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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.
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.
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"
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).
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.
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.
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!"
Ironic indeed! I say, well spotted, that AC!
Next thing you know, you'll be noticing sarcasm!
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.
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