British campuses are facing a student revolt from those who (gasp!) believe creationism is true:
A growing number of science students on British campuses and in sixth form colleges are challenging the theory of evolution and arguing that Darwin was wrong. Some are being failed in university exams because they quote sayings from the Bible or Qur'an as scientific fact and at one sixth form college in London most biology students are now thought to be creationists....
In the United States there is growing pressure to teach creationism or "intelligent design" in science classes, despite legal rulings against it. Now similar trends in this country have prompted the Royal Society, Britain's leading scientific academy, to confront the issue head on with a talk entitled Why Creationism is Wrong. The award-winning geneticist and author Steve Jones will deliver the lecture and challenge creationists, Christian and Islamic, to argue their case rationally at the society's event in April.
"There is an insidious and growing problem," said Professor Jones, of University College London. "It's a step back from rationality. They (the creationists) don't have a problem with science, they have a problem with argument. And irrationality is a very infectious disease as we see from the United States."
Establishment Science as usual tries to have it both ways. There is the attempt to crush debate by 'legal rulings' against any dissent from the Darwinian model. When people still insist on holding on to their subversive creationist views despite official dissaproval there is a call for 'rational discourse'. 'Rational discourse', however, is always defined by the Scientific Establishment in such a way that creationism is ipso facto declared as 'irrational': Why, no rational person could believe such a thing! Rational people believe that the universe exists as the result of a great cosmic accident then billions of years later something or other crawled out of the muck and now we have all sorts of different living things running about. We know that is rational because rational people believe it, and no one I would know would believe in a (ha!) 'God'. Only irrational people believe that thus such belief is irrational. Why won't these irrational people engage us in rational debate?
Yes, the creationists certainly are the problem...
4 comments:
I'm sorry, I can't follow your argument. I'm just a simple minded creationist. Could you just express it as a declarative statement of what is true and cease expecting me to actually follow a line of reasoning? That would make me much more comfortable. I am, after all, slavishly devoted to a God of declarative statements who never expects me to reason.
Sheesh.
(Sorry to delete and repost - I had a typo and given how picky I am with you about them, I couldn't just let it go. I would never hear the end of it.)
I'm still trying to figure out what kind of "creationism" you're referring to here? Is it "Young Earth" or "Old Earth" creationism? Is "Old Earth" creationism the same thing as "Intelligent Design?" And is "Intelligent Design" the same thing as "Theistic Evolution?"
Is the science of cosmology (which combines the disciplines of physics, higher mathematics, and observational astronomy) simply an elaborate Satanic deception? After all, if we accept that all of Creation took place less than 7,000 years ago, cosmology falls apart.
Hi Alan,
I live in London, am a Christian and a creationsist and am actually praying about whether i should attend this lecture being given by Professor Steve Jones at the Royal Society. The lecture will be on the 11th of April at 6:30 p.m.
Blessings,
Cecil
P.S. i thinks 'susanna' missed the irony in your post :-) sometimes irony is the best approach.
If you have the opportunity, I would probably go. Hang in there!
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