Split Thread Should creationism be taught as Science?

No. Any discussion of creationism does not belong in a science classroom -or any public school building, really. The only thing that needs to be said about it is, “Talk to your parents and pastors about that.”

I get that a small minority of kids is going to be hostile to science classes. I think it would be ok for the teacher to tell those kids, “I’m not asking you to abandon your religious beliefs; I’m asking you to learn this material. You can reject it as a lie if you want to; all I care about is that you pass my class.”
 
As far as I am aware school science classes already teach every theory as challengeable. "Any theory is only as good as the next experiment" and all that. That was the way I remember it and that is the way it is taught to my sons.

Maybe the title of the thread should be "should every minority theory be taught in science classes?".

Creationism/intelligent design is the minoritiest of minority theories, even among scientists who believe in God.
Political and in particular legislative pressure to boost a minority theory in science has nothing to do with critical thinking or the free exchange of ideas.

Proponents of creationism/intelligent design already have full access to the free exchange of ideas.
 
psionl0 said:
So like the GOP, you are against teaching critical thinking, which has "the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority." ?

Should we just be giving them instructions and not allowing any questions?
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tEArCh TheRE COnTRovesEE!!!1
 
Resume said:
Yes.

As long as it's being demonstrated as a good example of pseudoscience.
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I agree. I suspect Psion10 agrees, mostly, as well. There's a few subtle differences. I haven't read every single post here, but I think I understand where he's going with it. Maybe I'm just projecting my own opinion.

The real question is what is the best way to get students to get to a better understanding both of the general approach to determining scientific truth and, specifically, getting students to understand the reality of evolution, as understood by people who study it using scientific methods.
 
psionl0 said:
If you don't like the idea that science is theologically neutral then that is your problem. I have answered the question. Science has absolutely nothing whatsoever to say about anything religious. So stop trying to make this about religion.
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Except in as much as religion makes testable claims. Which it does. All the time.
 
Sideroxylon said:
Anyone genuinely interested in this Creationist weaseling should look over the Dover trial. You should find a couple of excellent documentaries on YouTube.
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Many many years ago I actually read through all the transcripts from the depositions to the trial, which at the time were available on the NCSE website. It was actually pretty fascinating.
 
arthwollipot said:
Many many years ago I actually read through all the transcripts from the depositions to the trial, which at the time were available on the NCSE website. It was actually pretty fascinating.
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Spent a lot of time myself. The attempt to put lipstick on the creationism pig in the rushed makeover to intelligent design and pretence to science was ironically exposed in analysis of the evolution through drafts of their text book. Including a sloppy find and replace operation that left the term “cdesign proponentsists” (design proponent in place of creationist) in the book. Their dishonest attempt to sneak the same old religious ideas into the classroom under a new name was exposed and punted.

https://ncse.ngo/my-role-kitzmiller-v-dover

I see some recent retrospectives on YouTube that I am going to watch. So many stars, so many great moments.
 
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arthwollipot said:
Except in as much as religion makes testable claims. Which it does. All the time.
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The Noah’s flood myth can be (and was) treated as a history claim but one that fails in the face of observations including geological, fossil record, genetic and contemporary species distribution. All observations that the theory of evolution by natural selection beautifully accounts for and makes repeatedly tested predictions.


ETA: if you do search YouTube you will find Michael Behe with a mousetrap and talking about bacterial flagellums as examples of irreducible complexity as if 15 years ago people like Ken Miller never falsified these specific examples and exposed his whole argument from personal incredulity? What is he? Delusional? Loves the creationist talk circuit? Utterly dishonest.
 
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arthwollipot said:
Except in as much as religion makes testable claims. Which it does. All the time.
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The general consensus seems to be against testing these claims in a science class.

That's fine. I only suggested Genesis as an exception since so many believe in it literally (and "children are our future"). The downside is that it could make science classes controversial and thus backfire.
 
psionl0 said:
The general consensus seems to be against testing these claims in a science class.

That's fine. I only suggested Genesis as an exception since so many believe in it literally (and "children are our future"). The downside is that it could make science classes controversial and thus backfire.
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They are excellent claims for students in of philosophy of science in the context of the demarcation problem.
 
I have a compromise solution: teach Both Science and biblical "science" as part of History, meaning that you introduce the knowledge we had at before the time of the OT, at the time of the OT, and the progress from there.
Then, after going through Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Planck, etc. and everything they discovered, we can have another lesson about how now, after two millennia of progress, some ******** want to got back to biblical knowledge.
 
psionl0 said:
The general consensus seems to be against testing these claims in a science class.

That's fine. I only suggested Genesis as an exception since so many believe in it literally (and "children are our future"). The downside is that it could make science classes controversial and thus backfire.
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I'm all for students testing the claims of religion in science class, as long as they do so rigorously.
 
psionl0 said:
I only suggested Genesis... The downside is that it could make science classes controversial and thus backfire.
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The category error such an unwarranted exception introduces is toxic to critical thinking about the natural world, source of the observations that form the sole foundation for science, the set of disciplines dedicated to examining nature. IOW, the controversy itself is fully contrived and serves to perpetuate poor thinking skills from the very start.

Science and religion are not competing explanations of nature. The latter is a rationalized construct about an imaginary realm, not nature, thus it often refers to the supernatural, its source being non-observations about idealized notions, along with accounts of human history that provide factual observations about believers, but never about the validity of their beliefs. This last distinction is often purposefully lost so that faithists can appear to adhere to objective standards.

To wit, religious artifacts, along with those scientific and artistic, represent the conceptual world humans inhabit made tangible by human hands. Religion is like art in that its artifacts substantiate human concepts and makes them tangible. Thus, religious artifacts are like comics and toy stores, human fancy in the flesh, not sources of factual observation of anything beyond human culture. Religious artifacts do not cut it, neither does religion, when it comes to the natural world. Art class and history class are where they belong, and dealt with as they are in nature: artifacts, not evidence.
 
One of the best examples of a religious claim being scientifically tested is the Shroud of Turin.

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arthwollipot said:
One of the best examples of a religious claim being scientifically tested is the Shroud of Turin.

[qimg]https://media.giphy.com/media/UVdiMrmmwTWDcN2dZ5/giphy.gif[/qimg]
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OK. So does it belong in the classroom? What exactly do you do when the Christian students start lying about it?
 
arthwollipot said:
One of the best examples of a religious claim being scientifically tested is the Shroud of Turin.

[qimg]https://media.giphy.com/media/UVdiMrmmwTWDcN2dZ5/giphy.gif[/qimg]
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... and found to be a 14th century fake.... conclusively... and the Catholic Church was told that by one of their own bishops...

Bishop Pierre d’Arcis wrote to the Pope that it was "a clever sleight of hand" by someone "falsely declaring this was the actual shroud in which Jesus was enfolded in the tomb to attract the multitude so that money might cunningly be wrung from them"..... he wrote that letter 632 years ago!!

They have been lying about it ever since!

But this is off topic, so carry on!
 
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