Creationism in science classrooms (an argument for)

Hi Teapots&unicorns, and welcome to the fray. It's been tried. FUNDIEs (Fundamentalists Under Numerous Delusions Involving Evolution) don't like it for the same reason they don't like evolution in science class - it doesn't teach only their religion. Evangelicals complained, and had the class removed from the curriculum. So much for "both sides" eh?Enjoy.

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Gosh, I'm shocked to hear that , I mean your name, your icon, your signature ... I had no clue! So you have made a subjective choice that there is/are absolutely no god/s after viewing the facts? Interesting.Enjoy.

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Rebel American Zen Deist
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Thanks, Teapots&unicorns. Yes, all of our sensing of objective reality is filtered by our senses. Blue is a popular color because of the way our eyes see blue.How we fit all our experiences together into a unified understanding of reality is called our world-view, even though not everything can be explained. Or give them the impression they know the answer to the unknowns, or it may be left over from some evolutionary benefit (fearless warriors get rewarded in afterlife) to the population, or it may be a side effect of a thinking brain. Or there just may be something that is out there and is immune to our testing and objective evaluations.All we can say, really, is that what we know of reality, is what we know of reality. Salt. Sugars and salts provide energy and minerals.I like green, dark green, but I don't like pink or pastels. I can't tell you why, though, I just find that this is what I prefer.Enjoy.

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Rebel American Zen Deist
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Hi Rahvin A non-science comparative religious class is permitted. It was tried in California, but too many Christian parents objected to their kids being taught about the other world religions.Sad.

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Rebel American Zen Deist
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Hi subbie, I hope to get back to our GD thread tomorrowi've been having computer probs and I get low on energy at end of day, so only have time for quickies. Actually both mutation and natural selection have been demonstrated to occur in labs and in the wild. These are FACTS that are known to be true.How? Mutations are demonstrated by changes in hereditary traits in following generations that did not exist in earlier generations and DNA analysis. Random selection is demonstrated by the change in frequency of hereditary traits that led to better adaptation.Google "e. coli long-term experiment" and you will see a population of bacteria grown from a single cell that over many many generations develop an ability to consume citrate that was not present in the parent population/s. Further analysis demonstrates at which generation two different mutations occurred that led to this feature.Google Peppered moths and Galapagos finches and you will see examples of natural selection in the wild. You can also see Peppered Moths and Natural Selection for a thread discussing this point.What is not proven is theory, here the theory that evolution - mutation AND selection - can explain all the diversity of life as we know it.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : add ecoli

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Hi Briterican, Why not teach all the real American religious narratives on creation/s etc?Native American Spirituality

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Many followers of Native American spirituality, do not regard their spiritual beliefs and practices as a "religion" in the way in which many Christians do. Their beliefs and practices form a integral and seamless part of their very being.

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Topics covered in this section:

• Native American: Quotations, Introduction and origins
• Development of Aboriginal culture. Adsorption of Native beliefs; Tribal recognition;
• Beliefs of Native American tribes, from the Arctic to the southwest
• Books and web sites dealing with Native American spirituality and culture

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Doesn't sound to me like it would be a bad class to teach, talking about spirituality as a common theme in religion would be an interesting concept, and it shouldn't raise any concerns by people comfortable in their various faiths.Native American Religion in Early America, Divining America, TeacherServe®, National Humanities Center

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Native American Religion in Early America

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Teaching about Native American religion is a challenging task to tackle with students at any level, if only because the Indian systems of belief and ritual were as legion as the tribes inhabiting North America. So let’s begin by trimming down that bewildering variety to manageable proportions with three glittering generalizations (which might, with luck, prove more useful than misleading).

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1. First, at the time of European contact, all but the simplest indigenous cultures in North America had developed coherent religious systems that included cosmologiescreation myths, transmitted orally from one generation to the next, which purported to explain how those societies had come into being.
2. Second, most native peoples worshiped an all-powerful, all-knowing Creator or Master Spirit (a being that assumed a variety of forms and both genders). They also venerated or placated a host of lesser supernatural entities, including an evil god who dealt out disaster, suffering, and death.
3. Third and finally, the members of most tribes believed in the immortality of the human soul and an afterlife, the main feature of which was the abundance of every good thing that made earthly life secure and pleasant.

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Sounds sort of similar to the Hindu faith, where there is a wild pantheon of spirits, but they are also all different aspects of the one universal god.I think the word "soul" is misleading here and implies a similarity to Christianity (or Hinduism, where the Christian concept came from) that is not necessarily valid: spirit would be better -- immortality of the human spirit and an afterlife -- and that would be more consistent with the first article.I think it would be an interesting class, but it would have to be a humanities, comparative religion, class, not a science class.Enjoy.

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Rebel American Zen Deist
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Hi subbie, I'll get back to our debate later. Science does prove facts: there are many experiments that have proven that

• the process of evolution has been observed to occur during experiments and field studies, and as a result we know that the process of evolution is a fact in those instances,
• the process of natural selection has been observed to occur during experiments and field studies, and thus it is a fact in those instances,
• the process of genetic mutation has been observed to occur during experiments and field studies, and thus it is a fact in those instances,
• the process of speciation has been observed to occur during experiments and field studies, and thus it is a fact in those instances.

What is never proven are the theories, but even there it is not completely cut and dry: through the process of the scientific method and building on the information we already know, we develop an approximation of the facts of reality that we don't yet know. As the theories are tested and refined, either through falsification and restatement or through validation and extension of the theory, we achieve a closer approximation to the unknown facts of reality than we had before.Einstein builds on Newton to achieve a closer approximation for the action of gravity, and all the gains in information that were derived from Newton's theory are still there, now supporting General Relativity. The next theory of gravity will build on Einstein and refine our approximation even further.A well tested hypothesis can become a theory after peer review and replication of results by other scientists, including the replication of positive evidence resulting from predictions and the negative replication of falsification tests.A well tested theory that has withstood many independent attempts to falsify it can be called a strong theory, or a law (coyote has a nice reference for defining hypothesis, theory and law, wish I kept the link).Thus we can say that validated, confirmed and heavily tested theory approximates fact (~fact)or that validated, confirmed and heavily tested theory approaches fact (→fact)Enjoy.

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Rebel American Zen Deist
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Hi subbie Neither is theory by itself science, as you seem to be claiming. Science is a combination of observation, experiment and theory, and it provides a framework for the acquisition of new observations that may not be made without the science predictions.If a theory predicts an outcome and that outcome is then observed, then the prediction has been proven to be true. This can include validation and invalidation test predictions. It's a little more than that.Speciation is a prediction of the evolutionary theory of common descent, and observing instances proves that speciation occurs. The observation of specific instances are examples of observations that prove the general process of speciation does in fact occur.Enjoy.

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Rebel American Zen Deist
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