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]

Well, a law of unpredictable consequences, like natural selection, can predict dang near anything. And like natural selection, it is far from scientific in nature.

[King Prout]

I'm glad you found it of merit.
I think it is one of my better efforts, in all truth :)

[jennyp]

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.

Sure it's scientific. Saying it's not is like a biologist saying that we know a lot about the biology of blunt-force trauma, including how much force, applied where, will kill a person, and then a gadfly piping up and challenging him to predict who's going to die from a blunt-force trauma vs. who's going to die of old age. He can't, but that's irrelevant to whether his specialty is scientific or not. (But the gadfly still walks away feeling trimphant. :-)

[Boiler Plate]

I'm glad you got it.

[Fester Chugabrew]

One of the problems with evolution theories is there is no possibility to do trial and error testing . . .

All of which renders it a vapid, philosophical pursuit, not unlike intelligent design when used as if it is necessary to scientifically prove the existence of God.

[ml1954]

I disagree with this methodological naturalistic ‘belief’ so what label should science don me with

Not A Scientist

[King Prout]

Well, a law of unpredictable consequences, like natural selection, can predict dang near anything.

again, error. the law of unpredictable consequences predicts nothing - it stipulates with 100% certainty that there WILL be unpredictable consequences for every action.

[King Prout]

[Battlestar Galactica 90minute Season Finale] placemarker

[ml1954]

Yeah, taking negative IQ's seriously is silly.

[Heartlander]

Not A Scientist

So, we are nothing more than chemicals acting upon each other and for no higher reason than any other chemical reaction?

[Ichneumon]

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.

ROFL!!! Hardly. It's the evolutionists, not the creationists, who very routinely get accused of being atheists, infidels, blasphemers, anti-God, God-haters, unChristian, heretics, blah blah blah -- even when they're Christians! Just today, we had creationist "nmh" claim that Catholics aren't "really" Christians because he didn't like that the Catholic church has stated that it finds no contradiction between God and evolutionary biology.

Pull the other leg now.

But hey, let's try out your test, shall we? Here's the last reply I've made to one of your own posts which contains both the word "evolution" and "creationis[t/m]", with the edits you suggest:

So again, can there be any connection into the ‘real world’ with any intelligent design in physical science -including/extending into biology?

If the hypothesis is drawn specifically enough and in a way which allows testable predictions to be made and those predictions are subsequently matched by the totality of the evidence, yes.

As it stands today, though, the "ID movement" has neither a specific hypothesis, testable predictions, nor positive evidence. It hasn't even conducted any original research. Nor does it seem likely to -- the "ID movement" is characterized by its affection for press releases and mass-market books, and by its aversion for making any testable hypotheses, much less actually testing them or doing research.

It's an anti-Allah infidel PR campaign dishonestly masquerading as a science.

Wow, doesn't *that* sound stupid... No, contrary to your false claim, it *does* "read significantly different [sic]".

[VadeRetro]

Yeah, taking negative IQ's seriously is silly.

In computing IQs, we should stop at zero, even for creationists. In fact, we should stop before we get to comparisons with the vegetable kingdom in compliance with Moderator-friendly FreepSpeak.

[ml1954]

So, we are nothing more than chemicals acting upon each other and for no higher reason than any other chemical reaction?

Who said that?

[Fester Chugabrew]

Predictability is ultimately predicated upon the knowledge of the one who assesses a given cause and effect. As such it is subjective by definition and of little, if any, scientific value. Any law of unpredictablility must also necessarily have limits, because physical reality entails an ample supply of predictable phenomena. Lastly, if a law of unpredictability were given full sway by science, then such phenomenon as virgin births could hardly be discounted as "unscientific" in nature.

[ml1954]

In fact, we should stop before we get to comparisons with the vegetable kingdom in compliance with Moderator-friendly FreepSpeak.

I agree. There's no need to unnecessarily offend vegetables and cause them distress.

[microgood]

Oh great, that would lead to the death of intellectual inquiry. If a supernatural being tampered with the universe and left evidence that leads to a false conclusion, than nothing true can really be learned by studying the universe. If you can't find Truth that way, why even bother with science? Most scientists on some level or another are driven by the desire to know what happened and why and how the world works.

I am not saying intellectual inquiry should end. What I am saying is that science makes certain assumptions and if those assumptions are wrong for a given field, the science around those assumptions is probably wrong as well. As far as Truth goes, science really is not about "Truth" but an best understanding of a situation given the amount of information we have about that situation. When Einstein developed the theory of general relativity, that did not make Newton a liar, that changed our understanding of how gravity works. Any false conclusions we come to are based on our flaws and not any supernatural being that fooled us.

Many of the things we understand about evolution is because of other theories which also make assumptions. There are quite a few assumptions made in dating rocks because God did not drop us a rock and say: "this rock is 100 million years old and you can use it as a baseline for dating rocks." There is no know baseline for dating rocks and the theories and formulas were derived in nuclear reactors with highly unstable elements with nanosecond half-lives. Are the values evos come up with for ages valid? We hope so but we do not know for certain.

Bottom line is that science about things that are extremely old face challenges that directly testable sciences do not. Evolution claims the process that resulted in all the diversity of life are naturalistic and that no supernatural entity was involved once life started. It also says we all came from the same initial life form, a singularity. These are both assumptions which could be wrong.

Even if evolution was a guided process instead of an unguided one, science should be able to figure out how it works. But it will not even consider the former possibility, and that is a problem related to man, not science.

[js1138]

If some of your conservatives are like this, I don't want to know what your liberals are like!

Same tune, different words. Liberals, by and large, don't understand evolution or science either. They just misunderstand it in a different way.

[ml1954]

Touche

[LiteKeeper]

Pretend you are a creationist: what evidence (which you actually reject) would you present that evolutionists reject?

[Stultis]

So, we are nothing more than chemicals acting upon each other and for no higher reason than any other chemical reaction?

Who said that?

To be fair, Lucretius (99 B.C. to 55 B.C.) said something very much along that line. However no one since then that comes to mind. (Creationists are sooo first century B.C.)