Just caught this story off the BBC news website, making me chuckle to myself somewhat.
Its about a professor at some Royal Society for Science getting sacked for allegedly stating that kids should be taught creationism - in fact the guy said that teachers should be prepared to discuss creationism with their pupils if asked, in the context of the teaching of the Theory of Evolution.
The stance taken by the Society just reveals how trapped they are in their thinking about the world around them and how they have never been in a situation of experiencing God, or if they have, that they rejected Him on whatever grounds suited at the time. To me, personally, it seemed like they felt threatened, hence the defensive reaction of ejecting the chap who spoke out on the issue of creationism.
I could get into the broader discussion of evolution versus creationism here, but I'm not going to; its not for this posting and deserves much greater time and effort than I currently have.
6 comments:
From the reaction coming from the Royal Society you might actually infer that the guy had sense to resign from the position himself.
The fact that he cannot express what he means clearly makes him a bit unsuitable to represent science...
Besides, creationism is nonsense. And you just cannot demand people, teachers or organisations to show respect for ignorance or stupidity.
Science believes, rightly or wrongly, that people evolved from the same ancestors as apes, monkeys etc.. Why should creationism get a mention in a science class? Should we also make space for The Jatravartid people, however, believe that the Universe was sneezed out of the nose of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Races_and_species_in_The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy). What about The Church of flying spaghetti monster? (http://www.venganza.org/). Who decides which religious theories should be taught as science? Where does it end?
Sorry if this sounds like an attack on your religious beliefs, it is not intended as such, just a personal statement that we should keep religion in RE classes and evolution in science classes.
It's interesting that you use the word "trapped" though I imagine that it is a plausible accusation given that the members of the Royal Society are contrained in what they will explore by current scientific understanding and thinking. I guess the same applies to any such organisation.
In fact clearly it would also extend to religion which is contrained by various holy books, accepted practices and current interpretation/understanding.
So who is more trapped?
My understanding of the story is that the guy actually resigned, not sacked and probably for the reasons already outlined; he didn't communicate an idea well enough and caused a mess.
I don't actually agree that he should slope off, I think it would be better to publicly clarify his point and make a reasoned argument. But these days it's fashionable to resign and let the fuss die down instead.
And why was there such a fuss?
Well, from my understanding of the current situation there is a great amount of pressure/controvesy around teaching a creationist view within science classes.
Several groups, including the Royal Society, have, quite rightly, attempted to block this on the grounds that creationism isn't science, which it isn't (I'll come to that in a second).
So, when a figure head stands up and gives an ambiguous message, or even a clear message but delivered badly it hurts all of the work done so far. So, big fuss.
Why isn't creationism science?
Quite simply the 'theory' states that life, components of life, and all the processes necassary for life are too complex to have evolved or developed without the aid of intelligence, therefore there must have been some "intelligent design" (aka creation) at work in order for everything we see to exist.
Okay, so test the theory, i.e. follow scientifc process to support the proposition. It's widely accepted that the way to do this is to make predictions for experiments in the theory and also to attempt to actually disprove it.
First off, simply accepting that "everything is too complicated" kind of makes it hard to predict anything! Your theory is a dead-end.
Secondly try and disprove it, try and think of a way that things could have developed without intelligent aid? Can you think of anything that would work here? Maybe the theory of evolution fits in here?
Of course you can counter that evolution has some issues - well, go look at those with an open mind and see if they can be 'fixed'.
Keep thinking of fantastical ways in which things could have worked, analyse the fossil record, look at bacteria that change/evolve, look at humans, look at animals, plants, study everything and constantly question how/why/what-if.
Simply accepting "it's all designed" shows a distinct lack of imagination in my opinion.
The above does not, necassarily, have any bearing on faith or the wider questions such as the existence of God, there are plenty of people who hold religious convictions while still treating science with an open, and more importantly, inquisitve mind.
What you imagine shouldn't be trapped by current scientific understand but equally it should not be clouded by religious dogma.
Blimey, best response to a post I've ever had! :-)
I particularly like Linas' throw-away line "besides, creationism is nonsense"... very funny man!
I think its interesting that this generates quite so much reaction and its obviously very important that we have good reason for thinking and believing what we do - for this reason I am personally pretty happy with the concept that God is behind everything, caused everything to come into being and sustains everything right now.
I also see no particular conflict between religion and science, for me there is no gulf separating the two - when you come to see that God is the source of all things, is it a surprise that science is something that He is rather good at, along with everything else we know about (and plenty we don't know about).
The 'battle' (if you can adopt that term for a moment) between the Evolutionists and those who believe in Intelligent Design (and please ignore my lack of finer understanding on how that differs from creationism) is fundamentally more about man rejecting God and thinking he can get by just fine on his own.
The wonderful thing about God is that He will let you do this, He gave you freewill after all, and in the meantime He grants you life to continue dodging Him.
Going back to the Royal Society chap, resigning or getting sacked, I reckon he maybe should have taken more time to try and clarify things, although I sense perhaps that might have been hard if the line of argument headed into 'God' territory, since a lot of his peers would of course then just laugh at him.
Jesus had a hard time getting through to 'the 12' who saw first-hand the miracles He did, so I'd be inclined to cut this guy some slack I guess.
Whilst I take the point about separating the tuition of religion and science, I think christian religious leaders are short-changing their students if they fail to get across the all-encompassing position of God and how all our various areas of study have their ultimate foundation in Him.
I agree that there is essentially no conflict between science, or scientific method, and the concept of a deity of some kind.
'Science' is simply a collection of theories, of knowledge about the way things work and methods on how to investigate further.
The fight is not about a rejection of God it's about questioning the world around us, including our beliefs and the things on which they are based.
Creationism (which is interchangable in almost all practical discussions with the term "Intelligent Design") rejects the whole scientific approach and instead simply states that the bible is literally true (genisis etc).
That is what the fight is about. Faith in a god is fine, taking a book at face value without questioning it is bad.
Final word: read "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins, "critical thinking" seems to be a theme in there.
Good points Fiona. As an agnostic Christian and scientist, I cannot understand the teaching of creationism at the expense of evolutionary biology in some schools, for example in the US - especially as Jesus did ask us to live by the spirit rather than the letter of the law!
However, education is about transmission of ideas and if the teacher is antagonistic towards the views of a student by rubbishing them, then the ideas are likely to fall on deaf ears and the process will have failed. By being prepared to debate different views with students, teachers are far more likely to be listened to. Which is good for education and science. Unfortunately Prof Reiss and the Royal Society have ended making a mess which hasn't benefited anyone except the media!
Thereagain, any good scientist remembers that the scientific orthodoxy of the day can soon be overturned - and there are plenty who don't!
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