Creationism to be taught on GCSE science syllabus (you can't keep a good idea down)

The Times of London ^ | 10 March 2006 | Tony Halpin

[Greg o the Navy]

AN EXAMINATIONS board is including references to “creationism” in a new GCSE science course for schools.

[Fester Chugabrew]

Natural selection certainly is not random.

Nor is it scientific. If it were, it could predict the state of species way down the road, especially given millions of years of its so-called "observed" history. Natural selection is an arbitrary determination made after species have performed as they were designed to perform, namely, within their intended limits.

[Luis Gonzalez]

That's a pantload and you know it.

Your preacher has no more business discussing evolution than the science teacher has discussing Creation.

Live with it or find a country more to your liking.

I hear religious schools are all the rage in Iran.

[Fester Chugabrew]

Thanks. I generally see where you're coming from. It is my conviction that even things having the appearance of being random are designed (i.e. nothing that makes itself available to human reason and senses can be devoid of design), and that nothing designed can be devoid of an agent involving intelligence.

[b_sharp]

"Insisting that there is a supernatural explanation starts scientific inquiry with a presumption also. This also biases their views and conclusions. Either way is biased. Assuming a non-supernatural, or *naturalistic* point of view is not a neutral position."

Science does start with a naturalist assumption, but that assumption is a result of the methods inherent in science. Science has great difficulty in dealing with anything outside of nature because supernatural causes introduce instabilities in the testing/prediction component of the process.

How does one test for the supernatural? Only if there is some confidence that the supernatural can and does predictably affect the natural can we test for it. If the supernatural can make its own decisions then in our assumptions we need to take into consideration the motives of that supernatural agent. As many here have effectively said, God moves in mysterious ways, ways that are above our understanding.

Sorry, the supernatural simply cannot be inserted into science without negative consequences.

[Fester Chugabrew]

Your preacher has no more business discussing evolution than the science teacher has discussing Creation.

I think you might be the one who would be more comforatble in another country. Here in the United States religion is free to express itself in a public context, and religious ideas are free to commingle with scientific ones.

[King Prout]

Nor is it scientific. If it were, it could predict the state of species way down the road

huge, gross, awful error in your premise.

making such *specific* predictions would require an essentially infinite database - among other things necessarily detailing the mass, location, and vector of *everything in the universe* at precision equal to the ultimate particle level.

that's just the tip of the iceberg, and assumes the various uncertainty factors of QM do not apply (which, at a guess, they quite significantly would).

[King Prout]

yes, and a semi-retarded mental patient has every *right* to converse on matters of nuclear science... but that does not make it his business, his bailiwick, nor anything he should be regarded as expert in handling in the real world.

[PatrickHenry]

... making such *specific* predictions would require an essentially infinite database ...

The kind that only the intelligent designer has.

[King Prout]

pasta be upon him

[b_sharp]

So, you feel this one interesting find negates all of evolution - geology, archaeology, palaeontology, astronomy, cosmology, biology,... do you?

[Luis Gonzalez]

Not in the school room.

You don't get to indoctrinate public schools kids to the religion of your choice, or mine for that matter.

No place for it.

Now tell me, who is trying to force what on who here?

[ml1954]

. It is my conviction that even things having the appearance of being random are designed

If you haven't read it before, you might find this post by Vicomte13 interesting See post 464. I did.

[Fester Chugabrew]

As long as it is a "law" it is not really unpredictable or random. I must grant, however, that the notion of randomness as explanatory is not without merit. With it one may explain anything, just as one may explain anything by beginning with the assumption that every detail of physical reality is the result of a Creator.

[King Prout]

every detail of physical reality is the result of a Creator

I have no problem with *that* specific proposition, in terms of ultimate causation or even thorough direction. Indeed, I am quite comfortable with that model.

think before replying.

[King Prout]

As long as it is a "law" it is not really unpredictable or random

the law does not predict specific unpredictable consequences for any action - it merely stipulates that THERE WILL BE unpredictable consequences for *every* action.

please think more carefully before making grand pronouncements - being forced bring the thread back to topic again and again is rather tiresome for me.

[microgood]

It only works if your assumption is correct. We could equally say quit trying to understand gravity... it is an "Intelligent hand" pushing you down. Or quit studying weather because it is an "intelligent weatherman" making the weather.

I am not saying that we quit trying to understand anything. The collection of data and information is important whether or not the theories that try to explain it are accurate or incomplete or not.

Most great technology happens because we have a lot of data points, not because we understand what is going on. Most great technology discoveries are done using trial and error, which you would not need if you understood how everything works beforehand.

One good example is microprocessor technology, which was relatively new when I was in college. When I took a microcircuits technology class, there was only one textbook out on creating microprocessor circuits on silicon wafers. Rather than a bunch of canned formulas, it was basically like a cookbook where you started out etching a pattern created by some image projected by light waves that allowed an acid to etch the surface and then apply p and n type material in hot gas concentrations. All of this knowledge had been obtained by extensive trial and error, the temperature, concentrations of gases, types of material used, etc.

Indeed the initial momentum for doing this came from theories about silicon and other elements that allowed them to create p and n junctions, which if they were wrong the silicon idea might would not have worked, but the real solution came from actually trying to do it.

I think the same is true for the pharmeceutical companies. They may start out with a theory, but some are dead ends but even goods ones involve extensive trial and error testing.

One of the problems with evolution theories is there is no possibility to do trial and error testing on whether we all descended from some initial life form. All methods of trying to verify such ideas are indirect and require many assumptions and theories that themselves cannot be verified directly.

[Heartlander]

To paraphrase Berlinski; if we were to replace the word evolution with ‘allah’ and the label of creationist with ‘infidel’ - I don’t think these discussions would read significantly different. But this obviously offends those who use this ‘creationist label‘ often. Why?

I am not by definition a creationist, but if someone in our society wanted to make this ‘creationist label’ (or even id) into a term used to judge others and cast them to the side… Well, I think Alvin Plantinga sums this up nicely here:

Suppose I claim all Democrats belong in jail. One might ask: Could I advance the discussion by just defining the word “Democrat” to mean “convicted felon”? If you defined “Republican” to mean “unmitigated scoundrel,” should Republicans everywhere hang their heads in shame?

I have loved science since a child, but as an adult I was disappointed to find science ’in a box’ and void of either intelligence or design when both of these aspects seem far too obvious for any denial. If science must deny any design or intelligence ultimately towards our very being, what does this mean? This question is rhetorical because the obvious meaning is we are nothing more than chemicals acting upon each other and for no higher reason than any other chemical reaction.

I disagree with this methodological naturalistic ‘belief’ so what label should science don me with to make me into a ‘convicted felon‘?

[Ichneumon]

[Someday, perhaps you'll work your way up to spamming threads with something that's actually relevant to the topic.]

Evasion... adress the peer reviewed facts next time.

I'm not evading anything. I'm just pointing out that you flung a non sequitur into the thread. If you feel this random piece of data bears on the current discussion, you've failed to bother to state how and why you think that. I can hardly "evade" your point when you haven't made one.

I can "address the facts" by pointing out that this does nothing to undermine evolutionary biology, or bolster "intelligent design", if that was what you were so poorly attempting to imply. Here, read this.

At very most, all it establishes is that under rare, special conditions (they're obvious rare and special, or else this wouldn't be such an unusual find and *most* fossils would be in this condition -- but they're not), there can be an excellent state of fine-grained preservation for some ancient fossils. Yeah, so? Did you have some point to make beyond that?

[Fester Chugabrew]

Now tell me, who is trying to force what on who here?

Today? Those who disavow the biblical texts as authoritative are trying to "force" their point of view on all children who attend public schools. Public schools are paid for in part by those who subscribe to the biblical texts as authoritative. Either the public schools should be abolished altogether, or they should accommodate a wider point of view.

The idea that matter is organized and performs specific functions because of an intelligent designer is hardly sectarian. But you're such an ideological wimp you cannot stomach the thought and think children will be ruined because of such a thought. Perhaps you think that by being exposed to such a thought they will be FORCED to acknowledge it. You must not have much confidence in human freedom.

You might be better off in commie land.

[jonathanmo]

Thanks from a lurker as well, King...