Thread: Should Creationism be Taught in Schools?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (knox @ Dec 1 2008, 07:24 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div>

I am also inclined to think that God would not lie to us by making it appear as though the world/universe has existed for that long, even if it had not. Therefore, either God is a liar, or a creationist theory putting the age of the earth in the thousands of years is wrong.[/b]

Have you seen Bill Hicks talking about a &#39;prankster God&#39;?

we learnt both at school, and both were in science class. Evolution was the official &#39;teaching&#39; but we had a very christian science teacher who believed in creationism, so he was invited into biology class to teach his side, and then the two teachers had a debate, and i think it was a good experience for everyone involved.

I still don&#39;t see how Creationism, which does not follow the scientific process, can be taught in a science class. Put the teaching of creationism in a comparative religion class where it belongs.

Firstly, it&#39;s pretty obvious to anybody with half an ounce of sense that the Christian creation myth is not something which belongs in science lessons. The Pope wouldn&#39;t disagree with me on that one.

Now, I found Devil&#39;s Little Angel&#39;s posts to be the most interesting here. One of the things you see about religious belief or belief in a God which is involved in our daily lives is that it&#39;s used to fill the gaps in people&#39;s understanding of the world. For example, with Devil&#39;s mum&#39;s various operations, Devil herself is ignorant of the complex medical procedures which have been undertaken and so simply fills that gap in her knowledge with the comforting thought that God was actually at work. If she had a detailed knowledge of medicine then she would no doubt see that her mother&#39;s recovery was due to the skill of medical professionals, good drugs, after-care and of course the natural regenerative nature of human tissue rather than divine intervention. I mean, things like driving from A-B are pretty simple and so I don&#39;t quite see how the hand of God is at work when someone simply drives somewhere they&#39;ve not been before. Also, her ex made her pregnant, not God so again where was the Lord&#39;s hand at work? Questions which to me seem quite valid but might not to her.

I really don&#39;t like it when God is used as a default answer to an unanswerable question. "I was in a car-crash and 3 of the people I was traveling with died but I survived. WHY?". Now you can give someone a perfectly reasonable answer to a question like that involving details of the circumstances of the crash but you&#39;re only answering HOW someone survived and if they want to know WHY something happened then sadly you&#39;re not going to be able to answer them scientifically and leave them satisfied. So they turn to the make-believe stuff. The thing is that there really isn&#39;t a WHY for so many things in life yet people still desire the comforting knowledge that everything that has happened has happened for a reason (scientists and non-scientists alike although in different ways of course) and whilst this is still the case you&#39;re just going to get people crediting the uncreditable to made-up stuff like the big loving friendly God.

That&#39;s not going to change and so until somebody somehow finds the all-encompassing answers to every question in the universe you&#39;re going to get people giving credit to fictional (or maybe not...) mystical beings.

I just wish people could more readily just hold their hands up and say "I DON&#39;T KNOW" because there is no shame in admitting that you just don&#39;t know and have no means of knowing the answers to certain questions.

"Where did the universe come from and why is it here?" - How the fuck should I know? I&#39;m simply the most evolved ape on one planet in one of many millions of galaxies and whilst I may think I&#39;m clever and know lots of things, the nature of all existence is not one of them and whilst I endeavor to find out as much as possible, I can quite happily accept that simple fact.

I&#39;m going to say yes


<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div>

Yes, many religious truth claims are testable. Those who are truly interested in whether a religion represents truth should test the claims to see how they stand against the evidence. Modern cosmology destroys the Hindu model for the universe, but affirms the Judeo-Christian model. Cosmology and earth sciences destroy the strange assertions of the Quran. Archeology, cosmology and molecular biology destroy the claims of the LDS Book of Mormon., but confirm many claims from the Bible. For an ancient document written thousands of years ago, the Bible makes some remarkable scientific claims - many of which were not verified until this century. However, the Bible was never written to serve as a science textbook, but was given as guide to having a relationship with God and our fellow human beings. The Bible answers the "why" and "what" questions that naturalism says are unanswerable[/b]

And the homework assignment can read: "strap on your lolerskates and follow this link to a scholastic roflcoaster. See if you can count the number of logical fallacies and outright lies!
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/a...eismintro3.html