should creationism be taught in schools?

Hi Beretta,You're arguing that evolution is bad science, but this thread is discussing whether creationism should be included in science curriculums. I don't think, "Evolution is bad science, therefore creationism should be taught in science class," is a very good argument.In order to make a case for teaching creationism in science class you have to focus on its positive qualities with regard to science, not evolution's negative qualities.--Percy

Whether it's history or science or English or math, schools teach the scholarly consensus, so it's good to hear you mention "historical and archeological verification," because all you need is evidence to convince the historical/archeological community that Noah's flood and the crossing of the Red Sea really happened. And you only need scientific evidence in order to convince the scientific community of flood geology and a young earth. Once the evidence causes these views to become part of the consensus then they can be taught in school.So probably the question you must address is why the evidence you say exists has failed to convince these respective scholarly communities.--Percy

The evidence for an ancient earth is not even the topic of this thread, so I really hope you and jar aren't going to get into an extended "is not, is too" about this.This topic asks whether creationism should be taught in schools, so you first you need to know why it currently is not. That reason is that creationism is understood to be religion and not science.Creationists claim that creationism *is* science that should be taught in school, but what is taught in school is the consensus of scholarly opinion, and there is not at present a scientific consensus in favor of creationism. Physics and chemistry and biology (including evolution) are taught in science class because there is a scientific consensus behind them. Creationism is not taught because no such scientific consensus in its favor exists, and to teach it in school would be to teach something not currently accepted as science.So the next question to ask is why creationism is not accepted as science by the scientific community, and it basically comes down to a lack of evidence. The scientific community examined creationism's evidence between a hundred and a few hundred years ago and decided it was lacking. And that's why the scientific community rejects creationism and why it isn't taught in school.--Percy

Hi Beretta,I'll just reemphasize a familiar point: this thread asks whether creationism should be taught in schools. It isn't about evolution.Creationism isn't taught in schools because it is understood to be religion, not science. We teach accepted science in science class. To become accepted as science requires a period of study and research that is described in peer-reviewed papers in science journals and at conferences. Once a new idea becomes accepted by the scientific community, then it can be taught in science class.The scientific community not only doesn't accept creationism, it rejects it. In fact, it rejected it well over a hundred years ago. If creationists think they have new ideas that would pass muster as science then they have to present them to scientists rather than to church congregations and school boards, in particular not to school boards. It is the responsibility of school boards to make sure their curriculums properly cover current scientific understanding, and they should not be asked to make decisions about what is and isn't science. Scientists do that.--Percy

Hi Beretta,This thread is not about evolution, it's about whether creationism should be taught in schools. If you want to discuss evolution there are plenty of threads for doing that, or you can propose new threads. What you're being asked to do in this thread is support the thread's premise that creationism should be taught in school. So far all you're doing is arguing that evolution is wrong, but that's not the topic.To everyone else:The topic is not about evolution. Please help Beretta and this thread stay on topic.Okay, now back to the topic. You did say one thing that was on-topic: There is no scientific support for these ID interpretations. The scientific consensus does not include these ID interpretations. Lacking such scientific support means ID interpretations should not be taught in science classrooms where scientifically established knowledge is the focus.--Percy

Hi Beretta,There are plenty of threads where your arguments would be on topic. Let me see if I can find a few...Okay, why don't you try one of these:

• MACROevolution vs MICROevolution - what is it?
• Questioning The Evolutionary Process
• Why haven't we observed mutations of new body parts?
• Peppered Moths and Natural Selection
• Carbon 14 in fossils?
• Feedback about reliability of dating
• Age Correlations and an Old Earth: Version 1 No 3 (formerly Part III)
• Radioactive carbon dating
• Exploring the Grand Canyon, from the bottom up.
• Uniformitarianism
• Was there a worldwide flood?
• Is the Designer Still Designing?
• Irreducible Complexity and TalkOrigins
• Irreducible complexity at the microscopic level

But please stop posting off-topic in this thread. This thread is not about evolution, it's about whether creationism should be taught in schools.To everyone else: please help Beretta stay on-topic by simply urging him to get on-topic in response to anything he says that is off-topic. By all means, please do not respond to off-topic discussion.--Percy

While you appear to be saying that there are scientists with evidence supporting an ID interpretation, I definitely am not saying they are not worthy of having an opinion. I'm saying that their evidence and arguments have not found acceptance within the scientific consensus. These scientists do not even bother trying to influence the scientific consensus, for the most part taking their evidence and arguments to church congregations and school boards, publishing them in popular press books, and presenting them at websites.If ID scientists were really interested in having the community of scientists consider their evidence and arguments then they would instead submit them to peer-reviewed scientific journals where they could receive scientific scrutiny and give other scientists the opportunity to perform replication. No one's equating consensus with truth, but it does determine what is taught in school, be it English, history, math or science. Beyond that, something isn't considered true because it's part of a consensus. Rather, a consensus exists because something is likely true. You began by saying, "There IS scientific support for these ID interpretations," but since then you've only talked about interpretations, not "scientific support," by which I assumed you meant evidence. Evidence is all important. Granted there can be more than one valid scientific interpretation of a body of scientific evidence, but ID is a religious, not a scientific, interpretation. The evidence from which science concludes evolution doesn't have any other valid scientific interpretations that conclude "not-evolution." If ID scientists have scientific evidence that leads to scientific interpretations of ID, then they need to present that evidence to the community of scientists. It isn't that ID is specifically excluded from science class. It's that science class teaches the scientific consensus, which doesn't happen to include ID at the moment. The scientific consensus also doesn't include astrology or the medical theory of humours or the four elements of earth, air, fire and water. The only way such ideas can ever be taught in science class is by presenting them and their supporting evidence to the scientific community, and if the evidence is sufficiently persuasive then they'll become part of the consensus and then they'll be taught.What you're requesting is a special dispensation for ID so that it can be the only idea taught in science class that isn't accepted science, and obviously most people who support science are against this.--Percy

If evolution is an incorrect interpretation of the evidence then science will eventually figure that out and evolution will no longer be taught. But this won't happen if creationists continue taking the debate to the lay public while avoiding the scientific community. For example, while Michael Behe of Lehigh University publishes popular press books about ID like Darwin's Black Box and The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism, he has never published a paper about ID in a peer-reviewed technical journal. Perhaps you're right and there is more to the universe than can be detected by our senses, but science restricts its focus to the material world. The non-material world must be the focus of some other field of study, and most people understand the non-material world to be religion's realm. You're stating as a conclusion the very premise for which you have yet to submit any evidence to the scientific community. You seem to have science and religion confused. It is the responsibility of science to figure out how the universe works. It is the responsibility of religion to make sense of our existence. Science class isn't where science is done, it's where science is taught. If creationists would like their ideas taught in science class then they must submit them to venues where science is actually done so they can be considered and tested in the same place where all other scientific ideas are considered and tested before moving into mainstream venues like science classrooms.--Percy

No one would argue against following the evidence wherever it leads, but if there are scientists out there with evidence leading to ID then they need to present that evidence to the scientific community, not to church congregations and school boards. Scientists battling other scientists over ID is what I keep telling you is not happening within the halls of science. Once again, IDists are taking their evidence and arguments to church congregations and school boards. The only venues where ID scientists battle other scientists is in popular press books and websites, and also in courtrooms when school boards or legislatures violate separation of church and state. The battle is social/religious, not scientific. If ID scientists want a scientific battle then they are going to have to take their evidence and arguments to scientific venues, something which they currently do not do. We don't actually know that it's unlikely yet since the techniques for finding the such remnants have only recently been developed. We'll have to wait and see how many fossils actually reveal traces of such remnants. But let's grant for the sake of argument that such remnants surviving for millions of years is extremely unlikely and consider your statement that it casts doubt on the geologic timescale, which seems to raise two issues.The first is why the occurrence of a single unlikely event would cast doubt on something as well established as the geologic timescale.But the second issue is much more significant. Since you're an IDist, and since ID doesn't question the geologic timescale or much else within science because it simply postulates that evolution has had periodic help from a designer to get it over the hump presented by structures above a certain specified complexity, why would you question the geologic timescale?--Percy

Hi Nosy,In his defense, Beretta's had an enormous amount of help avoiding the topic.To everyone:If the word "school" or "classroom" or some sort of synonym does not appear in your message, you probably shouldn't be posting.To Beretta:I'm a little puzzled why people are making it so easy for you to avoid the topic, and I think suspensions could have been more evenly distributed had it not been that you've already been warned by three different moderators (four if you count me, but I'm participating as a regular member in this thread, so I don't actually count), but we do have a set of Forum Guidelines and a moderator team responsible for enforcing them. Posts that have off-topic content or skirt the Forum Guidelines are often given much more latitude if they also address the topic, but if not and if they also ignore moderator feedback then they are eventually going to draw a suspension. Suspensions can range from one hour to indefinite. A common suspension period is 24 hours.--Percy

We know you believe there is scientific support for your religious beliefs, in this one thread alone you've said this many times. But science class teaches what science believes has scientific support, not what Christian fundamentalists believe has scientific support.You argue that we should teach the controversy, but as has been pointed out, there is no controversy within science. Only around one out of a thousand biologists reject evolution, and that doesn't qualify as a controversy. A much higher percentage of physicists question relativity, but no one is calling that a scientific controversy.The controversy is socio-religious, not scientific. Teaching the controversy might be appropriate for a social studies class.You claim that creationist scientists are being excluded from scientific outlets for their research simply because they don't support evolution, but even if this were so the solution is still not to take their evidence and arguments to church congregations, school boards, popular press books and websites, which must comprise about 99% of what actually creationists do. Were creationism rather than evolution a theory which more closely described the real world, then creationist biologists would be making all the significant biological and medical contributions, but they're not. In fact, they don't make any significant biological or medical contributions at all. If you know of any, name them.As I mentioned before, Michael Behe, author of Darwin's Black Box, is a microbiologist at Lehigh University and the most visible proponent of ID, yet he has never submitted a paper about ID to any technical journal. He knows the scientific evidence isn't there. He understands that the concepts of irreducible complexity and specified complexity cannot be given any definition based upon scientific evidence. Many have asked you what you would teach about creationism in science class. Would you teach that there are no transitional fossils? But paleontologists have identified scads of transitional fossils and have described them in the technical literature, and the scientific consensus is that transitional fossils abound, so how could you justify teaching something science doesn't believe in science class?Or would you teach that if something looks designed that it must have had an intelligent designer? Science doesn't accept this, either, so again, how could you teach something as science that science doesn't believe?This is the point Dr Adequate has been trying to communicate to you, albeit a bit bluntly. If you teach as science something that isn't science, no matter how sincerely Christian fundamentalists think it should be, then you are teaching something that isn't true. You can honestly believe that creationism is true and evolution is false, and you can honestly believe that science is wrong in not including creationism, but you cannot honestly teach that science believes there are no transitionals or that something is designed if it looks designed or that there's a scientific controversy over creationism, because none of these things are true. And whatever we teach in school, it certainly shouldn't include things that aren't true.You mention some specifics: There's no scientific evidence for accelerated decay or for a young earth. If creationists believe such evidence exists then it is incumbent upon them to present this evidence to the scientific community by submitting papers to peer-reviewed technical journals. If the science is solid, the papers will be published. And if the conclusions implied by the evidence become accepted within the scientific community, then they'll be taught in science class. This is how everything else taught in science class got there, not by lobbying school boards and arguing for "equal time" or for "teaching the controversy" that they themselves invented.Saying that some accept the "uniformitarian principle" and some do not is a bit misleading, as uniformitarianism is not a label used in modern geology. If you check any geology textbook you'll find that uniformitarianism is only mentioned in one of the opening chapters, the one which relates the history of geology. The term fell out of favor long, long ago. Today geologists would instead say that the same array of forces and processes operating on our planet today have been operating on it continuously throughout geologic time. This is what they've always believed, and it's probably why the term uniformitarianism is no longer used, because to too many people it implies gradualism. Certainly gradual change is a large part of geology, as with the slow accumulation of sediments on sea bottoms at rates measured in centimeters per thousand years, but so is rapid change, as with volcanic eruptions, asteroid strikes, floods, storms and earthquakes.In other words, in criticizing uniformitarianism you're targeting an archaic term. Geologists no longer use the term to describe their views.--Percy

Hi Beretta,Given your recent posts I'm guessing that you're still not sure what's expected of you, so let me try to clarify. This would be a useful nice statement if the discussion were in the opening stages, it's always nice to get a clear statement of everyone's position, but you've already stated your position. Many times. By simply repeating yourself you're failing to address the rebuttals, which I won't bother to repeat here. If you'd like to avoid future suspensions then begin responding to what people have said so far about the problems with teaching the scientific evidence for design.Many have asked you about your evidence for design, but you haven't answered this either. If, for example, you'd like to discuss the bacterial flagellum, or perhaps blood clotting, or maybe the eye, then propose a thread over at [forum=-25]. I wouldn't recommend this thread because it is nearing 300 posts, and threads are usually closed after 300 posts.--Percy