Creation: yea or nay?

Many of you that live here in America have probably read some stuff about creationism (specifically "intelligent design") and how it's gained supporters and is starting to be taught in schools. I'm too lazy to link specific articles, but if you go to any major news source you should find some stuff about it. Anyways, what do you guys think about this? Does creationism have a place in classrooms? Please, no flames.

 

Awww, such a harsh sig snowie... I only presume to speak for most of it...

I think just about everyone has a place in classrooms, it's just the teachers job to make sure that he or she is teaching it in as unbiased a way as possible. If the creationist ideas are added to a schools curriculum, more power to the students. They get to be exposed to something different. But the teacher shouldn't be trouncing the ideas, or trumpeting them. They need to get the ideas out there and let the students decide what to believe.

 

What do you mean, no flames? Chocolate Jesus on a Stickâ„¢, man, that's no fun.

Creationism has no business in grade school, as it is completely intellectually disingenuous, religiously biased, and just plain silly. It would be irresponsible to present young children with a variety of unscientific options and tell them they're just as acceptable as the scientific theories and that it would be A-OK for them to choose whichever story best fits their religion's medieval outlook.

Now in college it deserves mentioning. Not in science classes, but in courses on religion, philosophy, history of science, and terrorism.

 

How about making it an optional class, and letting the parents decide?

 

Or even better, letting the students decide for themselves.

 

Even better, letting schools teach established scientific positions and leaving the fantasy to the parents and churches.

Grammar school children are in no state to decide for themselves, considering how ignorant and poorly informed they are.

 

I was not inferring grammar school, I mewant somewhere in between 7-12. Yea, teaching religion right next to the abcs and gravity. By the time a person is in high school however, they should be able to differentiate between reality and nevernever land.

 

Putting aside the reasoning skills of high school students (for which I have limited respect), I see no justification for teaching an explicitly religious story alongside science as though they were equal, and then on top of it telling the kids whatever they decide is fine. In what other subject, even within science, would they be allowed the same leeway?

I don't want my taxes going towards the encouragement of backwards thinking among the most impressionable of our citizens.

 

I'm so with Canis on this one - everything I've heard about creationism is pure bullshit. I read a great article in Wired about it. Basically, they don't have a valid theory, what they have is a concept, and what they want is for a concept to be taught alongside a valid and proven scientific fact. Just getting attention drawn to it is a victory for them. They're playing on people's sense of a fair go - if you're against intelligent design being taught, then you're afraid of what it has to offer, and you're trying to hide the truth from everyone else. If you're okay with it being taught, then VICTORY!

Not only is their campaign full of theatrics, they don't have anything to their theory other than "We don't understand it, therefore God must have done it!" Never mind that we're understanding more and more about the universe everyday, seeing as we're at the pinnacle of knowledge now, if we don't know it already, then a greater being must have done everything.

In short, I have no respect for ID, or anyone who grants it any sort of credence. It's funded and being pushed by religious fanatics desperately clinging to an outdated dogma from Galileo's time.

 

Ditto to Jarinor, and canis' posts.

 

Tut, tut. Such small mindedness. Our "knowledge" that you speak of is nothing compared to a omniscient, omnipotent being. Where do you think our knowledge come from? Why are we different than the beasts of the earth? We have reason and logic (some of us) and creative thinking, emotion, ability to communicate through a complex language... Are you one of those that believes simians one day decided to climb outta the trees and invent shit?

That said, I think that what I had in school was probably best. Evolution and Creation were both briefly mentioned, and that was it. Unless it's a religious school, I think that it should be left alone. I don't want evolution shoved down my kids throats by some liberal, axe-grinding teacher either. Despite the fact that there are a few of us that descended from monkies, (Sleek) I did not.

 

<Ahem>

I don't want creationism shoved down my kids throats by some fanatical axe-grinding "teacher" either.

So if knowledge comes from omnipotent beings, where do omnipotent beings come from?

 

Retard, I'm sorry you reject that scientific fact. Would you care to look at the bone evolution, or is that just the liberal media? Your use of small mindedness, and your rejection of proven science in the same sentence is jarring.

Look, I don't know alot about creationism, and am too drunk right now, and too lazy every other time, to be bothered finding out about what you've so clearly stated is just some bullshit christian science-esc bilge. I think that if a responsible teacher, i.e. a nonpartisan axe-grinding fanatic, were to teach anything, explaining it in pure and simple terms for the students, then they'ld come to a rational decision for themselves. If the teacher is too far to either end of the spectrum, it'll cloud the lesson.

EXAMPLE: My U.S. History teacher, hard-line rightie. Evidently jefferson wasn't so hot. All those slave children easily outweigh any of his ideas, like freedom of speech, or the Declaration of Independence. My current English teacher, so far left even Sleek would cringe. I'm a male WASP. I am effectively Satan. The only good literature is literature either berating me, berating my "institutions", my parts (the republican party of course, the oppressors were all republican), or just bitching about the world and how I've in some way damned it to oblivion. All my opinions are null, coming from a man, a white person, and heterosexual.

Sleek, don't start this damn debate again, it goes no where. It's like asking which came first, the chicken or the egg, and then screaming because someone disagrees with you.

 

The egg would have to have come before the modern day chicken. Somewhere back along its evolutionary line its predecessors started laying eggs, you couldnt just have a slight jump in the chain and suddenly start having them lay eggs, the first chicken hatched from an egg layed by a slightly less developed chicken type creature. Of course you could say that the less developed predecessor of the chicken is just as much of a chicken as the one we accept as the standard chicken, laying eggs and whatnot, so by that rule perhaps the chickens werent chickens until they started laying eggs. Either way, our modern day chicken, was certainly first hatched from an egg.

 

That presupposes evolution by natural selection, Sleek. There's no reasoning with some people; that's why it's called faith, and it's why I'd support secession for the Republic of California.

 

Or you could say that God beamed the chickens down from his mothership and therefore they came first. Either way, no proof exists to provide true confirmation, so the issue will never be settled. So why should we waste time arguing and spewing vitriol when none of us can honestly say we're right? It is a little easier for Retard, he doesn't have to prove anything he says, he can just say it's in the Bible, but still, neither he, nor I, nor anyone can settle the issue.

I'm against censoring opinions or ideas, regardless of how stupid they may be. Perhaps you are correct in some ways. A teacher's curriculum is jam packed already, perhaps school time should be alloted solely to factual things, or fully accepted theories.

However, if people want to waste their time yelling stupid things, all I have to do is ignore them. They can either realize their defeat, or die miserable. In the first case they weren't hopeless anyway, and in the second they were. So.... where's the problem?

 

Snow, come to THE CHUJ sometimes. I need to sex you up girl

 

Well if that isn't some James Bond style seduction I don't know what is...

 

For England, James?

 

No, For Kenya, James. Their distant cousins.