
Teaching creationism as scientifically valid now banned in all UK public schools - personjerry
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2014/06/18/Teaching-creationism-as-scientifically-valid-now-banned-in-all-UK-public-schools/5631403128922?spt=su
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codeulike
I very much doubt there were any UK schools teaching it anyway, hence this
news is not really news this side of the pond. (Context for those in the US)

~~~
jwdunne
I went to a catholic school and we were still taught evolution, the Big Bang
theory, etc. Even had compulsory religious education lessons (sane number per
week as maths, english, science) and accompanying GCSE in Catholic
Christianity and we were still taught evolution.

Many teachers even said that the Old Testament shouldn't be taken literally!

It's quite rare I think and I'm surprised there are schools still teaching it.

~~~
tehwalrus
I was also at a Catholic school, same experience.

I would point out that this stuff has only become a problem after Academies
and Free Schools were: firstly, allowed to be sponsored/funded by random
people and organisations who were allowed to set the "ethos"; and secondly
were given license to choose whether or not to teach the National
Curriculum[1].

This second point was supposed to be so that English teachers could choose to
teach _any_ Shakespeare play to pre-GCSE students, or indeed to substitute in
Chaucer or someone else, but seems to have been used to substitute in this
creationist nonsense in place of Science. Note that the school in question(in
Manchester) also used a textbook that told students that wives were to be
subservient to husbands, or something similarly hideous.

I don't know, but I believe this ruling is a reaction to news about a very
small number of schools (this Christian one in Manchester, and the furore over
the Muslim ones in Birmingham.)

[1] This is my main objection to such institutions - I'd be happy with a
scaled back curriculum for them, but this ruling seems to do the job I wanted
(to prohibit unscientific nonsense.) DO NOTE that in particular, Catholic
schools like mine do not have this freedom in general, unless they've been
given Academy or Free School status - Faith Schools are (AFAIK) orthogonal to
these properties.

~~~
PPLwynSPFJ5p
The reason why wives are to submit themselves to their husbands is because the
Bible actually SAYS SO - or didn't you read the Bible when you were at
Catholic school? (It stems from the fact that Adam was created first, and Eve
second.) The fact remains that, if more people actually read their Bible, and
used it as their moral compass, our world would not be in the mess it is in
today. However, I do agree with you that "scientific nonsense" should not be
taught in schools. This should of course include any alleged scientific theory
that says that life sprang from nothing (This has never been observed in ANY
laboratory anywhere in the world and totally contradicts the known laws of
biochemistry), and that 'simple' organisms have changed from one form into
another more complex form over time. There is ZERO fossil evidence for this
fairy tale (all of the fossil evidence refutes it, and shows that STASIS is
the rule [i.e. no change]), and almost any molecular biologist will now tell
you that this kind of change is impossible anyway - which is why many of them
are now abandoning Darwinism).

The fact that you use the term "creationist nonsense" shows that you are
either (a) an outright atheist, or (b) have not bothered to study elementary
science, much less the Bible, despite your apparent Christian schooling. You
are therefore not qualified to make such a comment.

~~~
tehwalrus
I'm from the UK. Hardly anyone here questions the scientific explanations of
the origins of the universe, or evolution, because we understand how science
works. Darwin is on the £10 note for a reason, the universe is 13.9 Billion
years old according to the cosmic microwave background radiation, you lost
this argument some time ago, get over it.

(on a side note, I am completing a PhD in a geology department, and the guy
who sat behind me for two years was studying how those giant woodlouse things
evolved for his whole PhD, using fossils. In addition to that inadmissible
anecdata, I can assert that the scientific consensus on Evolution is much more
emphatic that you claim.)

Secondly, yes, like many young people I was brought up in a (UK version of a)
religious house and attended a faith school. I am now a Secular Humanist (you
seems to call that an Atheist, although it would be more accurate to say that
I don't believe _anything_ about deities, than to say I actively refute their
supposed existence,) and this transition is entirely common here.

Frankly, I think there are much more important things to do in the world than
debate unprovable things about gods. For example: persuading people that gun
ownership is bad; state-funded healthcare is good; and that religous
extremism/violence (including Christian violence that occurred in Europe
centuries ago) would be silly if it weren't so damn serious.

(also, I'm sad that your comment is a direct child of mine, and thus I am
prohibited from downvoting it.)

~~~
PPLwynSPFJ5p
Ah, a Humanist, that explains a lot. Woodlice first appear in the fossil
record 50 million years ago, and remain unchanged to this day, i.e STASIS, not
evolution (as in every other case in the fossil record). If you have a picture
of a woodlouse changing into anything else then please post it here. Or did
you mean a trilobite by any chance? If so, I would expect a PhD geology
student to know the difference between a woodlouse and a trilobite (and
trilobites didn't evolve into anything else either - they just became
extinct).

The cosmic microwave background (CMB) actually poses problems for Big Bang.
Obviously you are unfamiliar with the most recent findings from 2001, so I
suggest you start learning about it here:

[http://creation.com/recent-cosmic-microwave-background-
data-...](http://creation.com/recent-cosmic-microwave-background-data-
supports-creationist-cosmologies).

Furthermore, the CMB merely PRESUPPOSES a big bang in the first place (and big
bang is by no means certain - as many astrophysicists will tell you), so there
are many assumptions involved in drawing inferences from it. The CMB is also
very smooth - contrary to big bang predictions - and the observed mass density
does not agree with big bang predictions either. There is no evidence,
observational or otherwise, to prove that a big bang actually occurred (which
is why many scientist disbelieve in it) nor is there any definitive evidence
that the universe is billions of years old (I think that old chestnut arose
from uniformitarian geologists' misguided counting of strata, mistakenly
believing each layer to have been laid down over 'millions of years', even
though recent laboratory experiments as well as direct field observation, have
proved it can happen in hours or days).

Like any typical atheist (even though you describe yourself here as a Secular
Humanist)you refer to "Christian violence that occurred in Europe centuries
ago", forgetting of course that the most appalling violence, including mass
genocide, took place in modern history at the hands of exclusively atheistic
regimes, all of whose despotic leaders followed Darwinian theories completely
(e.g. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mau Tse Tung, etc).

As it happens, I am from the UK too (and I'm an astrophysics major). You are
free to refute the "supposed existence" of God in your own home, but please do
not try to impose your own secular values on me, or on other people of faith
in the UK, and especially not on my child's chance of benefiting from a decent
indoctrination-free education. That's something I WILL defend, vigorously.

~~~
mixmastamyk
> If you have a picture of a woodlouse changing into anything else then please
> post it here.

With that statement (and others) it is quite clear you have no idea what
you're writing about. Please take your misinformation campaign elsewhere.

~~~
mixmastamyk
No sorry, nothing personal, but you have no idea what you're writing about,
simple as that. You've taken a fundamental misconception about evolution and
turned it into a diatribe.

------
paddlepop
This is very encouraging to see. While it would be nice to live in a world
where this kind of policy wasn't necessary it is good to see UK taking this
kind of thing seriously.

My sister is a English teacher and she shared with me how some of her senior
students where not even being taught basic evolution in their science classes
owing to the fact that much of the Science faculty were deeply religious.

~~~
Liesmith
We do live in a world where this policy isn't necessary. the UK doesn't really
have a ton of people who take creationism seriously like the US does. As the
article mentions, the state mandates the teaching of evolution in schools, and
bans the teaching of pseudoscience. That latter is actually pretty funny since
UK educations are crammed with pseudoscience, but aside from a few high-
profile cases creationism isn't really a problem there.

~~~
paddlepop
I don't live in the US

------
arethuza
I wonder how accurate it is to say this is for "all UK schools" as education
is pretty heavily devolved in the UK - Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales
all have their own counterparts to the Department of Education:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_for_Education#Devolu...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_for_Education#Devolution)

NB As an aside, from a UK perspective the title is a bit confusing as "public
schools" are private schools here. "State schools" would probably be more
accurate - even if there are 4 "states" involved.... :-)

~~~
Liesmith
If you read the article it applies to all the schools that take government
money.

~~~
matthewmacleod
It does say that, but news organisations are notoriously poor at articulating
the constitutional situation in the UK.

In this case, for example, the move has no effect on Scotland - the education
system there is totally devolved, and AFAIK there's no concept of the "free
school" or academy model which has been introduced in England and Wales. I'm
not sure about the situation in Northern Ireland.

The Scottish Secular Society has been campaigning for a similar ban in
Scotland - this will probably happen at some point, although my experience
suggests that there's not as much of a problem there anyway.

~~~
arethuza
We do have problems related to religion in education - particularly around
sectarianism:

[http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/supportinglearners/posit...](http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/supportinglearners/positivelearningenvironments/inclusionandequality/challengingsectarianism/about/scottishissue.asp)

------
gpvos
One might hope so. How about private/religious schools?

------
return0
I wonder if that was even an issue in the UK (or really everywhere except some
parts of the US).

~~~
makomk
Yes, it was an issue in the UK. Our previous Government intentionally gave
control of some state-funded schools to Christian fundamentalists with limited
oversight and their schools have been teaching kids that the world is 6000
years old in science classes, complete with bogus scientific evidence for it.
The current Government has been expanding this program.

~~~
Silhouette
That is a rather one-sided presentation of how this happened.

Neither Academies in general (the invention of the previous administration)
nor Free Schools (one development of that idea by the current administration)
are necessarily anything to do with religion. Moreover, we have had successful
religious schools since long before that without the problems we're talking
about here.

Whatever your politics and whatever think of either the Academies concept or
allowing schools to be run by organisations with religious motivations,
singling out a few cases where things have obviously gone wrong with
insufficient oversight as if that is what either government intended to happen
with the changes in recent years is hardly constructive.

~~~
makomk
The successful religious schools were, for the most part, run by some of the
older and slightly calmer institutional religions like the Church of England
and the Roman Catholic Church. With academies, the Government deliberately let
random Christian fundamentalist businessmen with interesting religious views
run them on the basis that their religion and business skills would make them
suitable owners. They didn't actually expect them using this opportunity to
teach kids creationism but it was fairly inevitable under the circumstances.

------
tptacek
Politics. Religion. Valence issue. Why is this on the front page of HN? It
shouldn't be; I flagged it.

~~~
matthewmacleod
I'm not sure education counts as an entirely political issue.

It's obviously an area that interests the HN community quite a lot - there's a
bias towards science and engineering here, and everybody interested in those
fields should find the teaching of creationism in a scientific context to be
abhorrent. So I think it probably warrants discussion when the education
system adopts policies which are actively hostile to the fields many of us are
involved in (or in this case, when there's a push back against it).

~~~
arethuza
To be honest, I suspect this counts as a political issue in the US and isn't
one in the UK. As this is a US dominated site I can sort of see why people
don't want it debated here as it'll just upset people - which it appears to
have done.

Ironically, religion doesn't play a very large part in day the day political
life in the UK even though most of the country has an official established
religion.

~~~
tptacek
No, the problem isn't that it will "upset people" in the US. Virtually none of
the readers of HN in the US see this issue as controversial.

------
jscheel
Scientists tend to exclude God, and creationists tend to exclude science. It
would benefit all of us for each side to recognize that they can live in
harmony. Science can provide insight into how God's creation works, but it can
never exclude God. If religious interpretation of scripture flies in the face
of provable, observable science, then perhaps our interpretation of that
scripture is wrong. I'm tired of this ridiculous standoff between the two
side.

~~~
wfjackson
It is ironic that the very same creationists tend to exclude Gods from other
religions. Why do they firmly exclude the Mayan God, or the Hindu Gods? Why
are their scriptures true but not the others? If there are contradictions in
the scriptures of the various religions in the world, then perhaps the
creationists "interpretation of that scripture is wrong".

The following quote comes to mind:

“I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one less god than you do.
When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will
understand why I dismiss yours.” —Stephen F Roberts

~~~
dropit_sphere
I had to engage with the Roberts quote because it made me think.

I think he's making a false equivalency. A jump from believing in one god to
two gods seems much less significant than a jump from zero to one.
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_One_Infinity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_One_Infinity))

Further, I'm not sure that _Roberts_ understands why the religious reject
other gods. Like most things people do, there are a variety of reasons:

\- Both Judaism and Islam have explicit commandments or statements of faith
that reject other gods

\- Suspicious of foreigners? Deride their religion as unreasonable and
obviously contrafactual

\- Wary of talk of the divine being used as justification for a mortal power
play? (And you should be) Add a bias for rejection into your calculations

\- And of course, extraordinary claims and extraordinary evidence

------
err4nt
I never understood why people get so worked up over this issue. Is the job of
education to only ever let a child hear the one thing we believe to be most
factual and never hear anything else? How boring would life be?

I grew up in a place that valued multiculturalism. We heard about creation,
AND evolution, and Indian creation myths, and Egyptian creation myths, and
more. Pthe idea was that we had these people around us with this rich history
and tradition and us learning it made us understand others better, and feel
closer to them. We knew where they were coming from!

So why not teach creationism in schools, as long as at least one group of
people are telling their kids, then that's something we should tell all of our
kids so they all understand. I don't see the harm.

What if learning origins stories was an exploration of history or
anthropology, instead of being framed as 'science'.

~~~
joesmo
It'd be a waste of children's time and energy. I understand that, at least in
the US, the purpose of schools is _not_ education but babysitting, but if
you're going to spend time teaching anyway, perhaps teaching children real
science instead of pseudoscience might be a better option not only for them
but for society as a whole. Societies that believe school's primary purpose is
education don't even have the excuse above for the miseducation you refer to.

It's not about teaching children what we believe to be most factual, it's
about _not_ teaching them what we _know_ is false.

------
philcoders
I posted this link as a new thread, but i think it is worth posting this also
here,

[http://www.elisoriano.com/blog/new-truths-belie-evolution-
ev...](http://www.elisoriano.com/blog/new-truths-belie-evolution-even-more/)

Would love to hear what the HN community thought on the arguments.

~~~
daemonk
I am a bioinformatician with a background in genetics.

The argument against evolution in the article, mainly the piltdown man hoax
and new sequencing data on neanderthal is extremely weak.

I don't think a single example of scientific fraud is enough to discredit the
entire community. I actually think the fact that the fraud was found out as a
hoax shows that evidence is constantly being scrutinized and re-examined;
which is exactly what science should be all about.

The point about sequence similarity/dis-similarity being not the ultimate
evidence for common ancestry is actually an insightful point; however, I doubt
the author of the article realized the insight. He was probably just parroting
a statement he read in another article. I don't think you can make a strong
statement about homology between genomes using only 65,000 bases of sequence
from potentially heavily degraded sample. I think it is just an interesting
starting point for further analysis with more data.

The rest of the article dealt with interpreting biblical statements to fit
with current undeniable understanding of the universe. IE. Man is made from
dust is consistent with humans being consisted of elements found in dust
(crust) of the earth. I am sure it sounds nice to people who believe in the
bible. But it makes me wonder what these interpretations will look like in a
hundred years. Are these interpretations going to change with new
understandings of the universe? Is the bible just full of vague statements
that can constantly adapt to new understanding of the world? What good is that
really?

I've always wondered what a creationist view of biology would look like. There
are plenty of attacks against evolution, but never any clear explanation of
how their belief system is in accordance with current data. Do new species
suddenly pop into existence from nothing by god? Do god specifically implant
new species into the womb of a surrogate specie? Why does god invent bunch of
new species in the first place? Why not modify the environment to suit the
species rather than modify species to suit the environment? I think
creationism hides behind a wall of hand-wavy and foggy ideas that breaks down
when explicitly examined.

~~~
philcoders
"The rest of the article dealt with interpreting biblical statements to fit
the current undeniable understanding of the universe.", (How do i correctly
put a quote here in the replies?)

In Isaiah 40:22 It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth…

This is written before any scientist can confirm it. Thats not interpretation,
its a clearly stated fact, "circle". And he points out if other religion gets
it wrong.

~~~
Lambdanaut
The Earth is a sphere, not a circle. That's not a nitpick either. They thought
the Earth was a flat disk back then.

Regardless. Even if you were dumbly granted that the Earth was a flat disk,
how would that have any barring on the rest of the Bible's arguments?

Plato was right about a lot of things, but does that mean he was also right
about the elemental nature of the universe? (Everything being created from the
base elements of fire, earth, wind and water)

Your argument is bad even if it were correct.

~~~
meepmorp
> The Earth is a sphere, not a circle.

The earth is an oblate spheroid, not a sphere.

~~~
grkvlt
> The earth is an oblate spheroid

To a first order approximation, such as would be suitable for a discussion on
an Internet forum, the earth is basically a sphere...

