Texas Public Schools Are Teaching Creationism

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/01/creationism_in_texas_public_schools_undermining_the_charter_movement.html

by Frostine • 13 years ago

56 180 13 years ago

slate.com

dclowd9901• 13 years ago

I've come to the realization not too long ago that some things -- even things that appear to be very influenceable -- you cannot change.

A school, especially a charter school, teaching an agenda that parents don't oppose is one of those things. Just like wages, unemployment or gas prices, there are larger, more primordial forces directing these things.

So what's the point of this article? A naive answer would be "pure exposition." But surely there's an agenda to focus on these institutions, and all it will do is further divide a country where each half thinks the other is evil.

leephillips• 13 years ago

But just these kinds of things have been changed, thanks to organizations such as the ACLU bringing lawsuits, and many Supreme Court and other federal judges not all being insane.

Frostine• 13 years ago

The article specifically mentions legal action. I think they are hoping enough "exposition" might encourage parents or other charter schools to sue considering teaching both creationism and intelligent design in public schools has been ruled unconstitutional.

FrankenPC5• 13 years ago

I thought the article mentions that this charter school is taking public money. Therein lies the problem.

grifpete3• 13 years ago

One point is to evidence the fact that public money is being spent illegally.

Furthermore, to the extent that we tolerate this nonsense we will continue to miseducate a whole generation who will have no tools with which to escape from their family of community's broken belief systems. And this means we will continue to be divided.

Incidentally, my observation is that it is inaccurate to characterize the country as one 'where each half things the other is evil.' More accurate, I believe, is 'where one half thinks the other is evil, and the other half thinks the other is lamentably poorly educated with a medieval world view.'

kordless2• 13 years ago

Christianity brings a methodology to this part of our society. At a glance it encourages equal treatment of others, guides for parenting, finding happiness and even tips on raising children. I think the primary problem with it is that it fails to expose the underlying rationalizations and rule set for why these are good things to teach to people. At times that can cause issues, especially where intent or fears are misaligned with the goal of understanding.

Understanding we don't understand how the universe works takes a lot of brain power, so someone somewhere just has to have faith why that statement is true. Unfortunately this also opens up the possibility of someone who, for whatever reason, wants others to have faith that a supreme being created us 6,000 years ago out of thin air. By that same logic, one other individual could state we need to have faith a supreme being created all of this just this morning at 6:34AM EST, just like you see it here and stuck us all in it with our existing memories.

I was raised in a fairly religious household, but thankfully I also had time to think outside the box. If I had to label myself as practicing anything nowadays, it'd be Buddhism. It's much more applicable for me because it maps well into what I believe about the nature of the universe. That's not to say it's a completely accurate representation, but it serves me well enough.

cobrausn8• 13 years ago

So, as someone who went to a private (Catholic, even) high school in Texas that taught evolution, I'm often pretty frustrated by this. Aside from just waiting for those who set these kinds of policies in place to fade away, is there any specific voting pattern that would stop this? I don't live in areas that vote in people who set these policies, so I'm not sure I can actually even affect this.

herge• 13 years ago

Why would a Catholic high school teach anything else other than evolution?

tomswartz07• 13 years ago

I went to a private school in PA, and we were taught evolution. The teacher made a passing remark that creationism is a 'competing hypothesis' and left it at that.

vezzy-fnord10• 13 years ago

Catholics are in general more accepting of scientific evidence than Protestants, the latter being far more concerned with dogma and traditionalism. Evolution is officially supported by the Catholic Church.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_evolution

mnw21cam• 13 years ago

Catholics are in general more accepting of scientific evidence than Protestants

In my experience, the opposite is true (in the UK, at least).

Consider the condom issue.

jonesetc2• 13 years ago

I think the only way to do it is to move out of Austin and start converting.

cobrausn8• 13 years ago

Don't live in Austin. Austinites are pretty good at marketing themselves as progressives surrounded by the 'rest of Texas', but the reality is, as always, a bit more complicated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston

stonemetal• 13 years ago

If you are still in Texas you have some control. The state board of education determine Curriculum and instructional materials. Board members are elected so your vote and campaign contributions would have an effect.

singlow• 13 years ago

I don't think that board's decisions are directly affecting this charter school though. The decisions they make effect the curriculum used by public schools.

While this school receives public funding, it operates largely as a private school, with curriculum chosen by its own board. There are certain mandates that they must fulfill, and a general plan which must be approved by the state education board in their initial charter. In order to rescind their charter, the board would need to determine that their curriculum does not meet the plan outlined in their charter or that the students are not be prepared adequately for college. It appears from the information in the article that the science of evolution is taught and the students would, presumably, be able to answer test questions regarding it. They just aren't asked to believe it is fact.

fnordfnordfnord12• 13 years ago

But the idiots are so many. At least we finally got rid of that idiot Don McLeroy.

kordless2• 13 years ago

Hacking biases to establish pools of control. Humans are exceedingly good at this.

vezzy-fnord10• 13 years ago

Although this is a heinous butchery of education, it's been practiced for a long time and I do believe that all private schools (including charters, who have higher control of their curriculum despite receiving public funding) have the right to teach whatever inanity they decide.

It's depressing that such a primal culture of anti-intellectualism and deceit like this is thriving in the Deep South, but given the deeply ingrained religious paleoconservative culture, it's unavoidable and only likely.

It does however teach one that formal schooling cannot be trusted and should not be used as an accurate descriptor of intelligence and knowledge. The parents who support this have ideological agendas. If these institutions didn't exist, they would stick to homeschooling, as many of them already do.

It's a shame, too. Homeschooling is a viable alternative to the mess of public schooling, but too many people pursue it for wrong reasons.

poorelise2• 13 years ago

"I do believe that all private schools (...) have the right to teach whatever inanity they decide"

In a way I agree, because it's kind of like free speech.

On the other hand, shouldn't a society be responsible for protecting children? Schools teach children, after all. It's different from somebody voluntarily picking a topic to learn about.

Seems to me children being taught Creationism might be seriously disadvantaged.

Then again, by what standard? For example, what if being immersed in some cult brings total happiness, even if it looks insane from the outside? Should it be disallowed to raise kids as devote cult members?

gress5• 13 years ago

I went to one of the top 5 private high schools in the country. Evolution was split out into a separate class, and alongside it, there was a creationism class. Parents could choose one or both classes.

I can guarantee you the kids who did the creationism only track were not 'disadvantaged' compared to 99% of kids in public school who were taught evolution.

MartinCron3• 13 years ago

I see where you're coming from, but I can't get behind the financing of it. Private schools can get as crazy as they want, but a school receiving public funding that has a fundamentally religious curriculum is a straightforward violation of the establishment clause of the first amendment.

izzydata• 13 years ago

And Texas continues to be the most backwards state and least progressive. Not really news though.

angersock4• 13 years ago

Tell that to my openly lesbian mayor. Or go look at the AP computer science results from 2013--most diverse.

Way to just parrot nonsense though!

jswinghammer7• 13 years ago

Given that public schools can barely teach reading, writing, or math I don't really worry too much about what they are teaching children about much else. It also does not matter what schools anywhere teach if your children do not attend that school.

uptown2• 13 years ago

"It also does not matter what schools anywhere teach if your children do not attend that school."

How do you figure? These people eventually enter the workforce. Maybe they become politicians, and base their political direction on misinformation. Even if they remain in the private sector, someone that is the product of a misguided education will lack the tools necessary to impact society in an informed way, and will have an artificial ceiling on their potential due to lack of knowledge. Education has a massive impact on the world around those who are educated. Considering knowledge to be an isolated, personal thing isn't remotely accurate.

jswinghammer7• 13 years ago

I know a lot of successful people who don't know anything about the current state of evolutionary biology. I'm guessing you do too. It's totally superfluous to most occupations.

fnordfnordfnord12• 13 years ago

It also does not matter what schools anywhere teach if your children do not attend that school.

I'm afraid that I have to disagree. If a significant number of my neighbors' children are taught that the Earth is 6,000 years old, that blacks deserve scorn as penance for Cain's sin, and that the rapture's arrival is to be expected nigh on any moment now; that is a problem for myself, my children, and everyone in my community. People who believe those things support public policy that is incompatible with the type of place that I want to live.

jswinghammer7• 13 years ago

So maybe you want to live in a society where public policy has nothing to do with the age of the universe. Let's do that. That sounds good.

gms7777• 13 years ago

The whole principle behind public schooling is that having an educated public is beneficial for society as a whole. These are the people that eventually work and contribute to the economy, they vote, they become politicians and dictate policy, etc. As such, it matters quite a great deal what schools are teaching, even if you have never met a single person that attends those schools.

jswinghammer7• 13 years ago

This is part of why I'd advocate for limited government. That way if everyone around you is acting foolish then the amount of damage they can do is fairly small.

jostmey4• 13 years ago

Evolution is a theory that is almost self-evident. I hope that the pupils in these classrooms can determine the truth for themselves.

jostmey4• 13 years ago

And I must admit, the accusations in this article are outlandish. I found them hard to believe.

grifpete3• 13 years ago

Which accusations and why?

jonlucc• 13 years ago

I think this is true if you embrace the facts. It seems that many people I've discussed this with merely disregard the scientific process and experts in the field as biased.

jtbigwoo• 13 years ago

> Evolution is a theory that is almost self-evident.

I wish that were the case. To give one example, housecats are so vastly different than monkeys that initial observation wouldn't necessarily point toward a single primitive mammal ancestor. The theory of evolution gets so expansive when you consider billions of years that it's easier to believe in intelligent design.

In a clever twist, many creationists have started claiming that they accept micro-evolution (e.g. the idea that bird beaks would change over generations like Darwin observed) while denying that macro-evolution happens. Thus they can account for the high-school-science-class information that most people get while still clinging to creationism as the overarching truth.

jostmey4• 13 years ago

Sure, it is difficult to initially understand how a house-cat and a monkey once shared a common ancestor. Understanding this fact requires a great deal of knowledge about biology.

But the basic underlying assumptions of Evolution are self-evident. Just assume that you have something that makes copies of itself but does so imperfectly. This means that mutations may form during the copying process. Selection will then act to favor those mutation which are beneficial, and disfavors those mutations which are fatal or detrimental. These basic ideas of how evolution works, which apply to all objects that make (imperfect) copies of themselves, is almost self-evident.

mikeash5• 13 years ago

There are really two completely different concepts contained within "evolution".

First there is the concept of gradual change over time in a population of self-replicating entities subject to selective pressure and heritable variation.

Second, there is the theory that all life on Earth descended from a single common ancestor that lived billions of years ago, and the current scale of biodiversity comes entirely from the application of the first concept over the intervening time.

The first is nearly obvious. The second is definitely not.

tokenadult• 13 years ago

I had to digest after reading this article for a while. (I've also shared the link among my Facebook friends, so that they can help me digest this.) On the whole, I like the author's take that charter schools are a good idea, a good enough idea that while Texas limits the number of charter schools to 300 statewide, it is important to make sure that each charter school offers a sound curriculum. And I think the author is correct that the Responsive Ed charter school curriculum is simply unsound both as to science and as to history.

Regulation of schools is the job of state governments in the United States by default. Political forces in the state legislature in Texas make it hard to fix this problem solely by state legislation, because the Responsive Ed curriculum does represent the point of view of some highly motivated and politically active Texas voters. The article author points out that federal constitutional principles ban teaching religious doctrine in the guise of teaching school curriculum content, so that is one possible response to the skewed curriculum in these charter schools. Another, too little considered in most articles about school choice in general, is simply for other schools to boldly proclaim that their curriculum is better, and explain why it is better. The Responsive Ed schools surely find agreement among some parents shopping for schools in Texas, but they would also be embarrassed to have to defend point by point all of the ridiculous things they say in their curriculum. In particular, it would be good for other schools to specifically mention the many lines of evidence for macroevolution[1] as they promote their curriculums. Comparative advertising is still an under-used tool for promoting school reform, even in states like mine with pervasive public school open enrollment.

I think John Stuart Mill got the policy balance correct more than a century ago, when school attendance was not compulsory in Britain nor in most parts of the United States: "A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body."

John Stuart Mill On Liberty (1859)

[1] http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

mschuster914• 13 years ago

Allowing home schooling is even more sick than that kind of bullshit these Texans are doing.

In public schools one at least knows what the teachers are teaching. Home-schooled kids are not protected from anything ranging from creationist crap to domestic violence (you as a teacher can spot if a pupil turns up beaten every other day).

Not to mention the fact that home-schooled kids are far, far behind "ordinary schooled" kids in terms of knowledge. How should they be other, after all?

Edit: for all those who down-vote, I'm writing this from a German point of view. Here, nearly every non-state/church-schooling effort has been plagued with massive problems: inadequate knowledge of teachers, sexual harrassment, violence scandals. Name the problem, you've had it.

Karunamon4• 13 years ago

Not to mention the fact that home-schooled kids are far, far behind "ordinary schooled" kids in terms of knowledge.

Citation badly needed.

cobrausn8• 13 years ago

So, I don't disagree entirely, but I did go to college with a home schooled guy who was one of the most pleasant, hardworking, and intelligent people I met. I have no idea if religious reasons were part of the reason he was home schooled, he didn't really talk about it, but these blanket labels aren't really helping - home schooling sometimes seems to turn out positive results.

If one were to read your post cynically, they would see that you were advocating everyone be forced into a worse education (often provably so, especially at many public schools) so that we could make sure the parents didn't teach them anything you disagree with and beat them up.

stephenhuey4• 13 years ago

Even though there may be cases where home-schooled kids don't fare well, I can say that I learned more during my homeschool years (4th-7th grade) than any other time, and that broadening of my interests helped me go on to a top 20 university. Some home-schooled kids may have a worse experience, but you can't write off that entire demographic so easily. The reality is there is probably even more negligence in the public school system. Go watch Waiting For Superman when you get a chance!

fennecfoxen5• 13 years ago

Hmm. Among your premises, it seems you believe that a primary, desirable function of the education system is to limit the influence parents have on their children -- in essence, to protect children from their parents' parenting, including sociocultural influences like religion (and, by extension of that influence, also politics and philosophy).

... Permit me to express a measure of doubt on a variety of levels. The overall desirability, the extent to which that can work, the hubris involved, et cetera...

lukethomas2• 13 years ago

I was homeschooled growing up. My brother graduated high school with 36 college credits (dual enrollment), I graduated with 23, and my younger sister graduated with 26. It was like we went to college for a semester before even graduating.

Somehow I managed to graduated university with high honors (sister is in civil engineering on a full-boat scholarship, top of her class, brother got a full boat as well.)

Lastly, my other younger sister (14 years old) is going to be a sophomore next year, is currently teaching herself Python/Ruby, and takes senior-level math.

Homeschooling was the best thing that happened to me: I learned to love learning.

glomph• 13 years ago

I find it really interesting that homeschooling has such a bad reputation in america. In the UK my impression of it has been overwhelmingly positive. People who I have met who have been home schooled have often had broader education without the limitations of a national curriculum and with significantly more freedom in what sort of things that they learn.

This is balanced by the governments right to the quality of education a child is receiving and potentially serve a school attendance order.

ideonexus• 13 years ago

Common sense tells me home schooled students would do worse, but they in fact perform better on tests:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling#Research

I'm still anti-homeschooling, but I have to accept that these students do better... probably benefiting from having one-on-one personalized education from the parents while public school students are mostly lectured and ignored by teachers working with 30-plus students.

vezzy-fnord10• 13 years ago

The most damaging, repugnant and horrific lesson that school teaches you is to accept school as essential and vital for the education of a populace. You appear to have absorbed this lesson very well.

If you believe that the political biases, rote memorization, rigorous examination, strict discipline, regimentation and social control that comes with public schooling is superior to the intellectual freedom of homeschooling and alternative education, you are deluded.

In fact, a structured homeschooling curriculum outweighs public schooling: http://www.parentingscience.com/homeschooling-outcomes.html

People will be biased, but for open-minded families, it's an excellent bet.

Then you underestimate just how apt children are at learning and absorbing information if given their own pace and room to heighten their interests. It's better to be well versed in a few fields and know minutiae about others, rather than merely know minutiae about many fields.

Please read the works of John Holt, John Taylor Gatto and Ivan Illich for further information.

xradionut3• 13 years ago

Here's a datum to counter your odorous opinion:

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1989/3/16/homeschoolers-ar...

My nieces were/are homeschooled. Unlike their peers, they aren't ignorant, pregnant and don't have to run a gauntlet of savages in the public schools in their area. In addition to getting a much better education, they are better equipped to handle modern life. From financial wellness, to physical fitness, social integration to self dependence, they are score in the top decile.

nthj• 13 years ago

Not to mention the fact that home-schooled kids are far, far behind "ordinary schooled" kids in terms of knowledge. How should they be other, after all?

I was homeschooled all the way through high school, and while I may not be the founder of Dropbox, I scored pretty high on the SATs and do very well for myself. So, [citation needed.]

While students in a public school are vying for the attention of a teacher amongst a group of 20 other students, I had the almost exclusive attention of a teacher very invested in my success for more than a decade. I'm not saying it's perfect, but there can be distinct advantages.

eloff• 13 years ago

I was homeschooled, I can tell you It's not all like that. The Canadian government checked up on us twice a year. We followed the Alberta curriculum (using ADLC), well known for being strong in the maths and sciences. I wrote the same provincials that the other Alberta students did (in a supervised setting at the same time as everyone else.) I found it better prepared me for self motivation and learning on my own. At university I was on the deans list and scored better than 95% of students (exactly what percentile I don't know, but I'm pretty sure it was the highest of all students in the same year of computer science.) I scored 100% in calculus and published three peer reviewed math papers in conjunction with my professor as a first year student. So you can't discriminate across the board like that, even if in general you're probably correct.

fnordfnordfnord12• 13 years ago

Allowing home schooling is even more sick than that kind of bullshit these Texans are doing.

I agree in principle, but what if Christian religious ideals were compulsorily taught in Texas public schools?

Not to mention the fact that home-schooled kids are far, far behind "ordinary schooled" kids in terms of knowledge. How should they be other, after all?

I am an instructor at a small College in Texas, and I have had a few home-schooled students (and perhaps there were some that I did not recognize). After my experience with them I can say the following: One performed significantly better than public school students in at least one subject (math in one memorable case). Most performed worse or seemed deficient in at least one subject. All seemed to lack social skills to some degree. As an example, the student who was so good at math had no idea of the existence of the civil rights movement of the 1960's. There were other gaps in his knowledge of recent history, but that one stuck out the most to me.

michaeldhopkins4• 13 years ago

Germany has not had nearly the problems with homeschooling that you imagine. Its prosecution of homeschooling families has been appalling, though. Seizing children (at gunpoint) and forcing them to go to a public school against their parents' wishes, and not allowing the family to leave the country, is not healthy for the children, the parents, the classmates or the country.

bdfh423• 13 years ago

Don't panic - I was taught all sorts of daft stuff in school - when I think back on it a staggering proportion of (say) history or geography was completely untrue. It helps in a way that some of it was so crazy it got me questioning the basis for the rest. Thats when you stop being taught stuff and start researching and learning.

Not suggesting that every pupil taught creationism will respond in this way - many are probably pre-programmed by the religious affiliations to believe it anyway - but the intellectual health of the pupil body is not a lost cause.

vezzy-fnord10• 13 years ago

The people who can freely dispel from themselves the intellectual dishonesty and lies that they've been taught to accept as fundamentals, is low.

You sound like you weren't heavily ingrained into the dogma to begin with, and had a tendency to autodidact, which helps kill off the rest and make your own conclusions. Yet most people don't and they take whatever they're formally taught for granted, or selectively choose to believe whatever fits their ideological predispositions.

Many of these kids will be stuck with lifelong delusions. Their parents may mold them to a certain path, but their schooling will solidify it completely.

Even still, this is a very abhorrent thing to do.

"Hey kid, everything you know about history, geography, geology and natural science is a lie! Read up on the facts and realize you've been living in a matrix all this time!"

I mean, people with perseverance can totally get through it and then in retrospect have a laugh at the bullshit they were taught, but even with this in mind at best the whole thing is a major inconvenience.

bdfh423• 13 years ago

It may have helped that I was brought up a Catholic. Perceiving the shaky foundations of Christianity and the astonishing hypocrisy of that particular version probably helped clarify a lot of things for me and gave me the freedom to revisit the prejudices that had been foisted upon me in my early youth.

GotAnyMegadeth• 13 years ago

How do you know you have re-learned all of the stuff that you were taught wrong and not just a portion of it?

sophacles• 13 years ago

The answer is the same as if you were taught strictly the correct stuff:

Constantly learn more. Re-evaluate your knowledge in the light of new facts. Find the places where pieces don't fit and investigate further. This is the only sane and rational policy on knowledge one can have for them-self.

Heck even when teaching someone "correct" things, it is impossible to avoid this. There have to be abstractions and almost-but-not-quite generalizations. There is so much knowledge in the world that you have to build a general foundation to bootstrap better understanding. People are pattern machines, so patterns need to be presented, for easier consumption, then revised later.

bdfh423• 13 years ago

I don't - but I do question most things. Like in every other activity - you get a feel for things that seem untrue (and yes I recognise the potential for vast error there) and put them to one side for further thought - or just forget about them of course.

It helps that I am a developer - analytical and algorithmic thinking is a great start point. Learning some statistics helps - you can see through a lot of nonsense if you can get at the source data.

mikeash5• 13 years ago

That's an interesting point. There's a great panic about creationism, but when you discuss e.g. the tremendous fallacy of the standard "WWII started on December 7, 1941 and was won by the United States" narrative, you generally get shrugs.

I'm not defending the teaching of creationism at all, but it might be worthwhile to look at the whole curriculum with a critical eye rather than concentrating on biology.

FrankenPC5• 13 years ago

How does one "teach" creationism? Answer: you don't. Simply reciting "god did it" over and over is sufficient. No, this is Christian apologetics that they are teaching. In other words it's a religion class, NOT a science class. If this school is taking public money, those funds need to be withdrawn until the curriculum is properly labeled.

fnordfnordfnord12• 13 years ago

As an Atheist, I am not generally opposed to a religion class, even a compulsory one. Religion is a reality, and ignoring it is as bad as ignoring any other reality. Teaching creationism is worse than a mere study of religion because it promotes rote memorization of demonstrably incorrect ideas as facts.

stephenhuey4• 13 years ago

A fellow Christian and scientist named Dr. James Tour explained that many creationists do not understand the limits of the scientific method. Dr. Tour concludes, "I am sympathetic to the arguments on the matter and I find some of them intriguing, but the scientific proof is not there, in my opinion."

http://www.jmtour.com/personal-topics/the-scientist-and-his-...

So in response to people clamoring for creationism in the classroom, he suggests this:

"So what should be taught in schools regarding evolution? As I wrote, I am not a proponent of Intelligent Design for the reasons I state above: I can not prove it using my tools of chemistry to which I am bound in the chemistry classroom; the same tools to which I commensurately bind my evolutionist colleagues. But I think that a better approach might include more teaching about evolution, namely coverage of legitimate scientific criticisms of neo-Darwinism and disputes about the origin of the first life. That would be more balanced."

FrankenPC5• 13 years ago

I disagree. What it teaches is how to accept dogma without reservation. It's a brainwashing technique on par with anything the CIA could come up with.

Glyptodon• 13 years ago

These charter school conservative 'Christians' are essentially attempting to destroy the US and turn it into a theocratic state without modern medicine or technology. Forget Snowden and Manning. It's these America-hating hacks who should be charged with sedition and treason for attempting to overthrow the Constitution and replace with mandatory religious practices.

grifpete3• 13 years ago

This is beyond depressing. The idea that the USA, currently the world's leading first world country, hosts this kind of medieval nonsense is just depressing.

robmcm• 13 years ago

"the USA, currently the world's leading first world country," citation needed.

rayiner• 13 years ago

I obviously don't support teaching creationism as science or anti-feminism. At the same time, I think articles like this are a pointless move in the culture war. In the U.K. Christian-oriented religious education is not only allowed in state schools, but mandatory. Everywhere! Apparently, until recently, it was the only mandatory part of the curriculum. Yet we haven't seen British society crumble into ruin as a result.

tptacek• 13 years ago

Well, on the other hand, the UK doesn't have a 220-year-old Bill of Rights that literally opens with a prohibition on laws pertaining to religion.

And, while it doesn't seem to have caused the UK's culture to crumble (and indeed it doesn't seem to have done much of a favor to Christianity's influence in the UK), you don't think it's a little batshit to have a national law mandating that schools teach the primacy of Christianity among all religions practiced in the UK?

gadders• 13 years ago

What, in a Christian country? No.

When I was in my teens, I resented the fact that I went to religious assemblies at school and couldn't opt out. Now I'm older and look back on these assemblies, they taught moral lessons that could be applicable regardless of your opinion of the supernatural.

thejteam2• 13 years ago

I went to a very good public school system in Maryland. More than one math teacher taught me that while we suspect that there are an infinite number of prime numbers, we can't prove it. I found out later that there exists a relatively simple proof known to Euclid. Lots of college students honestly believe that 0.999… (repeating 9's) is NOT exactly equal to 1. My upper level analysis teacher spent an entire class period dispelling this myth. We were all taught the wrong answer by multiple public school teachers in many different districts. Now, is the teaching of creationism any worse than teaching wrong math? If public school teachers can't get cut and dried math facts right, how many are going to be able to understand the nuances between "hypothesis", "theory", "law", etc?

tmzt• 13 years ago

Do you have any reference/proof/etc. for 0.999... === 1? As one of those taught to believe it is not, I would like to see it.

Unfortunately, text books conserve non facts for very interesting reasons. Some good examples are at http://www.textbookleague.org/

thejteam2• 13 years ago

A very informal proof:

Let X = 0.999… Then 10X = 9.999…

10X - X = 9.999… - 0.999… = 9 = 9X Therefore X = 1.

Being able to do the subtraction infinitely is a little hand-wavy, but should suffice as a demo for middle and high schoolers.

More formal proofs involve limits that one wouldn't normally encounter until a course in real analysis.

Wikipedia has a whole page devoted to the topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0.999...

DanielStraight4• 13 years ago

I really think both sides get this issue very wrong.

Creationism is not valid science, obviously. But that's because it isn't science at all. It is a religious belief, which is by definition non-scientific.

Here is where the science side gets things wrong. Creationism is a NON-scientific belief, not an ANTI-scientific belief. It's not anti-intellectual or stupid or backward either. It's a choice to believe in the supernatural. Lots of people, even non-religious people, believe things on grounds other than science. Science is an excellent way of explaining the world, but it isn't the only way. People have the right to inform their beliefs with a source other than science.

Here is where the creationism side gets things wrong. Same basic principle, creationism is not a scientific belief. Christians, even those who accept evolution, believe a lot of things which are clearly not scientifically sound. Bodily resurrection from the dead is perhaps the most obvious and most fundamental. It's absurd to accept the resurrection of a deity without seeking scientific evidence and then try to make scientific evidence support creationism. Even if you convince someone that creationism is scientific, you aren't going to convince them that a deity being bodily resurrected from the dead is scientific. Given that Jesus' resurrection is the fundamental belief of Christianity, it's silly to make such a big deal of something that is comparatively non-important.

So my suggestion, teach evolution in science class without mentioning creationism at all. But require at least one class in religion/philosophy so students understand that there are other ways of understanding the world. I'm not saying to teach the beliefs of any particular religion, just to explain some of the ways other than science that people have historically and continue today to understand their world.

The overwhelming majority of people on Earth today are at least nominally religious. Schools shouldn't teach students to be religious, but they should teach them to understand religion... and not just as a cute, prehistoric way of explaining things that science now has exclusive domain over. Religious beliefs, as non-scientific beliefs, are non-falsifiable. Students need to understand this. Modern science does not falsify religious beliefs. It provides an alternative based on empirical evidence. But there is no requirement that everyone on Earth only accept things based on empirical evidence. It may seem odd to you to deliberately choose to believe something which isn't based on empirical evidence, but many people do (knowingly at that) and that is their right. Students should understand that science is not a tool for disproving religion, it is a tool for explaining the world in a different way than religion does.

Xdes• 13 years ago

But there is no requirement that everyone on Earth only accept things based on empirical evidence.

You'd get laughed out of the left wing political sphere if you went around saying that.

vezzy-fnord10• 13 years ago

No one is denying your right to believe in unfalsifiable and unjustified theology.

Of course creationism itself isn't anti-scientific, but the majority of people who deeply believe it do have anti-scientific agendas.

Is it stupid and backward? I'm not going to conclusively comment on this, but you seem to think that just because it's a choice, it has to be legitimate. No, it can be a wrong choice.

Schools shouldn't teach students to be religious, but they should teach them to understand religion... and not just as a cute, prehistoric way of explaining things that science now has exclusive domain over. Religious beliefs, as non-scientific beliefs, are non-falsifiable. Students need to understand this. Modern science does not falsify religious beliefs. It provides an alternative based on empirical evidence. But there is no requirement that everyone on Earth only accept things based on empirical evidence. It may seem odd to you to deliberately choose to believe something which isn't based on empirical evidence, but many people do (knowingly at that) and that is their right.

Argumentum ad populum. Just because a lot of people resort to superstition to explain natural events does not mean it is legitimate or correct.

The right to believe in unsubstantiated claims doesn't shield you from criticism on the illegitimacy of your claims.

DanielStraight4• 13 years ago

Obviously it can be wrong... but it isn't scientifically falsifiable. This is entire crux of what I'm trying to say. You can no more use science to disprove creationism than creationists can to prove it. It isn't a claim which is subject to scientific inquiry. Science has nothing to say on the subject of supernatural events with apparent natural causes. Science is a tool for providing natural, empirical explanations. Supernatural events are by definition invisible to science, because science chooses not to accept supernatural explanations. That's what makes it science.

You are free to criticize the legitimacy of religious beliefs, but science will not help you. Science cannot disprove what it does not accept or examine (namely, supernatural events). Science simply says that a natural explanation exists. Whether that explanation is "true", science cannot say. If gravity is really caused by an invisible flying spaghetti monster pulling everything with his noodly appendages, science will never see it. It cannot. Science refuses supernatural explanations.

I am not saying that popularity makes supernatural beliefs correct. I'm saying it makes them important. The concept that science is one way, but not the only way, people choose to understand the world is important. Whether science is "true", no one can say. Untestable, supernatural phenomena are just that: untestable. It could be that the flying spaghetti monster really controls everything in universe. All we can know is that if he/she/it does, he/she/it does it in such a way that natural explanations still work. There's no way to actually test the theory of a supernatural spaghetti monster. The distinction is subtle, but I think it's important.

gress5• 13 years ago

Ray Kurzweil believes in bodily resurrection, as do the customers of Alcor.

dllthomas2• 13 years ago

Some contingents, which I expect have some overlap with customers of Alcor, have a stronger expectation of resurrection through scanning and emulation, which isn't exactly "bodily".

cpher3• 13 years ago

But what about Ray Catsweil? http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HSFWWZQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UT...

thirdtruck5• 13 years ago

I'm not clear on what is left to know that falls outside the reach of science.

We can trace the very sense of "I am me" to the brain, as seen when it and other anthropocentric systems fail, which leaves the idea of a "soul" in doubt.

We can ask "why" something exists instead of nothing, but advances in quantum physics suggests that "nothing" lacks a correlate at that level. If we want to ask "why" the quantum foam exists, in turn, the non-scientific inquirer must explain how this potential for infinite regress is anything more than a shortcoming of language.

If any "big" questions exist that physics or neuroscience can't explain, let us know. If not, the burden lies with the non-scientific explanations to offer more complete, repeatable, and actionable insights.

fnordfnordfnord12• 13 years ago

I'm not clear on what is left to know that falls outside the reach of science.

Ethics. Morality. Art. History. Politics. Philosophy.

DanielStraight4• 13 years ago

I'm not really talking about things outside the reach of science. I'm talking about choosing to believe differently about things for which science does have an answer, or at least a strong suggestion.

There's a subtle distinction I'm trying to make between "true" and "scientifically proven". Equating the two requires a belief that what science discovers is absolute truth, but that meta-claim cannot be analyzed by the underlying tool of science.

One can easily conceive of example theories which are not scientifically testable. Let's assume for the sake of argument that the universe was supernaturally created out of nothing. Not 6000 years ago, but at UNIX timestamp 0. But everyone was created with memories. Objects were created in motion. Everything is exactly as we see it, with cause and effect stretching back for countless million years, but it actually was just all created looking that way. As absurd as this sounds, it isn't scientifically falsifiable. It can't be disproven.

Assuming the above scenario is true, it is still scientifically proven that the universe is unfathomably old. The natural, empirical explanation does not change. It simply becomes false while remaining scientifically valid. The science is still sound. (And assuming the universe was not in fact created at UNIX timestamp 0, the belief that it was is still false even if it isn't disprovable.)

The rationalist believes that the findings of science are absolute truth. That if the universe appears billions of years old, it's because it is billions of years old. But whether observation is proof of absolute truth is not a testable question in science. Science can't assert absolute truth in that way. It can only assert a sound, natural explanation of cause and effect. And just because everything has a sound, natural explanation of cause and effect doesn't mean those are explanations are true. We simply have no way of knowing whether the entire universe was created at UNIX timestamp 0 with everything exactly as it should have been to make it appear billions of years old.

cpher3• 13 years ago

I'll add that there are many Christians who are "evolutionists", and understand what science (and religion) can explain about the world. Some of us even attended Christian colleges with professors who taught evolution and actual science, and we had lengthy discussions about this entire topic. AND THIS WAS 20 YEARS AGO.

MartinCron3• 13 years ago

Creationism is a NON-scientific belief, not an ANTI-scientific belief. It's not anti-intellectual or stupid or backward either. It's a choice to believe in the supernatural

Choosing to believe in the supernatural IS fundamentally anti-science. That's what the word "supernatural" means.

thedufer3• 13 years ago

Here is where the science side gets things wrong. Creationism is a NON-scientific belief, not an ANTI-scientific belief.

Creationism isn't fundamentally anti-scientific, but it teaching it as science is definitely anti-scientific. "Creationism" is usually, in this context, used as shorthand for "creationism taught as science", because that's the only kind of creationism that matters (in this context).

DanielStraight4• 13 years ago

I agree with you that creationism shouldn't be taught as science. That's what I was trying to get at. I was not using creationism to mean creationism taught as science. Sorry if I've caused confusion to anyone.

piokoch• 13 years ago

The funniest this is that's creationism is a side effect of a strange, but very popular view of "tolerance". We are told that tolerance means that various points of view on any issue must be accepted, regardless if they make sense or not.

As a result with hava a wide stream of various absurdities comming from "the left" (gender people claiming that there are no differences between boys and girls) and from "the right" (creationism) are propagated instead of radiculed and thrown away. The same with Homeopathy and countless other things.

Another interesting thing is what happened with protestant churches. Once they were seen as progressive and modern (in Calvin, Luther times). Now they are either bunch of annoying old bishop-ladies ignored by everyone, who think that having gay priests is the most important thing on the World (Church of England) or radiculous morons who claim that earth was created 6000 years ago.

BTW it's somehow incorrect to call them Christians. They do not follow tradition and intellectual heritage of Roman Catholic Church. I guess that Thomas of Aquin and other great Christian philosophers are rolling in their graves seeing such widespread grow of stupidity among people who call themselves Christians.

vezzy-fnord10• 13 years ago

BTW it's somehow incorrect to call them Christians. They do not follow tradition and intellectual heritage of Roman Catholic Church.

No True Scotsman, lad!

The Roman Catholic Church were not the first and "true" Christians. The Gnostics were: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Gnosticism

Movements and cultures naturally stratify and disband. Just as postmodern, radical, anarchist and separatist feminists are just as legitimate as more traditional feminists (no matter how much they might try to claim the contrary), the same way all these Christian denominations are Christians like all others.

dkuntz23• 13 years ago

BTW it's somehow incorrect to call practitioners of the Roman Catholic Church. They do not follow the traditions and intellectual heritage of the Early Christian Church.

Fuck off. Christianity split multiple times, not just Roman Catholic and Protestant, but also the Early Christian church into the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Catholic (more commonly called the Eastern Orthodox church) churches. Claiming that because someone doesn't follow the Roman Catholic church they can't possibly be a Christian is ridiculous. The Roman Catholic church elevated the Bishop of Rome above the other bishops, something that wasn't done in the Early Christian church, and still isn't done in the Eastern Orthodox churches. The Eastern Orthodox churches are closer to "traditional Christianity" than the Roman Catholic church.

Learn you some Christian history if you're going to try to argue about it. And I say this as someone who doesn't affiliate with any religion.

xname• 13 years ago

The essence of the story is that liberals cannot wait for the progressive change in culture. Modern liberals do not believe progressivism, they believe extremism, revolutionarism. They want to destroy bad tradition as soon as possible. They just cannot wait. They hate people who are different from them (read: stupid).

BTW. I am a science person. I think creationism is trash, but I am OK with other people to believe creationism or whatever. I know there are billions year ahead of human evolution and cultural evolution. I don't expect to see all these changes in one night. I don't believe use government to impose cultural change to its citizens is a right thing to do!

As for the "public" school thing. That's simply because people do not have a choice. The dominance of public school in pre-college education destroyed the education market and made private schools hard to exist. That's why many religious people want to change the so called "public" schools, which is the only place they can send their children to. I do not blame them. This is just a minor collateral damage of the centralized education system. There are many much worth things in public education.

Public money? Come on, that's also their money. Where do you think those money come from?

Texas Public Schools Are Teaching Creationism

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