what many creationists think of science and the public education system

Great Debates
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Scientists have beliefs in what can be proven but not what can’t be proven scientifically. Hence the ‘alien theory’ of the building the pyramids. Once it was proven that slaves could not have gotten those many ton pieces of granite within a tolerance of 1/18th of an inch they had to replace it with something else. I was once heading in that scientific direction myself until I saw a void in myself that science cannot fill. There are things that can not be answered by science alone. That I am a three fold being. I am not an animal or a plant, I am human. I have 3 sides kind of like a pyramid. One is physical, one side is mental and the third is spiritual. Take out one side and I fall or die or become empty inside. I love the show Bones. Prudence? The archaeologist cannot understand love, only science.

I am a seeker. I have always been one and most likely always will. I worked with light and electricity for years and now I am a bit ashamed of what I helped to create. Also what a toll it took on me. I imagine Einstein must have felt the same way after the atomic bomb was dropped. I can’t go anywhere today without seeing the fruits of my work being misused. It made me soul sick.

I went back to the beginning and tried to find out where I went off the rails. I am so very glad that I had a broad base of education. I am back on the track again. The answer was something I learned a long time ago. What is really important is love and without it I am nothing. If I don’t love myself I can’t love my fellow man. If I don’t know right from wrong then what good is a conscience? If my beliefs are purely scientific then I can be of not real use to anyone or to humanity.

In the education of children I think it is vital to give them all the angles. All three even if they choose only one or two the third may come of some use to them later on in life.

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:)Thanks, I have already seen these on Utube. I had no idea until recently that the church had an observatory. Fascinating stuff!

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That’s not true. A lot of scientists believe we can’t know what happened before the big bang, for example. And many draw a dividing line between science and religion.

Are you saying scientists believe the pyramids were built by aliens? That’s not true. People who watched too many episodes of Sightings think the pyramids were built by aliens.

Humans are a type of animal. And in fact I think we share a lot of genetic material with plants, too.

Creationism and evolution are not different angles. They’re essentially unrelated.

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As an aside, I understand that most archaeologists presently don’t believe it was slaves either. Partly due to the quality of the work, partly due to nearby tombs for workers not being what they’d expect for slaves, and partly because of hieroglyphic graffiti.

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Right. A few years ago I read an article about the discovery of what may have been living quarters for some of the workers who built one of the pyramids. I seem to recall an archeologist found vessels for drinking beer.

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Nobody has a problem with your religious beliefs, so put down the “persecuted Christian” card.

What people here and people in the real world have a problem with is when people like you want ONE particular religious myth about the creation of life taught in a science class.

First of all, science and religion are not the same way of understanding the world, and religion should not be taught in science class.

Second of all, your statements about science and how it works and what scientists “believe” are incorrect (laughably so in some cases), and you’ve been told how they are incorrect by numerous people, but you’ve refused to respond.

THIRD of all, people like you tend to not want “all angles” taught to children in school. You want CHRISTIANITY taught in school. You want the Genesis myth taught in school, not every other religious myth about the creation of life and the world.

Science is not a religion, science is based on observable and/or knowable FACT, scientific theories are not the same thing as religious mythology, and religion should not be taught in a science class.

I’m all for religion being taught in schools - in a philosophy class, and as long as religions other than Christianity are also covered. I highly doubt, however, that the vast majority of the “teach the controversy!” crowd would be okay with anything BUT Christianity being taught.

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BTW

There is an important difference between believing in Creation and creationism.

One is a religious belief the other is a con job.

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Who is this ‘they’ you’re talking about here? It sounds like you’re lumping scientists together with any old crackpot who manages to get airtime on Discovery.

Nobody is insisting that you should. You could even (like most scientists - real ones, as opposed to TV characters on your favourite show) have some purely scientific views about matters of science, and some non-scientific views about other things.

Seriously, it’s not an either-or, black-and-white dichotomy between trying to apply science to everything, or throwing it away completely, and nobody in their right mind is insisting that it is.

You may have been told this by some of the creationist authority figures, but that argument is just a rhetorical tool they find convenient.

Consider this example:

“As far as we know, all life on earth descends from a common ancestry” = scientific view, supported by a mountain of diverse and verifiable evidence.

“I really like bacon sandwiches with ketchup” = completely unscientific personal opinion based on preferences I don’t need to analyse to any great depth.

There is no conflict between the above views, despite one being scientific and the other non-scientific.

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If your beliefs are purely scientific, you can deliver clean drinking water to populations and treat their wastes before returning them to the environment. You can improve crop yields and grow food to feed them. You can use transportation networks and refrigeration so that the people don’t necessarily have to live on the farms that produce food. You can heat structures when it’s too cold to survive in the elements, and cool them when it’s too hot. You can treat medical conditions that baffled humanity for years, and you can do a host of other things that we rely on every day, but take for granted.

What real use to humanity can you be if you reject science?

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To serve as a bad example?

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Or a horrible warning.

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Just to add to your many basic errors of fact on display in this thread: pyramids have four sides.

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That’s right. When I was there last year our Egyptian guide was rather pissed off by the claim that slaves did it. How it was done is known also. Sand was piled up around the basis, and the blocks were hauled up the sand. And there is nothing super-scientific about achieving small tolerances.

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And whether it was done by slaves or not, it was definitely done by humans.

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Yeah, humans…human slaves of our evil alien overlords!

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The show I was quoting on the pyramids was on the History channel this week. I was taught that the granite blocks were moved by slaves. In this show they showed it was humanly impossible because of the weight involved. They have supposed evidence that aliens gave the Egyptians tools to accomplish building them. A few odd shaped tools were found but not enough for me to believe it was aliens.

I am with the rest of you that there are just many unknowns. Someday we may know?

It could be slaves of evil overlords but the History Channel says it may be aliens that helped the slaves with their knowledge and then flew away.

Enginered, My real humanity lies not in science alone but in how I treat my neighbor, my family and everyone I come into contact with.

Czar, How am I bad example? I don’t pretend to know everything. Do I need to be perfect and use only straight logic to suit you?

Miller Thanks for pointing that out. I will replace it with a triangle or a three legged milking stool. Pull out one of the legs and it topples over.

Mangetout, I stink at debating but I get where your coming from. There are gray areas involved too. I would prefer and bacon and tomato sandwich myself :slight_smile:

Kolga, There is no way a child learning Genesis would learn a religion in one course on creation. You don’t have to be so snide, It doesn’t become you.
I liked you last line and that is all I wanted to say. I guess I lost my point but I agree.

Marley, It makes sense to me that slaves would have a few beers when taking on that building project.

Der Tris, On the History Channel program they had tool and die engineers that took precise measurements and were astounded that the tolerances were so tight between the blocks. Also that everything was level considering some of the granite blocks weighed many tons. One experiment they did was rig up a bunch of those heavy lifting cranes, the ones they use to pull a semi out of a river. It took like 15 of those lined up to lift this one block. It really made me see how difficult this must have been for the Egyptians.

Voyager, I think it was the weight that had them puzzled as to how they could get them to fit with only humans to place them.

Latro, I don’t know what you mean?

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A triangular pyramid is 3-sided. Carry on.

159

Talk about missing the point.

My point, and the point of a lot of other people in this thread is that the Genesis creation myth is only one of hundreds, if not thousands of creation myths from various religious traditions throughout the world.

People like you who claim to want to “teach the controversy” about creationism v. evolution only want to teach one creation myth - the Christian one.

Which is fine - in a philosophy or comparative religion class, with an exploration of other creation mythologies.

Otherwise, it’s a Christianity class, and that’s a different issue. It’s not really the place of public schools in the United States to teach classes on Christianity (since that’s the job of, you know, churches), and Christianity alone, although I am aware that some schools manage to do so.

And once again (with feeling) - scientific theories, which are based on observable and measurable and testable facts, are to be taught in science class. Religious mythology (i.e., the Genesis myth) are not to be taught in science class, because they are not…wait for it…science.

It’s actually very, very simple. Evolution = science, therefore taught in science class. Creationism (of any kind, from any religion) =/= (does not equal) science, therefore should not be taught in science class.

Actually, that’s my best quality.

Agree with what - that most creationists are actually attempting to shove Christianity down children’s throats (to borrow a current phrase from the Teabaggers) rather than actually interested in any so-called controversy?

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No, science accepts only what can be proven scientifically. Scientists are people and believe all kinds of things; some are agnostics, some are Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists.

But, you are defining “belief” too narrowly in any case. Many skeptics believe in things that are statements of value, not fact. E.g., it is good for people to be good to each other. You can’t prove that, not even in theory, but it doesn’t matter.

And, of course, in factual terms, just to get along, most of us believe a lot of things we have not personally investigated and don’t need to. I believe Lincoln was assassinated in 1865. I wasn’t there but I see no reason to doubt the historical consensus. I believe the Earth is round. I’ve never seen it from space, but it’s a more parsimonious assumption than an elaborate worldwide hoax.

Only because (1) science hasn’t gotten there yet or (2) they are things that lie outside the purview of science, such as value judgments or (3) they are questions which are factual in nature but too vaguely defined for any scientific answer to be meaningful or conclusive, e.g., “Does God exist?”