TheKak

Odin and his brothers first fashioned the earth (Midgard) from Ymir's flesh and, using his eyebrows, encircled it with a protective wall. Using Ymir's unbroken bones, they created mountains and from his teeth the rocks, boulders and stones. Using Ymir's blood, they created the sea and lakes. Using the dead giant's skull, they created the endless expanse of the sky and supported its corners with four dwarfs (Nordi, Surdi, Austri, Westri) from whose names we get the four main points of the compass; North, South, East and West. From Ymir's brains they created the clouds and from the sparks of Muspell, they created the sun, moon and stars to give light to the world. While the stars were fixed, the sun and moon were placed in golden chariots. Two riders named Day and Night were charged with guiding the sun and moon on their daily journey across the sky. They were pursued by a wolf intent on devouring them and from time to time, it did catch them in his mouth. Because of the cries of the terrified people of Midgard, the wolf released them, only to pursue them once again.

Clearly this is what should be taught in school, not that nonsense of evolution!

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hannukah harry

so when i describe home as being 'the ass end of the earth' i may not be all that far off...

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hannukah harry

the unicorn thing: an 'entity' creating the world by shitting it out its ass.
the god thing: an 'entity' creating the world by saying 'let there be yadda yadda.'

either way, they're both saying that a magical (read: fictional, imaginary) entity created the world/universe. they just used different orafices (methods) to do it. if the unicorn is evolution, than so is your god.

as to the rest of your post, of course you won't find a g-string turn into briefs (they're inanimate objects, duh) or monkeys turn into humans. first as someone (welshbyte) pointed out, humans are apes, not monkeys. we are incredibly sophisticated apes. but if you look back like millions of years, you will find a species which is common to both us and chimpanzees (as well as other members of the ape family). this species is a common ancestor to us both. just like you and cousin are not 100% identical you do have a common ancestor in your grandfather, who is also not 100% identical to you. we have primate A who is genetically similar and a common ancestor to primates X and Y (who are genetic cousins). unlike the example i used, rather than just being a couple generations from the common ancestor, we're separated by millions of years.

if you wish to have the idea that evolution was created by god, that's your choice. congrats, you're now an 'intelligent designist.' but there's still no evidence for such a belief.

i don't mean to sound rude or anything, but in your posts and this quoted ones last sentence you show that you are not only ignorant of the theory of evolution and the evidence supporting it, but that you're willfully so. if you don't want to learn, fine. but don't sound suprised ("A ton, really, and it would be what?") when people tell you about it. your ignorance on the subject doesn't make it not exist. go out and find information about it. educate yourself. i'll even help start you out.

http://biology.about.com/od/evolution/

i've never read through this site, but i've used about.com for other things and always found it to be pretty good. just do a google search for evolution (i'd avoid sites on the creation v. evolution argument for a little while until you've learned about evolution so that hopefully you would be able to tell the very biased from the 'really attempting to be objective' sites). the information is out there, you just have to be willing to find it.

i realize that challanging your beliefs may be scary. but as someones sig. says "if i had the choice between being the happy fool or the disappointed Socrates, i'd choose the latter."


edit: found this article on the site mentioned above that you should look at... misconceptions about evolution. http://biology.about.com/gi/dynamic/...nceptions.html

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reiii

In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

-Stephen Jay Gould

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reiii

Dos mas:

Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview - nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty.
Stephen Jay Gould

The fundamentalists, by 'knowing' the answers before they start (examining evolution), and then forcing nature into the straitjacket of their discredited preconceptions, lie outside the domain of science-or of any honest intellectual inquiry.
Stephen Jay Gould

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fnaqzna

So much for faith. There is plenty of room for the "hand of God" within the theory of evolution.

hannukah harry

no. not really. 'the hand of god' is not something that can be tested or used to predict future occurances. there is no evidence for god. the study of evolution is about finding out and understanding the mechanisms that led us from the first life form to the current diversity. now i don't see how it would be honest to say "hey, god made a jump from here to here."

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SecretMethod70

I think what he means is that evolution being true does not exclude the possibility of God. I agree though, that discussing where God fits into evolution belongs in religious studies classes, not science classes.

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filtherton

I bet you've never seen an atom, or the far side of the moon. Perhaps we should teach people that matter is made of really small gumdrops and the moon is really just a perfectly aligned semi-circle. As long as we're just making shit up.

Coppertop

Science should be taught in science classes, religion should be taught in religion classes. What's the big deal? I'm sure all these creationists would throw a shitfit if evolution was suggested to be taught in a world religion class. Double standard.

1010011010

Actually, the creationists would probably be fine with evolution being taught in a religion class.... it would tend to support their position. Educators in both religious studies and biology would probably be less than amused.

As for the "ton' of evidence for evolution... http://workbench.sdsc.edu/
That site allows you to import genetic data from a wide variety of species and use various bioinformation tools to compare them. The only tools available are built around the concept of comparing the genomes of evolved animals... but the creationists should be able to write their own tools and use the same data. Should be able to if it were a science, anyway.

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prosequence

There is some truth in your sarcasm. Atoms, as well as many other scientific rules are based on theories. Not proven, not factual, just predictable.
I guess the point I was trying to make is that evolutionists accept their theories to be true, not unlike the way creationists do. So instead of calling me names, try telling me why both philosophies can't be taught.

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filtherton

I didn't call you names, i stated some facts. If you feel they reflected poorly upon you, then maybe you should re-evaluate your position.

I'm not saying that they both shouldn't be taught. What i was getting at is that they can't be put on the same level in terms of backing by empirical evidence, importance or relevance. Part of science is constant reevaluation in light of emerging evidence. No scientist worth his/her salt will tell you that any theory is absolutely correct under all circumstances. Science is the process of creating useful constructs for explaining and predicting the way a certain system works. It exists because it is useful to know how things work.
Creationism has no functional use in this respect. The fact that there are myriad of equally valid creation stories is evidence of this lack of actual relevance to anything. I could claim that the world was created in a cloud of goblinfart, and it is equally as valid as the idea that god created the world in a week.

Science is based on a philosophy, creationism is not. I think creationism suffers from an absence of philosophy. Philosophy requires constant evaluation and critical thought and is based on logical reasoning. Creationism requires little more than the ability to read the bible and a good imagination. You could argue with an evolutionist, you can't argue with a creationist because there isn't anything to argue about. Either you believe it or you don't.

hannukah harry

filtherton, i think he may have been referring to me saying he was showing his ignorance or something of that sort a few posts back.


prosequence, evolutionists hold evolution to be true because there is observable and circumstatial (probably not the best word) evidence for evolution. all creationists have is a book and a prayer. and yet creationists will claim that they're belief is hard fact while evolutionists will admit that everything about how evolution works has not been discovered 100%.

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prosequence

Really, I'll let the millions of people know, who believe in God, that their lives mean nothing, or should I say have no "relevance to anything".

philosophy - noun
1 [U] the use of reason in understanding such things as the nature of reality and existence, the use and limits of knowledge and the principles that govern and influence moral judgment:

With this definition, I do not understand how religion or concept of God does not fit into philosophy. So, I will smile politely and nod.

And God of course, oh and a little faith as well.... patience with ye old heathens and such....

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stingc

Does anyone know if this debate ever comes up seriously outside of the US?

Anyways, I think it is important to say that public school cannot teach science from the viewpoint of students collecting evidence until they can figure things out for themselves. There is a good reason that the world's brightest minds have spent the last few hundred years arriving at our modern understanding of the universe. Things are complicated. At the level of basic education, it is best to just present the accepted viewpoint. I would guess that almost no public schools really get into enough detail in anything to be controversial.

Evolution, by the way, is not controversial in the sense that I'm using that word. There are no experts who believe in the versions of creationism which conflict with evolutionary ideas. The opinions of the uninformed public are irrelevant. The world does not work based on a vote of what people want to be true. We figure things out based on evidence, and all intelligent people who have evaluated that evidence have come to similar conclusions.

prosequence, I could also make an argument that you are not proven, but are merely a predictable figment of my imagination. The entire universe could be a fabrication of my mind. Certain philosophers have fun with that idea, but I think most of us can agree that it is not a very productive viewpoint. Science is about trying to compress all of the complexity of the world into a few simple rules. Its entire goal is to obtain predictibility. Anything "more" is not a part of science, whatever "more" may mean. Evolution is a part of science, whereas the only versions of creationism which conflict with evolution and actually have observable consequences are ruled out. Creationism therefore does not deserve any time in a science classroom.

filtherton

The only relevence is imagined. I know many christians who take the biblical creation story with a grain of salt. It has zero effect on how they live their lives. This is not to say that religion has zero relevence.

Philosophy requires active participation, you absorb an idea, you evaluate the idea based on critical thought, and you either abandon the idea or embrace the idea. Embracing a completely unsupported prefab creation story as fact is no more philosphy than buying a sandwich is cooking.

prosequence

Why is it "completely unsupported"?

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prosequence

Agreed, it should have a class of its own.

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zen_tom

At Sunday school

tisonlyi

Can the creationists please, before they come challenging the received, backed up conventional wisdom of the vast majority of the educated world, please, just for an hour or so... point that ultra-scepticism at the books they derive their own beliefs from.

Please? Is that too much to ask?

Fairy stories are fairy stories, evidence backed 'facts' are light years from creation stories.

How, in good faith, can any educated person deny evolution?

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Charlatan

but tisonlyi... faith *always* trumps reason...

/end sarcasm

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Ustwo

Science vrs Mythology

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Locobot

We are talking about the Norse creation theory correct? It states that the world as we see it is made up of the fragments of the dead giant Ymir--his blood forms the oceans, his shattered bones the mountains and rocks, his skullcap the sky above, and levitating fragments of his brain tissue form the clouds. Just wanted to make sure we were all on the same page here.

filtherton

Show me all the support. Show me the rational evidence that you have heard to support the idea that god created our planet in a week. A bunch of people believing something does not amount to support in any kind of critical sense.

sapiens

I think that you are confusing the colloquial definition of a theory with a scientific definition. The colloquial definition might be "an uproven guess." A scientific theory is very different. CSflim started a thread on this topic a year ago here: http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=14114

This is a serious mischaracterization of evolutionists. Evolutionary scientists doing research derive falsifiable predictions from evolutionary theory and test those predictions. This is not "accepting their theories to be true". Instead, they expose evolutionary theory to the possibility of falsification every day.
This is a bit of an oversimplification, but it is true.

A more complicated explanation would have to descrive how metatheories (like evolutionary theory) are evaluated differently from mid-level theories (like the theory parental investment and sexual selection), which are evaluated differently from specific evolutionary hypotheses and predictions derived from those hypotheses.

The bottom line is that evolutionists expose their theory to falsification, creationists do not.

tecoyah

In my opinion....it boils down to this:

There is no "Fact" in science.....there is only theory.
Some theory is backed by so much observation, by seperate studies, as to be confirmed as extremely likely by a community based on peer review.

There is no "Fact" in religion....there is only myth.
Some myth holds the human psyche in its grasp in such a way, as to become individual reality.

To claim either as proven fact....it to close the mind to possible future understanding, and defeats the very foundation of scientific thought.

Just My Opinion....and certainly not factual.

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hannukah harry

because it's only support is people claiming a 4-5,000 year old book as evidence. when the people who wrote the book weren't even there to view it, and the book has 2 different stories on how it happened.

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prosequence

Once again... theory versus theory, just because you don't like one, doesn't mean you can dismiss it. It's great that a lot of you think you are apes or whatever, I think that is wonderful, kind of makes me feel good knowing that I'm a creation of God and not an animal. So we both should be happy. Anyways, back on topic, Creation is a widely accepted theory, possibly more so than evolution... so, why does it not make sense to have it taught in schools.

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tecoyah

I think the issue with it becoming part of public education, is in the inherent religious nature of the theory. The evolutionary theory at least, can tie in to scientific exploration and lead to a further grasp of mathematics, history and such.Creationism would need to tie in to, well, religion, which is not taught in public school for good reason.

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stingc

Considering how few differences there are between humans and apes, God must be pretty lazy. Even a pigeon is physiologically almost the same as a human.

fckm

Interesting debate. I'd like to add a few penny's worth, if I may.
"Theory" is not the same thing as "theory". When Creationsists go to school boards and complain how evolution is just a "theory", they are trying to pull one over on you. When a scientist talks about a theory, they mean something very different from an English Professor talking about a 'theory'. Scientific theory, according to Popper, must be "falsifiable". That is, Scientific theory must directly or indirectly predictions which can be measured. This usually results in Technology, the application of the predictions of Theory.

Examples:
The computer that you are using to view this message is "proof" that Maxwell's Equations and Electromagnitism are good Theories.
Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria are good examples of microevolution. Pharmacutical Companies use microevolution all the time to create robust strains of protein producing bacteria.

But that's just the thing. It's NOT an accepted theory. The vast (>90%) of scientists will tell you that Creationism is not a scientific theory (it fails to make useful predictions). It is a widely accepted _Story_.

Sure, they can be taught side by side. In a philosophy classroom. Creationism has no place in a science classroom at any primary or secondary school. Sure, kids should learn about creationism as an example of something that _isn't_ science, but there is no reason to do it at such a young age. It will just confuse them. Similarly, no one teaches imaginary numbers to third graders. There's no reason to teach about the philosophy of science in grade school (well, maybe in the last two years of highschool).

They're not just predictable. They're VERY predictable. Around the turn of the century (1800-1900), chemists and physicists were very intersted in the study of energy and heat. The science of Thermodynamics was born. For a given body, there seemed to be a nearly linear relation between the amound of energy of the body and the temperature of the body. Many theories were made and tested. Why was this relationship so linear? Why did this relationship change at extremely high and low temeratures? Einstein's analysis of a solid as a collection of "Atoms" resulted in one of the first theories of matter that matched very well with experimental obersvations in Specific Heats. While Scientists had been kicking around the idea for a while, it was this study of specifc heats and other areas of interest in Thermodynamics that really cemented the validity of the Atomic Hypothesis. The Atomic Hypothesis still survives to this day. Althrough the revolutions in Quantum physics and High energy particle physics have altered our understanding of what Atoms are, the fundamental assumption of descrete mass still stands. The Atomic Hypothesis is probably up there with Maxwell's equations as the most well documented and well-"proven" Scientific Theory.

Now then, I told that little story so that hopefully people have a better understanding of what science is. It very easily to talk about Popper and Falsifiability, but it's almost too academic and meaningless. In the end, Science is about coming up with ways to explain our observations of the world. Each explanation is called a Theory. But one should also notice something about these Theories. And hopefully it was evident in that story I told. A good Scientific Theory doesn't just explain one thing. A good Scientific Theory has to fit with the Other Scientific Theories. Think of Science as a big jigsaw puzzle. Holding a single piece in your hand is irrelevant. You have to find the piece that fits in the right place.
Evolution is not a good Scientific Theory just because we dug up some bones. Evolution isn't a good Scientific Theory just because we know something about DNA. Evolution isn't a good Scientific Theory just because we can breed donkies and horses.
Evolution is a good Scientific Theory because of ALL of these things. Evolution is good because the puzzle piece fits. It explains all these phenomenon and gives us further insights. It is Elegant.

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RCAlyra2004

Basically I think that it is important that we DEBATE in school.... we should debate Creation VS evolution the sme way we SHOULD debate IF there is a GOD, and WHY we think so... Let expose thse who cannot prove what they beleive and those who cannot beleive what seems to be self evident... like evolution....


Darwin and his freinds forgot one of the most important statistical realities.... Correlation is not necessarily causation.... Evolution therefore is still only a theory to explain correlant facts.

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hannukah harry

as someone else already said, creation is a story, and it's not even that widely accepted once you get past fundamentalists. back when i went to hebrew school and participated in my synagogue, i didn't know a single person who believed that the story of genesis was true. i believe even the pope said that it was a metaphor.

and this entire thread has been about why we shouldn't have it taught in schools... go back and read it again if you need to.

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prosequence

Creation isn't JUST a story. Wether you believe that or not. Just like evolution is Just a story evolutionists tell. Why not tell both stories in school and let them be the ones who decide which they want to believe.

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welshbyte

Umm, you contradicted yourself. If creation isn't just a story then why do you refer to it as one of "both stories"?

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hannukah harry

if evolution is just a story, then i'd have to say that means that everything is 'just a story.'

i'm sorry if you can't see the difference between a really old myth with nothing to back it up other than people saying 'look, this really old book says it's true' and something that is observable, predictable and follows all the rules and testing that goes through scientific theories, then i don't think there's any point in continueing this.

i realize you probably find comfort in your stories. it's scary to look at change. and if you don't want to, that's fine. just don't try cramming your stories down my kids throats when they're in school.

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Pacifier

No.
As far as I know noone who is considered "sane" thinks about creationism to be taught in school here in germany.

It may be a good fairy tale, but it lacks a sinlge bit of evidence.

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Furry

Well, over here in England the view is the same. Creationism went out of the window with Darwin's book. Granted there are plenty of holes in evolutionary theory, but the evidence for it is very, very strong. And yet both arguments have their limits

I personally find the concept of directed, instantly perfect creation unappealing. It is an inelegant solution and does not fit the facts of evolution.

It is a fact that gradual changes in the DNA structure of a chain of individuals can cause physical change over time. Such mutations can be seen clearly, the change of colouring in Moths in industrialised areas being one such example.

However, evolution has to start somewhere. There needs to be a basic foundation for future mutations, but I feel that this is a seperate issue. Evolution does not explain first-generation creation.

In order for life to fit into an ever-changing world, there must be adaptation.

I do not wish to deny the core argument in this issue; that of creation versus evolution. It simply occurs to me that the supposed nature of God (Gods, Spirit etc, whatever you want to call a Prime Cause) has been slightly overlooked.

First-Order creation may very well have taken place. However from then on, constant changes in the nature of the world neccesitate constant adaptation. To have God tinkering in His/Her/It's own creations would be to deny the supposed perfectness of God, as it suggests the creation of something flawed. A self-perfecting mechanism, when viewed from this angle, is indeed a materstroke. Creating life that then has the ability to change and adapt to its own environment without outside help is an incredibly elegant solution to both problems.

jonjon42

well..if we are gonna go to the treat all theories the same...can we also include the egyptian theory of how life began (ancient egyptian)..Ra masturbates and the world is formed. If Creationism had any solid evidence that would hold up to peer review I would say teach away. Yet... no creationist paper I know of has withstood the rigorous testing of the scientific community. Saying that their is flaws in evolution does not mean that it needs to be disregarded..that's like saying Einstein proved Newton completely wrong...

The most I've seen creationists do is poke holes in Evolutionary theory...Sometimes they even try to point out flaws that don't exist.
(ex. entropy...entropy does not apply for this is not a closed system.)
.They try to make it seem like topic that scientists are divided on and arguing themselves..In truth we are arguing about Evolution..but for the most part we accept some of the basic principles...

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