Monday, October 01, 2007
“The use of the word ‘theory’ can mislead those not familiar with science..”
With Lisburn Council encouraging post-primary schools to teach neo-creationists’ untestable hypotheses as alternative theories to evolution, and the NI Department of Education apparently unsure about what they should do about it, James Randerson at the Guardian’s Science blog has pointed to the government’s new guidance to teachers in another part of the UK. And that guidance couldn’t be clearer - creationism and intelligent design are not alternative scientific theories to evolution and “should not be taught as science.” Perhaps someone could tell the spokeswoman for the Department of Education here?
From the post by James Randerson
The new guidelines could not be clearer:
“Creationism and intelligent design are not part of the science National Curriculum programmes of study and should not be taught as science.” [added emphasis]That doesn’t mean it cannot be mentioned of course, but the guidelines state that it should only feature as part of discussions about what does and does not make a scientific theory.
The use of the word ‘theory’ can mislead those not familiar with science as a subject discipline because it is different from the everyday meaning of being little more than a ‘hunch’. In science the meaning is much less tentative and indicates that there is a substantial amount of supporting evidence, underpinned by principles and explanations accepted by the international scientific community...Creationism and intelligent design are sometimes claimed to be scientific theories. This is not the case as they have no underpinning scientific principles, or explanations, and are not accepted by the science community as a whole.
And also from those guidelines
Creationism and intelligent design are not part of the science National Curriculum programmes of study and should not be taught as science. However, there is a real difference between teaching ‘x’ and teaching about ‘x’. Any questions about creationism and intelligent design which arise in science lessons, for example as a result of media coverage, could provide the opportunity to explain or explore why they are not considered to be scientific theories and, in the right context, why evolution is considered to be a scientific theory.
If the Northern Ireland Department of Education haven’t issued these guidelines to schools here, they should do so now.
Adds here’s another snippet from the guidelines to teachers elsewhere in the UK
Which subject should deal with creationism and intelligent design?
Teachers of subjects such as RE, history or citizenship may deal with creationism and intelligent design in their lessons. If such issues were to arise there might be value in science colleagues working with these teachers in addressing them.
Pete Baker @ 08:45 PM
David,
“Science is the anti-thesis of faith as it requires all theories to be proven to become accepted.”
Yes and no I think. As James Randerson, quoted by Pete, put it:
“The use of the word ‘theory’ can mislead those not familiar with science as a subject discipline because it is different from the everyday meaning of being little more than a ‘hunch’.”
Evolution theory is what you might call our “best guess” at present. But because it’s an educated guess certainly musn’t prevent us from using it. If science took that attitude to theories, no progress could ever be made, except perhaps when peeps have Eureka moments.
Of course the beauty of science is that no theory is sacred. On the contrary, the moment it’s overtaken by new findings is the moment it’s binned. This is a healthy state of affairs and demonstrates the width of the gulf between science and Creationism, a Bible-based proposition that simply cannot allow for change. If it did, it would fall apart.
Posted by on Oct 02, 2007 @ 01:20 PMSam Hanna- Why couldnt you answer my question on William Crawleys blog? Just one peice of “EVIDENCE” to show that Intelligent Design is a credible scientific theory! The two pieces of “evidence” you have tried to pass off here are evidence once again of absolutely nothing? Schroders comment says nothing of ID, merely expressing wonder at the industry of the human body!
I love how you try to gain Denton credibility by calling him an agnostic! Denton was one of the founding fathers of the Intelligent Design movement ( or at least his theories provided stimulus for it)! Here is a review of his book EVOLUTION A THEORY IN CRISIS- http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/denton.html
I have read the book, and I suggest you all do too as it is among the best that the ID brigade has to offer! Yet it is based on a complete misunderstanding of Evolutionary Theory! There are some sections of the book (like the quote above) that will have you pulling your hair out in frsutration!!!!!
Sam........is that is the best you can do you are in big trouble!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by on Oct 02, 2007 @ 05:53 PMSam Hanna’s post alludes to what is known as the “argument from improbability”. It is a version of the “intelligent design"(ID)argument and thus is cited by ID and Creationist advocates as evidence in support of ID or Creationism and evidence against the Darwin’s theory.
However, it is wholly fallacious. Richard Dawkins devoted an entire chapter of the “God Delusion” (see Chapter 4) and one entire book, “Climbing Mount Improbable”, to showing just how vacuous the “argument from improbability” is. Darwin, himself, also addressed and demolished the argument in the “Origin of Species”.
One fundamental mistake that ID and other Creationist advocates make is that they believe or, at least, try to make others believe, that Darwin’s theory is a theory of chance. As Darwin, Dawkins and others have repeatedly pointed out, natural selection is the opposite of chance. Instead, complex life is actually the end product of a long senquence of accumulated, non-random natural causes that have occured over millions of years.
One last point: The ID experts cited by Sam are not without their critics. Further information on these men is available generally on the internet, but a reasonable starting point is their entries on Wikipedia-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Schroeder
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Denton
Posted by on Oct 02, 2007 @ 05:54 PMAgain - no need for me to respond as I will let the experts speak,
Founder of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies and arguably the greatest astrophysicist of his time the agnostic Robert Jastrow,commented on the Bible and the scientific evidence:
The astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and the biblical accounts of Genesis are the same. The chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy.
So overwhelming is the cosmological argument for the existence of God that it has been reported that many scientists have renounced atheism. Newsweek reported a sharp increase of belief in theism by scientists in a 1998 edition:
Forty percent of American scientists now believe in a personal God - not merely an ineffable power and presence in the world, but a deity to whom they can pray (Newsweek, Science Finds God, 7/20/98).
I hope this counters the lies and propaganda that somehow ALL scientist reject ID and that evolution is the only show in town for the Science classroom. It would be helpful if the amateur scientists atheists here did some research!
Posted by on Oct 02, 2007 @ 06:54 PMI will continue to post SCIENTIFIC FACTS from experts in their field as to argue with the atheist fundamentalists here who are emotionally committed by faith to their theories is superfluous.
The information content in DNA of one cell of the three billion codes of the human genome is equivalent to more than 75,000 copies of the New York Times newspaper. Could this information have arisen by chance through physical laws like snowflakes or crystals?
Berkeley Evidence Law Professor,Philip Johnson explains:
Information is an entirely different kind of stuff from the physical medium in which it may be temporarily recorded. It would be absurd to try to explain the literary quality or meaning of a book as an emergent property of the physical qualities of its ink and paper. The message comes from an author; ink and paper are merely the media. Similarly, the information written in DNA is not the product of DNA. Where did all the information come from? Who or what is the author? Physical laws cannot be the answer. These laws do produce some fairly complex
structures, such as snowflakes and crystal. In such cases the laws produce the same structure over and over again, with chance variations. Repetitive order has a very low information content.http://www.jsm.org.sg/GodAndTheAtheist.pdf
Posted by on Oct 02, 2007 @ 07:01 PMSam, the 1998 Newsweek article has been widely criticised - simply “google it” and you will see for yourself. Here’s an example-
http://wwjdee.blogspot.com/2006/01/science-finds-god.html
Secondly, the major science journal, Nature, reported a survey that was conducted in 1998 which indicated that only 7% of members of the American National Academy of Sciences admitted to believing in a personal god. An article about this survey is here-
http://www.atheists.org/flash.line/atheism1.htm
Also, Philip Johnson is actually the founder of the modern ID movement. He is a former professor of law; meaning that he is a lawyer, not a scientist. He is most defintely NOT an expert or authority on scientific facts. His Wikipedia entry is here-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillip_E._Johnson
Posted by on Oct 02, 2007 @ 07:31 PMwild turkey:
The separation of church and state is enshrined in the US constitution.
Actually it isn’t. This is a common misconception.
That said, the founding fathers of the USA did warn of the dangers of mixing the two. There is no foundation for the perspective that the USA was founded on Christian principles.
Sam Hanna:
The complexity of the simplest known type of cell is so great that it is impossible to accept that such an object could have been thrown together suddenly by some kind of freakish, vastly improbable, event. Such an occurrence would be indistinguishable from a miracle.
Sam, there are a few things that you’re just not getting here :
- the probability of random events yielding a remarkable outcome is never zero. We see this in everyday events. Look at a snowflake under a microscope. Or ponder the likelihood of winning the lottery. The difference here is scale; the principle is the same.
- Your assertion that the wonders that surround us must have been created, contradicts your own belief that the universe began with an entity which was not created, namely God. Your philosophy is therefore inconsistent.
- A consistent theme of yours is argument by qualification, ie “look, here’s a bloke with letters after his name who calls himself a scientist who agrees with me, therefore this backs up my point”. Please stop doing this. Arguments stand or fall on their merits, not the qualifications of those making them. I would note that there are many, many religious people of deep faith who do not accept Creationism. Most of the religious people I know are happy to accept evolution as modern description for God’s own work in progress, and they do not see it as a challenge to their beliefs. Perhaps you should think about this, while bearing in mind that nobody can possibly accept the entire word of the bible literally without being completely insane.
Posted by on Oct 02, 2007 @ 08:32 PMI hope this counters the lies and propaganda that somehow ALL scientist reject ID and that evolution is the only show in town for the Science classroom. It would be helpful if the amateur scientists atheists here did some research!
Sam, please wind your neck in. Spending 15 minutes doing some Googling in order to find quotations which agree with you might give you a comfortable fuzzy feeling, but it does not constitute research.
Let’s have a look at the quotes you dug up. The Jastrow quote, does not expressly promote ID or Creationism. He draws some interesting and entirely reasonable comparisons between the generally-accepted Big Bang theory and the story of creation in Genesis, noting that at a fundamental level the stories are not hugely different. That is the man’s religious belief and he is wholly entitled to this. Many Christians are comfortable enough with their faith that they feel that science is compatible with it. Unlike the fundamentalists, he is not using the bible to attempt to refute science. I therefore see no aspect of this which contributes to your argument.
The guy with the problem is you. You’re the one who sees science as a threat.
Forty percent of American scientists now believe in a personal God - not merely an ineffable power and presence in the world, but a deity to whom they can pray (Newsweek, Science Finds God, 7/20/98).
There is nothing about being a scientist that precludes one from having faith. It’s only a problem when that faith impedes scientific investigation and work, and to anyone with an analytical investigative mind (most of us), this won’t be a problem. Again, none of this constitutes evidence that ID, as it is presented, is accepted within the scientific community.
The fundamental problem here, Sam, is that your one-line answer to the universe, namely “this is too complicated, therefore God did it” is fundamentally unsatisfactory for those of us who still retain our basic childlike human inquisitiveness and curiousity about the environment that we live in. What I don’t like about you is that the religion you stand for opposes research, opposes understanding, and opposes the quest by humanity to gain a greater understanding on the basis that we already know all there is to know by virtue of a book written by a bunch of lunatics thousands of years ago. If people like you were in charge, all human progress would stop and we would descend into the dark ages. I’m glad you’re dying out.
Posted by on Oct 02, 2007 @ 08:46 PMCreationism is true.
How do I know?
Well I believe in it and I have 4 O levels.
My brother-in-law is an athiest and he has no O levels.
Therefore I’m smarter than him so I must be right.
See? It’s simple if you only open your eyes and look at the facts.Posted by on Oct 02, 2007 @ 09:53 PMComrade Stalin/Ciaran
Get a grip of reality. You cannot simply dismiss people who believe in ID who have impecccable scientific and academic credentials just because they disagree with you. Jastrow, Denton, Behe, Schroder et al are leading scientists in their field who are not Evangelical Christians yet full accept that ID is science and that the universe demonstrates design and complexity. I know you are living in denial because it does not suit your moral agenda but lets at least have some academic honesty in this debate.
Philip Johnson has every right to speak about evolution has he has done copious amounts of research and is an expert at weighing up evidence - which ultimately, ironically, what this debate is all about. He brillantly demolishes Darwinism in his books as one of the greatest legal minds of American scholarship.
My fundamental answer may be that the universe is designed because that is exactly what it is but lets not pretend you have anything more to offer that “just so” stories. You come up with a theory of lunatics that everything evolved because it “just did” and because of these secret mysterious forces of “natural selection” we all now can worship, debate, write in complex grammars, uncover the complexity of the universe from a process that comes from nowhere and is guided by noone. Please be honest and move your theories to the faith class also.
As for your freshman philosophical point that God could not have created the world as we would then face the problem, I despair. It is axiomatic that the entity that created time. space and matter is by definition outside of those things and is not subject to those things. Therefore, to give you the freshman answer - God made time and therefore He had no beginning and therefore He needs no creator. It is all rather simple when you just think a little instead of going to “daft atheists anonymous” websites for your supposed clincher points.
Posted by on Oct 02, 2007 @ 10:05 PMJoe
I don’t think you are right . I have 5 o levels including an ology so I must be smarter than you and I am an agnostic who does no understand the question,
Maybe its all the fault of aliens.Posted by on Oct 02, 2007 @ 10:16 PMI do not want to get involved in this debate again but I feel drawn to it with the same tedious inevitablitiy that I feel winter is coming.
The following is someting of a confessional but I think it might interest some people (if it does not I beg your indulgence).
I was brought up by parents who believed in evolution (my mother is a christian, my father not) both are pretty well educated. I got saved at the age of 11. I initially still believed in evolution / thestic evolution, gap theories etc.
As a late teenager a preacher came to speak to our youth fellowship. he proposed creationism and the book the Genesis Flood. I initially disagreed with him but later felt that it was correct and over a number of months changed by view. I tried to agrue with my parents about these things feeling that if I could defeat their belief in evolution my father would be saved and my mother change her position. It never worked.
I am much older now and still pray for my father’s salvation but I do not think that destroying evolution will make him saved.
I believe in creationism. Many good Christians believe otherwise. I fear at times we as fundamentalists believe that by defeating Darwinism we can bring the walls of the towers of athiesm crashing down. It’s not like that. I think it was my minister who once told me that you cannot argue someone into the Kingdom of Heaven.
Now having bored you all silly a few points.
Evolution is not a theory per se but a series of interlocking theories. I do not agree with them but knocking down individual aspects of the theory will not by definition destroy the whole.
Intelligent design raises a number of very valid criticisms of evolution. There are some things which evolution cannot explain and there are definite inconsistencies. There is also a tendancy for evolutionists to find data and then try to mold it into the preconceived hypothesis (although all science is like that and can actually be very resistant to change/challenge).
ID does not, however, do much more explaining than saying that evolution has real trouble explaining lots of things and maybe an intelligent designer was involved. Intelligent design also includes people with very differing views of the origin of life from design/evolutionists to six day creationists.
What should we teach in schools? Well I must admit even at A level biology there was not that much evolution. I do not have a problem with evolution being taught but I would suggest a number of the problems with it should be presented and not simply to be immediately knocked down. Both Elenwe and I were taught evolution at A level and it was touched on in both our degrees but we stayed fundamentalists (nutters). If my children are taught evolution I will also tell the what I believe. If they reject creationism I do not really mind. If they reject Christ I will die a very, very sad man but God will decide not me.
RE should teach what the bible says and point out that believing in creationism has not gone away and is believed by clever sane people (I do not include myself in that group).
Well I guess that little lot has annoyed everyone.
Posted by on Oct 02, 2007 @ 10:32 PM“Well I guess that little lot has annoyed everyone.”
Not at all, Turgon.
I certainly welcome your civil and sensible contributions to this discussion.
Although that discussion has been side-tracked into a atheist/deist argument, the actual topic points to how science is taught in schools.
And, despite Sam’s insistence to the contrary, the simple fact is that untestable hypotheses [creationism and intelligent design] are not science. They can, however, be discussed at length in a religious class.
And they’re certainly not alternative scientific theories - regardless of the opinion of the spokeswoman for the NI Department of Education.
Posted by on Oct 02, 2007 @ 10:46 PMTurgon,
“RE should teach what the bible says...”
Someone suggested that RE should explore other creation
mythsnarratives as well. Any thoughts on this?Posted by on Oct 02, 2007 @ 10:57 PMSam Hanna, a small piece of my mind for you:
“The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church.”
Ferdinand MagellanKeep God out of education.
Posted by on Oct 02, 2007 @ 11:09 PMK Man
I don’t care what the Catholic Church says - here is what the Bible says centuries before Magellan
“He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.” (Job 26:7)
“It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in” (Isaiah 40:22)
The Hebrew word Isaiah used for “circle” means literally something with “roundness” or “spherically”.The Hebrew in this passage indicates that God’s work in stretching out the heavens is both “finished” and “ongoing”. Here we find two different verbs used “stretcheth” and “spreadeth” in two different forms to indicate two different works. This one verse literally states that God is both continuing to stretch out the heavens and has stretched them out. This is exactly what we see today with a simultaneously finished and ongoing aspect of cosmic expansion.
Posted by on Oct 03, 2007 @ 02:51 AM“And they’re certainly not alternative scientific theories - regardless of the opinion of the spokeswoman for the NI Department of Education.”
Pete Baker
Despite your arrogant attitude, you would be well advised in taking a 101 Philosophy of Science class at Queens. If you attend one you would hear about a man called Karl Popper who formulated “science” as something that can be falsified. I don’t happen to full agree with him as the Scientific Method is on dodgy philosophical grounds as it is a pre-suppositional truth. However, I will work with his definition for the sake of people like you.
Evolution is a theory (actually story) that tells a fantastically improbable yarn that in billions of aeons ago some unicellular organisms through an unguided chance process by a magical force of “natural selection” produced the most complex machines on earth such as human brains, which have emotions, can construct problems, solve arithmetic, speak with complex grammar, exhibit creative talents etc.
This fairy tale in the land of Darwin is sold to the gullible who don’t want a moral absolute framework for their life. It cannot be tested or falsified as we do not have the conditions on earth today that we are told was required for this evolutionary process to begin in promordial times. When asked to see at least something of the process of transition, we are told that we will not live long to even observe a incremental change so it is pointless to try and observe. Can you please let us know what part of the evolutionary process can be falsified? What right has this faith-based theory to be accepted in the classroom based on the Popper principle?
Posted by on Oct 03, 2007 @ 03:06 AMI’m sooooo impressed by Sam’s logic, I have to bow to his incredible intellect.
hehehehehehehe
Posted by on Oct 03, 2007 @ 04:07 AMRabbits in the pre-Cambrian would falsify Darwinism.
Or maybe saddles on dinosaurs.
Posted by on Oct 03, 2007 @ 09:07 AMThis argument is both alarming and rediculous. In no way shape or form should ID be described as ‘science’ and has no place in our schools. We have had enough revisionist history in this country. Although, I thought I’d draw your attention to a great article in the online satirical newspaper, The Onion, which is headlined: Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity with new “Intelligent Falling” Theory. Apparently, ‘Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, ‘God’ if you will, is pushing them down’ !!!!!!!!!!
Posted by on Oct 03, 2007 @ 09:58 AMSam is the best!!
Really that you can manage to keep this act of deranged looney up so long is impressive - although from your second last post there you’e interpretation has left me breathless. Bending the circle to a sphere is a handy trick but does this mean the world was a big flat circle back in those days when God made the covenant with his chosen people, but somehow he rolled it into a ball when the Word got around?
(Just like he somehow retracted the stoning to death for those not keeping holy the sabbath - although I only have your word that he did that. Another handy piece of interpretation there Sam.)You see bending cryptic texts to suit what you have to say does not pass for a logical argument. It does however very nicely illustrate the phrase “clutching at straws”.
Posted by on Oct 03, 2007 @ 10:03 AMYou know, we can laugh along with The Onion but part of the tragedy is that so many fine minds are wasted on this lunacy.
And who can deny that a great many of the proponents of ID are very intelligent people. But we’re dealing with peeps who find it difficult to accept that the stuff they were indoctrinated with—and I mean “indoctrinated” in the literal sense—can’t cope with the advances of science.
Creationism is doomed, that much must be obvious to all rational minds. You can’t square the circle. Yet they’ll try. Someone said that when a scientist is confronted with new, surprising data s/he’ll say: “Hmm, time to adjust my theory.” The Creationist on the other hand will ask how it fits with the Bible story.
The Creationist will desperately try to shoehorn new data into a flawed belief system. This is not the scientific way and it will fail.
Posted by on Oct 03, 2007 @ 10:48 AMSam, I have researched the matter and found quotes also:
“And the K man said, Sam was a deluded soul, and missing of major component parts, so that he shall go forth and quote crap.” (K man 12:3)
“And lo, E=mc2 for all eternity, so sayeth Einstein, and I sayeth that is truth, for it was written, so there”. (K man 1:14)
Would you like to dispute the book of K man? Of course these quotes should not be taken literally and cannot be viewed in isolation, the word “Einstein” of course, is the ancient Hebrew...blah blah blah.
Posted by on Oct 03, 2007 @ 11:26 AMHmm lets do the math
an eon is 1,000 years
an aeon is 1,000 ,000 years so a billion aeons is
1,000,000,000,000,000
but the best stellar scientist can estimate is that the universe is
12,000,000,000 years old
so sam is stating that darwinism is stating that the earth is older than the universe which is completely odd even for his ID lunacy! But the most disturbing bit is that evolution has never ever estimated the age of the universe and was never intended to!Posted by on Oct 03, 2007 @ 12:45 PMAnd as for teaching a science from the bible the first question is which bible? And whos interpretation of said bible? especially as they are all written 100’s of years after the death of the “son of god” who is rumoured to be gay. That kind of throws a wrench into the works
Posted by on Oct 03, 2007 @ 12:50 PM
