And also you tend to try and corner your opponents into a false dichotomy of either taking an absurd untenable position that doesn't reflect their views, or severely weakening their own position by conceding a point to you that should not be conceded.

There are things that should be thought to the students, and there are things that should be left to their research.

This is simply an area where non of them (evolutionism or creationism) should be thought but let students to make their own research and adopt their thoughts. Nuff said :P

No, science class should teach established basics of science to prepare a student with the skills and knowledge for a basic understanding of science so that they can live in the real world and/or study at college level.

Science should be thought and should include research skills as well as literacy skills (the kind you get in a language class) along with the vocab they currently teach in science classes.

Creationism should be discussed in the context of other creation myths in either an anthropology class (comparing various creation myths) or a comparative religion class. (growing up in Ireland I had compulsory religion classes which focused almost entirely on Catholicism, though growing up in a largely Catholic country nobody really believed in that bullshit, leaving a group of teenagers who didn't really care about religion class... especially as there was no state exam at the end of school in religion)

Have you ever heard about post-modernism? Those guys who criticise science claiming that science has turned into a religion? Have you ever asked yourself whether "the enlightment" can blind you? Have you ever thought science itself can turn into a blind-faith?

Perhaps the science has turned into what religion is before the reform and so called "enlightment"? perhaps the science is stuck between dichotomies and theories it created. Whereas, there are many theories taht it claim "unscientific" merely because otherwise is claimed by another older theory.

If you are a true scienceman, everything must be questionable to you. Including the science itself! Having that said, it is important to teach children what the methodologies of science is. Science must be teach as THEORIES as opposed to FACTS. Because that is what SCIENCE IS. And CONTROVERSIAL topics like evolutionism and creationism should be left to the research conducted by the students themselves.

That is the only way to provide FREEDOM of thought in the education system. Neither science nor religion should be indoctrinated to students. They should just teach the methodologies and lead the students in how they do the research rather than what they learn from it.

Neb are you arguing that we should not teach children science at or just certain scientific theories. If the latter how do you decide which theories children must discover for themselves?

Regarding science, I think we should mainly focus on methodologies and less controversial or in other words less debated areas.

For example we are made of cells, what cells do and what they are made of etc. Briefly, I do not say we cannot teach basic chemistry, biology, physics etc. I say we cannot teach (indoctrinate) our children with controversial issues. We must let them decide for themselves! All we are supposed to do is teaching how to approach ANY controversial issues.

"Have you ever heard about post-modernism? Those guys who criticise science claiming that science has turned into a religion? Have you ever asked yourself whether "the enlightment" can blind you? Have you ever thought science itself can turn into a blind-faith?" - Yeah I have considered that, because idiots who don't understand what science is or how it works keep saying that. I've thought about it, and it hasn't. The fact is, evolution isn't controversial. I mean, it is within the world as a whole, but within science? It's not. Not even a little. Evolution is on exceptionally solid ground scientifically speaking. It's very very well supported. Now, debates still rage in science about certain aspects of evolution. For instance what should we view as the central thing that gets selected, the gene? The individual? The group? Those are controversies I think students should be left free to explore. Did evolution happen? No. We do students a disservice by implying that it's even remotely possible that evolution did not occur. The problem with "teach the controversy" isn't that we don't want the controversy to see the light of day. It's that, in any real sense, the controversy doesn't exist. The controversy is a lie.

Yeah that's a crap argument. Why don't we also leave it open to students to

"Did evolution happen? No." - Errr this sentence was meant to indicate that I don't think that question is one we should leave up to students to explore for themselves. Evolution did happen.

"I say we cannot teach (indoctrinate) our children with controversial issues."

Evolution is not considered controversial within science. It is considered the cornerstone of biology. It is only controversial because some people object to it on religious grounds.

What you are saying is that we should not teach anything which is controversial to some religious people. Is that right?

It depends upon what you see as the purpose of school. If it's to prepare people to go out into the world and be self-sufficient, I would think modern science is one of the important things to teach. It is impossible to understand modern medicine without genetics and evolution. How do you think gene therapy works, and how is somebody who hasn't been taught modern biology supposed to tell it from quackery?

Cancer is essentially evolution run amok. How are we supposed to prepare people to help cure it in the future if we don't teach them how it works?

I understand full well that there are those who would prefer the world did not work as it does. It's perfectly appropriate to acknowledge that some people would prefer that evidence of evolution not exist. Personally, I'd prefer a flat Earth - all this fighting about map projections makes my head spin. Sadly, that's not reality, and we'd be doing our kids a disservice in an age of cheap international travel if we didn't give them the tools to realize that you can circumnavigate the globe. Science is about facts, even if the facts are inconvenient. Sorry.

"Neither science nor religion should be indoctrinated to students. "

Telling someone that certain real things work and are trusted by a scientific community and then testing their understanding of those things is not the same as indoctrination.

They are not asked to BELIEVE in evolution, they are taught to undersand it, it is a theory, they can understand it and reject it in class just as easily as most of my religion class understood and reject Catholicism. See i don't have a problem with religion in schools because it never hurt me.

I think you are giving children less credit than tuey deserve, and i think teachers are right to teach ACTUAL science; as scientific fact; if you recommend classes on post-modernism as a necessary component of education that's fine. Students don't need to explore critically all the areas of science ever considered because science builds on itself, it also corrects itself because some of it's building blocks are not on sound foundations. But you need to START somewhere, not handicap students with less knowledge than the ancient greeks had...

From there you can test those foundations as much as the student likes. Or not attempt science if the don't trust the world-view...

If there is a fact, that is there is a DISPUTE whether evolution is a theory or a fact in the scientific literature. You cannot challange this fact as there is an obvious and strong literature which claims that it is still only a theory not a `LAW`. I dont even mention the claims of religion and philisophy on this issue.

Blind faith to science is as harmful as blind faith to religion. In the end, one is what the priest say other what these self-proclaimed scienceman say. You may not believe in Moses, Jesus or Muhammed just as you may not believe in Darwin. They may use different methodologies and reasoning but in the end what they do is SAME! :D

- Restatement of the stories of Adam and Eve and similar stories in other religions may be merely a co-incidence.

- Claiming thatthere is a creator may be merely a coincidence...

- We may be evolved from another creature, but Adam and Eve may be the first 2 creatures that we evolved from.

- We may be evolved from another creature and Adam and Eve may be the first 2 Humans that we evolved from.

- Perhaps our souls may be get placed in our bodies only after we evolved into humans.

- Or maybe universe was a conincidence and we coincidentally (or for some other `scientific` reason) come to existence. So everything in our life and science may have a reason but not our existence.

- Maybe we did evolve from other creatures and there is no creator or we have no souls... We just evolve to adopt around...

- Or perhaps all the evidence presented by some sciencemen in favour of evolution is merely a co-incidence,

- justas all the evidence presented against evolution is merely a co-incidence...

There is only one fact: we do not know :D so let us research and please do not shade us with your prejudices =o

You may believe that it is a fact but you cannot deny that it is disputed. :D Otherwise we wouldnt be talking about it would we? :D

@Neb

You seemed confused. Let me try to help.

There are no "facts" in science. Scientific "laws" are nothing more than old theories. The term "law" is left over from early nomenclature. A scientific law has no more merit than a scientific theory.

People dispute facts all of the time. This does not make them anything other than facts.

For example, there's a good reason that the courtroom standard for conviction is not doubt, but reasonable doubt. You're welcome to have unreasonable doubts, too, but in science class, we teach reasoning and deduction, so your unreasonable doubts are out of place.

@orathaic

I am not sceptical about students but the teachers in high school.

Yet you completely misunderstand me regarding critical thinking. By teaching the students how to MAKE their own research and FORM their own thoughts about evolution, you do not make them less critical you make them MORE critical. You do not give them LESS information, you teach them HOW TO GET information.

Actually you are giving less credit to students by telling them to teach the "knowledge" as opposed to "how to get information and form critical thinking". We are not teaching critical thinking to students we are imposing our "the scientific facts" even if this condition is disputed.

Lets take one step forward, I also criticise the fact that some groups or the state use the schools to indoctrinate the students. Schools have become a place to discipline the society instead of a place to research and learn things. There should be more philosophical classes instead of "lets learn a scientific fact" classes.

So in a nutshell I say less disputed facts more critical thinking :D

@abgemacht if you ask me personally I agree with you. But it is also a fact taht tehre is a very significant group that claims that there are scientific facts (or laws). And there is also a number of people who claims evolution is a fact as opposed to a theory. That is the literature and we have to acknowledge it no matter what our standing ground is.

:@steinhardt who is the authority on declaring my doubts are unreasonable? lets be honest here, there is no authority in science to decide what is reasonable and unreasonable. You cannot simply be a sciencemen and declare some claims are unreasonable if they do cast a doubt. If you are saying that evolution is true without reasonable doubt, I remind you taht this is disputed in literature. Also consider the scientific evidence. Who determines what is scientific evidence? Who is the authority on the scientific evidence? :D All these are criticisms of post modernism to the science...

There

"That is the literature and we have to acknowledge it no matter what our standing ground is. "

Which literature is that?

The literature on the evolution? That means articles written by respected members of the scientific community?

Your phrasing make me feel you aren't too sure of yourself. Please link me a white paper that claims evolution is a "fact" above-and-beyond a standard theory.

'If there is a fact, that is there is a DISPUTE whether evolution is a theory or a fact in the scientific literature'

There is no such dispute. I'm not going repeat this point again 'fact' in the english usage is equivalent to 'theory' in most scientific usage. There are no laws that i'm aware of in biology.

If your point is that it is useful to teach philosophy to students so they can better understand the foundations of knowledge then that's great! I've no problem with that in a philosophy / arts / english class (where-ever it fits really)

Gravity is a fact we live with everyday, i'll admit the concept of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics is VERY cool, but even though it is a law we have some curious counter examples (wait long enough and entropy can decrease - or watch enough identical systems and in one of them entropy will decrease - though the total entropy of all the combined systems still increases, so it is not a breach of the law which invalidates it... Really interesting stuff there)

There is a difference between blind faith in scientific method and blind faith in any authority. The method encourages you to TEST the authority, it infact allows you independantly verify the claims of any authority so you don't need one in the first place. These are not at all the same thing, and for someone who seems to think they understand they epistological issues within a scientific framework you must be entirwly diaengineous to make the comparison.

They are categorically different systems. One is a collection of facts, the other is a collection of tools to test facts. Any claim that they are the same is based on a failure to understand what you are talking about. And i would claim that i put my trust/faith in the scientific method.

No-one is trying to stop you from doing your own research, but there IS a scientific concensus, it is up to you to decide whether you have any faith in that worldview.

'Or maybe universe was a conincidence and we coincidentally (or for some other `scientific` reason) come to existence. So everything in our life and science may have a reason but not our existence'

Any other untestable hypothesis you presented added NO explainatory power, thus as a piece of meta-theory is fails to add anything useful. I understanding no more and you cloud the understanding which is to be had by iterating the infinite possible variations.

Just because we can say nothing scientific about the 'soul' doesn't mean we should consider it in a SCIENCE class; have your religion/philosophy class. No problem there. And let science be rather specific about what it doesn't know - we can only guess at questions like 'why are we here' - they are not currently things which can be addressed by the scientific method.

A good teacher would explain that this is the case, and that the default assumption would be to assume no reason for existance before assuming any particular reason.

'You may believe that it is a fact but you cannot deny that it is disputed. :D' - well done you demonstrated nothing. The claim you are ignoring is the there is no accepted SCIENTIFIC dispute. You can dispute it on philosophocal grounds and question the entire basis of science, but reality has a blatant pro-science prejudice.

Tough luck with that, i guess it was inevitable given science is a method for describing reality...

There is a simple test for whether creationism is science: for a scientific idea, there is an experiment that could be done to test it, and if the test comes out wrong, the idea is discarded. Can you give me such a test for creationism?

There is, of course, no centralized authority on scientific evidence -- that's part of what it means to be science. It is not just the case that an experiment must be done to test an idea, but that the experiment needs to be reproducible. You do not have to take my word for it -- part of the requirements as a scientist are that when you do an experiment, you provide enough information for other people to perform the same experiment, so they can see for themselves that they reach the result you have claimed.

My notes tell me that it was stated in See: Science and Creationism (1999) http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=6024#toc, p28

'We are not teaching critical thinking to students we are imposing our "the scientific facts" even if this condition is disputed. '

Well then you're not doing a very good job. But there is no scientific dispute regarding evolution. You are either lying or intentionally misleading or just plain wrong.

Searching the referenced book all i can find is :

'the teaching of evolution should be an integral part of science instruction, and creation science is in fact not science and should not be presented as such in science classes.'

No dispute there over evolution. As repeatedly stated.

@orathaic When the Galileo said Eppur si muove! the majority (or reality in your words) had blatant pro-religion prejudice. Could the place of religion in that times be taken by science in our times?

If we agreed on science is not %100 truth, then what is the point of teaching it as if it is %100 truth? Moreover, as I told you I dont trust high school teachers. Honestly, Can all high school teachers present these issues neutrally without any prejudice, in the most impartial way? I highly doubt it. I believe one half will present it with a pro-science bias and other half will present it with a pro-religion bias.

yuo are also ignoring that im criticising the religion as well as I criticise the science. Philosophy does not seek answers it just asks questions. Both science and religion in our times look for answers rather than asking questions.

Is my standing more clear now?

@Neb

Since you can't be bothered to read your own source, let me quote the relevant portion. Notice it backs up exactly what ora and I are saying:

"Scientists most often use the word "fact" to describe an observation. But scientists can also use fact to mean something that has been tested or observed so many times that there is no longer a compelling reason to keep testing or looking for examples. The occurrence of evolution in this sense is a fact. Scientists no longer question whether descent with modification occurred because the evidence supporting the idea is so strong."

Also @ orathaic :D I found what exactly you are looking for! and guess where? in Wiki. I am amazed to find such articles there. Here is the exact link, just go to evolution as theory and fact in literature part. The rest is I believe irrelevant. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_as_fact_and_theory#Evolution_as_theory_and_fact_in_the_literature

here in this link you will find articles and sciencemen, some of which claims evolution is a fact, some which claims it is a theory etc.

Now if you still ask what is the dispute let me clarify: If people do not agree on a subject there is a dispute. IF some claims it is a fact and some claims it is a theory, that means tehre is a dispute.

This is just one dispute regarding evolution. As I told you there are religious claims and SEPERATE from scientific and religious claims there are also philosophical claims about how/why we come to existence and origins of humans.

@abgemacht, you're missing the point. Neb isn't trying to argue facts. He's simply pointing out that the truth is inconvenient, because it conflicts with what some people prefer to believe, and therefore we shouldn't try and teach truth.

@Neb: you never bothered answering my question. Do you believe it's important for graduating high school students to have a concept of how medicine works? Do you believe it's important for graduating high school students to know what cancer is? Cancer, I might add, is a very inconvenient fact of life. So maybe you'd rather not teach it, in the hopes that if we don't believe in cancer, it will go away?

A clarification for all those who thinks I claim:

Evolution is a FACT,
Evolution is a THEORY,
or evolution is a lie etc...

You are all wrong. I did not make any statement about my thoughts on evolution. I say we DO NOT KNOW. And all we know is this area is disputed. Some says one thing other says other thing but there is a no common acceptance. For this reason it should not be thought as a fact or a theory in schools. With the same reasoning, religious doctrines should not be thought as well...

I may not myself perfectly but please dont get parts from my arguments to say I claim something that I did not...