Posted on 11/30/2006 7:44:59 AM PST by SirLinksalot
Let us test Darwin, teacher says
Science teaching materials deemed "not appropriate" by the government should be allowed in class, Education Secretary Alan Johnson has been urged.
Chemistry teacher at Liverpool's Blue Coat School, Nick Cowan, says the packs promoting intelligent design are useful in debating Darwinist evolution.
Education officials insist intelligent design is not recognised as science.
It argues that evolution cannot explain everything so the Universe must have had an intelligent creator.
The packs were sent out to 5,000 secondary schools by a group of academics and clerics known as Truth in Science.
The Department for Education and Skills said they were inappropriate and not supportive of the science curriculum.
Reacting to Mr Cowan's letter, a DfES spokesman said: "Neither creationism nor intelligent design are taught as a subject in schools, and are not specified in the science curriculum.
"The National Curriculum for science clearly sets down that pupils should be taught that the fossil record is evidence for evolution, and how variation and selection may lead to evolution or extinction."
The call from Mr Cowan - former head of the school's chemistry department - comes as the Guardian reported that the Truth in Science materials were being used in 59 schools.
'Sacred cow'
Mr Cowan says they are "very scholarly" and could be extremely useful in helping children understand the importance of scientific debate
He told the BBC: "Darwin has for many people become a sacred cow.
"There's a sense that if you criticise Darwin you must be some kind of religious nut case.
"We might as well have said Einstein shouldn't have said what he did because it criticised Newton."
He argues that science only moves forward by reviewing and reworking previous theories and that these materials foster an understanding of this.
'Controversy'
He also points out that the Truth in Science materials, which he describes as outstanding, do not mention creationism or even God.
He says the GCSE syllabus requires children to appreciate how science works and understand the nature of scientific controversy.
"The government wants children to be exposed to scientific debate at the age of 14 or 15.
"All the Truth in Science stuff does is put forward stuff that says here's a controversy.
"This is exactly the kind of thing that young people should be exposed to," Mr Cowan added.
'Poorly served'
The chairman of the parliamentary science and technology committee, Phil Willis, said using the packs in science classes "elevated creationism" to the same level of debate as Darwinism and that there was no justification for that.
He added: "There's little enough time with the school curriculum to deal with real science like climate change, energy and the weather.
"This is quite frankly a distraction that science teachers can well do without."
Dr Evan Harris, honorary associate of the National Secular Society and Liberal Democrat science spokesman, said it was worrying that some schools were giving "this nonsense" any credence.
Many leading scientists argue that ideas about intelligent design should not be allowed in school because they are simply not scientific.
Back in April, the Royal Society warned against allowing creationism in school saying that pupils must understand that science backs Darwin's theory of evolution.
The society's statement said: "Young people are poorly served by deliberate attempts to withhold, distort or misrepresent scientific knowledge and understanding in order to promote particular religious beliefs."
Recently, the British Humanist Association asked Mr Johnson for greater clarity on the teaching of creationism in schools.
"That individual kinds of fossils remain recognizably the same throughout the length of their occurrence in the fossil record had been known to paleontologists long before Darwin published his Origin. Darwin himself, troubled by the stubbornness of the fossil record in refusing to yield abundant examples of gradual change, devoted two chapters to the fossil record. To preserve his argument he was forced to assert that the fossil record was too incomplete, too full of gaps, to produce the expected patterns of change. He prophesied that future generations of paleontologists would fill in these gaps by diligent search and then his major thesis--that evolutionary change is gradual and progressive--would be vindicated. One hundred and twenty years of paleontological research later, it has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm this part of Darwin's predictions. Nor is the problem a miserably poor record. The fossil record simply shows that this prediction was wrong."
— Niles Eldredge and Ian Tattersall, The Myths of Human Evolution (Columbia University Press, 1982), pp. 47-48.
Cordially,
Don't kid yourself. The [naturalistic] scientist acts as much on faith as the [creationist] scientist. There is no such thing as a scientist who is totally objective and neutral. That is a myth of the highest order. It is virtually impossible to hold to such a position. Be honest with yourself. Many things are assumed true before the scientist steps foot into the lab, regardless of which flavor you are talking about.
Yes – Yes, Shuckmaster… Lock them up! All of them! Teachers, scientists, and even parents that question Darwin… charge them with child abuse or whatever and lock them up! We must do everything to stop the obvious theocracy that is almost here! Nobody should believe that life was designed. Everyone must believe that matter ‘alone’ and without intelligence made our very minds. Sieg Heil! ShuckMaster… Sieg Heil!
Darwin's theory that incremental changes brought about by natural selection alone could create new "species" (and let's not get into a semantic argument over the meaning of the word) has long been discredited.
Offshoots such as Haeckel's "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" have been discredited.
Directing your attention to the structure of the article.
Note the similarity of style to the WND article that you had commented on.
The UK's schools seem to be much like Hitler youth camps.
This is the most imaginative bit of op-fiction that I have read in a long time.
"She should be charged with child abuse and put in a slammer."
I bet that in your home country the polit bureau considered you a libertarian, huh?
What sense does it make to speak of moral wrongdoing or intellectual dysfunction in relation to a product of evolution? What are you comparing the universe to when you assume that there's something 'wrong' with what it has produced, which commands punishment? How can there be something 'wrong' with evolution?
Complaining about something that on one's own view was not designed for any purpose and which is nothing but the result of completely impersonal, random concatenations of atoms, themselves nothing but the result of a large series of highly improbable, impersonal accidents of physics no different that the physics that cause the subjective utterances produced by the chemicals of your brain, is absurd.
Cordially,
To a blind man, the anus of an elephant may resemble a jar of peanut butter.
Those 'preconceived' beliefs don't 'override' scientific method, they complement it, and in most cases enhance it. The Holy Spirit guides believers, and helps them not to overlook key facts that a spititually dead person such as yourself will often overlook out of stern bias. Removing such bias is one of the reasons that most of the great men in science have been believers.
Touche btt
Not often, because that would require reading comprehension and math skills that they (and their teachers) don't have.
Sad, but true. It's so much easier to serve up a bunch a pap about "the environment" and call it science.
Evolution has undergone a century and a half of critical analysis. If you really want to get into critical analysis, you need to be well versed in a myriad of biological sciences at a graduate or post-doctoral level. That's where the criticality is located and it is not against evolution, but hashing out details we still don't understand. That does not belong at a high school level.
And if you want to get critical, there has yet to be a shred of evidence in support of a viable alternative to evolution or a test that has invalidated evolution. Like other posters have said, this is nothing but an attempt to introduce religion, via pseudoscientific nonsense into the classroom. The fallacies introduced by anti-evolution types is more damaging to students educations than the creationist manifestation they worship.
False. Evolution has undergone a century and a half of faithful propagandistic propping and patching. It has been ardently protected from critical analysis.
"And if you want to get critical, there has yet to be a shred of evidence in support of a viable alternative to evolution or a test that has invalidated evolution."
And the flood/fossil record that covers the Earth accomplishes both nicely. It fits the word, and demolishes evolution by many methods, but the most obvious is the nonexistence of intermediate forms. There should be billions of intermediates, but instead we find heavily redundant examples of the same creatures in diverse places. Exactly what Special Creation predicts.
Much easier! The periodic table is just so dead-white-male, you know.
bump
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