Teach both evolution and creationism say 54% of Britons (The Guardian)
More than half of British adults think that intelligent design and creationism should be taught alongside evolution in school science lessons – a proportion higher than in the US.Yeah, Egypt. That’s where they killed all of those pigs ‘cause of swine flu. You can’t get swine flu from pigs, but they killed ‘em anyway.
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About 54% of the 973 polled Britons agreed with the view: "Evolutionary theories should be taught in science lessons in schools together with other possible perspectives, such as intelligent design and creationism."
In the US, of 991 adults responding to the survey, …51% agreed that evolution should be on the curriculum alongside other theories, like intelligent design.
Across the 10 countries, 43% agreed with this statement.
It was found that Britons were almost three times more likely than Egyptians to want creationism and intelligent design to be included in the teaching of evolution….
If Creationism is a “theory,” it is a remarkably bad one. It implies that our planet is only a few thousand years old. Clearly, it is not.
In science, when a hypothesis implies X and X is not true, you dump it.
Meanwhile, “evolutionary theory,” by which I suppose people understand some sort of synthesis of Darwinian natural selection and genetics, implies all sorts of things, including some very remarkable things, and those things turn out to be true.
“Intelligent design” is merely a recasting of the old “argument from design,” which received a stake through its heart when Wallace and Darwin described the mechanism that explained the apparent fact of “evolution,” something that seemed evident to many scientists long before the publication of Origin of Species in 1859.
All of this is plain to anyone who has any understanding of the natural sciences.
Many people do not share that understanding, evidently.
3 comments:
Since 1944, every British child, by law, must be given a comprehensive and full religious education. When I was at a British school, in the 1980's, every morning I had to attend school assembly where I was expected to sing loudly several hymns praising God, listen to a Christian lecture and various readings from the bible. Once a week I had to attend a religious education class where I was brainwashed into faith. Therefore, it is hardly surprising most British people believe creationism should be taught at school, it is just a natural extension of what all British children are already taught at school.
There are also loads of religion based schools in Britain, nearly all of them funded by the state, schools that require entrants to belong to a particular faith. Most entrants have to sit an exam to prove their religious piety. In these schools, unsurprisingly, creationism is already routinely taught.
Britain, unlike America is not secular or a democracy. The upper chamber of the British parliament, called the House of Lords, is unelected and has representation for all the Church of England religious leaders guaranteed. 26 in total sit in the unelected House of Lords and have the power to amend legislation from the elected lower house, much like the parliament in Iran.
If Bush were yet in the White House and learned of this (that the framework of the British system is remarkably like that of IRAN), he would have attacked Britan. Wonder if he, Rove, Chaney are funding a private army to do so.
The remains of the former Blackwater group might do nicely.
You nailed it, as usual, Chunk. Most people have no understanding of the natural sciences.
This is terrifying. As that excellent book title (of quite some time ago) has it: Ideas have Consequences.
MAH
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