should creationism be taught in schools?

We wanted to know what should be taught if creationism should be taught.Are we to take this as a sample? I warn you, it's no better than your "all creatures have 2 eyes" claim.I notice that it doesn't mention any of those "young earth dating methods" that you claimed existed.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Well he did, remember. The miracle of the banana. "All earth's creatures have two eyes". A volcanic eruption producing "hydrological sorting". Neanderthals are modern humans "with diseases".Trouble is, it all turned out to be rubbish.And this is where it all breaks down, isn't it? Creationists can't produce anything which is both an argument for creationism and true.If Beretta would think about this fact for five minutes, he might realise why.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Inspired by this thread, I added Teach Both Theories to the miscellaneous section of SkepticWiki's list of creationist arguments.All suggestions as to errors or omissions will be welcomed.

Er ... but none of this is true. It's just another Gish Gallop, which is why you haven't been able to produce a single shred of evidence for any of it. So how do you expect science teachers to teach it? And yet in none of your pages and pages of reciting creationist gibble have you quoted or cited a single scientist.This is because creationist gibble does not, in fact, originate with scientists, but with scientifically illiterate religious fanatics. "A lot"? Then surely you'll be able to name one? Do you know that creationists have been saying that for over 150 years?The fantasy that you're just about to win is the longest running falsehood in creationism. It has been passed down from generation to generation.And it still hasn't happened.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

We have indeed explained to Beretta how something supported by all the evidence is not an "assumption".---To which I would add, for the benefit of Beretta --- scientists are not allowed to assume anything. If a scientist says that something is true, then the first thing that all the other scientists ask is "how do you know"?If his answer was: "I assumed it", then they'd all fall about laughing.Nothing in evolution is "assumed", which is why all the silly lies saying that it is come from scientifically illiterate religious whackjobs rather than from the imaginary scientists whom you assume, without proof, exist and agree with you.

That would explain why you can't even get your creationist lies right.Look up Mount St Helens on a creationist site, and find out what lies you're meant to be telling about this subject. 'Cos you're not even managing to get the lies right.Better still, look it up on any site not run by religious whackjobs and find out the truth.

Not only is this not true, but the people you're addressing know it's not true.As would you, if you ever bothered to look at the evidence instead of reciting dumb lies from your creationist script. But foraminifera haven't done so. Why demand evidence for something that scientists agree has not happened? Your beliefs are not evidence for anything except your limitless capacity for self-deception. Archaeology. Speak for yourself. Well, the Egyptians certainly didn't have the technology we do.

Put up or shut up. As happened to creationism.History also shows us that no abandoned paradigm has ever been resurrected a hundred years after being thrown in the trash. Because they aren't "interpretations", they're a bunch of dumb lies about how "all earth's creatures have 2 eyes". We can't teach that to children 'cos it's a lie. If you really can't figure out for yourself why lying to children is wrong, this article will explain it to you. No you don't. Scientists have the facts, you have dumb lies about how "all earth's creatures have 2 eyes" and red blood cells in dinosaurs and a volcano producing "hydrological sorting", and on and on and on. With only two exceptions I can think of, everything you've claimed as a fact turned out to be a ridiculous fiction. Because it isn't true, and they're addicted to untruth. Because they are facts rather than interpretations.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

But evolution is not a "wrong interpretation", it's a theory that's been proven correct.There's a difference. This is true, but has nothing to do with the subject under discussion. If you believe evolution to be "wrong", as you said at the start of your post, why should we "teach it as a possibility"? The facts confirm evolution and completely discredit creationism, which is why all the "facts" you come up with to support creationism turn out to be false, Mr "all earth's creatures have 2 eyes".Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Yes, but it isn't. Sure. But you guys aren't coming up with any evidence, are you? And yet, as I've pointed out, you're not quoting or citing any scientists. "All earth's creatures have two eyes" is not something you learnt from any biologist, is it? And yet this is what you've been doing. I don't mean, by the way, that you know that what you're saying isn't true, but you're passing on stuff that's totally wrong without bothering to check whether it's right. Which is nearly as bad. ... that dinosaurs had red blood cells, which we knew, and that fossilisation preserves things, which we knew.Now you guys usually claim that fossils were laid down in the flood. In which case these remnants (not the blood cells themselves, as you originally claimed) have survived for 4000 years. How can this have happened? Because there were no bacteria present to eat them.Likewise, if there were no bacteria present (as you must admit) then these remnants could also have survived for 100 million years. Stuff doesn't just vanish into thin air, you know.So this is not evidence one way or the other. The only thing we can deduce from this datum alone is that since there weren't any actual red blood cells preserved, the bones can't be fresh. Which we knew anyway.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

But this is just a creationist fantasy.Can't you see that if, in the course of their research, they found something that falsified evolution, they'd notice?

Six hours ago you told us that evolution and ID were two different "interpretations", and you were asking: "why can creationists and ID proponents acknowledge that their ideas are interpretations of the facts?"Now you tell us that ID is "absolute reality".Could you make your mind up, please?Do you wish to claim that ID is an "interpretation", or do you wish to claim that it is "absolute reality"?Your call.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Dear Beretta,Over the course of our debates, you have claimed or strongly implied the following things that are factually inaccurate:* That the "starting point" of evolution is "I don't believe in the possibility of a transcendent creator".
* That in the Cambrian Explosion, "suddenly complex and varied types all appear at once".
* That "there is no sign of precursor forms in precambrian layers".
* That uniformitarianism was pioneered by "atheist or materialistic geologists".
* That there has been a "recent increase in catastrophist geologists who go with rapid formation of fossils under catastrophic conditions".
* That "birds and cats and everything" appear "suddenly and simultaneously in the fossil layers".
* That "rapid hydrologic sorting" was "seen at Mt St Helens in 1980".
* That there are "all sorts of things found in completely wrong layers that contradict long periods of evolutionary change".
* That "up until the 1800's the generally held belief was that the sedimentary rock layers right across the earth represented the record of mass death from Noah's flood."
* That "all earth's creatures have 2 eyes".
* That the modern cultivated banana is not a product of artificial selection.
* That evolutionists claim that dogs are descended from porcupines.
* That the tails of Old World monkeys are prehensile.
* That "there are lots of geologists living right now that see the rocks all the time and refute evolution."
* That evolution is "random".
* That fruit should (from an evolutionary point of view) have some defense against being eaten.
* That (from an evolutionary point of view) "nature knew we were going to eat the bananas".
* That "The rules of evolution are simple: 1)Assume evolution 2)Observe a fact 3)Make up a story to fit the fact into the assumption."
* That coelacanths are a species.
* That there were no fossils displaying "half wing/half leg, half fin/half leg".
* That "numbers in favor of creation as an alternative explanation are rising all the time".
* That there are "fossils found in the wrong places".
* That there is "lack of any proof for increasing genetic information".
* That "evolution was quickly accepted as an hypothesis before anything but variation/natural selection was demonstrated".
* That there are "no proven intermediates".
* That contested intermediate forms "go out the window with no fanfare -just slip silently into obscurity to be replaced by the next hailed 'intermediate'"
* That "what seemed plausible in Darwin's time makes no sense in the light of modern genetics."
* That descriptions of "dragons" are descriptions of dinosaurs.
* That "Neanderthals are men with diseases"
* That "there are billions of 'where are they all' missing links that falsify the theory of evolution. No problem, make up a new plan called 'punctuated equilibrium' to take care of the lack of evidence."
* That "this i.e. evolution is a theory that can't be falsified".
* That "the evidence supports creation better than evolution".
* That "evolutionists assume a priori that the earth is billions of years old".
* That scientists "attach abnormal importance to the radiometric dating methods that (despite many assumptions) support their contention that the earth is billions of years old and ignore so many many other dating methods".
* That there are "dating methods that support a young earth".
* That radiometric dating is based on "presuppositions".
* That creationism has "loads of historical and archeological verification in its favour and lines up with the evidence".
* That "evolution was proposed as an alternative to creation based on fossils found in rocks and finches showing natural selection".
* That the old earth is "taken on faith".
* That there are "aging methods that say that [the old earth] is not so"
* That "creation is written off a priori by definitions of science"
* That macroevolution is "non-verifiable".
* That there are "billions of intermediates missing -no problem, come up with a theory that doesn't require them -like punctuated equilibria. There we are. It's true no matter what we find. Not falsifiable? Not a theory. That's evolution for you."
* That there are "red blood cells in dinosaurs".
* That there are "historical accounts of creatures called dragons that looked like the dinosaurs put together by paleontologists".
* That "James Hutton came along and decided randomly on the principle of uniformatarianism".
* That he "decided that everything in the past was exactly as it is now".
* That "Mt St Helens in gives us dates millions of years older than we know they actually are".
* That "radiometric dating on rocks of known date are invariably extremely wrong".
* That "geologists date the rocks according to their index fossils and then date some of the fossils according to the rock layers they are found in. Circular reasoning."
* That "C14 is not yet in equilibrium but is increasing -so we can't use that either since you need equilibrium before it can be applied."
* That "a lot of ID proponents are not religious at all".
* That there is an "evolutionary prejudice" that people 4000 years ago were "closer to apes than men".
* That "creationists by and large assumed that evolution had been proven more than a hundred years ago".Now, you may wish to claim that some of this is true. If so, feel free to start a thread.But it is clear that we are not just advancing different "interpretations" of the same facts. You think that these are facts. I think that they are ridiculous fictions, as, indeed, they are. It's not that we're interpreting these statements in different ways. It's that you've been duped into thinking that they're true, whereas I know that they're false.Your arguments do not rest on a different interpretation of facts. Your case rests on believing absurd fictions. This is why you haven't been able to support your "facts" with a single reference to the scientific literature.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

And what the "SCIENCE OF VALID REASONING" tells me is that things that don't help don't help.

And yet you said that ID is "absolute reality".Which of your statements do you believe? Do you claim that ID cannot be proven, or do you claim that it is "absolute reality"? See my post #228.We do not have "the same facts".I have the facts, you have silly creationist lies.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.