Should we teach both evolution and religion in school?

I have been at EvC for ten years, Colbard. The debates that I have had here have been varied. Sometimes they frustrate me. Often they challenge me, should I so choose to expand my knowledge or change my mind. In my opinion, there is a difference between debating with someone whom I do not know(in an internet familiarity sense) and with someone whom I do know.(such as jar or ringo) When we debate here, we are seeking to understand the world view and personality of our opponent--not simply to "win" the debate but so as to further understand how they think and why they think the way that they do. It is my observation that the method of thought and the approach used to formulate an individual point of view differs between evolutionists(in general) and Biblical creationists(in general.) Your opponents tend to look at the evidence and they employ critical thinking skills. They do this to such a high degree that they rarely become believers in God such as you may be. (Though there are exceptions to every rule) Belief does not need evidence. (some critics would disagree, however) The essence of belief does not normally engage in serious critical thinking nor the scientific method since these tools would assign a permanent skepticism and doubt into the belief...which believers quite naturally would want to avoid. Speaking strictly of subjective((individual and internally verified) evidence, I might agree with you. Certainly there would be no reason for me to disagree.

No-one carbon-dated your coin. It is false. Yes, you're right. You have chastened us. Obviously the question of which subject, if either, should be taught in schools, has nothing to do with which one, if either, is correct, and you have displayed a complete lack of focus by engaging us in this discussion.Because you are very stupid, I should explain that that was sarcasm. So, you can't think of any evidence for creationism? But this is obviously garbage, because many people who believe in a Creator --- many of the people arguing with you right now --- also think that creationism is trash. How does your half-baked amateur psychology account for them? We have religious schools and universities. Where are the important scientific results coming out of Bob Jones University?

Reality is calling. You ripped out the wires.

Doc, we all tend to get caught up in emotional barbs directed at our exasperating opponents. Perhaps it would be productive for us to direct our responses, accusations and insinuations at the philosophy of the opponent rather than the opponent themselves. Forum GuidelinesThis goes for all of us, by the way...im not picking on any one member in these discussionsCarry on Edited by AdminPhat, : clarification

Huh? Whatever about 1844 are you referring to?The Edict of Toleration, allowing Jews to settle in the Holy Land?The closing of the Fleet Prison for debtors in London? Guess that would have been a biggie for Aussies.The founding of the precursor of the Bah' Faith? Are you Bah'? Funny, I had always thought that Bah's were a lot more reasonable and rational.The sending of the first electrical telegram over the telegraph? But you've indicated copiously how much you hate science.The Great Flood of 1844 hitting the Missouri River and Mississippi River? You must love to watch train wrecks too.The founding of the YMCA in London?The martyring of Joseph Smith, Jr., founder of the Latter Day Saint movement? Are you Mormon?The extinction of the Great Auk?The meeting of Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx?The first ever international cricket match (played in New York City, United States v Canadian Provinces)? Are you a sports nut? Just when I thought you couldn't possibly sink any lower in my esteem.The debut of an opera by Joe Green (AKA Giuseppe Verdi)? Naw, that would have gone completely over your head.The publishing of "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" which paved the way for the acceptance of Darwin's book, "The Origin of Species"?Or was it the Great Disappointment? Jesus' Second Coming was predicted by the Millerites to happen on 22 October 1844. Of course, it didn't happen, which led to the Great Disappointment, which, among many other things, led to the formation of the Seventh-Day Adventists for whom that date became very important.Is that what you are, one of Ellen G. White's guys? We had one of you on CompuServe. What a piece of work he was! He posted copiously, but never his own writings. He would copy from creationist books so slavishly verbatim that he would include the footnote numbers (but never the footnotes themselves) -- since this was before scanner and OCR technology was common or affordable, we knew he had to have copied it all by hand. We'd comment or question part of a post and he'd "response" with yet another long verbatim copying for that book. When I was finally able to get him to post in his own words, all he could do was to try to convert me! Then he started going on and on about the miraculous physical feats that Ellen G. White could perform while in a deep trance, all of which I was also able to do because of my Aikido training and without having to go into any kind of a trance. Soon as I informed him of that, he instantly had very important business he had to attend to and completely disappeared from that point on. I reposted a reply I had written on CompuServe to his post of "23 Points" against evolution: 23 POINTS AGAINST EVOLUTION AND RESPONSES THERETO.Or maybe you were just referring to the year when annual British iron production reached 3 million tons.Whatever you wanted to mean by including that year, it couldn't have been important.

So we can rely on that evidence of creation to tell us how it was accomplished, and we can scientifically investigate this evidence.Any belief that is at odds with this evidence of the actual creation must be a false belief, based on snippets rather than looking at the whole.This evidence of creation shows that the earth is old, very old, that the universe was created before the earth, that the earth was created before life appeared, as part of the solar system in the remote arms of the MilkyWay galaxy.This evidence of creation shows there was no global flood, nor was there any special creation of any species, including man. And if you reject that evidence then you are rejecting that creation.Enjoy.

No it's not. It simply can't be.The reason is that you can't carbon date a coin. If you sent a coin to a dating lab, it would be returned with a note explaining politely that it's not possible to do what you ask.The best spin I can put on this is that it's a false memory but I don't believe it - I know you've just taken a stupid creationist story and clImed it for your own.Anyway, you've refused to produce anything to back up the multiple wild and clownish claims you've made, so I'm not actually expecting anything from you now.

It may be typical of really ignorant teenagers or of lying teenagers but not of reasonably intelligent or educated teenagers but the fact that if there had been a mixup (which there wasn't) it did not concern you at the time and neither did you find out would speak volumes about you were it true.How much carbon is in an Australian penny?If you test an object using radio-carbon dating that returns a reading of no measurable ¹⁴C what age will get returned?Did you not say " I have never believed the methods claimed for dating materials is correct, mainly because I had a coin from 1958 which dated at 2500 years old by radio carbon dating." in Message 557.Stop just making shit up.Again, if you test an object using radio-carbon dating that returns a reading of no measurable ¹⁴C what age will get returned?If the object contains no ¹⁴C or carbon of any form whatsoever what age would you get?In neither case could the answer be 2500 years.When you post absolute absurdities and continue to insist they are not absolute absurdities and in fact true while refusing to provide any support or evidence for your assertions should anything you post be taken seriously? And so you make another absurd assertion and even go so far as to declare that absurd assertions do not require support.You then followup that absurd assertion with a totally false assertion like "Once a person or society has decided to go down a certain track of philosophy which includes denial of the Creator, it is nigh impossible for them to see any evidence of truth outside of their head space." as though anything in either the fact that evolution happened or the Theory of Evolution that explains what is seen denies any creator.Compounding absurd statement with outright false statements does not help your case.

So you continue to waffle back and forth on this, now implying that you (or someone) just mixed up the information and that it "did not concern" you at the time.You also claimed that you did not trust 14C dating because of the coin story.You are going to have to choose whether the story is absolutely true (according to your memory anyway) or a mixup.If it was just a mixup then you have no cause to distrust 14C dating.But if it is true, then you still have no cause to distrust 14C dating ... for reasons that should be obvious when you know how 14C dating works.Whether or not there was any carbon in the coin and whether or not it was actually tested by a lab (which I absolutely doubt without corroborating documentation) is really irrelevant to whether or not you can date a metal coin with 14C measurements.Now I've explained this to you before, but let me repeat it in a little more detail so that maybe it will sink in, and maybe you will learn something. Image from How Carbon-14 Dating Works -- see link for information on this if you doubt what I say.The measurement of 14C compared to 12C is only used to date organic matter -- things that were living.The reason for this is that during the life of the organism it takes up (consumes) carbon from the atmosphere.Coins are incapable of doing this.Carbon-14 is formed constantly in the atmosphere from cosmic rays from the sun hitting nitrogen-14 atoms, and this sets the basic ratio between 14C and 12C in the atmosphere.The 14C dating method is based on the decay of 14C in the organism after the organism dies.Up until death the 14C faction is replenished in the organism from the atmosphere (which is constantly replenished by the cosmic ray bombardment).Coins don't "die" they are inanimate non-life. So there is no take-up of carbon by the coin.It is the death of an organism that starts the 14C "clock" and without death of an organism you do not have a start for the clock.Without a valid start for the clock you cannot get a date.So even if it is possible that there was carbon in your coin it does not give you a date, just a measurement of 14C and 12C.There are alternate sources of 14C than the atmosphere, so just measuring 14C and 12C does not give you a date. You must eliminate other possible sources, and you must have the preconditions of it being from an organism that consumed atmospheric carbon while living.In addition there are alternate reservoirs of carbon that some organisms consume, such as marine organisms. In these cases there will need to be a correction to the dating data to reflect the different 14C/12C ratio available in that reservoir. This is discussed in detail at Corrections to radiocarbon dates..Coins do not meet that precondition for testing, and any data obtained does not indicate a date for the coin.Do you understand this?Thus you have no honest reason to doubt 14C dating based on this coin story -- whether it is true or false.Can you admit this, or are you going to continue to play games with this ridiculous claim as only a fool\troll would do?It is your choice whether you want to be seen as a valid debater or as a fool\troll.Enjoy.

And yet again you admit to being a troll, purposely acting to create discord and then hypocritically blaming us for what you yourself had wrought.OK, let's talk honestly. Why are you here? What is your objective? What are you seeking to accomplish? By what actions do you intend to accomplish that objective?The function of this forum is discussion. Is it your objective to engage in discussion? Or is your objective to disrupt all discussion? Is your intention to be a participant or to be a troll? So far, you've been a troll.Or is your objective to be a martyr? Stir up discord and negative reactions to you so that you can then cry "oh poor persecuted me! Look at how mean those nassty evolutionistses are!" You want to claim that you are hated for being a creationist? Bullshit! Any hatred or anger directed your way is because you're a hateful disruptive troll.Or are you a POE who is only posing as a creationist in order to discredit them. Don't bother! They do a sterling job of discrediting themselves; they don't need your help!If you want to participate in discussion, then do so and stop acting like a troll! If you want to participate in discussion, then please explain to us how you think that you can accomplish that by acting like a troll. If you only want to be a troll, then forget it!Why are you here? What is your objective?And just out of curiosity, are you still completely clueless as to why your coin story is so incredibly beyond idiotic?

But what is the cause of that denial of the Creator? Not science. Science cannot disprove the existence of any of the gods, nor does it try to nor does it have any need to, nor does it have any desire to.Rather, it is "creation science" that is the cause of that denial of the Creator. And it is "creation science" that is able to disprove the existence of the Judeo-Christian God and it is "creation science" that is very zealous in imposing its teachings that disprove the existence of the Creator. I've explained that to you already. Stop trying to blame others for your own mess!"Creation science"-based theology is very much a false religion. Chop it down and throw it into the fire! Jesus' orders! (Matt 7:20)

Please note that I am taking your suggestion seriously and am trying to discuss it with you. Whether you choose to become a participant or remain a troll is entirely up to you. As Percy replied, this is already being done, though I'm not sure how well the outcome is being monitored and data collected for analysis.As I understand, for the most part the Christian- and home-schooled students age out of that system and end up entering the general student population in regular colleges and universities, or even younger at the high school (grades 10-12 or 9-12) and junior high (AKA "intermediate" -- grades 7-9 or 6-8) public school levels. When I first entered into college (1969) we all had to take a battery of placements tests to measure our math and verbal skill levels. Since then, it became very common for colleges and universities to use applicants' SAT scores to decide whether to admit that student. To test the results of undergraduate education in colleges and universities in the two groups, there's the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) that's commonly required for admission into post-graduate programs. Such test scores should be excellent for comparing the results of both types of schooling and it cannot be stressed enough that all examination of the results of the education of the two groups must be by the same standards or else any attempt at comparing them will be meaningless. Unfortunately, that testing would need to gather statistics about the test-takers' educational background in order to identify which of the two groups each belongs to, which I very much doubt is being done as part of the testing process.Also, as I noted above, there would be a third group, kind of a hybrid, which would include those students who started out in one group and then transferred over to the other group. I would also think that this would be a significant group that would be very interesting to study.Or we could do as Dr Adequate suggests and see what kind of research is being done by creationist universities as opposed to regular universities. One problem that I can see with that is that there could be inherent differences in curricula which might prove very significant, significant enough to make direct comparison very difficult if not virtually impossible. For example, a regular university would be expected to have very strong science departments, but a smaller and very diverse religious studies department. In contrast, a creationist university or "Bible college" would be expected to have very strong religious studies and religious education programs, but what kind of science programs they'd have would be questionable. Also, a regular university would be expected to have strong humanities programs, including philosophy, whereas a "Bible college" would have absorbed those programs under its religious studies umbrella, which would be a very narrow umbrella that caters only to one particular Christian denomination to the exclusion of the vast majority of other Christian denominations, not to mention all other religions.How would a creationist school handle its science program? We caught a glimpse of that in 1988 when the State of California was considering whether to renew accredidation for the Institute for Creation Research's (ICR) graduate degree in science. The process involved a visitation committee visiting the ICR's school and observing their classes. In one biology class, the ICR pointed out that they used the same textbook as regular universities use in their graduate classes, but then the committee members observed a class in progress: the instructor was taking the class through the book page by page and telling them which parts to cross out because "We don't believe that. And we don't believe that either. ... ". They weren't learning the subject matter, but rather what they needed to reject. The history of that school's accredidation is long and involved. Basically, renewal was rejected so the ICR sued and was given a temporary reprieve, then they created their own accredidation program with which to accredidate themselves, but then they moved to Texas which did not accept their accredidation and unanimously rejected their application for accredidate, which led to a long legal battle with Texas, which ended with the ICR closing their science school and opening it again as "a School of Biblical Apologetics, offering a Master of Christian Education degree with Creation Research being one of four minors", thus making it exempt from accredidation. The entire story is at http://en.wikipedia.org/...Research#School_and_accreditation.Or perhaps an acceptable metric of the effectiveness of a "creationist university" education over one from a regular university would be in the employability of their graduates: How well are those graduates able to perform in their professions?Again, we have evidence of that. Glenn R. Morton was a creationist with a bachelors in physics who studied geology from the ICR and who wrote several articles on geology for creationist publications. He went to work for an oil exploration company, where he hired in several of his fellow ICR geology graduates. They had been thoroughly schooled by the ICR in creationist geology, but now they were working day after day directly with the rock-hard geological evidence that actually exists. They were completely unprepared for being faced constantly with geological evidence that the ICR had taught them did not exist and could not possibly exist for Scripture to have any meaning. As a result, they all suffered crises of faith. After reporting about this to the 1986 International Conference on Creationism (ICC), Morton suffered through a decade-long crisis of faith that drove him to the verge of atheism.Please note that those crises of faith had absolutely nothing to do with "differences of interpretation, but rather with the physical geological evidence and what it very clearly showed. The only interpretation that had any involvement in the matter was the ICR's interpretation that that physical geological evidence did not exist and could not exist ... and yet it does indeed exist.So then apparently another test we can apply is whether a creationist or a normal education does a better job of preparing the student to deal with reality.Another metric for the effects of a creationist education could be that of retainability: How many Christian children raised on a creationist education stay in the faith and remain creationists for the rest of their lives?The answer is "damned few!" A large majority of youth raised in conservative/evangelical/fundamentalist Christian homes end up leaving the faith with many of them either leaving Christianity itself or forsaking religion altogether. Conservative Christian sources and youth ministries give the loss rates in figures ranging from 65% to 80%. Most cite attending public schools and college or university as a prime factor. Having been involved with "creation science" and having read several deconversion stories caused by creationism, my understanding is that it's when they learn actual science and realize that they had been lied to all their life. However, a blog I read a few years ago (link no longer available) cited a study that showed that it's the humanities in college that lead to far more deconversions than science does. According to that study, it is due to their learning that other perpectives exist, ways of looking at things other than their own, and of looking at things through other perspectives, as well as understanding those other perspectives, plus learning to examine all perspectives objectively, including their own, which are all what happens in history, literature, and philosophy classes. One of the greatest deficiencies in a fundamentalist Christian education is the lack of exposure to ideas that differ from their own, leaving the students with the stunted view that their way of seeing the world is the only way possible.The reason for all that lost faith is that the premises that they were taught cannot withstand the light of day, but rather will wither and crumble away in the face of reality. That means that those who taught them those premises failed to teach them true premises and failed to guide them in forming valid conclusions that could then be true premises for when they did encounter reality. That is what a creationist education does.If instead of being taught booby-trapped false premises that would blow up in their faces when hit with reality, they were taught premises that are not contrary to fact and to reality, then their faith should have nothing to fear from reality as they can arrive at logical conclusions that include their faith. That is what a regular education can do and regularly does do.The choice could not be any clearer.

We had top scientists in Australia, examine the evidence for this survey and types like it.
It so happens that church communities are far more accepting of the disadvantaged than the universities etc. and are found to be looking after them - trying to educate them, so that the conclusion - of Christians being dumber than the rest, is not only false, but shows a lack of compassion and understanding.Edited by Colbard, : shorten

I go along with the way you reason, you are very even. You know that we differ in our conclusions of what we have studied and seen, and it is not likely that we can convince each other into the other's thoughts.Evolution touches a wide spectrum of investigations, yet it remains challenged, even by former proponents, and the same goes for creationism, who have a vast number of absconders.It seems that the education system is just a reflection of our mixed culture and will probably always be in tune with it.

So if the beta decay is increased somehow while the carbon is in the ground, then we will have the reading for a very old bone.
The earth radiates alpha and beta particles as if it has a surplus, could this process accelerate the decay rate while the object is buried? A rate which is far slower in lab conditions?The belief in evolution was not very strong in my school, some thought it was a joke and most did not think about it. Did I hear someone else's results? Probably,
I assumed it was an error, not because I understood carbon dating, but because I did not believe the earth was that old, let alone the coin. I thought carbon dating was somehow wrong and did not know how.
I still assume it is wrong because I have studied the global flood as a hobby, and it adds up fine.