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Does a lack of evidence for theory A make theory B true?
Just because theory A is not fully proved does not mean we should choose theory B instead. Why not choose theory C, D, E, or F?
Or even better, why not stick to science and simply tell students that theory A has not yet been proven 100%, and if there are no alternative scientific theories available to offer, leave it at that?
And that's fine, I respect that belief, but its a belief and not a scientific theory which can be tested. But then I am not suggesting it cant be raised as part of the discussion, I just dont think it should be given as much time as evolution/adaptation.
To be honest I'd doubt the Big Bang theory is covered in any depth, I very much doubt even the teachers understand it let alone the students.
We were taught it as fact not a theory. I don't know if my school was typical but when we covered this it was only very briefly; I don't think we spent any more on it than one lesson. (And to think how much time and money is spent lobbying...)
Struggling to remember my own school days, but if I remember the teacher talked about creationism, to put into context that Darwin was the first person to seriously bring into the mainstream a challenge that the orthodoxy that the world was created in 6 days and to offer evidence for an alternative.
The teacher mentioned Archbishop's Usher's work that the world was created in 4004BC as the alternative before Darwinism.
http://www.thesite.org/community/reallife/getinvolved
Which is a fair point, quantum physics is fairly obscure. The thing is, while you can't test religious belief, that is, whether christianity is more correct than islam or whatever, you can test ID against Evolution, you can look at the odds, you can look at life. Personally I think as soon as you come across something that is irreducibily complex, like the bacteria flagella, you're looking in the face of engineering, not chance. It can be tested. I think it's much more reasonable to say that something made things the way they are, than to say everything happened because it happened because that really is incredibly unlikely, possibly, but unlikely, as I've said before, prohibitivly so.
But can it be tested? I suppose it can if we have a few billion years, but without that I dont see how it can.
There is clear evidence that things adapt and change to their enviroment (see MRSA for example) so if they do that, why not more complex changes?
Where did the creator come from?
God, is pretty complex himself right? So where the hell did he come from?
Similarly, where did the big bang come from? Comically put, "there was nothing which exploded making everything".
Religion believe that God is uncaused. The parties disagree on whether it is possible for Him to have always existed. Some say that everything with an effect has to have a beginning of time.
Instead, one can simply say that the universe has never been created and that matter has always existed. There's no evidence against either arguments which makes either more valid. That's the same with ID and the theory of evolution.
If we do not even understand how the Big Bang happened, we would have no idea on how to understand the existence of a supreme creator - especially if you are thinking of one in relationship to time.
Maybe the creator is not bound by time. Maybe the creator just is.
We don't know where god came from. Who was there before God? Why did he create the world as it is and why? Etc etc...we do not know
We dont know how the big bang happened and how it vreated the universe. We don't know what was there before the big bang. We don't know how life came to be on the earth HOWEVER there is evidence to back up this theory. Not to prove it but to support it. Genes, natural selection, evolution. It is PROVEN that animals adapt to suit their environments, both long term and short term adaptions. This supports the theory of evolution and suggests that it is possible
Both theories start off pretty shaky. ID could quite well have happened, there's no reason why not. But what evidence is there to support the idea? Not a lot. There is a lot more evidence to back up the idea of evolution
It's something that I've come to believe through reading around the subject. No doubt my source will be mocked, but Bill Bryson's book was most informative about the subject.
I do believe in Intelligent Design, of sorts, because I think that there are too many holes to fill by saying it was all just random chance.
As for evolution itself, I'm not sure about what I think. There is evidence of sorts to show natural change, but at the same time there is precious little evidence to suggest that we evolved from apes who evolved from amoeba. There is no evidence of a "missing link" which would show that evolution took place, there are some huge gaps filled with nothing more than speculation and conjecture. I've already been through this.
As for my teaching, it did raise questions which I went away and researched. Most of it I discounted.
As for it "not being science", how do you define science? There is much that is termed "science" that is nothing more than secular dogma.
If we had stuck to that mentality as a species would would still believe earthquakes and eclipses (amongst countless other ocurrences in every possible field) were just the gods showing their displeasure.
To suggest that beause something is very complex it must be the work of God requires a leap of faith and belief. But it is not science at all. If anything it stands against the very principles and basic pillars of science.
Frankly I cannot believe we're still discussing whether Creationism/ID should be even mentioned in science lessons. You might as well demand witch doctors must be allowed their say in a medical conference discussing how to beat the HIV virus.
It equally doesn't mean that it did just happen by chance.
My belief is that it didn't happen by chance. I don't want that taught as fact, but I don't want a hypothetical and speculative idea taught as fact either.
There is precious little proof that we evolved from anything.
I don't know, most science work in this field requires a massive leap of faith. It's just a different faith- the desire to prove the clergy wrong.
To suggest that something came from nothing, and life came from nowhere and that an a single celled organism made the random leap into something more complicated requires a similarly massive leap of faith. Whether you want to admit it or not.
Whereas, I am sorry to say, there is not much of anything to support Creationism or even the existence of any Deity. That is why one of the pillars of any religion is faith. Because there is little else to go by.
Now, there might still be a God, he could still have created the Universe and science could be completely wrong. But the point remains that unless any scientific evidence of that surfaces, religion should be confined to religious lessons, and science to science lessons.
Is it a similarly massive leap of faith?
ID believes that things have been designed by a creator of some sort - but there is nothing other than the idea that its very unlikely to support this.
However, evolution has some evidence to suggest it could work, there are things we can test, measure, study, prod and poke to evaluate the theory.
Having said that, of course when you are talking about the first 'spark' or bang or whatever then both science and religion are basically at a bit of a loss as to how it could happen, it just did.
I was never taught that Evolution was a fact. A lot of my peers and me included assumed it was at some point but whenver we said so we were corrected and told the difference between fact and a theory. In Icelandic it's even called '(Darwin's) Evolution Theory'. The theory bit is never left out.
Given what I was taught in Science classes I don't see any reason to include Creationism or ID into classrooms. Sure, if the topic comes up in class then it can be discussed, but it should not be a subject pushed by the school. It's religion, not science. If science is taught well, the kids should be more than capable of applying logic to make up their minds in their own time. I know I did.
Why do you and kermit keep bringing Big Bang into it?
What has that got to do with ID?
The starting premise is simply that there is some matter, and we want toknow how the living world around as came from that matter?
Where the matter came from in the first place is not directly relevant.
Nor is any theology or religious guff, remember this is 'science' :rolleyes:
Your theory is incomplete without saying where the creator came from...........
It's more interesting than this property purchase contract I'm supposed to be amending
Evolution and big bang are directly related. We all evolved from the same amoeba which came from the big bang, according to the theory.
it's 'fact' as in its the best explanation, and explains a lot of things
i'll be frank here, i think the science education in this country is a joke, went to a technicians health and safety thing today where a newly built academy doesnt even have a functioning prep room with a fume cupboard
and i'm very happy to see children taught the limitations of many scientific theories, evolution (as we know it) has many flaws, but it is the best working model, and teaching kids that all science effectively does it try to build up a working model of things would be a wonderful thing
sadly though, i find it inexcusible to bring in 'faith based' teaching such as ID which technically is a non-provable hypothesis and not a scientific theory and thus belongs in the realm of philosophy, which i'd like kids to take part in as it broadens the mind so to speak which is a good thing
as said before i wouldnt teach german in a french class, so i wouldnt teach a non-scientific idea in a science class
and yes school science is way too simplified, but thats what you get for wanting to teach 'real life' science as opposed to how ideas and theories have developed
in regards to development of species as a whole, people are working on it, and will be working on it for a long time past my to explain life on this planet, that doesnt mean it is beyond the scope of human intelligence, it just means it takes time - much like newton provided us with a simple model of gravity which works, almost all of the time - einstein has further improved our knowledge of how gravity works, like explaining how mercury's orbit is different to a newtonian orbit due to it's closeness to the sun - but still einstein's relativity theories don't hold in some circumstances, like what happens in extremely small yet large massed objects, or even a more basic question of 'What is Mass'
according to the current theory that is.... ideas develop, people always seem to think we're at our peak scientifically, there's always more to learn
there's a time and a place for philosophy, and science lessons aren't it
it's not an 'explosion' as we know it, it's just an expansion of 'space-time' - i can't get my head around it, it's like drawing a graph, and then scaling it up in size, same information different size
and on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducibly_complex and the flagellum
one function can alter into another, like a wire can be turned into a spring into something else, and just becuase you see say a series of springs working to form a clock, doesnt mean they were always springs, as is the case with flagellum, but with a molecular motor probably being a toxin needle before
and a lovely quote i read somewhere