Creationism in science classrooms (an argument for)

And here we see the essential reason why creationism should not be taught in schools.Because creationist arguments are crap. Crazy, malign, paranoid crap.

And that was crazy, malign, paranoid, and illiterate crap.This is why people like you aren't allowed to write school textbooks.

What a masterly piece of satire on creationism.Oh, wait, you're serious.

They put the Establishment Clause in the Constitution.Arguably when creationism was still plausible there would have been a legitimate secular purpose in teaching it. Now that it's just a religious dogma, there's no reason for teaching it any more than teaching the Bodily Assumption of the Virgin Mary. Judges disagree with you. And if the state paid the Corps of Engineers to build churches, you could argue that the Corps of Engineers are not the state. But the argument would seem somewhat tendentious.If the state pays someone to establish some religious view, then the state is establishing that religious view. If you deny that, then what teeth does the Establishment Clause have? Is the same true of teaching that the Earth is round rather than flat? Does failure to teach flat-Earthism constitute censorship and a breach of the law?Or do you want your argument only to apply to the silly ideas that you wish to be taught?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Why drag the Bible into it? In the first place, it too does not contain a scientifically agreed theory of the origin of life, and in the second place wouldn't the first amendment require that you mention every other origins myth as well?How about this: "No-one knows how life began. Some religious people have various conflicting hypotheses that all involve magic in some way, but there is absolutely no evidence for this, and overwhelming evidence against it in that the scientific evidence to date is that there's no such thing as magic. Hence, although we do not know and may never know the details, the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that life was produced by natural causes."Of course, as this is true, it would hardly be acceptable to you, but it does implicitly refer to the Bible and its scientific value (zero).

By creationism I meant fiat creation of species/"kinds"; that is, the bit that is falsified by our knowledge of evolution.

As I pointed out last time you asked this, it's bleedin' obvious. Clearly a sufficient number of mutations can turn any genome into any other genome.Now, your turn. Do you have any evidence for magic as a causative factor in biology?

But if you are going to go down that path, where are you going to draw the line?Some people will argue on religious grounds that the Earth is flat. Does that mean that we can't teach that the earth is round without breaching the Establishment Clause?We can't let religious people play dog-in-the-manger in that way, can we?If I founded a religion tomorrow which had amongst its tenets the proposition that two twos are five, would it then become wrong to teach the multiplication table?Even if we only had creationism to worry about, between them creationists have been wrong about nearly every subject in science, from thermodynamics to genetics to geology to the scientific method itself. Is every subject in science to be taboo if some religious person has made being wrong about that subject part of his religion?The only sensible thing to do is to say that teaching math and science and history and whatever else is acceptable even if it contravenes the religious dogmas of certain people.Or look at it this way. Suppose that all the evidence supported Young Earth Creationism. Suppose, for example, that radiometric dating showed that the Earth was six thousand years old. Suppose that the fossil record showed modern species persisting from the bottom on up. Would you then be saying that it is a breach of the First Amendment to teach these facts in school because they gave support to a particular religious view? I don't think you would. Nor would I. The facts should be taught.

No. Crick, having heard the word "dogma" in Enlish usage thought that it meant "something for which there is no evidence and may very well be false". Which is actually a good description of any religious dogma.That's why he used the word "dogma" to describe what he himself knew was no more than a tentative hypothesis.Finally, science does not teach this "dogma" because all scientists including Crick know it to be false, since retroviruses exist.

They are. You could say the same about gravity, and with the same degree of correctness.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

This sort of statement raises my hackles.There is a philosophical point of view from which it is true to say that "science never proves anything". But if we adopt this point of view then it would be equally true to say that I can't "prove" that I have two legs, not even by looking at them and counting them. As such, it redefines the word "prove" to the point where it loses its meaning in English as it is usually spoken.

Well, no. If it was true, then there would be a valid secular purpose in teaching it, and there would be no problem with doing so. The Supreme Court thinks you're wrong. And it wasn't the founders that wrote the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which is the legal foundation of the Incorporation Doctrine. "Intellectually solid"?Oh my dear chap.And there are a number of problems with returning it to the classroom, one being that you'd have to require every competent science teacher in the system to recite words which they knew to be untrue.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Which is why it's OK to implicitly teach that it's wrong.If someone founded a religion that had amongst its tenets that two twos are five, it might be illegal to denounce that religion by name,, just as it would be wrong to denounce the various Christian sects that promote creationism. But it would still be OK to teach that two twos are four.

I think you're wrong. As I understand the interpretation that the courts put on the First Amendment, it is illegal (in public schools, which is what we're talking about) to teach that Genesis is true; and it is also illegal to teach explicitly that it is false. However, one can teach the facts that falsify it.(I am not a lawyer, but I play one in elaborate swindles that defraud the gullible.)

Implicitly, perhaps. Well, for one thing, you overlook the legal concept of secular legislative purpose. There is a good reason for at least implicitly teaching that creationism is rubbish, namely that it is. Similarly there would be a good reason for teaching that it was true if it was true, namely that it was true.Again, I invite you to imagine a sect that taught that two twos are five. Would that sect, by its existence, make it unconstitutional to teach the multiplication table?