Thread: Split from Palin for VP: Creationism in schools

Originally Posted by Seraphim

Health class is about how to protect yourself whilst playing the part of a bird or a bee....

I thought the new doctrine was that the only way to get protection is to not play these parts.

Originally Posted by hoglahoo

biology can be taught without teaching evolution

Indeed, and math can be taught w/o irrational and complex numbers. Whether it is a good idea is a whole other story. After all why stop at complex numbers and not deal with quaternions, manifolds or Hilbert spaces? Most of these are just theories few european elitists came up whit while the american founding fathers were busy establishing the almighty constitution and a nation under God.

As just illustrated, sarcasm us completely useless in such discussions. I can be setting up straw men until the cows come home and that'll be just a wast of time.

I want to note that teaching a wrong or incomplete theory in school is most certainly not the end of the world. As long as you teach the best theory consistent with the observations, the students are still learning the scientific approach correctly. Things should never be shoved under the rug i.e. there is no observation of branching of species, or complete single-cell organisms spawning to life from an inorganic matter should be mentioned, to the same extent that after class on quantum gravity it should be clear that gravity waves have not been observed up to date. At the same time my impression is that the science curriculum does not shove things under the rug.
In my opinon the ID/Creationism proponents are the ones at fault - they claim their view is not represented in science class yet they are yet to provide any evidence as to why it should be. The only thing they can come up with is 'why, not - these other things also are not completely proven'. As it has been said countless times already there is a qualitative difference between having the slightest of support for a theory and none at all. And yes even if nobody has ever observed mud turn into bricks and houses I don't think this fluctuation is forbidden from the laws of nature as we know them. But there is a huge difference between 'oh, it must be created then, let's give praise to the Creator, period' and 'the chemical analysis indicates that mud was likely sourced by such and such place, the bricks were likely formed by such and such process, these things were done correctly and those things were done wrong, etc...' You may never have the complete picture of exactly how the process of building the house happened and sometimes you can infer the wrong things, yet figuring it out is a very valuable process.

The burden of proof is not on the scientists it's on the ID/Creationists - they are the ones that need to provide any usefull positive evidence of how their approach can result in something new. Once that happens there will be no pubilc debate whether it needs to be in the school curriculum or not - it'll just be there for the same reasons the rest of the science (like the absolutely 'wrong' newtonian mechanics) is in there right now.

Originally Posted by gugi

Indeed, and math can be taught w/o irrational and complex numbers. Whether it is a good idea is a whole other story. After all why stop at complex numbers and not deal with quaternions, manifolds or Hilbert spaces? Most of these are just theories few european elitists came up whit while the american founding fathers were busy establishing the almighty constitution and a nation under God.

As just illustrated, sarcasm us completely useless in such discussions. I can be setting up straw men until the cows come home and that'll be just a wast of time.

HilWHAT spaces? Quatwhationts? Dude...you totally lost me on that one.

There's plenty of basics to teach without guessing. Let's not go into the whole Evolution thing again....that's not what this debate was about.

Biology is mainly a subject (in highschools anyway) about how life works....NOT about how it came to pass.

As said before by someone who only just experience Highschool....that's myth.

He-he alex, well, that's fairly straightforward math, which normally doesn't fit in high school curriculum. The point is that not everything can and should be taught at school.

My view is that the role of science class is not to answer such and such question, but to illustrate the scientific method by giving the scientific answers to various questions.

For example the Newtonian mechanics is just wrong, it has been demonstrated countless of times that it does not work. Yet it is an illustration of science and it works very very well in most cases. Even if quantum mechanics describes the world a whole lot more precisely, there is absolutely no need for teaching the 'more correct' even when we know it. It's not a matter of complexity - in the case of quantum mechanics the alternative picture is not more complicated, but the Newtonian mechanics is more intuitive and serves better to educate students what science is.

Back to Mrs. Palin - she hasn't actively pushed any of her social ideas. The statement that I have heard was I guess a softened version of what her original statement may have been - she framed it as 'teach both, no need to be afraid of a debate'.
Of course nobody is afraid of a debate, but somehow I suspect that the ID/Creationists would not be happy with the only way their theory can be presented in science class: "It is possible that life on Earth was created by another being which may also have been created by yet another being...., however this is not and never will be science and there is absolutely no evidence that this has happened, although there is some indirect evidence for abiogenesis". This in my view is the only honest scientific answer to this question. It can be most certainly be preceded by a debate what constitutes science, but the result is pretty clear.

Originally Posted by gugi

Back to Mrs. Palin - she hasn't actively pushed any of her social ideas. The statement that I have heard was I guess a softened version of what her original statement may have been - she framed it as 'teach both, no need to be afraid of a debate'.

In Wasilla, she charged rape victims for the forensic rape kits used in their cases, because they contained emergency contraception.

gugi-> yeah, I learned about Hilbert spaces, and even studied the works of Dirac

but my degree was in math, so maybe I don't count

Originally Posted by gugi

He-he alex, well, that's fairly straightforward math, which normally doesn't fit in high school curriculum.

When I said biology can be taught without teaching evolution, you replied by saying we could also leave out of teaching math theories that don't normally fit in high school curriculum. So your parallel failed, bwahahahahaha

Originally Posted by gugi

The point is that not everything can and should be taught at school

All hail the great and wise gugi!

Biology, especially referring to biology that will be taught in public schools, can be taught without teaching evolution. So back to what Jockeys said earlier, what's wrong with teaching neither creationism nor evolution? Is JohnP's suggestion viable?

Originally Posted by hoglahoo

When I said biology can be taught without teaching evolution, you replied by saying we could also leave out of teaching math theories that don't normally fit in high school curriculum. So your parallel failed, bwahahahahaha

Originally Posted by hoglahoo

Biology, especially referring to biology that will be taught in public schools, can be taught without teaching evolution. So back to what Jockeys said earlier, what's wrong with teaching neither creationism nor evolution? Is JohnP's suggestion viable?

Uhmm, my parallel didn't fail at all, you seem to be missing the main point - where would you draw the line of what is taught and what isn't - what would your criteria be?

So let me reiterate and be very explicit - in principle biology can be taught w/o the evolution part, yet that doesn't mean it is a good idea. Excluding both evolution and creationism from science for the proposed reason is unacceptable for me. Creationism is not science, evolution is.

You want to exclude evolution from high school biology because there isn't enough supporting evidence, correct? Would you exclude mechanics from high school as well then - there is not only not enough evidence that this theory is correct, but there is even plenty of evidence that it is incorrect.
A consistent approach based on your criteria leads to a rather interesting scientific curriculum.

Originally Posted by gugi

Uhmm, my parallel didn't fail at all, you seem to be missing the main point - where would you draw the line of what is taught and what isn't - what would your criteria be?

I wouldn't exclude evolution from being taught as a decent model people have come up with to try to explain why things are the way they are. Kids are going to run into it all the time in life later on and it needs to be presented in school in my opinion. And it models the observable which is what science is all about. But creationism needs to be presented as well. I understand creationism can't be taught the same way evolution can be. Creationism isn't science. But like I said earlier, if it's true and it's left out anyway, wouldn't that be a grave error?

I understand your point now too with your clarifications. So I guess I'll have to admit I was wrong when I said your parallel failed *sigh*

Originally Posted by bbshriver

Just as a side note, I haven't had time to read all 17 pages of this, but as a fairly recent (2003) high school graduate I thought I'd interject here real quick. I went to a private, but non-Christian/religious high school (I did however go to Christian schools through the 8th grade). In my AP Biology class the book was, in fact, written around the theory of evolution, as the "currently accepted scientific theory", both the teacher and the book stressed that it was a THEORY not a fact/law, that it has essentially NO proof (no recorded cases of one species begeting another species. adaptations within a species are of course identified facts). The book did have a section on "origins" or something that did, in fact, go over creationism AND the "we were put here by aliens" and a few other theories. As discussed before though "God created the world" pretty much sums up creationism so there's not a whole lot more to teach on the subject, scientifically. In my AP english class we did go over "origin myths" from a variety of cultures from far-eastern to central america, etc.
Keep in mind this was NOT a "religious" school, and the textbooks were from well known academic publishers such as McGraw Hill, etc (can't remember exact ones, but I do remember a few from McGraw Hill, also a popular publisher at my college).

Essentially this post seals the deal for me.

From a contemporary, recent high school student, who says that indeed they do mention that it is still just a theory.



We can continue the debate as to the possible flaws in extrapolated data for the evolutionary side, and the lack of hard data for the creation side, as it certainly has been an interesting discussion.