The Gainesville Sun has been running a series of guest opinion pieces concerning the evolution/creationism controversy. The newest one isn’t reasoned out too well.
I was thinking about the controversy of whether or not the theory of intelligent creation should be taught in our schools, and realized that the main charge in our schools is to impart knowledge. Whether or not I believe in the theory of creationism, there are well over a billion people on this planets that do. Therefore this must be included with any other major theories.
There are well over a billion people on this planet that thing women are inferior and racism is perfectly valid. Should we teach that, too? Numbers do not make truth. Evidence makes truth. Creationism is counter to the evidence.
My middle school science classes are learning the characteristics of science and they have concluded that science is not democratic, nor is based on belief or faith, rather decisions in science are based on evidence. Our first week my 7th graders did an experiment which asked the question Is Astrology a Science. The hypothesis we posed was that a persons astrological sign will predict their personality traits. Alas when students chose the set of traits that described them best and then we matched those with their birth date, less than 1 in 20 actually matched what Astrology predicted. And although the idea of Astrology being able to make these predictions was popular in all my classes, my students reluctantly concluded that the evidence did not support Astrology being a science. This wonderful activity along with many others on Larry Flammer’s ENSI website plus our outstanding new science standards on the nature of Science help lead students to a much better understanding of Science. I am hoping with a lot of hard work and persistence (and maybe more teaching and less testing!) we may have a public that does not write such misinformed opinion concerning science as the one posted above.
I love the astrology lesson and will pass it along!
Perhaps we should consider this?
My name is Erik Lumberjack. I’m founder and chief scientist of the
recently formed Intelligent Gestation Institute. Our goal is apply
insights gained from Intelligent Design to combat the current Theory
of Pregnancy, i.e., that humans develop gradually from a sperm and
egg. The rest can be found here.
http://groups.google.com/group/atheism-vs-christianity/browse_thread/thread/021da2dd07acca73?pli=1