Should Creationism be taught in classrooms?

[otseng]

Should Creationism be taught in classrooms (as science)?
More specifically, should it be taught in public schools?
If so, how should it be taught as a science?

[otseng]

I would argue the opposite. The denunciation of Creationism being taught in schools is indicative of the general climate of lack of open inquiry in classrooms and society. Science is furthered by open debate on existing theories and is hindered by lack of challenges to theories. And evolutionary theories are closed to challenge and debate in classroom settings. As a matter of fact, often evolutionary theories are taught as fact and challenges to the theories are not tolerated. This leads to a decline is scientific advancement, rather than progression.

I don't think this is true.

Which parts of my statement do you consider not to be true?

Since I've begun researching this topic (thank you, otseng), I've noticed that many Creationists seize on parts of evolutionary theory that have already been refuted or altered through the scientific process. And they tend to use reasoning that is less than scientifically or rhetorically rigorous in order to make their claims. While this was true of many scientists back before the modern era, we have since discovered how best to think about these things and interpret the evidence. Unfortunately for Creationism, many of its proponents come off as religious zealots and irrational apologists.

I would not deny this. And I probably have been guilty of this myself.

Present company excluded, of course.

Whew... I'm glad I am not viewed as an irrational apologist.

Is it possible for a Creationist viewpoint to exclude God? I submit that it is not. If you study the workings behind Creationism, you eventually get back to this fact.

I would completely agree. And here is what I believe to be the major stumbling block of the acceptance of the CM as a valid theory. Because that God is in the picture at all, the CM cannot be accepted, even with evidence and logic to support it. But, I ask, why should CM be categorically dismissed when there are evidence and logic to support it even though a supernatural being is also involved?

[ENIGMA]

Is it possible for a Creationist viewpoint to exclude God? I submit that it is not. If you study the workings behind Creationism, you eventually get back to this fact.

I would completely agree. And here is what I believe to be the major stumbling block of the acceptance of the CM as a valid theory. Because that God is in the picture at all, the CM cannot be accepted, even with evidence and logic to support it. But, I ask, why should CM be categorically dismissed when there are evidence and logic to support it even though a supernatural being is also involved?

The problem with the Creation Model being accepted on the basis of evidence and logic is that by and large it can be supported with roughly similar logic regardless of what the evidence happens to be. The only prerequisite for such a belief is organisms of sufficient intelligence to develop such concepts. Any piece of evidence can be construed to support the said creation model since it can be "explained" by an unexplainable stop-gap, as follows:

The sky is blue, which is pretty, which shows God made the Earth...

The sky is hot-pink, which is God's way of showing us unconditional love.

The fossils look somewhat demonic, which means that God created the Earth after destroying the wicked...

Our bodies are utterly inefficient and malfunction prone in many areas of activity, which means that God had made us but the dark one screwed with the design....

There's a big alien-looking portal in the middle of nowhere that is labeled "Property of Marklar, Do Not Marklar or You Will Be Marklared", which shows that God created us to learn stuff while avoiding temptation while interacting with a previous creation....

Every molecule in the universe splits apart every few hours, quickly blips around the universe and returns to its original position to reconsitute people, showing that God made us to continually renew ourselves...

etc... etc...

I honestly must inquire, is there any possible set of evidence that would preclude the ability of some omnipotent creator to snap their fingers and make it so, leaving its followers to give some obscure rationalization? If there isn't then such a model is not science for the same reason that a UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) does not make an effective minesweeper:

Even if you send it into a densely packed minefield, it won't hit anything.

Likewise, even if the Creation Model is refuted on all technical points, one could always claim divine or demonic intervention in all matters so as to render any scientific data as being corrupted.

As with the Church a few hundred years ago, even if the calculations all work out that something that contradicts dogma is found to be the case, the calculations are wrong, not dogma.

...and that my friends is how we have conclusively established that the Earth is flat, the center of the solar system, and congealed together by a supreme being within the space of a week.

[Abulafia]

I honestly must inquire, is there any possible set of evidence that would preclude the ability of some omnipotent creator to snap their fingers and make it so, leaving its followers to give some obscure rationalization? If there isn't then such a model is not science for the same reason that a UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) does not make an effective minesweeper:

Even if you send it into a densely packed minefield, it won't hit anything.

My assumption is that everyone who is debating creation models on this board are entering into the discussion with the belief that:

- We should base our views on evidence and scientific method (which doesn't preclude theism)

- For a model to be worth considering as something which should be taught in schools, it has to not dismiss its own inconsistencies as "mysteries beyond human understanding".

- The Bible may be used as a starting point, but not as the authoritative source of data for the model. IE: A biblical passage can't be cited as evidence in a scientific CM. It can be used as a background assumption, and can be interpreted in light of scientific evidence, but the theory doesn't get any "credibility points" for being in line with the Bible - It has to earn those on its own.

- It has to be a legitimate theory - in other words it has to have more explanatory power than the competing theories (not just be prettier, but be either better at consistently interpreting the data, or better at making predictions), and has to have implications which can be 'objectively' tested against the implications of competing theories.

I'd love to hear from some of the Creationists here whether I'm mis-representing. I know that there are Creationists whose views are closer to those charicatured by Enigma, but I figure we might as well do away with straw-men.

[ST88]

I don't think this is true.

Which parts of my statement do you consider not to be true?

Sorry. I wasn't being all that clear. I went off on a tangent and never came back to this. This is the statement I don't think is true:

The denunciation of Creationism being taught in schools is indicative of the general climate of lack of open inquiry in classrooms and society.

I don't think the two things have anything to do with each other. Disagreeing with teaching Creationism is not caused by a general lack of open inquiry. Quite the opposite. For all that I can see, Creationism tends to discourage open inquiry.

Creationism was the dominant Western theory of the universe for about 1500 years. One might say that alternate theories were... discouraged. There were Creationists and there were heretics. What has changed since then are the methods of dealing with heretics.

Inquiry into Creationism leads nowhere. All roads lead to God. I disagree with teaching Creationism because -- in my opinion -- it is not science. It looks a heck of a lot like science, but in reality it only uses the tools of science. All the messages appear the same to me, the only difference is that it now has the means to define itself in terms of the currently accepted framework (the Big Bang theory sounds suspiciously like "Let there be light.")

But now to get back to the statement (finally). It may appear that "open inquiry" is discouraged because you are on the other side. But there are are so many problems with Creationism that it doesn't have the kind of scientific credibility that evolution has. And I'm not talking about the individual issues that you've raised here. I'm talking about the wide variety of scientific findings that directly oppose what Creationism says they should be, such as dating methods, interpretation of strata, the operation of genetic material, and the way light works (not to mention some scientific "mistakes" in the Bible). The "open inquiry" question does not necessarily imply that the theory is being dismissed simply because it conflicts with current theories. The end-result of Creationism is belief in the Bible, that is its purpose and reason for being.

Convincing people with the carrot and stick approach of Heaven and Hell has not been working all that well since the Enlightenment. In our current culture, the most convincing type of arguments are scientific arguments, so naturally the focus has been on doing the science. Now, I'm not saying that there is this big organization dedicated to promoting the science of the Bible -- as there is in Scientology, for example -- all I'm saying is that people tend to be more convinced when the evidence is based in science, so the people trying to do the convincing tend to make their case in those terms.

But, I ask, why should CM be categorically dismissed when there are evidence and logic to support it even though a supernatural being is also involved?

Consider how such a course could be taught. You describe the mechanisms of the flood, like you did in the various Global Flood threads, discuss how the layers formed, the limestone, the rivers, salt vs. fresh water, etc. And it's all very well to describe how these things happened -- until little Jillian raises her hand and asks, "What caused the flood?" and further, "What caused the fountains to release the water from the bowels of the Earth?"; and "What caused the vapor canopy to release itself in a torrent?"

When you get down to the meat of the theory, it is no different from various other creation myths. And how do you make the distinction to teach one as science and not the others?

Now, I realize that the way science is taught in many of our schools is flawed. Theories are presented as facts and individual interpretations of the evidence are presented as universally accepted. But I think this is less a case of the exclusion of other theories than it is a case of the "Thistlebottom" effect. When discussing how English teachers approach grammar, grammarians often use the instructive case of the fictitious Mrs. Thistlebottom, who had to come up with strict rules of grammar despite the fact that no such rules exist. For example, the split-infinitive is not a violation of the rules of grammar. But in order to quell the unruly offspring of the great unwashed, she perpetuated that fiction because it's easier to teach than it is to say "put the verb wherever it feels right in the situation." I'm sure many of us had a Mrs. Thistlebottom in our histories somewhere (or have her right now).

In other words, it's much easier to teach evolution as a fact because gray areas open up the floodgates, if you will, of unruliness. And there's so much information to get through in a semester that digressions of this kind -- which require a great deal of reflective power that our K-8 education institutions are refusing to help promote (but that's a different issue) -- are counter-productive for the class as a whole. This is more indicative of a monolithic educational system that favors learning facts over learning how to think, creating better test scores over creating viable citizens, and maximizing the income potential of students over maximizing satisfaction of their lives.

[otseng]

The problem with the Creation Model being accepted on the basis of evidence and logic is that by and large it can be supported with roughly similar logic regardless of what the evidence happens to be. The only prerequisite for such a belief is organisms of sufficient intelligence to develop such concepts. Any piece of evidence can be construed to support the said creation model since it can be "explained" by an unexplainable stop-gap, as follows:

If such arguments were made to support the CM in any of the threads here, then it could quite easily be dismissed. Arguments stand by an appeal to reason, not an appeal to faith. And practically all arguments made by creationists here on this forum appeal to the former. If you do see an appeal to faith, then by all means point out the logical flaw in the appropriate threads.

My assumption is that everyone who is debating creation models on this board are entering into the discussion with the belief that:

- We should base our views on evidence and scientific method (which doesn't preclude theism)

For the C vs E debates, I agree.

- For a model to be worth considering as something which should be taught in schools, it has to not dismiss its own inconsistencies as "mysteries beyond human understanding".

I would quibble with this one. We have mysteries that we cannot fully understand. Yet, we teach them. Could it be possible that we can understand them in the future? Possibly, but there is no proof that we will ultimately fully understand them.

- The Bible may be used as a starting point, but not as the authoritative source of data for the model. IE: A biblical passage can't be cited as evidence in a scientific CM. It can be used as a background assumption, and can be interpreted in light of scientific evidence, but the theory doesn't get any "credibility points" for being in line with the Bible - It has to earn those on its own.

Agreed.

- It has to be a legitimate theory - in other words it has to have more explanatory power than the competing theories (not just be prettier, but be either better at consistently interpreting the data, or better at making predictions), and has to have implications which can be 'objectively' tested against the implications of competing theories.

I would agree that it has to be a legitimate theory, but it doesn't necessarily have to have more power than competing theories in order to be taught. If it does, so much the better. But it doesn't mean that the weaker theories should be completely dismissed.

I don't think the two things have anything to do with each other. Disagreeing with teaching Creationism is not caused by a general lack of open inquiry. Quite the opposite. For all that I can see, Creationism tends to discourage open inquiry.

I would not say that it is a cause, but rather just indicative of the general climate.

I fail to see how teaching Creationism would discourage open inquiry. Nobody is suggesting that only the CM should be taught and that the EM should be thrown away. Rather, by pitting the two frameworks together, it fosters debate and challenge. Isn't this forum a case in point?

Another note, I'm not suggesting either to give the CM equal time as the EM. And I'm not suggesting that all schools should teach the CM. But, it should at least be an option to whatever school that wants to teach it as a science.

until little Jillian raises her hand and asks, "What caused the flood?" and further, "What caused the fountains to release the water from the bowels of the Earth?"; and "What caused the vapor canopy to release itself in a torrent?"

When you get down to the meat of the theory, it is no different from various other creation myths. And how do you make the distinction to teach one as science and not the others?

For the case of the public school system, it is easy to get around this problem. The teacher just simply says some supernatural source. Nothing in the CM describes the exact identity of the supernatural source. It could be Jehovah, Allah, or Super-dooper-big-man-in-the-sky. Teaching Creationism ends where science ends and doesn't go into which god created things.

[nikolayevich]

The end-result of Creationism is belief in the Bible, that is its purpose and reason for being.

It appears that one of the recurring themes in the creation / evolution debate is that evolutionists question the legitimacy of purpose on the part of the creationist, and use this question to undermine the legitimacy of science dealing with ID or CM. The dilemma is that doesn't add to refutation, any more than an assertion that one's own position is somehow "unbiased".

I think we could all agree that science ought to deal with content, not intent.

That said, I think that it's fine to discuss motives in appropriate places, just as long as evidence or concepts are not thrown out on that basis.

It has to be a legitimate theory - in other words it has to have more explanatory power than the competing theories (not just be prettier, but be either better at consistently interpreting the data, or better at making predictions), and has to have implications which can be 'objectively' tested against the implications of competing theories.

Yes. I and others that I discuss these things with would not at all be happy about weak arguments or especially "just so" propositions. This particular thread question is not about removing speciation or such topics from the classroom. It is not about changing biology. It is, as Osteng has pointed out, legitimate questioning of the theory of evolution.

If evolution cannot be questioned (note that I'm not speaking of presenting it as false, but rather allowing and encouraging debate) then it is not presented as falsifiable. This is quite serious. One only has to do a bit of searching to find cases where teachers have, without adding a theistic framework, questioned the potency of evolution before their classes and been later suspended or fired. Scientific American is one journal where a science writer was rejected, not because of a lack of scientific scholarship, but because of his belief in creation.

I'd love to hear from some of the Creationists here whether I'm mis-representing. I know that there are Creationists whose views are closer to those charicatured by Enigma, but I figure we might as well do away with straw-men.

You represent well for having a different perspective. I must say, Enigma's depictions of creationists are at the very least amusing. It should be noted that the same extreme exaggerations can be applied to evolution, it simply does not do justice to evolutionists trying to arrive at truth.

[Abulafia]

- For a model to be worth considering as something which should be taught in schools, it has to not dismiss its own inconsistencies as "mysteries beyond human understanding".

I would quibble with this one. We have mysteries that we cannot fully understand. Yet, we teach them. Could it be possible that we can understand them in the future? Possibly, but there is no proof that we will ultimately fully understand them.

I should clarify: I'm certainly not saying that there aren't mysteries! I'm saying that when a model has elements of itself which are internally inconsistent, this should be acknowledged as a shortcoming of the theory. It may mean that the theory needs to be scrapped. Frequently inconsistencies (particularly external ones) mean that there's an important line of research needed, or a major "out of the box" leap needs to get made in terms of revising the theory to iron them out. And certainly it can mean that a theory touches on things which will stay outside of the realm of human comprehension forever.

What I meant to say is that any inconsistencies shouldn't be treated dismissively, as things which are simply beyond comprehension, and therefore shouldn't be bothered with.

Certainly when it comes down to it we don't understand much of anything. We don't understand light, yet we certainly teach about it. I was meaning to talk exclusively about approach to inconsistencies, not about acknowleding where we lack knowledge.

I would agree that it has to be a legitimate theory, but it doesn't necessarily have to have more power than competing theories in order to be taught. If it does, so much the better. But it doesn't mean that the weaker theories should be completely dismissed.

Good point. My bad! Certainly it doesn't need to be more powerful than competing theories in order to be taught. It just needs to have a certain 'acceptable level' of merit. (I was ranting earlier about the need to not just teach the dominant theory, or we cripple our kids' ability to learn how to think critically.

[ENIGMA]

I honestly must inquire, is there any possible set of evidence that would preclude the ability of some omnipotent creator to snap their fingers and make it so, leaving its followers to give some obscure rationalization? If there isn't then such a model is not science for the same reason that a UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) does not make an effective minesweeper:

Even if you send it into a densely packed minefield, it won't hit anything.

My assumption is that everyone who is debating creation models on this board are entering into the discussion with the belief that:

- We should base our views on evidence and scientific method (which doesn't preclude theism)

The scientific method, namely the experimental or testing portion of said method runs into a good bit of a snag when omnipotent entities are given near infinite discretion to screw with the results.

"Oh, no, it just looks like an evolutionary process..."

- For a model to be worth considering as something which should be taught in schools, it has to not dismiss its own inconsistencies as "mysteries beyond human understanding".

Fine then, why is it that every single indication shows that the Earth is roughly 4.5 Billion years old, and the Universe roughly 10-15 Billion, if the universe is in fact 6000-10000 years old as projected in the Bible? Time distortions perhaps? or is it the standard "Starlight was created en route" notion?

Or how about the countless examples of jury-rigged design and non-optimal reuse of various organs? God just couldn't be bothered to make new prototypes I take it?

God is almost by definition rendered as a mystery beyond human understanding. This is uncontested. In fact I could point to a number of posts on this very forum which makes such an equivalent statement on a different debate topic.

Without God or an equivalently unknowable deity, exactly how do you propose to base such a model? Evolution has no such problem since the mechanism for change (Mutations + Selection) is fairly well understood.

- The Bible may be used as a starting point, but not as the authoritative source of data for the model. IE: A biblical passage can't be cited as evidence in a scientific CM. It can be used as a background assumption, and can be interpreted in light of scientific evidence, but the theory doesn't get any "credibility points" for being in line with the Bible - It has to earn those on its own.

I must inquire, what evidence?

Some statements of incredulity about the ability of evolutionary mechanisms to develop structure "X"?

I imagine that many people a few hundred years ago would have found it hard to believe that the Earth is a sphere that is rotating around in the gravity well of a very large gravity-compressed nuclear fireball that will likely in a few billion years time, expand, rendering Earth uninhabitable.

I would not be suprised if the average person today took a double-take at the description above either. However such incredulity is fundamentally baseless.

I would think that such incredulity would be better applied to the notion that a supreme deity would go to the trouble of developing a universe so massive that a typical human mind goes full tilt when they try to intuitively understand such massive distances just to create some species of builder apes to develop stuff, and consequently sustain their knowledge about stuff through such constructions.

I mean, come on, what possible explanation can creationism hold for a universe that is mindbogglingly massive to our ability to perceive it? I can think of a couple of good evolutionary reasons for the full tilt right off the top of my head...

- It has to be a legitimate theory - in other words it has to have more explanatory power than the competing theories (not just be prettier, but be either better at consistently interpreting the data, or better at making predictions), and has to have implications which can be 'objectively' tested against the implications of competing theories.

Creationism has infinite explanatory power, since it can be used to explain any set of data (Just name any possible set of data and I can quite easily construct a creationist explanation). However, consequently it has zero predictive power for the same exact reason. Oh, what is the scientist to do?

[Abulafia]

The scientific method, namely the experimental or testing portion of said method runs into a good bit of a snag when omnipotent entities are given near infinite discretion to screw with the results.

"Oh, no, it just looks like an evolutionary process..."

As apparently it wasn't clear in my last post I'll restate: presumably we're talking about any CM based on the assumption that it has to come up with a logical explanation of the data. Sometimes this may indeed seem to be counter-intuitive, particularly if one isn't familiar with all the working assumptions of the model. (ie: the earth and universe may be much younger than generally supposed due to inherent errors in dating techniques or assumptions of 'linear' extrapolation in terms of inflation.)

(Again: I'm not a CM kinda guy so perhaps someone else could provide a better example, but I think these will do for making my point).

Likewise a mainstream scientific explanation can be counterintuitive if one isn't aware of all the assumptions (axioms) of the model. Wave-particle duality and Bose-Einstein condensates are pretty counter-intuitive, especially to the previous generations.

Of course people can come up with explanations where "omnipotent entities are given near infinite discretion to screw with the results.". But as those wouldn't fit the criteria I gave for a theory acceptable to teach in class, that seems to be a bit of a straw-man you're bringing in.

Fine then, why is it that every single indication shows that the Earth is roughly 4.5 Billion years old, and the Universe roughly 10-15 Billion, if the universe is in fact 6000-10000 years old as projected in the Bible? Time distortions perhaps? or is it the standard "Starlight was created en route" notion?

Firstly, my understanding is that "every single indication" does not show the Earth to be 4.5 Billion years old. That's an estimate arrived at by looking at a whole lot of data from a whole lot of sources, and finding an age that seems to best fit the data. It is nowhere near a certainty. It could be 2 Billion. It could be 10 Billion.

The age of the Universe is even more disputed even within non-theistic circles: There's everything from the fractally expanding universe theories where there needn't be a beginning, to 'big bangish' theories. Within the more dominant big bang theories there's a huge range of ages given.

I think part of the problem here goes back to the way science is taught: Atheist, you present the dominant theories as absolute and irrefutable facts when they are (in my opinion as a non-CM guy) best guesses based on skillfull interpretation of a variety of conflicting data.

Let alone the age of the universe and go with something as 'simple' (relatively speaking) as the distance to any given star (other than Sol). My astronomy 100 prof did his best to shatter the illusion created in high school physics that we know these distances well... that Alcyone is 367.718 light years away, etc. etc.... If our guesses are within a factor of 2 frequently, that's considered to be a good margin of error (in other words: it could be 185 light years, it could be 735 light years).

The bottom line is there's a lot of play in terms of how you interpret the facts. In order to shut out all CM theories as non-viable (which seems to be your goal), you need to demonstrate that the best CM theories (not the easiest to defeat) go too far outside the bounds of 'reasonable interpretation' of the data; and "But belief in God just isn't reasonable" doesn't count. If, for example, you could demonstrate that a CM which posited the age of the Universe at 6000 years had to assume a greater margin of error for carbon dating than is even vaguely reasonable... you'd have a good start...)

Or how about the countless examples of jury-rigged design and non-optimal reuse of various organs? God just couldn't be bothered to make new prototypes I take it?

"Jury rigged design" doesn't fit into evolutionary theory either. There is no design in evolution. There's just what works. While it's a natural human tendency to want to talk about parts of the body as "designed" to do certain things, from a steadfast evolutionary perspective, that just ain't the way it works. I know I'm being sorta pedantic here, but I think it's an important point.

On a sidenote, reuse of various organs can be a far more optimised pattern for a system to use than there being an organ for each task. From the "design" point of view, I'm a programmer, and when I can make elements of my code reusable (even if it's non-optimal from some perspectives) it makes for good code. Most good programming languages are tailored to facilitate the re-use of code, sometimes in fairly disparate situations. The fact that organisms like us have elements with multiple functions isn't a stroke against creationism (though it certainly isn't one against evolution either).

Without God or an equivalently unknowable deity, exactly how do you propose to base such a model? Evolution has no such problem since the mechanism for change (Mutations + Selection) is fairly well understood.

First off: CM doesn't have to not mention God, or not allow God into the model. It has to do so in a way that accounts for the observable facts, and in order to be compelling has to do so in a way that makes sense. (Sure: God could have made fake dinosaur fossils to test our faith in the Bible, but that (to me) seems like an absurd explanation).

I don't propose a base for such a model. I just don't instantly dismiss the possibility of there being a viable CM model. I prefer to dismiss my models one at a time

I would not be suprised if the average person today took a double-take at the description above either. However such incredulity is fundamentally baseless.

Incredulity (disbelief) in anything isn't fundamentally baseless. It's based on:

1) An ignorance of a given concept.

2) A familiarity with a given concept, and that it lacks internal consistency

3) A familiarity with a given concept, and a failure to see that concept borne out in the world

4) Intuition (not always a good base, but a base nonetheless)

I would think that such incredulity would be better applied to the notion that a supreme deity would go to the trouble of developing a universe so massive that a typical human mind goes full tilt when they try to intuitively understand such massive distances just to create some species of builder apes to develop stuff, and consequently sustain their knowledge about stuff through such constructions.

I would agree. Of course, that's not a notion that I've ever heard anyone seriously support. I know you're meaning to give an amusing retelling of the "typical" CM, but once again this seems like a straw-man.

One can have a CM where God creates the universe, and has all sorts of reasons, none of which have to do with humanity: we're just along for the ride. I don't think anyone here is proposing such a CM, but your pitcure of it above at best characterizes an incredibly narrow range of CM theories.

I mean, come on, what possible explanation can creationism hold for a universe that is mindbogglingly massive to our ability to perceive it? I can think of a couple of good evolutionary reasons for the full tilt right off the top of my head...

The creation of a universe in which the human mind can experience wonder, and the joy of coming to a greater understanding of the unvierse for as long as it endures? That we aren't the only things the universe was created for? That we're still children in terms of our abilities and knowledge as compared to what we may eventually become?

(remember that a CM doesn't even have to deny macro-evolution. That's just the norm).

- It has to be a legitimate theory - in other words it has to have more explanatory power than the competing theories (not just be prettier, but be either better at consistently interpreting the data, or better at making predictions), and has to have implications which can be 'objectively' tested against the implications of competing theories.

Creationism has infinite explanatory power, since it can be used to explain any set of data (Just name any possible set of data and I can quite easily construct a creationist explanation). However, consequently it has zero predictive power for the same exact reason. Oh, what is the scientist to do?

If you break down "Creationism" into an aggregate of CM theories, each will have a specific ratio of explanatory power and predictive capability. (Same hold true for any set of theories about anything actually).

Thus, my abovementioned criteria says that ones to consider for teaching in the classroom have to have both an acceptable level of explanatory power and an acceptable level of predictive power.

I think what the real debate here surrounds two questions:

1) Are there any CM theories which meet all of these criteria (or a similar set of criteria suitably modified to be acceptable to most folks within this forum)

2) If yes, should they be taught in schools as scientific theories?

Wow. That was a longer rant than I was shooting for. Think I'll shut up now

[Jose]

Wow. That was a longer rant than I was shooting for. Think I'll shut up now

That's often the way of rants. Your last comment shows you are more considerate than others of us. For example (enter into extended rant as always):

presumably we're talking about any CM based on the assumption that it has to come up with a logical explanation of the data. Sometimes this may indeed seem to be counter-intuitive, particularly if one isn't familiar with all the working assumptions of the model. (ie: the earth and universe may be much younger than generally supposed due to inherent errors in dating techniques or assumptions of 'linear' extrapolation in terms of inflation.)

Being counter-intuitive is often true of the way things actually work. We'd better be prepared for some counter-intuitivity here, because we're going to get it.

Now, you've hit a major issue here, when you mention "inherent errors in dating techniques" and "assumptions of linear extrapolation." The anti-evolutionists (by whom I mean people who explicitly state that evolution can't be true because some aspect of one of the lines of evidence has unproven assumptions or inherent errors) like these two issues particularly well. That's why we see so much about "the error of carbon dating." [My mom would sure have thought it an error for me to date Susie Carbon, but that's another story.] The measurable ages are really important if we're considering differnences of 6000 years vs 4 billion years.

The assumptions are essential here. The dating techniques depend on the assumption that the laws of physics that we observe have been pretty much the same for the lifetime of the universe. Obviously, in CM, the assumption is the opposite. The odd thing is that, even for those who understand the assumptions, the argument tends to be about the conclusions, not about the assumptions. Rather than get all hot and bothered about what the radioactive decay rates were in the first weeks of creation, and whether really-high decay rates would have been supernaturally prevented from causing radioactivity or heat, why not actually address the assumptions? What is the reasonableness of assuming that gravity was gravity 10,000 years ago (or a billion years ago)? What is the reasonableness of the basic atoms of our world being pretty much the same at those times as they are now? I guess the problem is that we'd have to come up with a reason to choose 6000 years ago to be the date at which everything changed...and really the only reason to choose that date is by biblical reference.

Fine then, why is it that every single indication shows that the Earth is roughly 4.5 Billion years old, and the Universe roughly 10-15 Billion, if the universe is in fact 6000-10000 years old as projected in the Bible? Time distortions perhaps? or is it the standard "Starlight was created en route" notion?

Firstly, my understanding is that "every single indication" does not show the Earth to be 4.5 Billion years old. That's an estimate arrived at by looking at a whole lot of data from a whole lot of sources, and finding an age that seems to best fit the data. It is nowhere near a certainty. It could be 2 Billion. It could be 10 Billion.

Certs is both a breath mint and a candy mint. (Or am I the only geezer old enough to remember those ads?)

You're saying rather similar things. The aforementioned issue of "error inherent in the technique" means that we know the date with a certain degree of imprecision. If we speak of the average, best-approximation-given-what-we-know, we can say 4.5billion. If we speak of the degree of precision, we can say 4.5 billion +/- a factor of two. Even with the greatest inherent error in the technique weighed against the idea of an old earth, we still come up with a couple of billion, which is way different from a few thousand. We're quibbling about factors of 2 when the relevant difference is a factor of about a million.

I think part of the problem here goes back to the way science is taught: Atheist, you present the dominant theories as absolute and irrefutable facts when they are (in my opinion as a non-CM guy) best guesses based on skillfull interpretation of a variety of conflicting data.

Of course, the same "absolute and irrefutable fact" approach is used in a lot of religious teaching as well. Recall, of course, the history of science teaching. Initially, it was natural theology: teach the names of the things God had created, as part of recognizing the glory of God. It moved on to teaching the names of everything because that's what science was doing at the time--figuring out what there was in the world. It moved on to teaching about things we'd discovered about things we couldn't easily see, like chemistry. The more we learned, the more it was thought we should cram into the courses as "things we have learned."

But then we started running into a couple of sticky bits. Fundamentalist Christianity arose in the South. Enough evidence had been amassed for evolution that it began to be put among the "things we have learned." These two events clashed.

Now, years later, we see that we should be teaching science as a progression of getting data and attempting to interpret that data in the light of other data of which we are aware. We see that we should be making it more clear that there are assumptions and logic built into the interpretations. We see this because the general public has acquired the notion that science is "memorizing facts" (which is deadly boring), AND they have acquired the notion that scientists are usually wrong (is Atkins OK or not?). The latter notion, of course, follows directly from the first: if new data come along, and we revise our understanding--but we've memorized the prior interpretation as Fact--then we pretty much have to conclude that the earlier guys were wrong.

We need to change this. But, it's not appropriate to say (as some do, elsewhere than in this thread) that teaching science as facts is done a-purpose to teach the deviltry of evolution as if it were the only explanation, and to banish the concept of creation. It's not a conspiracy. It's the result of years of tradition.

It is also guaranteed to continue as long as the "no child left behind" law is on the books. The law requires annual testing by high-throughput techniques, the result of which is testing "science facts." It's hard to write standardized tests to test complex thinking.

If, for example, you could demonstrate that a CM which posited the age of the Universe at 6000 years had to assume a greater margin of error for carbon dating than is even vaguely reasonable... you'd have a good start...

Of course, that's been done many times, but not in those exact terms. Carbon dating is usable only within something like 60,000 years, given the half-life of the isotope. The older ages don't, and can't come from carbon dating. They come from the use of other isotopes with longer half-lives. Those dates are so different from 6000 years, even with their margin of error, that it is necessary to conclude either that the earth really is much older, or there is a fundamental flaw in the use of any decay rate for dating anything. There are too many correspondences of dates from decay rates for this to be easy to do--especially if we consider the dating of historical artifacts and things that can be matched to dates from dendrochronology. I admit, though, that carbon dating isn't the way to do it--which, I imagine, is why the dating arguments always seem to focus on carbon, and not on the other elements that are simply incompatible with such a young age.

"Jury rigged design" doesn't fit into evolutionary theory either. There is no design in evolution. There's just what works. While it's a natural human tendency to want to talk about parts of the body as "designed" to do certain things, from a steadfast evolutionary perspective, that just ain't the way it works. I know I'm being sorta pedantic here, but I think it's an important point.

Pedantic is fine. Sometimes it shortens the text. I'll second your notion that the tendencies to think of "designed" parts, or of humans as the "top of the evolutionary ladder" are tendencies that fit our exalted notion of ourselves, and have no basis in evolutionary theory. I'm sure my dog thinks he's the top of the evolutionary ladder, and that it's a good thing us bipeds are smart enough to bring him food when he asks for it.

As for the issue of how to teach CM scientifically, I've considered one approach: identify specific aspects of the model, and treat them as one would treat any scientific model. State the hypothesis, identify predictions made by the hypothesis, then gather data to see if those predictions are borne out, or whether there exist data that show the predictions to be wrong. The advantage of this approach is that it lets us base the predictions on the post-flood world, when (we think) the current laws of physics were put into place. We should be able to use the same set of assumptions. Installment #1 is a question to otseng in the global flood thread.

puff puff puff end of rant