Let's teach creation science in the schools

Submitted by brad on Mon, 2004-12-13 08:52
Topic: 
Observations
Politics

Creationists regularly complain that schools teach evolution improperly and should also offer creation science as an alternative. They went so far as to push one school board to put stickers on biology textbooks remindng students that evolution is a theory and should be critically viewed.

Well, surprisingly, I have some agreement with them. Evolution, like Quantum Mechanics, gravity and others is indeed a theory. And in proper science all theories are subject to intense scrutiny and testing. They are required to make predictions which can turn out false, and those predictions are tested with repeatable experimentation and observation.

So now I wonder, why if we give them their way -- sort of -- and mandate the teaching of "creation science" in the shools. Except I mean a rigourous, scientific treatment, by non-religious teachers, where a lesson about science and bad science is taught. Other examples of bad science should also be covered.

Students should be challenged to consider the predictions, past and present, of the creation "scientists" and whether they have come true. They should learn what happens when people conclude the results in advance and try to bend the facts to fit them. It happens in all areas of science, and a good education trains you to identify when it is happening, and when you are doing it yourself. They should of course also learn the predictions of evolution and many other theories and how they have been tested and verified. They should learn about theories that had supporters but then failed their tests and thus fell from favour.

Why creation science and not every other bogus fake science? Well, studies show it is probably the one most widely believed by the public, though psychic powers, alien abductions and others also rank highly. So as the #1 it deserves a place in our curriculum, because the critical examination of bad science deserves a place.

Indeed, for a student not actually going into science, it could well be that learning to understand bad science would be the most important thing they take out of the program. They will almost assuredly never need to calculate the velocity of a spherical monkey hanging from a massless rope over a frictionless pulley. But they will encounter bad science and have to deal with it.

(I think the same is true in math for non-professionals. One of the most important things they should learn is how statistics are misused.)

So give them what they want, and then see them beg to take it back.

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Comments

Jason

Tue, 2004-12-14 00:32

I wholeheartedly agree with you.

I think the problem is the folks who want to push creationism in schools (and ban or at least cast a dark light on evolution) don't believe that creationism is a science. They believe it is fact, and a fact that is immutable. Creationism, to them, is not something they have to 'prove' like evolution, and it is not soemthing that can be 'disproved' like evolution.

-jb

Tom Limoncelli

Tue, 2004-12-14 06:22

Jane, you ignorant slut.

Highschool science already emphasizes the concept that science is based on theory. The entire "sticker issue" is just a ploy to increase the attention that creationism gets. The more it gets talked about, the more it gets talked about.

N. Davis

Tue, 2004-12-14 09:03

Evolutionists regularly complain about people that complain that schools teach evolution improperly and should also offer creation science as an alternative. They have gone so far as to push all school boards to put information into textbooks informing students that evolution is an undisputed fact and should not ever be critically viewed.

Well, not surprisingly, I disagree with them. Evolution, like Quantum Mechanics, gravity and others is indeed an undisputed fact. As all proper sciences such as evolution and environmental studies should be taught in schools before their parents expose them to the subject with any scrutiny or testing. And they are required to make predictions which can turn out false, and those predictions are tested with repeatable experimentation and observation.
....

ok I got bored with this. How has the theory of evolution been tested to any degree with repeatable experimentation and observation?

What this is about is a religion, the one called secular humanism. And its efforts to drive out though the courts any references to any other religion.

John J. Dunphy, in his award winning essay, The Humanist (1983), illustrates this strategic focus, "The battle for humankind's future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith: A religion of humanity -- utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to carry humanist values into wherever they teach. The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new -- the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism."

The first plank of the Humanist Manifesto states: "Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created." The second plank states: "Humanism believes that man is a part of nature and that he has emerged as a result of a continuous process." Certainly, the public school system propagates the Humanist doctrine (clearly an atheistic "religion"), and thus, condemns the concept of God. www.secular-humanism.com/

Tom Duff

Tue, 2004-12-14 13:43

While we're at it, let's have prayer in schools, for the same reason. In the country where I went to school (the same one Brad went to school in) we didn't have any of that pesky first amendment stuff, so we recited (sang, some years!) The Lord's Prayer in class every morning. It's tricky to measure, because there's little people like to lie about more than piety, but the best-justified figures I can find http://www.religioustolerance.org/rel_rate.htm indicate that about 20% of Americans attend church services regularly, but only about 10% of Canadians. Maybe that compulsory school prayer thing wouldn't have the effect the rollers want. I say bring 'em on!

Paul

Wed, 2004-12-15 07:42

The Scientific Method (hence, science) can deal with questions such as whether taking Vitamin E supplements daily is healthy for your heart ... or will kill you. (Either is a scientifically proven fact.)

The theory of evolution, or special creation, is taken solely on faith although there are several observable phenomena which could be interpreted to support either. Neither falls within the realm of science.

brad

Wed, 2005-11-16 14:13

Why do you have fish DNA in your genes? You even have vestigal gills when you are very young. Evolution predicts that, creation science doesn't. You are descended from a fish. Now that we can decode DNA the number of evolution's predictions that have been verified is immense. No other theory comes close to matching the evidence, except Pastafarianism.

Nathan

Tue, 2007-12-18 07:56

are we decended from fish or apes?

and according to evolution we aren't decended from anything.
We have branched off from certain species.

rediculous.

It takes alot more faith to believe in that than creationism!

brad

Tue, 2007-12-18 16:40

We are not descended from any current day fish or ape. Our ancestors are not around any more, just like your great-great-grandfather is not around (or even moreso.) However, we are apes (or more correctly, they are homo) but it was politically incorrect to write than when the family/genus labels were made. Chimps, Bonobos, Gorillas and Homo all are descended from a now-extinct ape that lived millions of years ago -- and long ago out-competed by his improved descendents.

Likewise all vertebrates descend from early fish. And we have their DNA in our genes. If you went into an African village of black-skinned people, and you met a Chinese couple living there, with Chinese children, would you insist that nonetheless they must be adopted? When you get down deep inside (the DNA) we really do look so very much like our ancestors, and our cousins. So very, incredibly much so that within scientific circles the debate stopped long ago.

chris

Mon, 2009-06-08 21:27

Today, most genetisists are in agreement that we ( the human race ) descended from two common ancestors, a male and of course a female. This sounds suprisingly in accord with biblical doctrine. In fact if we use mathematical statistics to come to some understanding of the chance of just one species or type being randomly sprouted from a pool of protoplasmic gunk, the probability is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1x10 to the 50th power. A number so large as to be inconceivable. To look at the complexity of life as we see it today, the ability of random chance to adequately answer the questions of how?, where?, when?, and most importantly WHY? is ludicris. To think that a sightless creature one day decided that having the ability to see ( realise this creature had to have huge reasoning ability, understanding that seeing existed, that it was beneficial, and then by merely wanting to change, started the supposedly eons long process of creating an eye without any understanding of what that was ) is so far fetched as to be absurd. There is a God, just turn and accept Him and let Him show you His truth.

Anonymous

Sat, 2006-04-29 16:16

Obviously Mr.Brad you're still under the evolutionist myth. If you knew the lies that you've eaten you'd be quite mad.

Fish DNA?? Yeah right. The entire human genome hasn't even been mapped yet. You think we have fish DNA??? The genome study of the partially covered human genome and other animals broke the taxonomical classification of a bunch of evolutionist predictions, including the frog connection.

Please read more on the subject. Maybe you should learn something about Laws discovered by CREATIONISTS who believed in God's Word including Newton, Pasteur, Mendel, Neil Bohr, and many others.

The following ALREADY ESTABLISHED LAWS contradict evolution:

Information Theory
Law of Chance
2nd Law of Thermodynamics

Please Mr. Templeton, read more before you answer with the same old uneducated excuses of a proof I've been getting from evolutionists.

By the way, did you know that We share 50% of the genome with bananas? You know why? Please learn, and as Thessalonians says, test all; prove all things. Don't indulge in fantasies and delusions.

Anonymouse

Wed, 2010-10-27 08:38

First off the second law of thermodynamics doesn't contradict evolution, nature is an open system with many things coming in and out. Evolution still obey the laws of thermodynamics.

I havent looked up stuff about the other 2 though.

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