Should we teach both evolution and religion in school?

Most of the Western world does teach religion and evolution in school without any problems at all. It's only the teaching of religion in a science class that gets Americans all hot and bothered (and quite rightly so.)

Jz writes: I will create a new topic proposal on this as it will require some serious examination for me.

A new topic on what? All you've done here is come up with a pile of already refuted petty protests. People around here call it the Gish Gallop.

By all means pick just one of the things you want to discuss and go with it - but you'll find that they've all been discussed here before; best have a read first and see if there's anything at all new you need answering.

Colbard writes: So the evolutionary purpose of life is? To breed.

Evolution does not have a purpose, it's just a human description of a naturally occurring process - like gravity or radioactivity. You're confusing a process with agency.

It would be closer - but still wrong - to say that living organisms' purpose is to replicate (not all forms of replication requires breeding). it would be wrong to say that because almost all organisms are not conscious agents so the idea of 'purpose' is invalid.

Colbord writes: Should we teach evolution and religion at school?

Might as well ask if we should teach chemistry and the history of art. Of course we should, they are both extraordinary examples of knowledge and culture.

We should teach neither. Show what nature has but don't put forward dumb conclusions, let the students make up their own mind.

Cobblers. We teach the things we have learned - incuding our conclusions from the evidence. Students are free to make up their own minds about whether the conclusions of the concensus are correct or otherwise.

Colbrad writes: Going by modern standards we might as well dispense with religion altogether.

That would be as big an error as not teaching evolution. Religion is part of our history and culture and we need to remember the mistakes we made with it and why we made them so that we can understand and live easier alongside others with differing beliefs.

Colbard writes: I get what you are saying. It is balanced and with best intent, but do you know how creepy both religion and evolution are? And how that both are controlled by spiritually inept men?

I certainly know how creepy religion is and how it is controlled by inept men. That's why it needs to be taught.

Evolution though is just science; no different than any other. No one is in control of it - prove it wrong and you'll get a Nobel prize.

Given all that - which is obviously true - why the fuck do we bother arguing with her? That's something I've been wondering about for a while.

Colbard writes: True, but imagine how far you'd have gotten at school if the teacher had just stated that the letter "a" is "a" and you said, prove it to me, I won't believe it until it is proven to be so. You'd never get ahead. But you accepted the alphabet by faith so that you could learn to read. The proof that "a" = "a" could only come if you accepted it first. Such is creationist knowledge. "by faith we understand that God created worlds" -plural, not single, here is evidence of other worlds, and yet science has not discovered them yet or have they?

This is an argument that we can hopefully convince you to abandon because it has creationist answer. We, man created 'a'. Man imagined it into existence in order to help him communicate over time.

Man said 'let there be an alphabet', and lo, there was a letter 'a' and man saw the 'a' and it was good. So man creted 'b'. After the 26th letter he rested.

A bit later man said go forth and multiply, but that's another story.....

Colbard writes: It's interesting that if someone does not believe in evolution, that they are automatically labelled as religious. Is that because evolution is a direct hit at the thought of God? Or is it just a convenient label while they don't have another?

I have never met anyone that doesn't believe in evolution that isn't also religious. Have you? The reason for this is to non-religious people, evolution is just another part of science with no more significance than organic chemistry or Hook's Law. It's just not controversial.

To a few religious people - the few literal biblical creationists in the first world (which means pretty much only in the USA) - evolution proves those ceation passages are myths, so they continue to fight a battle that was lost over a hundred years ago.

Personally I think both have the same source in ruling the thoughts of men, which in the end is about removing the value of independent thought.

That's just ignorant. Religion is dogmatic - it's not subject to independent thought; it's core tenets can't change. Science has change as an essential part of it constitution and it thrives on independent thought - it can't exist without it, that's why be get huge breakthroughs from time to time. Science is iconoclastic, every scientist would give a body part to overturn a hard clad, existing theory or create a new one.

Colbard writes: The falsehood of science is the dismissal of God,

The falsehood of this statement is that science doesn't dismiss god.

There is no scientific statement made about god anywhere. Science has nothing whatsoever to say about god. Loads of scientists believe in God.

All science does is comment on stuff in the natural world which it can observe and test. Some religions have found that this process has revealed that some of their ancient stories are not literally true. That's all.

Colbard writes: The bottom line of modern science is to dismiss God, with or without mentioning the Name.

Utter crap. Science doesn't give a monkeys about god and gods.

If you think differently please support your assertion with evidence. The evidence needs to be policies, statements from academic institutions, peer reviewed papers - anything in the hundreds of millions of books and papers referring to science's actual work that claims that it is setting out to "dismiss" God/s.

By the way, that excludes opinions of what scientists personally believe about god/s. e.g. Dawkins.

Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

Colbard writes: I gave the story of the coin dating as a trigger to help the 'scientists' blow their steam off, giving them an opportunity to run me over with a bulldozer full of regular words

No you didn't. What you did was repeat a story you'd read on a creationist site or been told by another nutty creationist and presented it as your own experience with some flowery additions. You thought that it was proof of a carbon dating error. In other words you told a huge porky pie and got caught.

Now you're telling more lies and everyone can see it. The dishonest tactics haven't worked, why don't you try being honest for a while - you never know, it might work.

Colbard writes: What will you feel and say when your world of conclusions is proven wrong?

If what we think we know is wrong, we damn well want to know about it and as soon as possible. Bring it on.

Colbard writes: What if you don't know that you don't want to know?

You appear to be talking about things that we DO think that we know about so we might as well start there. What do you have for us?

Colbard writes: Carbon dating is the holy grail of evolution. It's entire structure rests on that poor brick, and many other poor foundations like it have been buttressed to keep the confounded thing from looking unsupported.

I'm not sure why we bother correcting you anymore - you're oblivious to information, but just in case you ever care about not making a fool of yourself.....Evolution was discovered in the early 19th century and published in 1860. Radioactivity wasn't discovered until 30+ years later but radiocarbon dating wasn't invented until 40 years after that.

Radiometric dating is not required for evolution but it IS required by creationists because had creation happened in the last 10,000 years, it would prove it.

It's the same kind of thing with genetics, evolution was accepted by science well before there was any knowledge of genetics. Genetics could have completety debunked evolution as a theory by disproving common ancestry. Instead it fitted in beautifully.

Scientific theories are cool like that - they're built from multiple sources of independent evidence, each one capable of proving the whole wrong.

So if you have any evidence to disprove any of these things, it'd be great to hear from you.
(Yeh, right.)