No funding for schools that teach creationism as scientific fact - UK Pages PREV 1 2 3 4 NEXT | |
Schools teach FACTS. Religion is not testable and/or proveable scientific fact. | |
I was going to say "Now I know you're simply trolololol'ing" to this part:
But then I saw this:
You have just provided the evidence for why you can't study Biology without Evolution, because you've evidently attempted to do so and have failed utterly. First of all, all science is always incomplete, it is by nature a process of continually increasing understanding. Scientists do not propose a hypothesis, declare it a theory, and say "done". Second, you used the term "irreducible complexity", which is a nonsense concept dreampt up my creatards who have no understanding of biology or evolution. It has been disproven time after time after time, the rebuttals of it are easier to find than explanations of the concept itself. So, either you're a creationist who's idea of "education" involves animatronic dinosaurs giving Jesus a piggyback ride, or you're just trolling. And no, I'm not going to provide you with a link, because if you honestly have so little respect for rational inquiry that you can't type "irreducible complexity" into Wikipedia and read the comprehensive rebuttals therein, you're evidently not interested in what's true and no amount of links will change your addled mind. | |
You know, I've spent plenty of time reading wikipedia and never found a comprehensive rebuttal of the term, only specific exampls of possible pathways of specific organs and organelles. Your use of the word comprehensive is extremely careless. | |
So you don't see anything pointing out irreducible complexity is utterly rejected by the scientific community and is at best a god of the gaps argument? | |
Creationism has been proven beyond all reasonable doubt to be 100% false, a complete lie, a way of understanding the world invented by people who don't know any better. Evolution is as much a fact as the Earth revolving round the sun. Actually my definition of evolution is dead on, if a change doesn't help a species survive, the species dies out, unless of course a change is side effect of an even greater change that does help it survive. Homo Saipens are the huge exception to this rule, we have evolved beyond this rule as anyone can reproduce, it's no longer a case of only the best may reproduce for us. Yes I am upset about making up magic stories but not about ghosts, believing in ghosts is essentially harmless, it's an addtional aspect, something that's off to the side as it were, but our origins is fundamental to understanding the world around us. History has taught us that there will always be things we don't understand, but we are no smart enough that we don't need to make up stories about magically beings to fill in the gaps in our knowledge, we accept the gaps and work to fill them. It really doesn't matter to science if ghosts exist or not at this point, there are far more important questions to be answered. Yes there are many other valid sciences out there, we learn about most of them in school here, evolution is just kinda essential to understanding our existance so it's a priority. The UK school system is excellent for science, most students at GCSE level (last 2 years of High School) take 3 double length classes a week, or the top students take 6 double length classes a week and did each science seperately in great complexity, and evidently my science teachers did like my reports as I was selected to do this. And yes actually, EVERYTHING known in science has required some form of experimentation at some point, that's how it becomes a fact, it becomes experimented to the point where it's no longer reasonable to doubt it. Lets look at Hardon Collider again, they "experimented" with neutrinos and so far the results show that neutrinos may move faster than the speed of light, this is not yet a fact, only 2 experiments have been done, but lets say they do dozens, hundreds more that all show the same result, it is then a FACT that the speed of light isn't the fastest possible, it's a PROVEN FACT that neutrinos move faster than the speed of light. Thats why scientists do experiments, to PROVE things. Evolution through a combination of the fossil record, the wonderful examples of bio-diversity that appear in isolated pockets around the world (Australia is good exmaple) and genetics PROVE evolution to be fact. The scientific rule is that something with the most evidence is deemed to be true until proven otherwise, we don't need to be prove the evolution is fundamental to biology this is the established fact, you need to prove that it's not, if you have any evidence to countrary I will gladly entertain the idea. | |
Yeah, because irreducible complexity as an argument is based on organs and organelles supposedly not possibly coming about through evolution. Problem for ID is, though, that every example given has been disproven, be that bacterial flagellum, blood clotting, the eye or whatever else. I'm not aware of any new examples of supposedly irreducibly complex organs or organelles that haven't been disproven yet. The main problem with ID, which should become apparent from this issue, is that it is based on a fallacy, the argument from ignorance. It is based on the idea that we do not know and do not understand how something came about, therefore a designer made it. The moment we find the natural evolutionary explanation, the whole thing crashes in on itself. ID is a complete failure, both in practice and in theory because the approach itself is fallacious. | |
That's because wikipedia isn't the source of all knowledge. You find such detailed studies in various books and papers written on the subject. Books and papers that no creationist ever bothers to read. | |
To whom it may concern, I am ignoring the specific of the responses above and restating my point because we keep getting dragged around the periphery of the discussion. It's one of those things where I made a statement, someone repondeded in a specific way, I responded to that specific thing, and then got a response from a totally different person about how my arguement doesn't justify intelligent design or make evolution less correct. For example, one person told me I was too lazy to read up on wikipedia, so I addressed that claim and was promptly told that wikipedia is worthless by somebody else. All of this is distraction. I would not and have not said evolution is fake. I would not and have not said that intelligent design is true. I would not say that evolution is not a fundamental aspect of nature. But I would say that evolution is not required to understand science or general biology, but rather the inverse is true. Evolution is not a primary concept, but rather a conclusion reached through understanding of many other primary concepts. Even if those concepts are causally dependant on evolution in nature, the conclusion of evolution may need those concepts to understand, the same way 4 may depend on 2+2, but you cannot teach 2+2 without first teaching what a 4 is. The crusade to try and teach evolution as a counter to creationism is not for the best of the students but rather just a movement of by people who consider evolution their pet project. They are more interested in spreading the topics they like than spreading the fundamentals, and as such have pushed a concept that is essentially a tertiary conclusion. Evolution is a conclusion drawn off of a combination of many observations. Why make students memorize the specific topic when they can be given the practice at making the observations themselves. And the people trying to tell me that students are getting that in their education are telling me about how science has proven facts about things and evolution is change for the benefit of the species (rather than vice versa; saying something changed for a reason is total misinterpretation of the concept.) Or lecturing about how belief in ghosts is harmless but belief in intelligent design is incredibly dangerous. | |
The thing is, your portrayal of this issue as a "crusade to try and teach evolution as a counter to creationism" is a misrepresentation of what's actually taking place, which is the opposite. Evolution has been taught in schools for a very long time - the primary reason for this being that it is a ubiquitous and important aspect of biological science. A fairly well-known phrase amongst biological scientists (it came up in either the first or second lecture in my Biology degree course, if I recall correctly) is "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution", a reference to this essay by Theodosius Dobzhansky. I highly recommend giving it a read, if you've not come across it already. Evolution is essential to understanding why life is so incredibly uniform in some respects (the universality of DNA/RNA, the reason why cytochrome c seems to pop up in various places) and so varied in others (biodiversity). One won't get very far trying to understand taxonomy if one doesn't understand cladistics and phylogenetics; one won't get very far trying to understand genetics if one doesn't understand heredity; one won't get very far trying to understand anatomy if one doesn't understand why certain bits go in certain places and why particular things function in particular ways. Imagine you're trying to build a house with some bricks. The bricks represent various aspects of biology - botany, genetics, biodiversity, taxonomy, biochemistry, cell biology, anatomy, physiology, ecology etc. Evolution acts as the cement which holds all of these bricks together. Something like anatomy is the "what" - evolution is the "how" and "why", it's the explanation. Putting evolution to the sidelines when learning biology would be like putting history to the sidelines when learning about current affairs. It'll work for a while, but it turns out to be absolutely vital if you're looking for anything more than a basic understanding. In any case, teaching evolution is far from a "pet project" or a "movement", it's an essential part of biological science, and it's been taught that way for decades from the high school level up along with much of the rest of the biological field. If there's anything I think there needs to be a little more of, it's the teaching of how the scientific method works. Hmm. I fear I might have strayed a tad off-topic with the above, so in getting back with the evolution vs. creationism debate, suffice it to say that the reason that evolution needs to be taught is that it is very important science, whereas creationism is not remotely important nor is it scientific. Attempting to teach easily refutable bunk in a science class is simply not on. | |
I do like that piece. Thank you.
You could claim one doesn't actually understand genetics without understanding of biochemistry, which requires physical chemistry, which requires calculus... To really understand a subject all building blocks must be in place. An understanding of evolution comes off of many concepts which first or second year high school students don't have yet. And in the meantime, while students are just memorizing information they lack the bachgound to comprehend, they are not learning how to experiment, reason, or articulate their findings. In high school biology, I'm pretty sure we had 2 tests about genetics, heredity, and evolution, but only designed 2 experiments for ourselves the entire year, and I find that deplorable. And to use the essay you linked to as an example, it's a not the most specific piece; it is written for outsiders to understand rather than for people writing their thesis in biology, and I'd still speculate that half of it would seem like worthless ramblings to a high school underclassman because they just don't have the education yet.
And calculus was needed to derive large amounts of the mathematical formula's taught before calculus, especially with geometry, but many high school students are taught volumes of geometry and minimal calculus; they learn the concept without knowing why it works. I would agree that is a sort of stupid way to go about things, but it is not as though we can push derivatives and integrals down 5 years so that all of high school makes sense. If I were making a school curriculum, I'd probably have nothing but math and grammar until the 5th grade atleast since primary school science is practically arts and crafts without the math and history gets so fluffed up it's not even the truth anymore.
Definitely need more education on the scientific method, experimental design, and logic in general. Seriously though, biology people are scarily obsessed with evolution while those of us in other sciences don't really care at all. Next time evolution makes fluids move differently I'll come back here and apologize for saying that.
This is actually the debate I tried to prompt when I started commenting in here, so it might be off the topic of evolution vs creationism, but thank you for indulging me. | |
Has it occurred to you that the reason nobody has previously been up for indulging your incoherent sideswipes at evolution is because your "arguments" are the same tired, reheated crap that comes up in every debate about evolution, and has been comprehensively debunked already? Seriously I'm half expecting you to bust out the Crocoduck, or the Banana - God's Ringpull Fruit. And yes, I am quite comfortable using that word, comprehensively, in every context as regards creationism. The reason I used it before is because I was correct to; creatards claimed biological systems were irreducibly complex, they were challenged to provide even a single example, and they picked the bacterial flagellum - their claims were debunked. Then they claimed the eye - their claims were debunked. Then they tried coagulation - their claims were debunked. At that point, they stopped trying to make a serious argument, and just began repeating those same few debunked examples while shoving their fingers in their ears and yelling "LALALALALALALA CAN'T HEAR YOU" whenever anyone pointed out that they're morons. Look, I'll make it even easier, here's one of the images from that wikipedia page you apparently still haven't read;
Your arguments were trashed by scientists in the seventies, is it any wonder we're sick of hearing them? | |
Stop trying to have a different debate with me than what I'm argueing. I believe entirely in evolution. I know that irreducible complexity is a wrong arguement (though I would argue it just externalizes the problem; a complex organ could be naturally selected for only under the circumstances where each individual step is beneficial in its environment, making a very specific set of events necessary or a much longer time period of evolution than is usually claimed as how long life has existed on this planet.) At any rate, I just got pegged by people as the anti-evolution debater, and to play devil's advocate (like I'm having trouble not doing now), I approached evolution with an amount of skepticism one would expect to find in these forums. The truth is, I commented in here with another debate in mind entirely, and if you would like to respond to that, it is waiting for you in my original post and 5 posts up from here. I'm not argueing that evolution is incorrect, only that the controversy about teaching it in schools is totally undeserved because trying to teach it to high school underclassman a) does not give them an understanding of it since there are other topics they need to study first to comprehend the process, and b) could be considered a waste of time when they could be learning how to actually practice science instead of memorize what other people have found. | |
Like what?
What do you mean by "practice science"? | |
Like heredity, ecology...
Observe, hypothesize, test, reason, present... | |
They do learn that.
It's impossible to observe every single phenomenon that occurs in nature in a classroom. That's why textbooks are used to supplement the material. | |
I can't account for your school experience, but judging from what I've seen, science classes in high school tend to by 95% textbook and 5% personal observation. That is not teaching science. I don't expect kids to observe all phenomena, but I expect them to learn how... | |
What do you mean by "practice science"?[/quote] Observe, hypothesize, test, reason, present...[/quote] That's the process i've been arguing to you that proves evolution as fact 'observation, experimentation, verification' and you were saying "Something can only be proven if it is logically determined from laws without uncertainty. Anything that requires experimentation is supported, not proven." This is not the case, this process has been applied to Evolution to the point where no serious scientist does anymore because it has been proven beyond all reasonable doubt. Nothing can be proven without experimentation, "logically determined from laws" produces only theory, never facts, you've got it the wrong way round. This is the case for evolution, it's been tested so much it's unproductive to continue to test it, we know for a fact evolution occurs and is responsible for the bio-diversity on earth. What is tested in evolution is how and where from certain features and species evolved. You are right about schools needing to teach more practical science, how to test things that is far more useful and productive, it's just evolution is a fact, testing it is like testing if gravity is real, pointless. | |
Thank god for that! (No pun intended, but noticed after!) I was never taught 'creationalism' at school, only Evolution, and the big bang, so I am glad that reason is being kept in the UK schooling sector! Now to get rid of those redicuolous Saudi curriculums that keep creeping back into the UK... The ones that teach that 'Jews look like monkeys and pigs' to kids as young as 6! Its banned from the UK, but as these schools are attached to mosques they are pretty much untouchable! | |
Ah, the conceit of a member of a 200k year old (at most) species, that it has managed to bypass a major biological driving force in the last, what, 200 years, which is totally insignificant on the evolutional clock? Let's wait another 10 or 20k years, then we'll see ;) ~Sylv | |
Er...lots of people don't reproduce, and thus are selected against. Selection pressures (especially in the West) might not be as large as they used to be, but that is not the same as saying they don't exist. | |
What can be observed is observed. The rest is in the textbooks. | |
Oh agreed, our species could very still "evolve" but not in the conventional sense and under the usual rules, any further evolution is far less likely to make us better adapted to survive, we'll be victims of our own success. And this scene was my first thought to your second comment ;) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKt9OIED57E
You know that's not what I mean't, many genetically passed on condition that would have not been survivable and therefore not passed on too frequently in the past are now liveable, the weak, the small, the sickly are now all able to reproduce. You are somewhat right, but the selection pressure aren't as large, they are different, our future evolution if it does occur will be very interesting, as it doesn't need to produce species better suited to survive, it will be more random than anything that has evolved in the past. | |
While it's certainly possible there's not near enough experimentation done in science classrooms (and, actually come to think of it, I don't remember much experimentation in my high school biology--but that was a long time ago, perhaps I've just forgotten) I'd also say that teaching biology without evolution would be like teaching programming without decision statements. | |
As a Californian who moved to Kentucky, I found stories of teachers gluing entire chapters of science textbooks that describe evolution and the big bang. I pretty much facepalmed EDIT | |
Do you mean to say you'd be fine with it if creationism were given equal weight? You didn't really mean that, did you? | |
Probably not, but that's how it ended up coming out I'll get rid of that before I unintentionally start a flame war | |
I strongly disagree with this. Evolution always is at play. Humans are evolving, just as we always have. Evolution is not concerned with values like "best". Evolution is an unthinking force of nature. It does not make judgements. The lowly bacterium survived, the mighty megatherium is gone. This doesn't mean that bacteria are "better" than the megatherium. It means one of these creatures was able to adapt and survive, and the other wasn't. If humans aren't dying of infections of the gums at 30 like we used to in the stone ages, that doesn't mean "our best" aren't the only ones reproducing or that we aren't experiencing evolution. It means in our present niche, infections of the gums no longer select for survival. Perhaps in our niche, very few diseases select for genetic survival any more. And we might make our own value judgments on if this is a good thing or not. But as far as evolution is concerned, we don't get As, Bs, Cs, Ds, or Fs, depending on how physically robust we are. Evolution is a pass-fail course that we always have to retake, and there is only one grading criteria: did our species pass on its DNA to offspring that will survive to pass on their DNA? If they did, we pass for another round. If they don't, we're extinct and fail. Nothing qualitative enters into the judgement. We don't get bonus points for our species impressing other humans. | |
The problem is that Lamarck and co. have been refuted. They're no longer interesting for the scientific community because their ideas and hypotheses have been proven wrong. Intelligent design is a whole other kettle of fish - it was never proven right or wrong, or even considered remotely scientific to begin with. Shortly after the concept first appeared, after intense investigation, it was declared "not science" and "just a rebranding of creationism" (fully accurately, I might add - go check out the BBC's documentary on the issue) by the courts. As in, not a jury, but a conservative christian judge who was friends with Bush. And there's reason for this: essentially every version of intelligent design posits either something unprovable, something with no evidence, or something that runs against the evidence. Michael Behe was actually forced to admit, under oath, that he was aware that by the definition he used to call ID a "scientific theory", he'd be forced to accept astrology, homeopathy, and other pseudosciences, and that there was no way to falsify ID, even in theory. | |
No, making species better adapted to survive in their environment is what evolution does. The environment might be increasingly artificial, true, but that's not terribly relevant...a species existing in lightless caves will lose its eyes, which under most circumstances are viewed as good things, but are still disadvantages there. People might keep changing the environment faster than it changes them, however.
Yes, many conditions are now survivable, in that they aren't guaranteed to stop you breeding, but they are still disadvantages and make individuals less likely (if only slightly) to reproduce before they die. Over long periods of time, the selection pressures are likely to remove such things from the gene-pool. It might take much longer than it would have without medical advances, but as long as people with them are statistically less likely to breed (or breed less) than those without, the pressure exists. Evolution will produce species better suited to survive, or, in the absence of selection pressures, not tend to change the creature at all. There are many creatures that are well adapted to their environments, that haven't changed much in many millions of years. | |
First off, I gave those two examples(more importantly the first one) because, I was trying to show that besides Creationism, there are different ideas on evolution. Most importantly, even amongst the scientific community, not everybody has always agreed with Darwin's idea of evolution. Second, people should not just accept something because their told it is correct, they should think it through first. Case in point, before you totally disregard the ideas of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, I think you should look at this, this, and this. | |
Today, there is an overwhelming consensus that Darwin's theory of evolution (combined with genetic drift, and Mendelian genetics) is right. While Lamarack might have been relatively right, evolution through genetic mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift are the supreme mechanisms, beyond reasonable doubt. | |
I'm not Darwin's theory is wrong, just that it might to be the whole picture and that people shouldn't just accept it as fact, and instead should think about it first. | |
Well excuse me, somewhere along the way I thought we were at odds on some point. | |
There are different ideas on the structure and form of the cosmos as well - people who believe the earth is hollow or flat, those who believe that the earth is the center of the universe...
Not everyone agrees with heliocentrism, or that HIV causes AIDS, or that germs cause illnesses. The few among the "scientific community" who disagree with that are basically laughingstocks, holding up their credentials as a weak shield against the utter inanity of what they propose. It's no different with evolution's key principles: you can essentially compare Behe to Peter Duesberg[1].
Indeed! I agree! Let's apply that same principle to other basic and vital scientific theories, like Gravity! [1] Well, this isn't entirely true - Behe isn't partially responsible for the death of millions through his flawed research. | |
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I wanted to respond to the first half of this sentance because there is an intresting point to be made. However the second half is just so, wrong (not to imply the first half was correct in the point you were making), that I don't know if it's worth the effort.