Thread: Split from Palin for VP: Creationism in schools

I believe that atheism is also a 'religion' and the current slant on evolution is atheist driven. No religion should be taught in public schools. That is the responsibility of the parents.

Besides schools being created by 'religious groups', let's think about hospitals, food banks, halfway houses, etc... Have the atheists created any of those??

Originally Posted by Seraphim

Anybody ponder the idea that Evolution is also supporting a religious point of view, that of Atheism?

Niether side has any hard "proof". So it is a matter of faith one way or the other.

This is an all too common misconception of the term "atheist".

Atheism is not a religion, it's a rejection of theist religion. One can be an Atheist and still be a Deist.

A theist believes that a suernatural being has direct and continual involvement in the workings of the natural world and is responsive to the needs of it's creations.

A deist believes that a supernatural being created the universe and set things in motion but has not meddled in the affairs of the natural world since that initial creation.

As for Evolution supporting an Athiest postion, it does to some extent, but that's is looking at the issue from "the head down" rather than "the ground up", in that both Atheism and the Theory of Evolution find similar ties in their insistance on naturalism and their rejection of supernaturalism (barring the philosophical cunundrum of the deist position).


Proof?

There is proof that evolution occurs on many levels of complexity in biology, but no, we haven't been alotted the amount of time needed to show an entire population of higher intelligence beings evolving.

The difference is that intelligent design gets it's "supporting evidence" from the small gaps in evolution. THIS IS NOT EVIDENCE that ID is correct because showing errors only means that there are errors, not that some other theory is automatically proven correct because of those errors.

Originally Posted by JMS

I thought the idea behind school was to bring out the ability to discover for oneself instead of instructing them on what they should discover!

Yes, I believe education should be more about learning to learn instead of learning the prevailing dogma as 'facts'. For good or bad we like to separate different aspects of the process. Thus science class should teach science and religion and history should be thought in religion and history classes. In principle I could envision different approach to education where everything is taught altogether, but I probably won't pick it for my children until some more adventurous people test it first on their kids.

So whether to teach creationism and where? Certainly not in science class - it has nothing to do with the methods of science and even if it's completely wrong evolution does. I've looked at what the Creationism approach is and I'm very skeptical that it will ever produce anything but dogma, although if it's proponents can get something good out of it I'm all for it. However the burden of gathering enough evidence to justify its place in school's curriculum is on those who believe in it. Until then teaching it is just an indoctrination in my book.

The science is taught in schools not because it's infailable, but because over the last several centuries it has proven again and again as a method that works to bring great advances of our societies and most importantly to being able to correct itself. By definition scientific theories are never complete or 'a fact', that's just a false standard that some people are using in order to equate them to any bogus idea one may come up with. However there is a huge difference beteen scientific theory and hypothesis.

When Creationism gets something useful done there will be a whole separate class on it, may be even instead of the science classes if it turns out to be superior to the scientific method. Until then I think schools should restrict their teachings in science class to science and scientific theories, not hypotheses.

And yes, Bruno, thanks for reminding us that Einstein got the 1921 Nobel Prize for the photoelectric effect. Plank received his Nobel prize for quantum theory threee years yearlier. They did the work in 1890s and 1905. In 1918 and 1921 Quantum Theory was still a work in progress (and still is today - fractional quantum hall effect is 1982), but unlike the general relativity there was more than enough scientific evidence to warrant Nobel prizes for quantization.

Originally Posted by kelbro

Besides schools being created by 'religious groups', let's think about hospitals, food banks, halfway houses, etc... Have the atheists created any of those??

I don't want to step on any toes, but this is the kind of argument that is only harmful to this kind of discussion.

Evolution vs. Creation has nothing to do with the kind of philanthropic actions taken by two different groups that are not the sole backers of the topic at hand.

Originally Posted by Russel Baldridge

I don't want to step on any toes, but this is the kind of argument that is only harmful to this kind of discussion.

Evolution vs. Creation has nothing to do with the kind of philanthropic actions taken by two different groups that are not the sole backers of the topic at hand.

+1. it's totally off-topic and likely to lead to a flamewar. branch the thread if you want.

Originally Posted by Russel Baldridge

We know that Evolution works because it can be observed in progress, from start to finish, on bacteria and plants in laboratory settings.

It is not at all correct to say that we don't have evidence that evolution occurs because evolution is process of genes being altered (or more correctly, the expression of the genes as well), this happens all the time and has been observed extensively.

What people really mean when they say "evolution isn't proven" is that there are "gaps" in the current fossil record and that it "natural selection" couldn't have created complex organisms.

The gaps are there because the fossilization of bones is a finicky process that could easily wipe out any trace of a small population of proto-hominids thus leaving one link unproven, and also because we haven't dug up every square inch of the earth's surface.

You can't claim something doesn't exist just because it hasn't been discovered yet.

And as for natural selection, it's a misunderstanding to say that a natural process can't create order (and complex organisms) because such things happen all the time. The crumbs in a bag of chips get filtered to the bottom, but there's no need for an intelligent source deciding that things should be that way. And so works natural selection. Gene expression allows for the gradual change that an animal might need to suit a different climate because the portions of a population that can't express the correct gene are more likely to perish under the new circumstances.

Hi Russ. What can be proven is that mutation happens. It can not be proven that any new genetic information is added to the genome- no new functions appear . Antibiotic/viral resistant strains of bacteria/virus comes to mind. These are minor modifications of existing systems in the cell, which actually make the cell less efficient. The cell is weaker than its non-mutated form~de-evolution

Originally Posted by Milton Man

Hi John, and thank you for your considered response to my rather tentative post.

The main concern I have is the privileging of one religion's (namely a Judeo-Christian approach) creationism over others. I can see valid arguments for critiquing evolution just as much as ID, but I can't see a rational for forwarding only a Judeo-Christian approach to evolution over, say, a Buddhist approach? What makes one more valid than the next, especially in a school paid for by a very diverse tax base?

In a perfect world, I believe that a science class should teach the theory of evolution, and a religion class discuss theories of creation - a well rounded education benefits us all - but this either/or view that is being purported in schools doesn't seem to jive with me, somehow.

Thanks again, and I agree with John P absolutely on this - great posts thus far!

Mark

I agree with you, believe it or not. I do not believe lessons in creationism should be exclusive to Judeo-Christian beliefs any more than any other religion's version of it, as such would cross into favoring one religion over the other. All religions I know of have their own explanations for the origins of things, life, and who or how it happened. Creationism doesn't seek to do this, but rather simply to acknowledge the possibility of life being created. It doesn't go into "who" or "what" by. That's the realm for religion, IMHO, and implying it was created by "nothing" is just as much so.

So again, I feel it's fair to include it.


John P.

Originally Posted by JohnP

Evolution does not explain the origins of life

Well, yes and no.

Every scientist working today will preface a response to that by saying "as far as we know". This is because a scientific theory is always open to valid reviews, whereas creation (and ID) is not, let's get that out of the way.

You are correct in that the "origin of life" implies the origin of the universe and that is out of the realm of evolution.

But one of the current theories is that life occurs for the same reasons that elements bond in the way that they do, as a result of stable electrical charge configurations (not to mention the Strong and Weak nuclear forces doing their parts). Quoted from the previous thread for time saving purposes: "Nucleotide bases in DNA are no different, they are just bound collections of hydrogen, oxygen, carbon and nitrogen. DNA is a chain of nucleotide bases that have, again, bonded in a stable manner, no designer required, no violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, it happens as naturally as water (hydrogen bound to oxygen, though admittedly less abundantly and in a more complex way, but even water is scarce through out the universe). From there, chains of DNA are still more stable, and at some point we have life."

So it's incorrect to say that Evolution says that life "just happened" and that both are taken on faith, you just have to research why so many scientists believe Evolution is correct in order to find just how non-random the theory really is.

Originally Posted by Russel Baldridge

This is an all too common misconception of the term "atheist".

Atheism is not a religion, it's a rejection of theist religion. One can be an Atheist and still be a Deist.

A theist believes that a suernatural being has direct and continual involvement in the workings of the natural world and is responsive to the needs of it's creations.

A deist believes that a supernatural being created the universe and set things in motion but has not meddled in the affairs of the natural world since that initial creation.

As for Evolution supporting an Athiest postion, it does to some extent, but that's is looking at the issue from "the head down" rather than "the ground up", in that both Atheism and the Theory of Evolution find similar ties in their insistance on naturalism and their rejection of supernaturalism (barring the philosophical cunundrum of the deist position).

One may be a deist, but that still puts them in the camp of creationism, doesn't it? Which would lead me to stick with my original assertion that evolution as an explanation of creation is an atheist viewpoint.

We know that Evolution works because it can be observed in progress, from start to finish, on bacteria and plants in laboratory settings.

This can show a "work in progress", but is far from "start to finish", as they are looking at already created organisms.

I agree that there is scientific evidence of the process of natural selection,and evolution in that sense. But as far as where we all came from, and the origins of life, science is as murky and full of guess work as religion is full of dogma on the subject.

The difference is that intelligent design gets it's "supporting evidence" from the small gaps in evolution. THIS IS NOT EVIDENCE that ID is correct because showing errors only means that there are errors, not that some other theory is automatically proven correct because of those errors.

I do not subscribe to the idea that the one is correct because the other is wrong, all I'm saying is that the theory of evolution is a pretty good idea, and it does belong in the classroom as a scientific theory, but not as a scientifically proven fact.

Personally I do not support the idea of teaching creationism in the classroom, as has been mentioned there are far too many views on that to be able to contain them all in any sort of meaningful teaching context. Creationism can be handled quite well with parental/religious affiliation teaching outside the classroom.

I must also put in this disclaimer:

I have a custom razor on order with Russell. So I know for a fact who The Creator of that razor is!