God Help Us

[ll_billym]

Creationism should be discussed in school science lessons, rather than excluded, says the director of education at the Royal Society.

Hmmm, anybody up for discussing the scientific evidence between whether God created Adam out of dust or whether God created Adam from dust and Eve from Adam or.... Whether they were both created from Lord Brahma splitting in two?

Believe whatever you want about how the universe was created but keep science and religion in different classrooms.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7612152.s tm

[naomi24]

Quite right. Creationism has no place in a science lab.

[jno]

like it or not, creationism has been the philosophical basis of society and ethics for most of 2000 years. Children who aren't taught what it's about will be historically illiterate.

[terambulan]

Sorry for this Steve5.....but I agree with you. I can trace my heirs back 5 generations and none are called Adam or Eve. But I know a monkey that shares my dad's name ;-)

[naomi24]

jno. That's the point. Creationism is philosophy - not science. Whether it's taught at all is another issue, but if it is, it should not be taught in a science class.

[littleoldme]

My initial reaction to this post was to agree wholeheartedly that creationism should be kept out of science classrooms. However, having actually read the article, I see that the BBC headline is somewhat misleading. The idea is that science teachers should explain that creationism has no scientific basis, so that they can then better explain scientific reasoning to those children who may have been brought up to believe the Bible's version of events.

I think Professor Reiss' clarification lower down the page is fair enough. After all, just telling a God-fearing child that "Creationism is bunk" without giving reasons isn't going to convince them.

[China Doll]

I think it has a place in education and kids should be taught it in order to make up their own minds. However I would teach it in RE and not Science.

[mushroom25]

Particle physics theory exists to fill the gaps in science that the boffins cannot yet explain. If the CERN experiment finds the Higgs Boson it will go some way to validating the theory, but nobody knows if it will.

On that basis, isn't particle physics also a philosophy rather than a pure science?

[brionon]

We who worship the Giant Pommegranat ,demand our creation story should be taught also.

[China Doll]

Not really mushroom25 although I do understand your point. Partial physics is trying to understand the world around us based on some fairly solid and scientific principals. It's a different type of phillosophy.

Creationism is a cultural thing which has at it's core a belief in a higher being and as such doctrine for people to live their lives by and/or debate to their hearts content. Physics is not a way of living your life or viewing the world around you. Hence physics, even partially speaking, is a science and creationism is a religion/way of being.

[Booldawg]

There are also HUGE holes in non-Creationist theories; hence the LHC at CERN and the missing link etc etc.

[birdie1971]

I believe very strongly that creationism (or creation science) should not be taught in science classes. The reason is that creation science is not science at all. All proper scientific theories have to fulfil three basic criteria � 1. They are testable against observed real-world phenomena. 2. They make predictions about what we should find. 3 - They can be disproved.

Number 3 is the most important. For example, if a modern human skeleton was found in the same geological strata as an ancient dinosaur then evolutionary theory would have been disproved and would have to be torn up. As yet, this has not happened so for the time being, evolution is the best theory to explain the origins of the species.

As there is nothing that could disprove creationism, it is not a science as should not be treated as such.