It seems that the UK Department of Education is able to
function reasonably adequately even while its minister is daydreaming about
royal yachts.
The Guardian is reporting the success of a campaign headed by
Richard Dawkins, Sir David Attenborough and the British Humanist Association
(BHA) to prevent faith-based Free Schools teaching creationism as fact with the
DoE revising their agreements to remove the government funding from
establishments which try to run religious “Intelligent Design” Trojan horses in
science lessons.
It worrying that such a measure has been necessary in the
UK, but I guess the level of nutbarism in the US was overflowing in influence
and dollar-terms into the UK. We should be awake to that same influence coming to NZ, and I will certainly be writing to both John Banks and Hekia Parata with
respect to the establishment of Free or Charter schools here.
Where my positive impressions start to evaporate, is in the
wording reportedly inserted into the agreements to make this happen:
funding will be withdrawn for any free school that teaches what it claims are "evidence-based views or theories" that run "contrary to established scientific and/or historical evidence and explanations".
There’s another obvious area of contention that this catches,
which is the climate change / AGW argument. So schools will also be forced to
teach only the government approved Al Gore line? It's a carte blanche to push whatever the state wants pushed. Making a sweeping change based on one specific circumstance is always a bad idea, why not a simple "No mucking about with the scientific method, there'll be none of that, and Creationism is right out."
Science is about competing evidence-based theories, take
that away, and it’s not science anymore. The point about “Intelligent Design”, is
that it isn’t “evidence-based” at all, ask a proponent for evidence in favour
of ID and what you’ll get is an attempt to poke holes in the evidence for
something else (such as a “gap” in the fossil record), therefore Evolution can’t
have happened and the only other option is god dunnit.
I feel like I’m expressing a worryingly socialist point of view,
I want other peoples’ children to be taught what I think is right, but I guess
there’s always a point at which principles and reality clash…
2 comments:
Yes, the wording is a bit too free and easy for comfort. Obviously, children should be taught to weigh opposing scientific theories as long as said theories are derived by scientific method. ID and creationism usually fail this test as no scientific theory can rely on the miraculous or the magical. To be science, it must be a naturalistic theory. ID may be an interesting explanation, but it is not a scientific theory and should not be taught as such.
Well put James, although I had to look to see who had posted this as it didn't seem to fit KS's style!
As a christian I have serious concerns with ID and "Creationism", especially the 7 literal days brigade and the young-earthers. The human genome pretty clearly shows common ancestry with certain members of the ape family (but not others - can't recall which off-hand) over a long period of time.
OTOH, there are extreme evolutionists too, including those you list. I recall that Bill Bryson's "Short History of Almost Everything" mentions that all fossils ever discovered would fit in the back of a ute or pickup truck, so perhaps some caution is required. A good example of extension from the known facts is the classic ape drawing, based on some fossilised footprints and nothing else, but commonly appearing in texts with little, if any, explanation.
So regrettably, both extreme Evolutionists and extreme Creationists tend to use the same type of dogma as Warmists, to the discredit of all.
On the latter topic, I've just read "The Chilling Stars" - brilliant. The science is compelling, but at the same time the enormity of the universe does tend to suggest that a creator might have been involved (just sayin').
So my theory, subject to testing of course(!), is that God is the creator of the universe, and his methodology includes, but is not limited to, evolution.
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