Why Creationism Should be Taught in Science Class

originally posted by: borntowatch

originally posted by: Atsbhct
As a taxpayer, if my child went to the local public school school and was indoctrinated into any religion, I would be quite upset. Everyone has their own beliefs, and that's okay, but I'd rather no one taught them to my kids and presented them as theory or fact.

Strawman, thats a misrepresentation of what I wrote in the first post

I did not say indoctrinated, I said taught an opposing view, others beliefs, the good and bad.

I get the point you're making. I took a World Geography class in high school & our teacher would also talk about the most popular religions in each region as we studied it. I think that approach works well, especially for schools with no ethnic or religious diversity. Because it can show students that the world is very diverse & that their culture's way of doing things isn't the only way to do them.

However, many people are misinterpreting what you're saying. They seem to be thinking you mean it in zero sum terms. So "teaching Creationism" comes across as "only teaching Creationism as the truth of our origins". Also, it shouldn't be taught in science classes because it's not a science. We can't approach the universe as a creation of Shiva, God, or any other other creative deity without being able to prove they exist in the first place. Plus, every religion has different interpretations for the universe's creation, so which one should we teach? So maybe it should be in a separate class, but definitely not sciences.

Last, I also think you have to be realistic on something. How often does our country honestly teach both sides of a story? What American politician or news channel describes the Iranian points of view in regards to its rivalry with Israel? Or teaches the merits of communism? Or teaches the merits of having a royalty or dictator? Or teaches what Wahabism is & its pro's which get people to join them? We idolize what we consider "good" and demonize what we consider "bad". It's a stupid approach but most people are too concerned with their daily lives to care about the details.

Creationism should not be taught in any sort of science class, because there is nothing about it that's scientific. Period. It's a religious belief. If they want to teach it in religious studies, fine, but it has no place in a science classroom.

a reply to: Ghost147

Those fossils prove nothing. For all we know they are most likely fake. Science has a really bad habit when it comes to faking fossils to prove evolution. But I won't get into that right now, just saying.

originally posted by: RealTruthSeeker
a reply to: Ghost147

Those fossils prove nothing. For all we know they are most likely fake. Science has a really bad habit when it comes to faking fossils to prove evolution. But I won't get into that right now, just saying.

So you care to slander, but don't care to "get into it" and back up your slander?

Evolution is one of the most evidence-backed studies in all scientific fields. If you have evidence to support your claims, then do so.

Fossils aren't our only evidence. We have directly witnesses speciation, we see changes in allele frequencies through reproduction, we have Junk DNA and actual physical mutations that were once useful in ancestors and related species that are now no longer useful due to genetic drift.

If you think fossils are our only evidence, you're not ready for this conversation.

a reply to: RealTruthSeeker

Oh come on, stop spouting porkies.

I look at foraminifera almost daily.
You can trace their evolution quite easily.

This is just one example....

originally posted by: borntowatch

originally posted by: Metallicus
It should be taught in a theology class not a science class. I am pro-Christian and pro-God, but it has no place in a scientific forum in my opinion.

So in a science class anyone with an opposing view, an ID bent should just shut up and be served some one else's beliefs.

Science becomes the monster, unchallenged and unquestioned, thats not education and its not healthy.

Science is based on theory, experiment, results, proof, conclusions, publication, reproducibility and debate.

You have a theory, you create some experiments to prove your theory, analyze the results, provide some conclusions, and then publish. If you are lucky, others will take an interest, attempt to reproduce your experiments and have a debate. Otherwise, they will just ignore your paper. That's the way knowledge advances. If you think something is wrong, you think up an experiment, log the results and publish a paper. In high-school science lab, there are all sorts of experiment that can be performed to prove different laws of physics, chemistry and biology.

With creationism, there is a theory, but no experiment to reproduce, so there's nothing to analyze.

originally posted by: RealTruthSeeker
a reply to: Ghost147

Those fossils prove nothing. For all we know they are most likely fake. Science has a really bad habit when it comes to faking fossils to prove evolution. But I won't get into that right now, just saying.

but but, the whole peer-reviewed thing. That kinda means anyone can go test such things. Wouldn't there be ONE credible whistleblower by now if that were the case?

originally posted by: borntowatch

Teach both sides, the pros and cons and allow the individual to decide for themselves

Why not teach it as part of a religious class that addresses all religions and not just one aspect of a religion as a full course? Also, should not churches teach this if one is so incline to be a part of that religion and not so much as part of public education? I think I could think to a lot of other non-science beliefs that one could say should be in school too if this was a part of public education.

a reply to: Xtrozero

Will wahhabism be included in the course?

a reply to: borntowatch

Why not? Simply because its an alternate belief based on God

False... it's because there is not enough evidence to support that idea. Just because it's written in a book does not make it a valid theory. The theory of evolution has countless different forms of evidence, which when taken together produce a rather robust theory about the way life developed on Earth, and we can even simulate it with evolutionary algorithms. It's not simply an idea, it's a framework describing how complex systems can get better at what they do over time.

Some would say Psychology isnt a science so should it be pulled from every curriculum

Well I don't really think you can learn psychology until you get to university and choose to take a course on that subject. But at least there is some sort of evidence which backs up the ideas taught in psychology, there are experiments and other forms of evidence which indicate that the human brain works in a certain way. It's not simply guess work, but it's certainly one of the most unclear subjects in science.

originally posted by: Vector99
a reply to: Xtrozero

Will wahhabism be included in the course?

Sure and Church of BoB too...bottom line is I think that religion is not needed in public schools and be left to private schools and religious classes related to the church they would be associated with.

a reply to: Ghost147

It's not slander, it's fact. Don't get me wrong I believe things can evolve and learn to adapt to their environment if need be. But when it comes to creatures changing from say a pig to a bird, or ape to man over million of years then now your talking pure science fiction. Science can not, has not and never will prove where man came from, it's just not possible. The theories sound good, but that's all it is, a theory not a fact and therefore should not be taught in schools as proof of where man came from or how the universe got here for that matter.

Funny thing is when you really think about it, it's not just a theory, it's a belief. Until science can provide hard core solid evidence of such a theory, all they can do is believe that this is how things might have happened.

originally posted by: RealTruthSeeker
But when it comes to creatures changing from say a pig to a bird, or ape to man over million of years then now your talking pure science fiction. Science can not, has not and never will prove where man came from, it's just not possible. The theories sound good, but that's all it is, a theory not a fact and therefore should not be taught in schools as proof of where man came from or how the universe got here for that matter.

Could we be related to chimps?

How do you explain that every living thing on this planet shares like DNA, even grass has 40% of human DNA, chimps are like 97%. Plus it is not over millions of years it is over 10s or 100s of millions. Chimps are about 6 million from us, orangutans are about 12 million, grass is most likely billions.

It is not that a bird changes into a pig it is a species that gets separated and evolves in two different locations and over a long period of time they change slightly from each other to a point they can no longer breed. They continue to change and branch off into other species and after 100s of millions of years you may get pigs off one branch and a bird off another that has millions of splits from a common ancestor that looks like neither 100s of millions of years in the past.

Now I would agree that if we are talking 6000 or even 100,000 years we would need a God to do all that...

originally posted by: Xtrozero

originally posted by: RealTruthSeeker
But when it comes to creatures changing from say a pig to a bird, or ape to man over million of years then now your talking pure science fiction. Science can not, has not and never will prove where man came from, it's just not possible. The theories sound good, but that's all it is, a theory not a fact and therefore should not be taught in schools as proof of where man came from or how the universe got here for that matter.

Now I would agree that if we are talking 6000 or even 100,000 years we would need a God to do all that...

But what made god. Why can god be all powerful and infinite but the universe cannot?

a reply to: RealTruthSeeker

Funny thing is when you really think about it, it's not just a theory, it's a belief. Until science can provide hard core solid evidence of such a theory, all they can do is believe that this is how things might have happened.

Yes it's a belief, but it's a belief based on a lot of evidence. There isn't any other theory I know of which has more evidence supporting it than the theory of evolution, so it's not a simple belief, it's an educated belief. What you are demanding is the direct observation of a monkey turning into something entirely different, which will obviously require millions or billions of years to occur, so your demand is bogus and you know it. You need to understand how small changes over a large period of time can build into large changes. If I create a computer program and then change one line of code every day, after a few years the program will be entirely different from what it started as. I want evidence of creationism, I don't even need "hard core" evidence, just something that comes remotely close to the kind of evidence that evolution has. But you wont even be able to produce that because such evidence doesn't exist.

Both sides of whether Creationism should be taught in Science class can be discussed in this earlier thread:

www.abovetopsecret.com...



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