Re: The United Kingdom has banned the teaching of creationis
Posted: Thu Jun 19, 2014 10:47 pm
Look, I'm going to try not to get into another Creationism vs. Evolution debacle, but I feel like I should atleast stress what Evolution is and is not.
Evolutionism is not a thing. It's a dishonest, semantic attempt to miscategorize a scientific theory and field of study as a belief system. No matter how often or loudly you insist upon it, you will always miss the point if you keep pulling this line.
Evolution is a scientific theory. At it's core, it's about incremental changes in population propagated though genetic inheritance over competition for limited resources. It started as a hypothesis, withstood over a century of research and is a firm theory in the explanation of biodiversity and goodness of fit. If you step outside the Creation vs. Evolution arena for a bit and see what "evolutionists" actually do, it's research. That's what the scientists really care about. If you can't spend the time to understand what Evolution is, why should anybody listen to what you have to say about it?
Yes, it is a theory. Unfortunately, not only is your conception of what Evolution is incredibly fallacious, so is your idea on what a scientific theory is. A theory is not an "unproven" fact or law. A theory is a good as a scientific idea gets. It's a well-defined explanation of natural phenomena. It has passed peer review and experimentation. It does not graduate into anything else.
This is different than a scientific law, which is a prediction. They are often represented in formulas. The Law of Gravity describes how objects would attract each other. The Theory of Gravity would be an explanation on how gravity works. The Germ Theory explains that sickness is caused by microbial life. The Plate Tectonics theory explains how continental plates float on a molten magma and their collisions causes earthquakes. The theory of Evolution explains how life evolve to adapt to their environment.
So tell me, what does your study tell you not only how Evolution is so wrong, but also what it even is?
I guess this is the kicker for me. I get you don't buy into the theory of Evolution. It's just be a whole lot more palatable if you were a little more humble, considering the lack of knowledge of Evolution itself.
My problem with the quoted rhetoric is not in how you are using it, but that it's often used by others in a very misleading way. People frequently use this argument to have Creation or ID taught in schools as a science, when it has clearly not passed the qualifications for it.
Everybody is free to believe whatever they want to, but it's dishonest to present to children an idea as science when it clearly is not. We do not teach that babies come from storks in bio class, or that the earth is flat in geography, or the Holocaust never happened in history, or that the world is formed from the body of the Giant Ymir according to Norse myth in science. None of these have passed qualifications of their respective fields. It's not about silencing differing ideas, it's about providing the best results from the respective fields of study.
Evolutionism is not a thing. It's a dishonest, semantic attempt to miscategorize a scientific theory and field of study as a belief system. No matter how often or loudly you insist upon it, you will always miss the point if you keep pulling this line.
Evolution is a scientific theory. At it's core, it's about incremental changes in population propagated though genetic inheritance over competition for limited resources. It started as a hypothesis, withstood over a century of research and is a firm theory in the explanation of biodiversity and goodness of fit. If you step outside the Creation vs. Evolution arena for a bit and see what "evolutionists" actually do, it's research. That's what the scientists really care about. If you can't spend the time to understand what Evolution is, why should anybody listen to what you have to say about it?
Yes, it is a theory. Unfortunately, not only is your conception of what Evolution is incredibly fallacious, so is your idea on what a scientific theory is. A theory is not an "unproven" fact or law. A theory is a good as a scientific idea gets. It's a well-defined explanation of natural phenomena. It has passed peer review and experimentation. It does not graduate into anything else.
This is different than a scientific law, which is a prediction. They are often represented in formulas. The Law of Gravity describes how objects would attract each other. The Theory of Gravity would be an explanation on how gravity works. The Germ Theory explains that sickness is caused by microbial life. The Plate Tectonics theory explains how continental plates float on a molten magma and their collisions causes earthquakes. The theory of Evolution explains how life evolve to adapt to their environment.
So tell me, what does your study tell you not only how Evolution is so wrong, but also what it even is?
I guess this is the kicker for me. I get you don't buy into the theory of Evolution. It's just be a whole lot more palatable if you were a little more humble, considering the lack of knowledge of Evolution itself.
This works from education in your own home as you have the right to teach your children religion and science and I know you believe in Creation, I applaud you for giving both he religious explanation and the scientific explanation to your children.ccgr wrote:For now I'm okay with public education, but if I were home schooling I would teach both view points and let the kids decide which side of the fence they're on.
My problem with the quoted rhetoric is not in how you are using it, but that it's often used by others in a very misleading way. People frequently use this argument to have Creation or ID taught in schools as a science, when it has clearly not passed the qualifications for it.
Everybody is free to believe whatever they want to, but it's dishonest to present to children an idea as science when it clearly is not. We do not teach that babies come from storks in bio class, or that the earth is flat in geography, or the Holocaust never happened in history, or that the world is formed from the body of the Giant Ymir according to Norse myth in science. None of these have passed qualifications of their respective fields. It's not about silencing differing ideas, it's about providing the best results from the respective fields of study.