http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3635794.stm
I completely did not expect to see this news story. Everyone’s heard of this happening in places in the USA, but is this sort of movement (to place Old-Testament creationism on par with evolution by natural selection) gaining steam in Europe? Is Serbia a special case?
There’s a bit of a creationist movement here in the UK; there are a few independent schools that include it on their science curriculum and there are some lobby groups etc. I would tend to view this sort of thing as more like the noisy death throes of creationism than its uprising; it has had its day - when you’re dead, you should lie down.
Teaching the myth of creationism as an alternative to evolution is not the answer. Teaching that evolution is a theory is all that’s needed.
A handful of Christian schools in Norway only teach creationism. These schools are connected with churches that very clearly draw inspiration from the evangelical/fundamentalist Christian movements in the US and elsewhere. In ordinary public schools outside of areas where these churches are particularly popular, however, evolution is not controversial.
It’s hard to generalize from one European country to the whole continent. This goes double when the one European country is Serbia and Montenegro.
Totally speaking out of my arse here, but seeing how it is in a Serbian school… coupled with the widespread reports of a rise in mysticism and paranormal interests – AND religious tensions – in Russia and the former Soviet states:
I get the feeling that the societies that lived under the former communist regimes will be specially susceptible to this – after 50 years of official atheism and “scientific socialism” (and in Russia, the travesty that was Lysenkoist biology) that were taught dogmatically and authoritarianly, you have three or more generations who by the time they left school had developed a cynical “yeah, whatever” POV about what is taught in school.
Add to that the long suppression of religion under that system (one antagonistic to religion and supposedly oriented to the well-being of the workers in the here and now, but which produced mostly misery and anomie and crappy shoes that did not fit), which simultaneously creates a pent-up thrist for a promise of spiritual rewards AND raises the prestige of religions as having opposed that evil system all along: from there, it’s easy to imagine people will start thinking “if the religions were right about the evils of what the State taught in social matters, why not on scientific matters?”
Finally insert the post-communist political leaderships in the respective countries, now accountable to an electorate, noticing those trends among the population, and thinking to themselves, Homer-Simpson-like: “Mmmmm… voters…”
My WAG
JRD
(And considering that the bulk of that leadership at least got a taste of what the old system was like, they probably appreciate greatly how emphasizing accepting something on Faith, rather than critical thinking, makes the masses easier to rule.)
In addition, you would also have to make it clear to everyone what “theory” means - it’s a big-picture explanation of a bunch of observed facts. Be sure to state that in the scientific sense, “theory” is a high-level thing and does not mean “hunch” or “guess” as it does in nontechnical use.
“roger thornhill” - wasn’t that the protagonist in North by Northwest?
Agreed, just as teaching that gravity is a theory is all that’s needed.
The fact of objects’ motion toward Earth and Earth’s motion around the sun is explained by Newton’s theory of gravity (strictly, that of “universal gravitation”).
. The fact of species dying out to be replaced by other species which weren’t there before over millions of years is explained by Darwin’s theory of evolution (stricly, that of “the origin of species”).
One of the UK groups, the Creation Science Movement, does also run the country’s only creationist museum in Portsmouth. In keeping with such the usual pattern that such groups are now only pale local imitations of their American counterparts, it looks piss-poor by even the standards of creationist museums.
I suspect it’s more permanent marginality than death throes. Historically, there were quite a few British creationist societies through the 20th century, but they were always tiny, ineffectual affairs without any influence outside very constrained circles. That pattern hasn’t changed, even as the newer ones have tried to copy the likes of the ICR in the last few decades. The odd temporarily noisy controversy - including Peter Vardy’s attempt to buy his way into the school system - aside, organised creationism in the UK is surely most likely just to continue bumbling along, always existing in some form, but never breaking out from its traditional niches.
Numbers’ The Creationists (Knopf, 1992) devotes a chapter to the older British movements.
I think you’re confusing me with someone else.
Like George Kaplan, maybe? With such expert playacting, you make this very room a theater.
Apparently the only performance that will satisfy you, CurtC, is when I play dead.
The statement by a minister of education is astonishing to say the least. Surely there must be some debate in Serbia over the issue? Perhaps this represents a religious revival after the many decades of secularism under Tito and the cynicism of the war and immediate post-war era, like we hear of in Russia? Are there any Serbs on the board that would like to comment? Any background information on the minister in question would be great.
In Sweden, we are currently debating whether independent schools run by regligious groups should be allowed to teach the children just any damn thing. Livets ord, a fundamentalist outfit in Uppsala, runs the worst example.
We should remember that Serbia is not part of the Union, or the controversy would probably be much bigger. Religious controversies are a touchy subject for a continent that invented wars of religion.
The decsision was revresed after an outcry: BBC NEWS | Europe | Serbia reverses Darwin suspension
Serbia’s current government is a coalition government and the party that the Minister in question belongs to, the Democratic Party of Serbia, is so conservative that its nickname amongst its opponents is “The Amish”! This decision had no support from either clerics or the public and as the above post notes was quickly reversed. I think we can safely regard this as the work of a lone nut rather than a reflection upon Serbian society in general.
Incidentally, Mr. Ruadh (a Serb) tells me that Serbian was the first foreign language that Darwin’s works were translated into.
Seems a bit unlikely. Assuming he’s referring to the Origin of Species, the first foreign translation of it after it appeared in 1859 is usually regarded as Bronn’s German edition, which appeared early in 1860 - though it was immediately recognised as a bad translation all round. In summarising the situation in early 1860, the editors of the Correspondence Project only mention this and the first American edition. There was a Dutch translation shortly thereafter, followed by a French one in 1862.
Writing about the earlier Journal of Researches (aka The Voyage of the Beagle), Janet Browne (Charles Darwin: Voyaging, 1995; Pimlico, 2003, p455) says of its translation into German in 1844:
The earliest mention I can find of a Serbian translation of the Origin is in 1874. Milan M. Radovanovitch wrote to Darwin asking his permission to translate it. Radovanovitch next wrote in 1876, enclosing a copy of the Serbian edition of one of Haeckel’s books and explaining that the translation had yet to be published due to local turmoil. Darwin replied thanking him for the present and his efforts. His father then sent a letter in 1878 to explain that his son had died. Whether Radovanovitch’s translation was ever published, I’ve no idea.
I am sure you know what you are talking about but are just saying this to make your point. However, Newton’s theory of gravity is more along the lines of him saying that there is a gravity between big objects and how is completely up to his reader. His equations work quite nicely, but in his “Principia” he prefaces with something along the lines of “This works, I have no idea how it works, take it with a grain of salt.” Providing equations which very accuratly capture a bodies movement through a gravitational field is not equivalent to him saying how they do such. Now, some were theorizing at the time that it was due to planents rotations and such, and Newton may of himself, but I am pretty sure that his Universal Gravitation was something along the lines of “Two bodies atract each other proportional to their masses and inversly proportional to the square of the distance between them.” The “two bodies attract each other” was the murky grey area, never a complete “This is how it works” thing.
The Minister for Education has been relieved of her duties. Apparently, this was the final straw. She’d already imposed a couple other loopy policies, such as stopping young children learning English (because it would confuse them) and computers (because the radiation from them is bad for kids).
Good riddance IMHO, although under the coalition agreement she’ll be replaced by someone from the same party.