Thursday, October 11, 2007

Don't Teach Creationism in Science Class

Some of my readers may have a knee-jerk reaction to the title of this post (either pro or con). Both are probably wrong: Creationism should not be taught in science in class, it should be taught in history class. The creation of the world and man should be the first two chapters of any school's history curriculum.

Now, it should be fine to mention the historical fact of Creation in science class, but Science class is not the place for teaching Creationism, or the Fall of Rome, or the colonization of the Americas.

On the other hand, evolutionism should not be taught anywhere: it is a lie. All living things are not the result of common biological descent: much of the variety we see is the result of special creation.

There certainly should be some mention of evolutionism in both science and history class, but that mention should be sharply critical.

Will these proposals be widely adopted? Not in countries where "pluralism" and liberalism have already gained dominance. They can and should, however, be adopted in private and especially home education.

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God!

Praise be to the Word by whom ALL things were made,

-Turretinfan

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Amen. Evolution is speculative philosophy, not science. And creation is history, not science. I would add that a country supposedly founded on "We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights" ought to outlaw the teaching of evolution as treason.

Turretinfan said...

Thanks for your support!

TheoJunkie said...

Interesting.. hadn't thought of that. I had only gotten so far as "Creation isn't science, and you should only teach facts (not theories as fact) in the science class."

As far as evolution not being taught anywhere... well, it shouldn't be taught as fact, and it shouldn't be taught as the only car on the market.

Example: Hinduism is a lie, but I wouldn't have a problem with a comparative religion class that gave "just the facts Ma'am" about all the world religions. Whether that is possible without bias, no comment. But I don't have a problem with teaching "the facts about a lie" as long as you don't teach it exclusively or as The truth.

If all the information about a lie is presented objectively (which may include teaching the truth as comparison), then it will be exposed for what it is... no?

Turretinfan said...

Children should be prepared, whether in religion, history, or science class to deal with the theory of evolution, because it is out there - it has many adherents.

What I meant is that evolution should not be presented as though it were legitimate, because children need guidance and instruction.

Pitfalls should be identified, and this topic is no exception.

-Turretinfan

Anonymous said...

The only reason anyone believes evolution is intellectual idolatry, setting some professor or teacher up in their minds as omniscient. So, the best preparation against evolution that you can give a child is not specific arguments against evolution (which will probably backfire on you) but to instill in the them the obvious fact that the teachers at school must always be questioned, that no man is omniscient, and all men are wrong on some things. (That's the same basis on which I checked the hex values on that checkerboard illusion and found they weren't the same color, although everyone swore on their mommas grave that they were.)

Turretinfan said...

EM,

Thanks for your comments.

Interestingly, I noticed in some reviews of that experiment that there is an "edge" problem in the file under review, caused by someone along the way saving in jpeg format (which is a "lossy" compressed format).

If you go in and edit the pixels so that all the relevant pixels are the same color, you'll find that the illusion still works. The squares still look like they are different colors.

Not that it matters.

I disagree, though, with your explanation as to why people believe evolutionism: some people believe it simply because they do not want to accept that God is their creator.

-Turretinfan

Peter Pike said...

I do think you need to be careful at distinguishing terms here.

Evolution does occur, but it is trivial evolution (e.g., Americans are larger now than in past years--caused by McDonalds, not Darwin, though).

Darwinism is what does NOT occur.

Also, I would argue that the reason Darwinism is not science is because science, even according to naturalists, must be able to predict and/or explain natural phenomenon. Darwinism can neither predict nor explain anything. This is why evolutionists such as Gould were honest enough to admit that if we went back in time and had to guess which species would survive and which would go extinct, it would be impossible to tell. Darwinism itself has no mechanism to account for why mammals survived but dinosaurs didn't, for example. And because it cannot explain past events, it cannot predict future events either.

As a result, it isn't science.

Further, while Darwinists often appeal to other scientific theories, it's a one-way street. Example: Darwinists claim Darwinism is just as established as Einstein's Special Relativity. But you never hear a physist say, "Einstein's Special Relativity is just as firmly established as Darwinism is." If Darwinism were really as strongly scientific as is claimed, physists shouldn't feel uncomfortable linking their theories to Darwinism just as Darwinists link Darwinian theories to thiers.

Turretinfan said...

Dear Peter,

Good points!

I was trying to capture those ideas when I wrote: "All living things are not the result of common biological descent: much of the variety we see is the result of special creation," (emphasis added) but perhaps I should have been a bit more explicit.

One of the mechanisms that is built into living being is a degree of genomic flexibility. Some kinds of animals/plants have greater genomic flexibility than others.

-Turretinfan