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Published online 10 October 2007 | Nature 449, 649 (2007) | doi:10.1038/449649c
News in Brief
Council of Europe votes against creationist teaching
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This is an important statement of the EU only because of the harm already done in the US by creationists in the teaching of biology. I would add to that the harm done by Islam for denying science, including evolution within the Muslim curriculum. In this denial of evolution Christian and Muslim fundamentalists share common ground. It is not rational to include irrational beliefs within any school curriculum, especially in Europe where the past is so badly scarred by Nazi ideology. Dr Donald McMiken
The Council of Europe is a separate international/intergovernmental organization from the European Union.
I was breastfed evolution from infancy and an ardent defender of it during my teens. Since medical school days I was astonished by the casual and hopelessly wishful myth-making inherent in abiogenesis, and a great deal of careless and tendentious reasoning in standard texts, attributable only to a kind of fideistic materialism. It's indicative of the unscientific nature of neo-Darwinism, and of the degree to which it is legitimately being challenged by ID that it requires political moves of this kind to stifle proper, dispassionate consideration. It's ironic McMiken refers to Nazi ideology, given Darwin's theory's central role in supporting it. We all know Nature's stand on this seminal issue, and its refusal to countenance contrary views in its own pages. I shall watch with interest to see if this post is published in full - I'm not holding my breath.
One of the characteristics of the CoE document is that it is strong on generalisations but very weak on evidence. They say that "Creationism is a potential threat to human rights" but this is not backed up with any documentation or data. Yet this is not the spirit of science, which they claim to be supporting. This pattern is repeated with all the other charges made (but not reported in this news item). The science community should be seeking to promote a thorough examination of relevant evidences and a critical scrutiny of alternative interpretations. We address false theories by the falsification of hypotheses and the demonstration of superior explanations. We should stick with this, and not welcome resolutions by political appointees.
Let's look at simple facts: is it really scientific to teach a theory that relies on Random Big Bangs, Chance chemical soup & Trillions of genetic mistakes turning hydrogen into you & i?! 'In the beginning God created the heavens & the earth': a 'round earth', 'hanging on nothing', in 'stretched out' space, where the 'sun circuits the heavens', & everything only reproduces 'After its Kind' - now that's observable science, written down under inspiration some 700 to 2000 yrs ago. What you should be doing is teaching how to think, not what to think.
Way back when people believed the earth was flat, everybody had to farm and hunt to eat. They were deathly afraid of droughts, floods, locusts, plague, war, etc. -- powerful forces they could not control. They attributed these things to god(s), and thus made up a bunch of crap to explain why god(s) were angry or pleased with them, and all that crap became their religion. A religion spread when it conquered another, which is why the dominant religions come from the most vicious and hypocritical people -- all talking of peace and freedom while constantly crusading and jihading on one another. Now that we have modern irrigation, pesticides, and antibiotics, religion is only good for manipulating people into giving you money or dying for you.
How much longer will Darwinism be able to survive? If the Darwinian dogmas require politicians to be propagated in classrooms, it tells us Darwin is dead and so are his hypotheses. Darwinians must be in dispair now their ideas are completely overturned by the new biology. That Darwin's ideas are not in agreement with observations has been known since the release of "The origin of Species" and is currently being demonstrated on the molecular level. More and more scientist are tacitly turning away from Darwin's inventions. Scientists have wasted 150 years by following this 19th century naturalist. See also: http://www.biology-direct.com/content/2/1/21 Peter Borger
How much longer will Darwinism be able to survive? If the Darwinian dogmas require politicians to be propagated in classrooms, it tells us Darwin is dead and so are his hypotheses. Darwinians must be in dispair now their ideas are completely overturned by the new biology. That Darwin's ideas are not in agreement with observations has been known since the release of "The origin of Species" and is currently being demonstrated on the molecular level. More and more scientists are tacitly turning away from Darwin's inventions. Scientists have wasted 150 years by following this 19th century naturalist. See also: http://www.biology-direct.com/content/2/1/21
A literal interpretation of the Origin of Species is about as useful to modern evolutionary biology as a literal reading of the Old Testament is to 21st century society (ie historical inspiration rather than eternal truth). Obviously Darwin didn't have the last word on evolution - science is about continually updating hypotheses according to new evidence, not clinging desperately to the words of a long dead prophet. That said, I agree with above comments that this is an issue that needs to be debated on rational scientific grounds, not by governmental decree. But to do that we need to start by educating students as to what science is and is not.
I'm all for freedom of beliefs. If the President of Iran doesn't want to believe in the holocaust it's up to him. From where I stand he has the right to believe anything he wants to. If someone wants to believe that some Jewish Zombie saved their soul that's cool too. All I ask is that my tax dollars which are spent educating children be spent on giving them an education and not indoctrinating them. It's a "theory" of evolution, and while it is (still) largely incomplete there is no evidence to suggest that the theory, as a whole, is wrong. It's not perfect but when one considers the billions of years this rock's been orbiting the sun one can't help but think that there was a "natural" start to it all. Granted, nothing has proven that some God didn't create us with his 'noodley-appendage,' but that's not a Scientific issue. If parents want their children to learn about creationism a religious school (or even just the standard "Sunday School"), or even the parents themselves, could fill this role. Don't trust the government to teach your children everything you want them to know (I know I won't when I've got rugrats of my own). On the other hand I could see the justification of explaining creationism in a non-Scientific context in classrooms. Maybe as a Social Studies component where it is explained as what "some people believe but which has no supporting scientific evidence." I think Philip Snow hit the nail on the head when he said "What you should be doing is teaching how to think, not what to think."
The opening line of this article is stupefying: "Creationism is a potential threat to human rights..." What?! It is an evolution-based mindset that justifies actions like the Holocaust. Adolph Hitler was convinced (or at least said he was) that "the master race" was at the top of the evolutionary ladder. We know where that led. The founding fathers of the United States stated, "[A]ll men are CREATED equal, that they are endowed by their CREATOR with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness". Did I miss something? Is there a threat in there somewhere? As for commenter Donald McMiken's assertion that harm has been done to the teaching of biology, I can only ask: What harm? Is it harmful to wonder how everything - anything - even exists? What went bang if there was a Big Bang? How did life evolve from rocks? What did that first life eat? Which evolved first, male or female? How many generations died before nature got it right? <- that's a trick question. Which is more evolved, very light skinned people or very dark skinned people? They're obviously not the same, are they? etcetera times hundreds.
As always a lot of commetns followed the news about this topic. And even though I`m very much for an open discussion as well as for the right to belive in anything an individual wants to, I`m always wondering about one point in this comments: People arguing for creationism name Hitler and the Nazis as the "dark side" of Darwins theory, not understanding that the Nazis, as well as creationism, didn`t got Darwin right and their interpretaion of his ideas is far away from what he proposed. Also I have to remember you that Darwins theory is a THEORY and not a dogma as mentioned above in one of the comments. And this is the major contrast between natural science following Poppers idea of falsification and religion/ideology which works with dogmas. And this dogmas are inhibiting any kind of scientific discussion, since any reasonable comment can be showed to be wrong within a closed system of dogmatic arguments. That`s the reason why the EU has to point out it`s opinion on this topic - and that`s the only thing they made since their decision is not binding to anyone.
I certainly hope that this is yet another small step towards recognizing religion for what it is; a memetically transmitted virus. Once we can begin to cure the rest of the population the inane banter and ridiculous rehashings of the scopes trial can end, and we can hope to use the resulting resurgence of science to help mankind.
Darwinistic evolution as well as single event creationism lack a mathematical model that allow to comprehend observations. Pure random acting tends to thermodynamic equilibrium equal to death. This is not a good base for life. Creating all at once violates all reliably known rules of nature and the Bible's story, too. Could relativity of time be a compromise?
This is so comic. The Council of Europe has just declared the teaching of evolution to be on an equal footing with the theory of creationism: i.e. that evolution is necessarily a philosophy that speaks to origins. Scientists who are atheists could do both the cause of science and the cause of atheism a service by separating the two. Scientists become unscientific when they must insist on abiogenesis. Atheists become annoying when they must call all non-atheists unscientific. Since the initial conditions of this particular universe are not provable, theories about origins, theistic or materialistic, are necessarily matters of faith. The Council of Europe has just, with a single statement, crafted a spectacular display of the ignorance of its members in the fields of philosophy, history and science.
Okay, teach whatever creationist pablum you want to everyone. The smart kids will figure out how bogus it really is, and everyone else will follow its predictable path to ignorance, making it that much easier for the intelligent ones to dominate.
It seems to me that science, and I'm not a scientist, is the study of observable and re-creatable patterns in the universe. And, it seems to me that both the atheist explanation(s) and the theist explanation(s) for the origin of life and the existence of the universe as we know it now are both non-scientific matters of faith. As was pointed out above, there are numerous holes in the evolutionary record and we have a long way to go to fill in all of the details. When we get the full picture, assuming that it possible to do that, it may become evident that one approach or the other is the correct one. But we’re so far away from having that full picture that debating the issue just seems silly. One person looks at all of the evidence and concludes that there can be no god; another looks at the same evidence and concludes that there must be a God. But neither conclusion is based on observable and re-creatable patterns in the universe provable by “scientific� methods; they’re both theories (or pick a synonym: arguments, assumptions, concepts, conjecture, doctrines, dogmas, guesswork, hunches, hypotheses, ideologies, impressions, philosophies, postulates, presumptions, speculation, suppositions, surmises, and/or suspicions) based on faith. Until we have all of the data, the suggestion that creationism should be taught in Social Studies seems like a good one; but so should the idea that there is no causal force driving the universe, i.e. that there is no god or God. For now, and for the foreseeable future, it seems to me that they’re both matters of faith and have no place in the serious discussion of science. (Of course, that does not mean that serious scientists can’t or shouldn’t discuss the issues, but call it what it is… a discussion about religion.) What troubles me is that the majority of the "smart kids" figure out that religion doesn't have a provable answer, and swing too far the other way concluding that all religion must be “bogus.� It may be, but that can't be proven either. But most of the IQ points held by debaters on the far ends of the debate are held by the atheists. After all, the most strident creationists still think the universe is less than 10,000 years old.
All the creationists, look here: http://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/english/evolution_kuraev.htm