education secretary is 'crystal clear' that teaching creationism is , page 1

At Odds With Scientific Fact !!

Well with all the crap going on in the world and our new government hell bent on penalizing the poor and engaging in every US world policing adventure, this is one piece of good news.

The ongoing conspiracy to corrupt the young minds of our children by idiotic christian juju merchants dressing up as educators, has received one hell of a bitch slap .

The end of this superstitious buffoonery could well be nigh

Free schools will not teach creationism, says Department for Education

The Department for Education has said Michael Gove is "crystal clear that teaching creationism is at odds with scientific fact" after a warning that the government's new free schools could be exploited by fundamentalist churches looking to promote a literal interpretation of the Bible.

The BCSE, which describes itself as the leading anti-creationist organisation in Europe, wrote to Gove to express its "extreme concern" at applications from groups such as the Everyday Champions Church and the Christian Schools Trust to run free schools. The trust has already had one proposal accepted. A primary school in Hampstead "with a distinctive Christian ethos that permeates every aspect of school life" will open in September. The BCSE says the trust has four applications outstanding.

www.guardian.co.uk...[/url]

reply to post by The Djin

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Well, of course they won't teach creationism, it's illegal to do so...unless they're going to teach every single creationist account, and there are several versions within Christianity, let alone with the addition of each and every religion that wishes to have their ideas taught as well.

Granted, I think teaching creationism in schools would do one thing: show exactly how lacking creationism is when compared to real science.

Nice job, star and flag.

reply to post by madnessinmysoul

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Well, of course they won't teach creationism, it's illegal to do so

And here is a clown sneaking it in through the back door -

lqJ5KM9txkQ&feature

reply to post by ararisq

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No he shouldn't. Evolution is observable. Creationism is nothing but a myth passed down with absolutely no observable evidence to support it. Teach children how the world ACTUALLY works so they can live in it. Keep creationism in sunday school at church where it belongs. I don't want MY kid believing nonsense.

reply to post by ReluctantBlossom

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Just a calm question for the sake of argument - What evolutionary changes have you recently observed and documented?

reply to post by ReluctantBlossom

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There has never been an observable instance of species changing into another species. So no evolution is not observable.

Originally posted by Conclusion1
reply to post by ReluctantBlossom

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There has never been an observable instance of species changing into another species. So no evolution is not observable.

Speciation has also been observed in mammals. Six instances of speciation in house mice on Madeira within the past 500 years have been the consequence of only geographic isolation, genetic drift, and chromosomal fusions. A single chromosomal fusion is the sole major genomic difference between humans and chimps, and some of these Madeiran mice have survived nine fusions in the past 500 years (Britton-Davidian et al. 2000).

Source

Observed Speciation

Originally posted by mandella1099
reply to post by ReluctantBlossom

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Just a calm question for the sake of argument - What evolutionary changes have you recently observed and documented?

Modern Evolutionary Changes

Rapid Evolution

And personally, I've witnessed flu strains change quite a bit over my lifetime. Africanized-Honey Bees come to mind and how they've taken over and incorporated the native bee colonies along their way. We actually witness evolutionary changes everyday, we simply lack the perspective of time. Gradual change over time . . . not one day donkey, next day apoloosa punk donkey, next day zebra. Evolutionary Theory makes no claim that the latter is the way things work . . . the only people who make the claim we should see things of that nature are those with a religious agenda to discredit Evolutionary Theory (and any other scientific claims that go against said religion).

reply to post by solomons path

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Apart from the flu, the rest aren't evolution.

They are the results of breeding one type of animal or insect with another.

The flu strain really isn't evolving really, it changes a small part to become immune to the previous years vaccine. Kind of like when you first started drinking beer. The first time you had one it gave you a buzz and now after many times of drinking you can now drink a twelve pack and still walk.

You're not evolving, you just built a tolerance.

reply to post by ararisq

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Creationism isn't a theory, it's a story, based upon nothing but the fanciful imaginations of goat-herders who lived thousands of years ago.

Evolution, on the other hand, is a scientific Theory (Theory in this context means more than just an idea). it is observable, verifiable, provable. There is reams and reams of evidence to support the science, yet creationists will trot out tired old lines such as:

Originally posted by Conclusion1
There has never been an observable instance of species changing into another species. So no evolution is not observable.

The above quote gives the impression that the creationist would only believe evolution if they actually observed one species change into another, which betrays a TOTAL lack of understanding about evolution. It is a gradual change as a result of environmental pressures on populations. You will not see a bird lay an egg and the offspiring come out as a monkey, as that is not how it works.

I am glad the Education Secretary is quite clear about this. Creationism has it's place in Churches who choose to follow such nonsense, not in schools where the aim of the game is to educate Children and make them ready for the world. Filling their heads with biblical clap-trap does not have it's place within a school.

I actually took a stand with my daughter a couple of weeks ago. She is 7 and goes to a CoE school. They follow the curriculum, but they do go to Church once a week. Being an impressionable little girl, she bought the whole "God made the Earth in 6 days" bollocks, hook, line and sinker.

How did I overcome this? I took her to WH Smiths with a book token she got from school and we got her an enclopedia. All it took as her reading a few pages on evolution and the big bang and that was it, religious nonsense was washed away. If my 7 year old can understand it, it baffles me why grown adults can't wrap their heads round it.

It is an extraordinarily simple concept to understand and blows creationism out of the water.

Let me try to explain. In a desert, you have a cactus. Come spring, it gnerates it's seeds and in the process of doing so, a mutation is introduced into one of it's offspring that enables that offspirng to hold a little bit more water than it's parent.

Other than that, it's essentially the same cactus. Other offspring have mutations that make them hold less water than even their parents. Now, in the summer, it gets very dry and the offspring that can't hold any water die off first and don't reproduce at all as they don't live long enough, but the offspring that holds more water thrives.

Come the next year, it spreads it genes by procreating, so even more cactii exist that can hold more water. Yet again, it is dry that Summer and even the original cactus has trouble surviving, eventually dying off, leaving only the type of cactus that holds more water.

Now, this is a grossly, oversimplified way of describing it, but it shows that evolution is an accumulation of small genetic changes that grow over time. Eventually, the offspring of the original cactus might develop a mutation that enables longer spines. These come in handy when animals roam and the ones with shorter spines get eaten, therefore being unable to breed as much as the one with bigger spines. Given enough time and the offspring many generations later could be fundamentally different to the orignal cactus in our story.

Evolution.

reply to post by Becoming

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An example of being selective when trying to falsify evolution.

"That one doesn't count, nor that one...Ok, thats an example, but I am not going to acknowledge it, or that one...You still haven't provided proof...LALALALALALALALA, I'm not listening..."

reply to post by madnessinmysoul

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Well, of course they won't teach creationism, it's illegal to do so...unless they're going to teach every single creationist account, and there are several versions within Christianity, let alone with the addition of each and every religion that wishes to have their ideas taught as well

This is the point that seems to be ignored by those who lobby for creationism to be included in the school curriculum. Allowing the Christian version of creationism without giving equal time to all the alternate creation stories of extant religions would be grounds for religious discrimination, or so I would assume.

reply to post by ararisq

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I can't believe this sort of idiocy gets stars...

Originally posted by ararisq
It is a sad day for education when any theory is condemned and withheld from the public by a single individual.

Creationism is not a theory. Creationism is a religious belief. Furthermore, it's not a single individual condemning it, it's the entire scientific community. Just like we condemn geocentrism.

How often has science been curbed by people like this?

Never. These are people accepting science on scientific principles, not dogmatically preventing scientific inquiry.

If the Secretary for Education feels so strongly he should host a series of panels and debates with creationist scientists for the public to make up their own mind as to how much it is at odds with science.

I'm sorry, but science isn't a public forum. Science is a dictatorship of evidence. Most people, especially in the United States, are far from qualified. There is an appropriate means to get scientific ideas through to the world, creationism couldn't get through it. I'm talking about peer review.

reply to post by Conclusion1

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Why the hell do I keep having to post this link and this link? These are observed instances of speciation that I've linked. As in, us observing one species changing into another.

...granted, you probably don't even know what a 'species' is if you're making such an ignorant statement. Please, read a science book.

Originally posted by mandella1099
reply to post by ReluctantBlossom

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Just a calm question for the sake of argument - What evolutionary changes have you recently observed and documented?

Here's something quite simple for you to chew on -

According to the bible thumpers yahwhe/jesus created everything that is, was and will ever be.

According to evolutionists everything evolved and is evolving and perhaps one could say devolving.

According to the bible thumpers science book (the bibles) yahwhe/jesus created language

Since the bibles were written, science can prove how language has evolved leading to the obvious conclusion that a bible disproves itself.

Originally posted by Danbones
A fundie was telling me the creationalists won in court
so I looked it up
I found the case he was refering to,
and then found out the creationalists lost
and not only that they had tried to FALSIFY the evidence
and got caught


the government wont hesitate to use the religious right when ever possible,
and the religious right thinks they will get to run the world, so they go along
but of course when the luciferians aren't using them...
boot boot boot kick punch slam....

A bit of confusion as to substituting the falsifiability of a theory for the falsification of evidence in support of said theory. Interesting that the wiki entry on falsifiability currently uses a legal example involving creationism:

Use in courts of law

Falsifiability was one of the criteria used by Judge William Overton in the McLean v. Arkansas ruling to determine that 'creation science' was not scientific and should not be taught in Arkansas public schools as such (it can be taught as religion). In his conclusion related to this criterion he stated that "While anybody is free to approach a scientific inquiry in any fashion they choose, they cannot properly describe the methodology as scientific, if they start with the conclusion and refuse to change it regardless of the evidence developed during the course of the investigation."[2]

It was also enshrined in United States law as part of the Daubert Standard set by the Supreme Court for whether scientific evidence is admissible in a jury trial.

Falsifiability

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