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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6187534.stm

Let us test Darwin, teacher says

Science teaching materials deemed "not appropriate" by the government should be allowed in class, Education Secretary Alan Johnson has been urged.

Chemistry teacher at Liverpool's Blue Coat School, Nick Cowan, says the packs promoting intelligent design are useful in debating Darwinist evolution.

Education officials insist intelligent design is not recognised as science.

It argues that evolution cannot explain some things so the universe must have had an intelligent creator.

The packs were sent out to 5,000 secondary schools by a group of academics and clerics known as Truth in Science.

The Department for Education and Skills said they were inappropriate and not supportive of the science curriculum.

Reacting to Mr Cowan's letter, a DfES spokesman said: "Neither creationism nor intelligent design are taught as a subject in schools, and are not specified in the science curriculum.

"The National Curriculum for science clearly sets down that pupils should be taught that the fossil record is evidence for evolution, and how variation and selection may lead to evolution or extinction."

The call from Mr Cowan - former head of the school's chemistry department - comes as the Guardian reported that the Truth in Science materials were being used in 59 schools.

'Sacred cow'

Mr Cowan says they are "very scholarly" and could be extremely useful in helping children understand the importance of scientific debate

He told the BBC: "Darwin has for many people become a sacred cow.

"There's a sense that if you criticise Darwin you must be some kind of religious nut case.

"We might has well have said Einstein shouldn't have said what he did because it criticised Newton."

He argues that science only moves forward by reviewing and reworking previous theories and that these materials foster an understanding of this.

'Controversy'

He also points out that the Truth in Science materials, which he describes as outstanding, do not mention creationism or even God.

He says the GCSE syllabus requires children to appreciate how science works and understand the nature of scientific controversy.

"The government wants children to be exposed to scientific debate at the age of 14 or 15.

"All the Truth in Science stuff does is put forward stuff that says here's a controversy.

"This is exactly the kind of thing that young people should be exposed to," Mr Cowan added.

'Poorly served'

The chairman of the parliamentary science and technology committee, Phil Willis, said using the packs in science classes "elevated creationism" to the same level of debate as Darwinism and that there was no justification for that.

He added: "There's little enough time with the school curriculum to deal with real science like climate change, energy and the weather.

"This is quite frankly a distraction that science teachers can well do without."

Dr Evan Harris, honorary associate of the National Secular Society and Liberal Democrat science spokesman, said it was worrying that some schools were giving "this nonsense" any credence.

Many leading scientists argue that theories about intelligent design should not be allowed in school because they are simply not scientific.

Back in April, the Royal Society warned against allowing creationism in school saying that pupils must understand that science backs Darwin's theory of evolution.

The society's statement said: "Young people are poorly served by deliberate attempts to withhold, distort or misrepresent scientific knowledge and understanding in order to promote particular religious beliefs."

Recently the British Humanist Association asked Mr Johnson for greater clarity on the teaching of creationism in schools.

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Oh dear, we are getting into trouble aren't we?

- An organisation called 'truth in science' wants to pitch a message about some sort of magic.

- Our goverment seem to think that 'climate change' is real science.

What hope for science and truth?

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Hang on, hasn't this already happened in the US with 'Intelligent Design' being taught as an alternate theory in science classes. Christian Fundementalism back the back door.

Can't remember the link but there is a website that 'believes' in the flying spaghetti monster as the creator and have lodged a cmplaint to the school boards that insist in ID being taught for not teaching 'Spaghetti Monsterism' as another alternative theory.

The words 'Hoisting' 'Own' and 'Petard' spring to mind.

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Gordon Brown saying I got the country into it's current economic mess so I'll get us out of it is the same as Bomber Harris nipping over to Dresden and offering to repair a few windows.

Chaos, panic and disorder - my work here is done.

http://www.wildcrafts.co.uk

If this means less brainwashing with junk propoganda thinly desguised as "undisputed truth" science, then bring in Creationism, and have a sensible debate about it. Admit that science doesn't explain everything yet, and has never claimed to, and that it is only the best version that we have come up with based on what we currently know - subject to scrutiny and widespread peer review. Then use the same to demolish man-made global warming theory as it doesn't stand up to any sort of detailed scrutiny.

May you be touched by His noodly appendage.

gods have no place in science, except maybe to mention that people who didn't understand how things work as well as we do now made them up to explain whatever they needed.

"design by gods", which I believe is a better name, is all well and good until you simply ask, who designed the gods? And who designed whoever designed the gods? Or did they... evolve?

Sounds like freaky religos wanting to control people, after all that's what religion is all about.
Which is a shame because I actually enjoyed going to church when I was young. Except for the boring religious part.

Evolution can be seen in a lot of things. Hands up who is running a 286 with a Winchester hard disk? Anyone? Why not?

I do like science. I frequently watch Brainiac and Look Around You.

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Andrew.

It depends on your view on what “god” is. To believe science disproves god, I believe is wrong, and is and arrogant view. Also to think of god as some bloke in the sky is probably wrong to. What if science proves the existence of a supreme being? The simple fact is every thing in the universe wants to go the lowest energy state and the highest state of disorder. Yet there are parts of the universe, which are highly ordered. Like things living on earth. I am not a religious nut, but I think you would be surprised how many scientists are religious. Some scientists see something divine in the simplicity of the atom and how they form and begin to build highly complex systems.

Remember Darwin is still a theory. A lot of what is assumed to be science fact is quite simply a model of the best guess of what happens.



That theory is worthless. It isn't even wrong! ~Wolfgang Pauli


Facts are not science - as the dictionary is not literature. ~Martin H. Fischer

Science, like life, feeds on its own decay. New facts burst old rules; then newly divined conceptions bind old and new together into a reconciling law. ~William James, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, 1910

Science is always wrong. It never solves a problem without creating ten more. ~George Bernard Shaw

The First Clarke Law states, 'If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible he is almost certainly right, but if he says that it is impossible he is very probably wrong.'



Edit:- One more thing if I was "god" I would desgin things to evolve, And I would start with something smiple- like a single cell.

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Oct 11 Birmingham Half Marathon. I am running for the British Heart Foundation.
http://www.justgiving.com/Rob-Taylor

On the basis of this developing...

I'd like to inject a note of caution about challenging one another's beliefs in this area.

Say what you want, but respect other's views too. Each of us is equally entitled to an opinion.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I don't think I'd have a problem if it was taught in RE,
but as science I'd have to object.

fatboytim

My thoughts entirely.

I want kids taught true stuff, not superstitions.

Should they teach anthropogenic global warming in RE?

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

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“For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.” - H. L. Mencken

I couldn't agree more with the chap from the Bluecoat school:

"There's a sense that if you criticise Darwin you must be some kind of religious nut case.

"We might has well have said Einstein shouldn't have said what he did because it criticised Newton."

We (as a race) seem to have got to the point where we know quite a lot and we think we're pretty damned smart. Unfortunately, the sum total of our knowledge has not managed to either prove or disprove the presence of an all-powerful supernatural being. If it had, we'd either all be memebrs of the religion that worshiped him or we'd all be atheists.

So far, we've (I think) pretty much come to the conclusion that both Newton AND Einstein were right - in a way that we don't yet fully understand. I really can't see the problem with making pupils aware of both evolution AND intelligent design theories and leaving them to make their own minds up. (well, not unless we don't WANT them to know about one or the other theory for some reason)! Maybe in years to come, we'll find out that, like Newton and Einstein, there's room for both to be right!

If there is a place for debate about intellegent design vs evolution then school is certainly not the place for it.

IF

Why?

Kids are often much more willing to question assertions than grown-ups.

Pretty much all of them have sorted out Father Christmas and the tooth fairy before they leave school! I'm not sure they're as daft as we think!

The trouble is, you could use this to assert that just about any made up claim might be true and should therefore be taught in school. "They laughed at Einstein, they laughed at Galileo, they laughed at Bozo the Clown." Sadly most people who get laughed at do in fact deserve it.

The difference between Einstein and ID is that Einstein had lots of very sound bases for his theories, which have been tested many times and have survived every attempt at falsification. ID does not make any testable claims and is therefore not science. It seeks to explain things that can already be explained more parsimoniously by theories that are scientific and testable.

Anybody else read "Science of Discworld III - Darwins Watch"? It is about Darwins Theory and how it came about, and the problems with ID.

For example the "Watch" is Paley's - from a previous work that justified ID theory based upon an observer finding a Watch on a Heath and questioning how it got there. Paley said (in a lot of words) that it was obvious that the watch had been designed, and must have had a maker (designer), and that it couldn't have just been sitting in the heath since the world began. Likewise the eye was such a complex device that it had to have been designed because half an eye is useless. Darwin actually spent years and years coming up with a solid argument against every one of Paleys (and others) points.

He is even now criticised in bible belt america - for example a chat show had the guest dismissing Darwin because if he was any good as a scientist he would have won the Noble prize, and he didn't, therefore he wasn't worth listening to. The fact that Darwin was dead when the Noble prize was initiated apparently doesn't come into it.

I wouldn't mind an intelligent design debate based on the Science of Discworld books, which while they include a Discworld story, also include very large sections of scientific debate and examination of issues from a wide variety of views (but inevitably the conclusions match the authors views).

Incidentally the word "Theory" has a specific meaning in science, which is subtley different from the general use of the word - it is most certainly not a guess or hunch, which is what most ID proponents dismiss it as. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory

No... Not really... Newton was wrong. But for a non-relativistic frame Newton's equations of motion are "near enough", using Einstein will produce correct results (as far as we're presently aware) but until you're working with collosal speeds they differ from Newton's only in a miniscule degree - certainly not enough to be measurable.


That's the difference between "Science" and "Faith". The Popperian view of science depends upon the concept of "falsifiability" - ie any scientific "law" can be proven wrong at any time - hence Einstein invalidating Newton. That concept doesn't apply to, say, "Intelligent Design" which essentially states that "something is like it is because God (or deity of your choice) made it that way" - which cannot be disproven.

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"Politicians are the same the world over... We build bridges where there aren't any rivers." - Nikita Kruschev

Yes but they should be debated as part of an intellegent organised debate as I used to have in say english lessons, not taught as fact in a biology class.

For what it's worth my view is that 'gods' etc are used as an explanation for the 'unexplained'

That's it exactly, in my view. As our knowledge and understanding of the world grows, the boundary between science and faith is pushed back and back. There will always be things we don't know though, and always people willing to confidently tell us the answer.

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Peter Humphries (and a green V8S)

As a comment I once heard said... "Religion is merely early mankind's attempts to communicate with the weather.".

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"Politicians are the same the world over... We build bridges where there aren't any rivers." - Nikita Kruschev