Teaching creationism as scientifically valid now banned in all UK public schools | Hacker News Reader

Teaching creationism as scientifically valid now banned in all UK public schools

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130 pointspersonjerry115 comments

I very much doubt there were any UK schools teaching it anyway, hence this news is not really news this side of the pond. (Context for those in the US)

Also, this is just a clarification of an existing rule that already applied to most state schools, they are just re-stating it for some of the funding edge cases like acadamies and free schools. ref: http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2014/06/18/secular-triumph-as...

Academies are no longer edge cases. Most Secondary Schools (11-18) are now Academies, and hence no longer have to teach the National Curriculum.

I feel this is a very important clarification, especially considering the number of Academies and Free Schools that are sponsored by religious groups.

Although the majority of secondary schools are academies, which I had not realised, they all still have to follow the core national curriculum for maths, english and science subjects.

There are ACE schools in the UK teaching creationism as science:

http://www.christian-education.org/christian-education/curri...

http://www.christian-education.org/schools/choosing-a-school...

Well OK it seems there are a handful, e.g

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2012/nov/30/...

... but I just wanted to highlight that the situation in the UK is generally very different to the USA.

It's unlawful to teach religion in public schools in the US.

And yet http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...

What about 'Religious Education' type classes where they teach about religion, I assume that distinction is important?

False.

"Part of the problem is widespread misunderstanding regarding U.S. law. According to a 2010 Pew Forum survey, nearly two-thirds of Americans erroneously believe that the Constitution forbids public schools from offering a course on religion.

"Charles Haynes, a senior scholar at the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University, said courts have ruled that schools must be neutral, but that doesn't mean they must ignore religion. On the contrary, ignoring religion gives preferential treatment to a strictly secular worldview, he said." -- http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765616766/Religion-in-pub...

I think you're playing a semantic game with the words "teach religion" in my comment.

I went to a catholic school and we were still taught evolution, the Big Bang theory, etc. Even had compulsory religious education lessons (sane number per week as maths, english, science) and accompanying GCSE in Catholic Christianity and we were still taught evolution.

Many teachers even said that the Old Testament shouldn't be taken literally!

It's quite rare I think and I'm surprised there are schools still teaching it.

Catholic schools in general are not the problem when it comes to these things.

Pope Pius XII made it quite clear in 1950 that evolution is compatible with catholic doctrine, with certain proviso (such as that they don't accept a material basis for the human soul, and the idea that God is "guiding" evolution). Pope John Paul II further strengthened that substantially in the 90's, by reaffirming Pius XII's statement and adding that scientific discoveries in later years have substantially strengthened the theory.

This has been supported by a long range of conferences and statements supported by the Catholic church. Including outright dismissal of any scientific basis for intelligent design by the Vatican's chief astronomer.

Perhaps the Catholic Church would like to enlighten us evolutionary skeptics as to precisely what scientific discoveries "in later years have substantially strengthened the theory"? Evolutionist are abandoning Darwinian theory in droves (check it out for yourself by googleing the Altenberg 16, or The Third Way, for example) because their bankrupt theory has no explanatory power whatsoever. Then there is also the small problem of the recent discovery of soft tissue, blood cells, collagen, DNA and significant amounts of carbon-14 in dinosaur bones, which proves that they cannot be millions of years old (the discovery was made by an evolutionist by the way, not a Creationist. Most people will be unaware of this discovery, of course, because anything that contradicts the prevailing dogma does not get any media attention, and secularists try very hard to cover it up anyway).

You see, when the established church falls into compromise, abandons its belief in the Bible, and sells its own soul to the devil, we should hardly be surprised if our children end up being forcibly indoctrinated by atheists.

The Catholic Church (and the Anglicans - who are just as bad in this respect) need to look more closely at what the scientific evidence ACTUALLY says. Most of that evidence is posted on various creationist websites such as Creation Ministries International.com. Just choose your topic of interest and type it into their search box. Your eyes will be opened as to what is actually being withheld from you by the so-called scientific "consensus". God bless.

I was also at a Catholic school, same experience.

I would point out that this stuff has only become a problem after Academies and Free Schools were: firstly, allowed to be sponsored/funded by random people and organisations who were allowed to set the "ethos"; and secondly were given license to choose whether or not to teach the National Curriculum[1].

This second point was supposed to be so that English teachers could choose to teach any Shakespeare play to pre-GCSE students, or indeed to substitute in Chaucer or someone else, but seems to have been used to substitute in this creationist nonsense in place of Science. Note that the school in question(in Manchester) also used a textbook that told students that wives were to be subservient to husbands, or something similarly hideous.

I don't know, but I believe this ruling is a reaction to news about a very small number of schools (this Christian one in Manchester, and the furore over the Muslim ones in Birmingham.)

[1] This is my main objection to such institutions - I'd be happy with a scaled back curriculum for them, but this ruling seems to do the job I wanted (to prohibit unscientific nonsense.) DO NOTE that in particular, Catholic schools like mine do not have this freedom in general, unless they've been given Academy or Free School status - Faith Schools are (AFAIK) orthogonal to these properties.

Same; Catholic school grades 1-12, taught evolution, and not in a "teach the controversy" way.

The reason why wives are to submit themselves to their husbands is because the Bible actually SAYS SO - or didn't you read the Bible when you were at Catholic school? (It stems from the fact that Adam was created first, and Eve second.) The fact remains that, if more people actually read their Bible, and used it as their moral compass, our world would not be in the mess it is in today. However, I do agree with you that "scientific nonsense" should not be taught in schools. This should of course include any alleged scientific theory that says that life sprang from nothing (This has never been observed in ANY laboratory anywhere in the world and totally contradicts the known laws of biochemistry), and that 'simple' organisms have changed from one form into another more complex form over time. There is ZERO fossil evidence for this fairy tale (all of the fossil evidence refutes it, and shows that STASIS is the rule [i.e. no change]), and almost any molecular biologist will now tell you that this kind of change is impossible anyway - which is why many of them are now abandoning Darwinism).

The fact that you use the term "creationist nonsense" shows that you are either (a) an outright atheist, or (b) have not bothered to study elementary science, much less the Bible, despite your apparent Christian schooling. You are therefore not qualified to make such a comment.

I'm from the UK. Hardly anyone here questions the scientific explanations of the origins of the universe, or evolution, because we understand how science works. Darwin is on the £10 note for a reason, the universe is 13.9 Billion years old according to the cosmic microwave background radiation, you lost this argument some time ago, get over it.

(on a side note, I am completing a PhD in a geology department, and the guy who sat behind me for two years was studying how those giant woodlouse things evolved for his whole PhD, using fossils. In addition to that inadmissible anecdata, I can assert that the scientific consensus on Evolution is much more emphatic that you claim.)

Secondly, yes, like many young people I was brought up in a (UK version of a) religious house and attended a faith school. I am now a Secular Humanist (you seems to call that an Atheist, although it would be more accurate to say that I don't believe anything about deities, than to say I actively refute their supposed existence,) and this transition is entirely common here.

Frankly, I think there are much more important things to do in the world than debate unprovable things about gods. For example: persuading people that gun ownership is bad; state-funded healthcare is good; and that religous extremism/violence (including Christian violence that occurred in Europe centuries ago) would be silly if it weren't so damn serious.

(also, I'm sad that your comment is a direct child of mine, and thus I am prohibited from downvoting it.)

Ah, a Humanist, that explains a lot. Woodlice first appear in the fossil record 50 million years ago, and remain unchanged to this day, i.e STASIS, not evolution (as in every other case in the fossil record). If you have a picture of a woodlouse changing into anything else then please post it here. Or did you mean a trilobite by any chance? If so, I would expect a PhD geology student to know the difference between a woodlouse and a trilobite (and trilobites didn't evolve into anything else either - they just became extinct).

The cosmic microwave background (CMB) actually poses problems for Big Bang. Obviously you are unfamiliar with the most recent findings from 2001, so I suggest you start learning about it here:

http://creation.com/recent-cosmic-microwave-background-data-....

Furthermore, the CMB merely PRESUPPOSES a big bang in the first place (and big bang is by no means certain - as many astrophysicists will tell you), so there are many assumptions involved in drawing inferences from it. The CMB is also very smooth - contrary to big bang predictions - and the observed mass density does not agree with big bang predictions either. There is no evidence, observational or otherwise, to prove that a big bang actually occurred (which is why many scientist disbelieve in it) nor is there any definitive evidence that the universe is billions of years old (I think that old chestnut arose from uniformitarian geologists' misguided counting of strata, mistakenly believing each layer to have been laid down over 'millions of years', even though recent laboratory experiments as well as direct field observation, have proved it can happen in hours or days).

Like any typical atheist (even though you describe yourself here as a Secular Humanist)you refer to "Christian violence that occurred in Europe centuries ago", forgetting of course that the most appalling violence, including mass genocide, took place in modern history at the hands of exclusively atheistic regimes, all of whose despotic leaders followed Darwinian theories completely (e.g. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mau Tse Tung, etc).

As it happens, I am from the UK too (and I'm an astrophysics major). You are free to refute the "supposed existence" of God in your own home, but please do not try to impose your own secular values on me, or on other people of faith in the UK, and especially not on my child's chance of benefiting from a decent indoctrination-free education. That's something I WILL defend, vigorously.

> If you have a picture of a woodlouse changing into anything else then please post it here.

With that statement (and others) it is quite clear you have no idea what you're writing about. Please take your misinformation campaign elsewhere.

No sorry, nothing personal, but you have no idea what you're writing about, simple as that. You've taken a fundamental misconception about evolution and turned it into a diatribe.

Not really surprising that Catholic schools would teach the Big Bang theory. It was first suggested by Monseigneur Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître, a Roman Catholic priest and astronomer at a Catholic University in Belguim, who called it the "Hypothesis of the Primeval Atom or the Cosmic Egg" apparently.

Its to cut off some of the fringe "free" (but tax payer funded) schools that Gove was so fond of until recently.

Indeed. There has been a lot of controversy in recent weeks about how some schools operate and the influence of certain religions in what is taught:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-27944190

Although that situation is about something else, it did renew attention on other long-standing concerns about how our schools today aren't all required to follow the same rules as much as they used to be and how this might negatively affect their children's education.

Incidentally, the article title is misleading here. In the UK, "public school" means something counterintuitive and quite different to "school receiving public funds":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_school_%28United_Kingdo...

There were/are a few, but generally you are right. Creationism is not really a thing in Europe.

There were a few of the state funded free schools trying it on -

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2012/jul/17/creationist...

I think "any" is probably an optimistic stretch. Certainly there have been academies[0] teaching it. It wouldn't surprise me if some religious schools would still like to (Muslim and Church schools being most likely).

[0] http://www.theguardian.com/education/2004/jul/11/schoolpriva...

This is very encouraging to see. While it would be nice to live in a world where this kind of policy wasn't necessary it is good to see UK taking this kind of thing seriously.

My sister is a English teacher and she shared with me how some of her senior students where not even being taught basic evolution in their science classes owing to the fact that much of the Science faculty were deeply religious.

We do live in a world where this policy isn't necessary. the UK doesn't really have a ton of people who take creationism seriously like the US does. As the article mentions, the state mandates the teaching of evolution in schools, and bans the teaching of pseudoscience. That latter is actually pretty funny since UK educations are crammed with pseudoscience, but aside from a few high-profile cases creationism isn't really a problem there.

I don't live in the US

I suppose you would advocate the teaching in schools of man-made global warming as well, despite the fact that it has been adequately exposed over and over again as a complete and utter fraud, with data fiddled by mainstream 'scientists' to purposely deceive the public for political and other reasons - see the many books exposing the global warming fraud including this one:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Watermelons-Environmentalists-Destro...).

Pseudoscience is any science subject that presented to the public AS FACT in the face of solid contradictory evidence or even with no evidence at all. Darwinian evolution (along with its many deceptions, e.g., the alleged 'evolution' of the horse, recapitulation theory, the peppered moth, and outright frauds such as Piltdown man) falls into the category of pseudoscience. Creation science is operational science carried out by PhD scientists who have contributed much to our understanding. Without them we would still be laboring under the mistaken belief that radiometric dating (along with its "millions" of years of supposed earth history) was exact science. Nothing could be further from the truth. Google, for example, RATE research (radio activity and the age of the earth), or this:

http://creation.com/radioactive-decay-rate-depends-on-chemic...

If, as you say, pseudoscience is "banned" then why is evolution still being taught in schools? Why are students not allowed to question it or even be made aware of the many difficulties associated with it? Why can students not be told of any physical evidence, arguments, or other data that contradicts this bankrupt theory? All of this smacks of cover-up so that students cannot not see the desperately threadbare state of Darwin's knickers. (note to self: make 'Darwin's Knickers' the title of my next book. Or maybe call it 'Knickers to Darwin'. Hmm . . .)

Glad to see that some of them are taking their religious convictions (as well as their science) seriously, and are not bowing down to the sacred cow of Darwinism. The students you refer to don't know how lucky they are to have such principled teachers. Although those teachers may not hold to the consensus view, they are no doubt aware that the history of science has frequently shown the 'consensus view' to have previously been completely wrong (think hand-washing and germs, for example). Scientist are already reaching a similar conclusion with respect to Darwinian evolution, which is why secular activists, and atheists, have had to campaign vigorously to have their pet theory enforced in the classroom by BY LAW (rather than because the theory has any scientific merit, let alone evidence). If more people invested some time in examining the most up-to-date scientific evidence we would not be having these debates. There is no agency known to mankind whereby a simple cell - let alone an entire universe - can arise out of nothing and without a first cause. NONE. It has never been demonstrated in any laboratory on earth and it never will be. We should confine our teaching to operational (i.e. observable and repeatable) science in the science classroom, and not resort to teaching our children science fictions. Questions about the origin of life should be confined to history, R.E., or philosophy lessons, but even then, BOTH sides of the argument must be explored. We must teach our children HOW to think, not WHAT to think.

I wonder how accurate it is to say this is for "all UK schools" as education is pretty heavily devolved in the UK - Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales all have their own counterparts to the Department of Education:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_for_Education#Devolu...

NB As an aside, from a UK perspective the title is a bit confusing as "public schools" are private schools here. "State schools" would probably be more accurate - even if there are 4 "states" involved.... :-)

If you read the article it applies to all the schools that take government money.

Which government though - we have three parts of the UK with different levels of devolution:

- The Northern Ireland Executive

- Welsh Government

- Scottish Government

[NB I was careful to get the name of the institutions correct - the Welsh and Scottish bodies are styled "governments"]

Edit: Mind you - I rather wish it did apply here in Scotland!

I doubt this will extend to the North of Ireland. We have a disproportionately large evangelical Christian contingent that extends to the (current) largest party in the Executive, which would aim to block it. The education ministry is held by Sinn Féin, though, who would pass it.

It does say that, but news organisations are notoriously poor at articulating the constitutional situation in the UK.

In this case, for example, the move has no effect on Scotland - the education system there is totally devolved, and AFAIK there's no concept of the "free school" or academy model which has been introduced in England and Wales. I'm not sure about the situation in Northern Ireland.

The Scottish Secular Society has been campaigning for a similar ban in Scotland - this will probably happen at some point, although my experience suggests that there's not as much of a problem there anyway.

We do have problems related to religion in education - particularly around sectarianism:

http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/supportinglearners/posit...

Huh. I didn't know any of that. Sorry for my dismissive reply.

The source it quotes is specifically for new Academies and free schools. Those already established are not, I believe, affected.

One might hope so. How about private/religious schools?

I wonder if that was even an issue in the UK (or really everywhere except some parts of the US).

Yes, it was an issue in the UK. Our previous Government intentionally gave control of some state-funded schools to Christian fundamentalists with limited oversight and their schools have been teaching kids that the world is 6000 years old in science classes, complete with bogus scientific evidence for it. The current Government has been expanding this program.

That is a rather one-sided presentation of how this happened.

Neither Academies in general (the invention of the previous administration) nor Free Schools (one development of that idea by the current administration) are necessarily anything to do with religion. Moreover, we have had successful religious schools since long before that without the problems we're talking about here.

Whatever your politics and whatever think of either the Academies concept or allowing schools to be run by organisations with religious motivations, singling out a few cases where things have obviously gone wrong with insufficient oversight as if that is what either government intended to happen with the changes in recent years is hardly constructive.

The successful religious schools were, for the most part, run by some of the older and slightly calmer institutional religions like the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church. With academies, the Government deliberately let random Christian fundamentalist businessmen with interesting religious views run them on the basis that their religion and business skills would make them suitable owners. They didn't actually expect them using this opportunity to teach kids creationism but it was fairly inevitable under the circumstances.

Just one of the scientific discoveries pointing to a young earth (which you describe as being 'bogus', and without evidence) was found recently by Dr. Mary Schweitzer, an evolutionist, not a creationist, and can be found here along with photographs. http://creation.com/dinosaur-soft-tissue How would you explain this, makomk?

Politics. Religion. Valence issue. Why is this on the front page of HN? It shouldn't be; I flagged it.

I see no reason for your comment, specially when the guidelines are clear about these types of contributions.

From http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html 4th paragraph from the bottom

  > Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is 
  > inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, 
  > flag it by going to its page and clicking on 
  > the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) 
  > If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.

I disagree with that section of the guidelines.

I disagree with drug laws, but that doesn't mean I can possess drugs without penalty.

You know that doesn't work since you had to tack on "without penalty". I doubt tptacek expects to be shielded from disagreement and/or downvotes.

I disagree with you completely about this article not being suitable for HN, but on the other hand, I have to respect this approach to people quoting guidelines.

I'm not sure education counts as an entirely political issue.

It's obviously an area that interests the HN community quite a lot - there's a bias towards science and engineering here, and everybody interested in those fields should find the teaching of creationism in a scientific context to be abhorrent. So I think it probably warrants discussion when the education system adopts policies which are actively hostile to the fields many of us are involved in (or in this case, when there's a push back against it).

To be honest, I suspect this counts as a political issue in the US and isn't one in the UK. As this is a US dominated site I can sort of see why people don't want it debated here as it'll just upset people - which it appears to have done.

Ironically, religion doesn't play a very large part in day the day political life in the UK even though most of the country has an official established religion.

No, the problem isn't that it will "upset people" in the US. Virtually none of the readers of HN in the US see this issue as controversial.

And what exactly has evolution got to do with Science and Engineering? Name one advance in your own field that has been made by an evolutionist? And why do you find the teaching of creationism in a scientific context abhorrent? I think you are mistakenly confusing or conflating the theology with the science. The latter is based on empirical evidence, research, and peer reviewed papers, and as such cannot be disputed even by you. Science classes are for the teaching of science, not origins (especially not alleged 'evolutionary' origins).

Why do you have to do this? You remind me of a little boy in on the playground, who immediately yells "Im telling" the moment anything interesting happens. You don't have to agree with every post, just let it slide.

When a government is trying to preserve our only tool to understand the world, well I think this is relevant. There are people fighting otherwise https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AS6rQtiEh8

Scientists tend to exclude God, and creationists tend to exclude science. It would benefit all of us for each side to recognize that they can live in harmony. Science can provide insight into how God's creation works, but it can never exclude God. If religious interpretation of scripture flies in the face of provable, observable science, then perhaps our interpretation of that scripture is wrong. I'm tired of this ridiculous standoff between the two side.

One of the problems is the connotations tied up in the word "God". Because there's so much history, baggage, and tradition tied up in that word it makes it difficult to do any sort of real experiments based on it, nevermind using that word in any defined sense in the first place.

But that said, I'm with you. It saddens me to see most scientists completely close their mind to an idea. It flies in the face of the idea of experimentation and discovery. Especially bad when you see people dismissing very valid interpretations of experiments simply because the downstream ramifications make them uncomfortable (the Copenhagen interpretation comes to mind).

creationists tend to exclude science

No, that's exactly the problem - many creationists try to pass off their theological scriptures as science. Which is why rules like this have to be imposed. Thankfully, they are an exception among religious people as a whole, at least here in Europe.

If they prove something scientifically, then great. It's when they ignore the overwhelming body of science around certain things, such as the age of the Earth. That's just crazy.

> Science can provide insight into how God's creation works, but it can never exclude God.

Of course it can exclude "God," seeing as "God" is nothing more than a fictional construct created by humans because they couldn't fully understand the world around them. Anyone who cannot recognize and accept this is either deluding themselves or lying.

Your assertion has absolutely no more bearing to this argument than saying "nuh uh" and plugging your ears. You bring nothing to this discussion, and you should be ashamed for refusing to participate in real discourse.

It is ironic that the very same creationists tend to exclude Gods from other religions. Why do they firmly exclude the Mayan God, or the Hindu Gods? Why are their scriptures true but not the others? If there are contradictions in the scriptures of the various religions in the world, then perhaps the creationists "interpretation of that scripture is wrong".

The following quote comes to mind:

“I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one less god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” —Stephen F Roberts

I had to engage with the Roberts quote because it made me think.

I think he's making a false equivalency. A jump from believing in one god to two gods seems much less significant than a jump from zero to one. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_One_Infinity)

Further, I'm not sure that Roberts understands why the religious reject other gods. Like most things people do, there are a variety of reasons:

- Both Judaism and Islam have explicit commandments or statements of faith that reject other gods

- Suspicious of foreigners? Deride their religion as unreasonable and obviously contrafactual

- Wary of talk of the divine being used as justification for a mortal power play? (And you should be) Add a bias for rejection into your calculations

- And of course, extraordinary claims and extraordinary evidence

False equivalence. Science is simply making hypotheses about how the world works, and testing thises hypotheses with experiments. Everyone does thus, not just scientists. When he plant on my window sill is looking a bit ill, I might hypothesise that it's not getting enough water. I then test the hypothesis by watering the plant lord. If the plant still looks sickly I discard the water hypothesis, and may try for the sunlight hypothesis. The only difference when it's scientists, is that as professionals, they know what has already been tried elsewhere, so they don't repeat the same erroneous experiment needlessly.

Creationists actively reject evidence. I see no good coming from science bending to compromise with active ignorance.

Science has its own religious as well. There are plenty of people who will extrapolate a hypothesis way past the point of credulity. For example, claiming that the Big Bang excludes the existence of God. You can't scientifically disprove his existence. I'm not sure you can scientifically prove his existence either, but that's were faith comes in.

> It would benefit all of us for each side to recognize that they can live in harmony.

"mutually respectful, honest and rational debaters cannot disagree on any factual matter once they know each other’s opinions. They cannot "agree to disagree", they can only agree to agree." [1]

[1] http://www.overcomingbias.com/2006/12/agreeing_to_agr.html

Scientists tend to exclude unicorns and Santa Claus as well.

Maybe it does not pass their basic threshold for assumptions. Anything can be claimed with the same level of potential to be true. Also they may have the strength to accept unanswered (or unanswerable) questions without needing to invent something. For me all religions are the same. They are so absurd to me like the scientology stuff probably is to you. Also Strawberry-God, cause why not. Where do you make the distinction?

> Science can provide insight into how God's creation works, but it can never exclude God.

People really like to downplay this, but a scientific investigation of any phenomenon must begin, in step zero, by assuming that god is not responsible for the phenomenon. There is no evidence that could support a conclusion of "it was god", because the scientific method assigns that hypothesis a Bayesian weight of zero.

Religious scientists seem to understand this when it comes to their own field; you don't see a lot of young-earth geologists, but you can find geologists rejecting evolution.

It's fine for science to say, this is how we think it worked without God. But science cannot disprove God.

You completely missed what I said. Your original wording was that science couldn't exclude god. Science excludes god by its very nature; the basis of science is the assumption that god is not responsible for anything at all. It makes no more sense to talk about science disproving god than to talk about geometry disproving the postulate of Euclid that states "all right angles are congruent to each other". If you allow for the possibility of a god, you're not doing science.

> If you allow for the possibility of a god, you're not doing science.

No, that's nonsense. It is perfectly possible to do rigorous science but to believe in a God. There is nothing in science that rules out a god.

Sadly the vocal majority of people who believe in a god also believe weird stupid obviously wrong things about science. I'm not talking about those people.

Science proceeds on the assumption that effects can be replicated. Its stated goal is to discover the principles that govern any phenomenon.

If principles govern a phenomenon, god can't. The only god allowed by science is a god with no power to affect anything in the world, or at least no more power to affect the world than a human or any other mundane creature has. The question then is why you want to apply the word "god" to that entity.

http://www.cectic.com/051/

I think it's worth repeating a point from earlier. Yes, there are many people doing science and avowing belief in a god. However, none of them are involving any god in the science that they do. Their gods are tightly restricted to areas of the universe that they don't practice in. This isn't a coincidence -- as I said in the quote you object to, allowing the possibility of a god means you're not doing science. But there are lots of scientists (really, this is the group of all scientists) who don't practice in every area at once.

I don't think Newton thought of it that way.

I never understood why people get so worked up over this issue. Is the job of education to only ever let a child hear the one thing we believe to be most factual and never hear anything else? How boring would life be?

I grew up in a place that valued multiculturalism. We heard about creation, AND evolution, and Indian creation myths, and Egyptian creation myths, and more. Pthe idea was that we had these people around us with this rich history and tradition and us learning it made us understand others better, and feel closer to them. We knew where they were coming from!

So why not teach creationism in schools, as long as at least one group of people are telling their kids, then that's something we should tell all of our kids so they all understand. I don't see the harm.

What if learning origins stories was an exploration of history or anthropology, instead of being framed as 'science'.

"What if learning origins stories was an exploration of history or anthropology"

That's pretty much how it is taught in schools here (at least in Scotland) - kids are taught about religions as cultural phenomena.

Meanwhile, in science classes they are taught about we think the world was actually created.

I don't think anybody is opposing teaching religious creation myths in a religion class. Saying that "creationism is a valid scientific theory", on the other hand, is the same thing as claiming that there is a controversy in the scientific world about the existence of Greek titans. Teaching that the world is a varied place is valuable, but it doesn't mean telling kids that myths and science have the same factual value.

It'd be a waste of children's time and energy. I understand that, at least in the US, the purpose of schools is not education but babysitting, but if you're going to spend time teaching anyway, perhaps teaching children real science instead of pseudoscience might be a better option not only for them but for society as a whole. Societies that believe school's primary purpose is education don't even have the excuse above for the miseducation you refer to.

It's not about teaching children what we believe to be most factual, it's about not teaching them what we know is false.

I posted this link as a new thread, but i think it is worth posting this also here,

http://www.elisoriano.com/blog/new-truths-belie-evolution-ev...

Would love to hear what the HN community thought on the arguments.

"Ludicrous"?

Did you read it? Which one did you find ludicrous?

"Elements and minerals found in our body is exactly what are stated in the Bible that we came from the dust (crust) of the earth."

The two pie charts for the Earth's crust look pretty different to me - although the fact that the same colour is used for different elements in the two charts is obviously trying to hide this (the only consistently coloured one is oxygen).

Yeah, I kept looking at that chart, trying to work out the point he was trying to make. It was a very confused essay, in general.

Speaking for myself, I don't understand understand how people can choose a book of questionable origin and authenticity as their authority on matters concerning life and death.

Whatever that page is trying to say has most likely already been addressed here: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html

I scanned the link you posted, found it actually is confirming one of the arguments on the blog post, about the Piltdown man Hoax. And it says in the link you posted that science corrects errors. On the blog post link i posted, one of the arguments is that in the bible it is written the shape of the earth (circle)

It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth… ISAIAH 40:22

One of the argument of the writer of the blog post, in his other articles (e.g http://esoriano.wordpress.com/2007/05/25/from-dust-to-man-a-...). is that Science and the Bible doesn't contradict each other. He points out mistakes of other religions, for the wrongful claims of other religions for example that the earth is only 6000 year old or so.

The 'arguments' you refer to are meant to support the idea that the theory of evolution is "senseless" (the author's own choice of words). Given that evolution is pretty much a scientific fact, the author clearly believes that the Bible contradicts science.

Now I'm going to be blunt: neither you nor the author have a sufficient understanding of the philosophy of science to be drawing any conclusions regarding science.

I've been trying to sit this one out, but I've got to be blunt with YOU: how can anyone with a "sufficient understanding of the philosophy of science" draw the conclusion that evolution works?! Simply put, the scientific process is supposed to be: observe -> hypothesize -> test -> revise. If life is supposed to have arisen by purely natural processes, then the information-building, error-checking and correcting code system that is our DNA must have somehow constructed itself. I am not aware of any experiments following the scientific process that have demonstrated that such a thing is even remotely possible. Instead you have a bunch of "just so" stories about the distant past that are untestable ancient history that we are supposed to believe because we are told to do so by "people who are smarter than you". Smacks more of religion than "science" to me. And don't tell me about any experiments that demonstrate rapid speciation as evidence of evolution - that is NOT the same thing and is an equivocation I see proponents of evolution use all the time. They are instead examples of genetic isolation and information LOSS and are incapable of generating more complex, "higher" organisms. It is for this reason that some scientists have adopted the idea of intelligent design: information can only be created by an intelligent designer. I would expect a forum populated by people who write code to see that. I think that the idea of even a simple computer being able to construct AND program itself would be preposterous to most people here. And yet that is what the GTE proposes. Perhaps that points too much in the direction of a god for some people to accept, but the evidence seems to be clearly on the side of ID, IF you are truly following a "scientific" process.

An organism made out of 100 trillion machines? "Science" says it happened by accident. Not much point in arguing though. I'll just leave people with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id2rZS59xSE

Evidence is not on the side of ID. ID is not a scientific theory. It cannot be confirmed or falsified. It does not explain anything. Its premise is flawed (I don't know how X happened therefore Y must be true). Believe in ID if you want but don't confuse it with science.

Indirect evidence, at least beyond the step of abiogensis, is overwhelming. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

There are probably no documented examples of macroevolution that would satisfy you because what you're looking for are systemic functional changes in non-microscopic species, in the wild, which then forms a stable population as a separate species. Such changes are the accumulation of minor changes (which have been observed), but are not observable in aggregate in modern times because there has not been enough time to observe them. And if such examples were given, you'd say that's just a variation of an existing species. The perspective required to judge a separate species in your view is longer than the time phylogeny has been rigorously undertaken by scientists. You are asking for the impossible and using that to declare a theory you don't like as invalid.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html

The GTE as you call it is not a finished theory. There have been significant changes in the past few decades (Lynn Margulis's work on endosymbiosis, for example), and there will be more changes in the future.

Intelligent Design is not based on evidence. It is not falsifiable. It is not a scientific theory. It is a quasi-theory-of-the-gaps based on the assumption that the progress of evolution is too small and too slow to have resulted in humans. It ignores the mountains of indirect evidence pointing to macroevolution. ID rejects the theory of evolution on the grounds that there is too little direct evidence, or that the probability (not that anyone can calculate it properly, but Creationists pretend they can) of evolution is too low, and posits an alternate "theory" of a designer, for which there is no evidence, nothing that allows calculating a probability of such a designer, and which completely ignores where the designer came from, typically by punting and declaring the designer God, and stating that God exists inherently, which is riddled with assumptions, and regardless of whether it's true says nothing about the nature of that God or what it might want or do.

The changes you refer to are examples of the equivocation I was speaking of. One cannot simply point to "changes" in an organism, micro- or not, call that evolution, and then say it must be true. And just because there are similarities evident in different types of organisms, it does not necessarily follow that they are of common descent. If they were designed by the same designer, would you not expect to find some features in common? But this does not mean there is a natural mechanism to turn molecules into a genetic code that can in turn be read by a a decoding system (after all, what good is a code without the decoder?) which can then construct an organism. Even the simplest of organisms must have intricate, complex machinery inside for it to exist. I know of no method whereby this machinery can come into existence without intelligent direction. And even this simplest of organisms has no means of improving upon itself to create a "higher" organism. You say that the accumulation of minor changes (via mutations, perhaps?) is the mechanism whereby evolution works. I posit to you that such changes are examples of broken genetics whereby information is LOST, not gained, and are incapable of building a higher organism. See works such as Michael Behe's "The Edge of Evolution" for a more in-depth look at such changes.

To use your turn of phrase: Evolution is not based on evidence. It is not falsifiable. It is not a scientific theory. It is a quasi-theory-of-the-gaps based on the assumption that there is no higher intelligence that created anything, and all we see HAS to be the result of natural processes. It ignores the mountains of indirect evidence pointing to design.

My point is: we see cars, computers, planes, etc. around us all the time, but we would never dream of suggesting that they are the result of natural processes. They are the obvious result of SPECIFIED COMPLEXITY, which requires some intelligence for its existence. The more we learn about the inner workings of cells, even at the molecular level, the more obvious it is that we are dealing with a SPECIFIED COMPLEXITY.

The problem with 'intelligent design' is that it's such an infantile way of trying to understand the world. Stating "God did it", rather than using one's brain to figure out the mechanisms of how the world works, is just lazy, regressive thinking that doesn't advance our knowledge and understanding in any way whatsoever.

>Such changes are the accumulation of minor changes (which have been observed), but are not observable in aggregate in modern times because there has not been enough time to observe them. //

Is that really true? Drosophila are used for genetic studies with a [shortest] breeding cycle of 7 days and have several ways to introduce mutations that would mimic natural mutagenic mechanisms [but accelerated] as well as being able to apply a lab version of selective pressure [which again would seem to be accelerated].

So far as I can tell we've been doing evolution experiments on drosophila since 1910 or earlier; but lets say a conservative 60 years. That's a potential 3000 generations. What's the least related variant?

For comparison the youngest Neanderthal ancestor is dated as 45000 years old (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html#morpho...) which puts it within this order of generations.

Macro-evolution isn't rigorous. For example we've long been told it's incontrovertible that 'humans developed from a common ancestor with [knuckle-walking] modern chimps', that this should be believed as a facile result of evolutionary theory and holding out on that assertion is unscientific - http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html#morpho... is an example. Then some evidence is actually found http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091001/full/news.2009.966.ht... that disproves the assertion that was supposed to be based on sound scientific theory and evidence. But of course the theory stand unfalsified because it didn't demonstrate the result claimed at all, it was bad science in the first place.

But 'dogs definitely evolved from modern wolves though!' ... http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2014/0117/Did-dogs-really-e....

But at least we have evidence of speciation and evolution of dinosaur features:

>"the diversity of dome shapes, and their association with boss and spike ornamentation, suggests that the domes were important for spe- cies recognition (Goodwin and Horner 2004)."

... and the following year everyone agrees that in fact that Dracorex, Stygimoloch and Pachycephalosaurus are just different aged version of the same animal (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091031002314.ht...). And there were similar results for other "species" of dinosaur.

I like this http://www.walkingwithdinosaurs.com/news/editorial/t-rex-gro... as an example of the type of thinking going on. The professor writing it is clearly holding on to the concept that you can give valid incite in to speciation and evolution based on the visual appearance of very limited fossilised remains despite the point of the article being that doing this in the past failed completely in producing truthful results.

It's seems pretty clear relying on "indirect evidence" isn't producing valid results in these cases.

On to your last para. There are enough holes in most Creationists viewpoints not to need to lie about the problems. You say creationism "completely ignores where the designer came from" but it's uncontroversial Christian theology [in common with the other Abrahamic religions] that God is eternal. 'Well who created God?' is the usual response. That, perhaps ironically, exactly mirrors one objection to the Big-Bang - the need for a prime mover. If the Big-Bang doesn't need a prime mover why does God, and vice-versa?

If the earth were as old as lots of people seem to believe, there would be adequate evidence for macroevolution in the fossil record which COULD then be observed. But the fact remains that all of the predicted transitional fossils are notably MISSING. The vast majority of fossils show no change at all when compared to their modern counterparts. I do not see how this can equate to a "mountain of evidence" for macroevolution. And that's assuming you have already got past the problem (which you have already graciously acknowledged) of abiogenesis. Doesn't all of this tell you something?

Well said, HillObeans. I would like to ask permission to quote you in my forthcoming book, Darwin's Knickers (or maybe I'll call it, Knickers to Darwin - I haven't really decided yet [see one of my earlier posts on this deliberation]). I could really learn from you. I have a lot of respect for ID people, as well as for creationists. At least they have taken the trouble to learn and understand the science they're commenting on. Unlike most others.

I am a bioinformatician with a background in genetics.

The argument against evolution in the article, mainly the piltdown man hoax and new sequencing data on neanderthal is extremely weak.

I don't think a single example of scientific fraud is enough to discredit the entire community. I actually think the fact that the fraud was found out as a hoax shows that evidence is constantly being scrutinized and re-examined; which is exactly what science should be all about.

The point about sequence similarity/dis-similarity being not the ultimate evidence for common ancestry is actually an insightful point; however, I doubt the author of the article realized the insight. He was probably just parroting a statement he read in another article. I don't think you can make a strong statement about homology between genomes using only 65,000 bases of sequence from potentially heavily degraded sample. I think it is just an interesting starting point for further analysis with more data.

The rest of the article dealt with interpreting biblical statements to fit with current undeniable understanding of the universe. IE. Man is made from dust is consistent with humans being consisted of elements found in dust (crust) of the earth. I am sure it sounds nice to people who believe in the bible. But it makes me wonder what these interpretations will look like in a hundred years. Are these interpretations going to change with new understandings of the universe? Is the bible just full of vague statements that can constantly adapt to new understanding of the world? What good is that really?

I've always wondered what a creationist view of biology would look like. There are plenty of attacks against evolution, but never any clear explanation of how their belief system is in accordance with current data. Do new species suddenly pop into existence from nothing by god? Do god specifically implant new species into the womb of a surrogate specie? Why does god invent bunch of new species in the first place? Why not modify the environment to suit the species rather than modify species to suit the environment? I think creationism hides behind a wall of hand-wavy and foggy ideas that breaks down when explicitly examined.

"The rest of the article dealt with interpreting biblical statements to fit the current undeniable understanding of the universe.", (How do i correctly put a quote here in the replies?)

In Isaiah 40:22 It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth…

This is written before any scientist can confirm it. Thats not interpretation, its a clearly stated fact, "circle". And he points out if other religion gets it wrong.

> This is written before any scientist can confirm it. Thats not interpretation, its a clearly stated fact, "circle". And he points out if other religion gets it wrong.

The Earth was considered to be a flat disc, so there's nothing of value there. Please do some research before coming here with your bullshit.

Historian Jeffrey Burton Russell says the flat-earth error flourished most between 1870 and 1920, and had to do with the ideological setting created by struggles over evolution. Russell claims "with extraordinary [sic] few exceptions no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the earth was flat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth

The Earth is a sphere, not a circle. That's not a nitpick either. They thought the Earth was a flat disk back then.

Regardless. Even if you were dumbly granted that the Earth was a flat disk, how would that have any barring on the rest of the Bible's arguments?

Plato was right about a lot of things, but does that mean he was also right about the elemental nature of the universe? (Everything being created from the base elements of fire, earth, wind and water)

Your argument is bad even if it were correct.

> The Earth is a sphere, not a circle.

The earth is an oblate spheroid, not a sphere.

> The earth is an oblate spheroid

To a first order approximation, such as would be suitable for a discussion on an Internet forum, the earth is basically a sphere...

> They thought the Earth was a flat disk back then.

What "they" are you talking about? Europeans haven't thought the earth was flat since the beginning of recorded history. It seems reasonably safe to extend that viewpoint to Mediterraneans.

>They thought the Earth was a flat disk back then. //

Evidence?

FWIW the word here used for "circle" (in the ancient Hebrew, chuwg, [1]) is that used for the arch or vault [a bi-concave ceiling] of the skies; they'd need to also consider the skies to be a disc for it to make sense that it should be interpreted as disc in the Isaiah 40:22 [2] reference. I think the most obstructive interpretation would still need to be something like "dome" - definitely not flat.

So, why not a flat circle? Well there are other words used for that exact thing, as in 2 Chronicles 4 / or 1 Kings 7:23 [3]:

>Now [Solomon] made the sea of cast metal [of the altar] ten cubits from brim to brim, circular in form, and its height was five cubits, and thirty cubits in circumference. //

This is the word for the plane shape "circle" ('agol) that matches the brim of a cup (or giant bowl-shaped altar!).

Note that the figures leaves the brim at 5 - 30/2pi ~= a hands breadth under some interpretations, just as Kings 7:26 suggests. But that verse 7:26 also says that the brim was like that of a lily, not a hands-breadth at the brim but fine and dainty ... and here in lies a very interesting piece of gematria [use of letters for numbers] associated with the Kings passage [4] which in short form encodes in a variant word form qava (=111) for qav (=106) in the oldest Hebrew version of the passage [that in Kings] is the ratio 111/106; the implication being that the true figures should be 30/10 x 111/106 which gives an excellent approximation to pi.

[1] http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Stro...

[2] http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=isa+40%3A22&vers...

[3] http://biblehub.com/niv/2_chronicles/4.htm or http://biblehub.com/1_kings/7-23.htm

[4] http://www.mathteacherctk.com/blog/2011/08/biblical-and-gema...

Yes, you can interpret circle as spherical if you wanted to. You can also interpret circle as a circular disk. Was it against all conventional wisdom at the time of this writing to hold a circular view of the world? Were there no other culture that thought the world was circular? I am no anthropologist so I can't comment on that last question.

This is just another example of vague statements.

> before any scientist can confirm it

Well, Isaiah was kicking about the Middle East in or around 650 BC. And somewhere in Greece at about this time, Pythagoras was one of a line of philosophers and astronomers who knew the earth was round. Eratosthenes comes along a couple of hundred years later, and he actually measured the circumference of the earth; pretty accurately too, considering the highly technical equipment (a well) he used!

In general, the ancients knew the earth was not flat, and had a pretty good idea of its shape and size a lot earlier than most people realise.

I just want to add that there are several references in the bible to there being an under the earth, and if we look at the latin where this is more clear, it doesn't mean inside, but below. The old testament is not scientifically accurate.

Believe whatever mythology you want, I will fully defend your right to do so. But do not try to force your agenda on those that don't follow or share your doctrine though made up fiction masquerading as science. Evolution through natural selection exists, it's demonstrable, and the only piece we do not have a precision view of is speciation. But not unlike the Higgs, when we have all the other pieces, we can extrapolate, and we have some pretty solid theories on how this happens, and evidence that through husbandry, we as humans have caused it to happen through human selection.

I sympathize with your problem. But the problem is, you have confused creationists with theistic evolutionists! They are the ones that say that evolution occurred, but God guided it. He didn't. He created EX NIHILO, from scratch, in the beginning (that's pure creationist thinking; theistic evolution is merely a compromise position by those who have departed from their Bible). For a view of what creationist biology might actually look like, I suggest you start here. I believe you will find it quite interesting:

http://creation.com/what-biology-textbooks-never-told-you-ab...

God bless.

I just don't understand it. What is it exactly that creationists argue against? What part of the theory of evolution do you disagree with? Is it the fact that there is a thing called DNA? That DNA determines traits of organisms? That DNA gets mixed up as organisms multiply? That some traits are better than others? That this process leads to evolution and natural selection?

I'm sure there are, within the field of evolutionary biology, numerous claims that will turn out to be false, as well as many phenomena not yet understood and explained.

But draw from this the conclusion that the theory of evolution is flawed and must be replaced with creationism, is absurd. The basic claims of the theory are well understood and have been confirmed in the real world over and over again.

Just stop the nonsense.

I see what the author did there, he used DNA to disprove evolution.

It's a poorly argued essay.

The author starts from an assumption that the Bible is true and cherry-picks evidence in an attempt to support that, choosing the interpretation (or misinterpretation) that best fits into his pre-existing biases.

Not convincing unless one has already been indoctrinated into the belief that everything is 'God-given', rather than being more open-minded and inquisitive about the nature of the world.

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