Why Evolution Should Be Taught (page 21)

Warlock

I'm sure your answer will be extremely enlightening given your belief in superstitious nonsense.

What 'superstitious nonsense' are you referring to?

I've already told you, I don't believe in evolution.

Warlock

hamilcarr

What 'superstitious nonsense' are you referring to?

Probably anything that precedes scientific knowledge.

Caedes

What 'superstitious nonsense' are you referring to?

All belief in the supernatural is superstitious nonsense.

I didn't ask you if you believed in evolution (do try to keep up), I asked (for the third time to both yourself and Yknot) if you were happy for superstitious nonsense such as astrology (or indeed other non-scientific beliefs such as the flat earth or a spirit world) to be taught in a science class?

Gill

It may be that 'everything' should be taught as a theory but not as fact.

Children should be exposed to all the different 'how we got here' ideas and then allowed to furthur explore these themselves rather than the 'forced guidance' that extremists in all camps take.

As a JW child, I remember going to my Social Studies teacher and saying that I couldn't learn the Evolution theory as I 'didn't believe in it' or rather had been told I didn't believe in it. She said, it didn't matter if I didn't believe in it as other people did, just as other people believe the creation story etc but all of these were one thing, a theory. And so I had evolution classes, without my parents knowing.

Didn't know at the time that it was all incorrect, but then, in time, I had the tools to make a more rational judgement.

hamilcarr

It may be that 'everything' should be taught as a theory but not as fact.

This scientific relativism doesn't make much sense to me though. Evolution perfectly meets the requirements of a scientific fact: it has been observed whenever a population of organism genetically changes over time because of differente environments. Additionally, there's no reason to believe that these mechanisms wouldn't have happened in the past. This fact could easily be falsified by an observed instance of design.

Caedes

In science theory means well-proven fact, theory doesn't mean an idea that someone plucked from their hat.

So how do you 'know' that evolution is all wrong? Or is it a case that you simply believe that to be the case?

Gill, are you happy for astrology to be taught in science classes?

It's the more rational worldview that children are exposed to at school that helps a lot of them to escape the blinkers that the JWs try to force them into.

zagor

Well I could think of many reasons why, but one that hits me is this - what is the alternative? What would happen if religions had their way? What you would see is return to a new Dark Age, simple as that. You'd see that "my god is better than your god, my truth is more truth than your truth" etc.

jaguarbass

If the Bible didn't tell the Genesis story, would Creationism ever be taught? Ever?! If you can answer that truthfully, you've got to agree that this is a religiously-based argument and not based on scientific evidence.

Who can answer that truthfully?

Who knows?

How many of us have ever had an original thought?

I think most of us are pretty much parrots we read something and repeat it.

Solomon said there is nothing new under the sun.

Lennon said "Theres nothing you can know that isnt known"

The genetic code seems like an advanced computer program to me.

It seems like everybody here is repeating something they read.

hamilcarr

The genetic code seems like an advanced computer program to me.

I've never seen an advanced computer program able to adapt itself to a changing environment.

MissingLink

The genetic code seems like an advanced computer program to me.

I'm a programmer. From what I've seen, the genetic code is horribly inefficient and buggy. Full of obsolete and redundant bits. If there IS a god, he's not a very good programmer. His "copy and paste" coding style does not meet current engineering standards.

Why Evolution Should Be Taught

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