating them.
Or in other words, it doesn't ban the teaching, just the teaching that it is " as evidence based theory". You could likely teach it as a "this is what people used to believe until evidence showed this" and get buy with it.
You're dealing with Anglicans here. They tend not to interpret the bible all that literally. If you were to say to one that the Universe was created in an instant over ten billion years ago they'd be much more likely to say "well, duh" than to start ranting about how it was hashed out over a week only 6000 years ago.
Britain Rules Teaching Children Known Falsehoods In Science Class For Religious Reasons Now Deemed Inappropriate
Good. Honestly, though, this isn't a huge deal for Britain. Almost every developed country has this policy either formally or de-facto.
If this came out of the US, though, holy balls it would be big. The US seems to be the only country where a sizable body of Christians are allowed to lie for Jesus to impressionable children, or worse, genuinely believe creationist excrement and are still permitted to use their authority to teach it to others.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
With just one little comma...
"Teaching Creationism, As Science Now Banned In Britain's Schools"
Not really - old, new, or entirely unrelated to Christianity - if you claim that the creation of life by a supernatural being is position backed by scientific evidence, you are either misinformed or outright lying. At best you can insert a "God of the Gaps", but even that, by definition, has no supporting scientific evidence.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Evolution is falsifiable - find a modern rabbit fossil in the Precambrian.
Just because you can't setup a laboratory experiment for something *doesn't* mean you can't test it.
Basically, if you claim that anything other than simple biology was at work in creating animals, then you lose your funding (and possibly right to call yourselves a school).
No, only if you make it those claims (because they violate the scientific method) in a class that you label as "science." Nothing is preventing a school from teaching it in a class labeled as "theology." The point is to be clear that one idea is based on evidence backed up using the scientific method ("science"), while the other is based on belief without evidence and/or despite evidence to the contrary ("faith" or "theology"), or with supposed evidence that cannot be validated using the scientific method (pseudoscience).
Science, at its most basic, requires falsifiability.
The "God" question (or the "which God" question), is not subject to falsifiability, and therefore, clearly doesn't belong in a science class. If that question should come up, it should be clearly answered with "gods are not falsifiable, so they don't belong in science class - ask a theologian or philosopher".
Now if by denying a 7 day creation period for the planet in science class, we're implicitly denying the existence of God, and your kids pick up on that, I'm not terribly sympathetic. Science may not speak to whether or not God exists, but it has no responsibility to avoid contradicting any particular mythology with the scientific method.
Yes, you could teach it in a balanced way by looking at several creation myths from various religions, include it in a discussion of the enlightenment and maybe more people will leave HS understanding that religion and science split because blind faith and reason are fundamentally incompatible.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Um, no. The relentless path of universal entropy doesn't exclude localized reversals of entropy. When you create waste heat while building your lego house, you're creating localized order, but still, entropy is increasing in the universe as a whole.
Perspective. Get some.
You found a modern rabbit fossil in the Precambrian? Pics, or it didn't happen.
Oh, and "the fossil was obviously disturbed and moved to a different strata in the earth" is a *valid* explanation.
You are correct. Life on earth can't get more complex over time, because that would require energy and the sun doesn't exist.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
can you think of a repeatable experiment that would prove or disprove that there is a creator?
I suppose this would be similar to thinking of an experiment that would prove or disprove that some same particular species of spider lives in the rainforest.
The experiment is "look for the spider", and if you find it, then it exists, and if you don't, then you don't really know, but it makes sense to tentatively assume the null hypothesis (that it doesn't exist).
In this sense, the God hypothesis is not unfalsifiable in principle, just in practice. It's important to note this difference between falsifiability in principle and practice. The Higgs boson hypothesis was falsifiable by an experiment involving the LHC. The LHC didn't exist in the 18th century so if the Higgs boson were proposed in the 18th century would not have been practically falsifiable, but it was still falsifiable in principle (i.e. a machine like the LHC could one day, maybe hundreds of years in the future, be constructed).
There is a good argument to be made that the existence of God is also not falsifiable in principle. You could have a super powerful alien capable of destroying entire worlds and causing us to hallucinate in anyway it desires. You could never really trust that an entity claiming to be the creator of the whole universe was telling the truth. Any beings significantly more technologically advanced than us would be practically indistinguishable from a God.
Also, even if there were really a God that created our universe, this God could not know for sure that he was really God in the sense that he couldn't know that there was nothing greater than himself (for the same way that we atheists can't know that there is nothing greater than us).
But if it turns out that God's existence is unfalsifiable in principle, then this means that even God presenting himself to us, is still not sufficient proof for his existence, because we don't even have a way to verify that a being is really God (i.e. that there is nothing greater) and not just some extremely powerful being.
If a powerful being showed us a video of himself creating the universe, we can probably assume he is powerful enough to fabricate a video. Obviously the proof is probably not going to be a conventional video, but whatever form the proof takes, it doesn't matter. We can assume that a sufficiently powerful being could convince us of anything, regardless of whether it's true or false.
And it's been that way for a while. The Archbishop of Canterbury, more-or-less the leader of the Anglican Communion, announced his enthusiastic acceptance of the basic tenants of the theory of evolution...in 1884.
Nope. You can find plenty of examples by doing your own research, I'm not doing it for you. It won't take long, a simple Google search for "out of place" fossils. When you look at results you will find plenty of examples that are either discounted, "explained" away, or outright covered up.
And, you, as most other ardent Darwinian's won't give half a thought to the bigger picture and happily swallow the "explanation" knowing full well it doesn't make sense.
You were offered a chance to present evidence and refused. You lose the argument.
Oh please! There are thousands of things in climate science that are falsifiable. It's going to take falsifying more than a few of them to discredit AGW. I suggest you get started.
This came out of a row in Britain over an investigation into schools in Birmingham. Unlike the US situation, what brought this about was a charge that Muslims were trying to take over schools in Birmingham and alter the lessons to support Islamic Ideals. The term you can search on to find this is Trojan Horse Investigation, along with Birmingham.
For example: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-eng...
For a more sensationalist view, we have the Daily Fail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...
One of (many) things charged was teaching creationism. Others were teaching in sex ed that wives weren't allowed to "say no" and must submit to their husbands.
How much of this is true depends on who you ask and, no surprise, it's quite a controversy.
But, to put it in context, this came up in response to charges of Islamic influence. Apparently any Christian state funded schools teaching creationism didn't raise this level of concern.
Can you think of a repeatable experiment that would prove or disprove that there are magical unicorns?
See, it's not up to science to prove some imaginary thing you or anyone else comes up with. It's your idea, so you prove it. If you can do that, science will suddenly become interested. But, seeing as how the "God" superstition has exactly as much fact backing it up as the magical unicorn idea, that is to say, none whatsoever, the balls in your court. Not in science's.
Here's the metric: reproducible, consensually experiential, testable. None of "I had an idea", " I read it in an old book" or "someone swore to me it was true" equals "it's Science!"
Sure, in theology or philosophy class.
Not in science class.
England != UK. This is the Dept of Education for England not Scotland, or Wales, or Northern Ireland - all of which are UK yet, strangely, they are not England.
Yes, you could teach it in a balanced way by looking at several creation myths from various religions, include it in a discussion of the enlightenment and maybe more people will leave HS understanding that religion and science split because blind faith and reason are fundamentally incompatible.
Yep, you can look at the various creation myths, spot the similarities (throw in Pastafarianism for shits and giggles), compare these myths to science and get students to spot the flaws.... The fundies would shit a brick.
The big problem behind creationism as science is that you're not meant to think critically about it. You're not meant to question it. Its entirely faith based. You have to accept, with no evidence that god exists before any of the rest of it makes sense.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Sorry you lost your wife and son. I think experiences such as yours shows the background and reason why humans had to invent gods. Originally those gods were in the Sun, or Rocks or Trees or anything else mystical, and they gave comfort to humans. Which is fine, but let's not confuse that comfort with something that actually exists.
I too am sorry for your pain. It means nothing to reality, though. Reality is reality, it doesn't care about your feelings or mine, your wishes or mine, your faith or mine.... it is reality. In reality, there is no evidence, and never has been any evidence, that God exists... none, not a single shred, ever in the history of the human species. Teaching that there is to a bunch of impressionable children, should be considered a vile form of abuse.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Wow. There isn't a better post one could write as an example of cognitive dissonance.
I feel sad for you. Trapped in a belief system that you will see you dead family again instead of actually moving on.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on