Talk:Scientific creationism/Archive 1

Why was "most" changed to "many"? I can think of no reason for that change. Is it not the case that most scientists reject "scientific creationism" as unscientific? If so, then the word should be "most". -- Egern

It was changed in:


 * While many Christians and about 99.9% of scientists accept the theory of evolution and natural selection as the most likely explanation of speciation, most -> many nonscientists do not.

--Taw

Oh, never mind. I misread the change. My mistake. -- Egern

Y'know, the words "about 99.9% of biologists" are interesting. I doubt the person who wrote this is familiar with a survey that found that precisely 99.9% of biologists believe this. For all I know, it's 99.999%, or 97.6%. Everybody knows, in any case, that it's a very high percentage. If we don't know that the 99.9% figure, precisely, is correct, then why are we using it? --LMS

The creationism article contains this quote:


 * In 1987, Newsweek said: "By one count there are some 700 scientists with respectable academic credentials (out of a total of 480,000 U.S. earth and life scientists) who give credence to creation science...". Among scientists who work in the field, therefore, only about 0.14% hold the creationist view

That would make Newsweek's estimate 99.86%. I agree, though, that even if the number is accurate, it sounds like just a rhetorical flourish for "nearly all", and in any case, such numbers ought to be attributed as this one is in the other article. --LDC

Yep, here's where a more precise number and a citation of a study would come in handy. --LMS

Why do both creation science and scientific creationism exist? The names mean the same thing, right? --LMS

Who knows? F. Lee Horn


 * You're right, Larry. Perhaps one should REDIRECT to the other. I

hereby authorize you; feel the empowerment!! Ed Poor

I was waiting for someone who knows and cares enough to do it. :-) --LMS

''The teaching of religions at public schools is prohibited in the United States.''

This sentence says that students cannot be taught about religion in public schools. Is this true? My understanding is that American public schools simply cannot teach from the perspective of a particular religion. --Stephen Gilbert


 * Well, this must be subjective. I understand the sentence to mean

exactly what Stephen thinks the sentence should mean -- i.e. that schools can teach "about" religions and religion, but cannot teach students to be religious or to adhere to any particular religion. That's just what I think the "of" means. SR

It is certainly legal for American public schools to teach their students about religion. However, it is strictly forbidden by the Constitution of the US to teach children religion; the small difference is phrasing masks a tremendous difference in meaning. Teaching students about religion merely means that teachers can talk about the existence of various religions, and mention their beliefs and practices that have to do with the issue being studied by the class. Teaching students religion itself, however, would mean indoctrinating the students in one particular faith. American schools can and do have courses in Human Sexuality that mentions the Jewish, Christian and Islamic views of abortion and birth control. American schools may not, however, use their schools to teach their students to become Jewish (or Christian, or Muslim, etc.) RK

Just by way of clarification, the prohibition against teaching a supported by public revenue. F. Lee Horn
 * particular* religion applies only to schools which are financially

Removed for the moment:


 * The National Center for Science Education

http://www.ncseweb.org is an excellent resource for learning about and helping to fight against creationism.

This sounds like advocacy. We need to rewrite the context for this and, preferably, add a link to a major creationist site as well. --Robert Merkel - Taken from the article:

Some arguments proposed by creationists are: *That there are structures in species, such as the woodpecker's hyoid and the eyes of Strepsiptera, that could not have developed gradually. of order. *That the existence of strata and fossils suggest that they were laid down catastrophically. *That the speed of light has changed over time, thus changing the speed of radioactive decay. (Since both the meter and the second are defined in terms of light waves, this would then make no sense.) *That radioactive dates may be thought unreliable if they assume that certain isotopes were not present in the rock when formed. *That while a few thousands of years elapsed on earth, millions of years may have elapsed in the wider universe. (This argument is based on a non-standard interpretation of the theory of general relativity.)
 * That rock strata have in some places apparently been laid down out

Until a list of counter-arguments to the above is made (by whichever side), this list is inherently POV since it only presents one side of the argument. --mav

I am a creationist and wrote this list of creationist arguments to begin with, and I think it is correct to present them from the creationist POV, after the introduction stating so. I also think that some of them are bunk, so I've put parentheses around the counterarguments, though I've known someone who believes in c-decay. I suggest that rebuttals to the others be added in parentheses, if you know of any. -PierreAbbat


 * Mav, I agree with Pierre. Moreover, there is no "risk" that people

will be swayed by these arguments (they don't hold water). Actually, they show just how silly creationism is; they hardly require rebuttal. I vote to include them, and I'm willing to help locate some anti-creationist arguments. Why? Because I'm neither a creationist nor an evolutionist: I'm a serious student of science. Ed Poor 15:46 Jul 22, 2002 (PDT)


 * Hello all. Sorry for crashing in with my NPVing without

introducing myself on Editing Talk. I'm new here and I haven't quite got to grips with the etiquette. The revised list of arguments seems much better to me, although I don't agree that it is scientific to claim that some features couldn't have evolved gradually. There may be some for which the mechanism isn't [yet] known, but one can't prove a negative. GrahamN

I think the arguments should stay. The page is meant to describe the tenets of scientific creationism, and I believe that the most NPOV way we can do that is to present them (with the appropriate introduction) as they are.

Debating the validity of the arguments has no place on a page which should simply describe them as clearly as possible; if we get into that we run the risk of an endless revision based on editors' personal beliefs.

Standard practice here is to present the fact that "group A believes B" in a straightforward, factual manner, even in a generally sympathetic tone--at least in the article on subject B--followed by a brief statement that group C beleives otherwise. It's distracting to include the counter-arguments point-by-point inside the list, so I removed those (besides, the speed-of-light counterargument was even sillier than the creationist one). LDC

I agree that we shouldn't do it point-by-point, but...

I feel that recent revisions are a little bit as a result of the idea that it's irresponsible to present a falsehood as the last word in an article. This "last-word-ness" isn't going to help the entry. While we should make it clear that the scientific community generally regards these opinions as bunkum, that's already been said earlier in the article, and we shouldn't worry about leaving them with the impression that it's true. Compare the page on Buddhism, which rightly sees no need to rebut the assertion that "all life involves suffering" since it's presented as a belief that Buddhists hold without any statement on its truth or falsehood. Mswake

I don't disagree, really, it's just that this article is structured to make the counter-argument last kind of natural. In the early paragraphs, we only state that biologists generally disagree with "scientific creationism" in general. Only later do we present the arguments of the creationists, so we need a further statement that these arguments are considered unscientific or flawed. I don't think we need point-by-point debate, but we should at least balance all the major sections. How one chooses to do that is a matter of style. LDC

Fair enough. How's this as a final paragraph? "It should be noted that each of these arguments has a scientific rebuttal."? The problem is that any sort of having the last word requires that we add things like "this has a religious rebuttal" to pages such as Theory of Relativity, which seems ridiculous. Mswake

That would be a reasonable way to introduce the paragraph, but it makes it awkward to include the example. I don't think we need a counterpoint to each argument, but an example is good. What we don't want is just a blow-by-blow "group A believes this, group B says they're weenies". We want a reasonably complete, accurate statement of the beleivers' ideas, and a brief summary of what opposition groups believe and why. LDC

Just saying that each of them has a rebuttal would leave me wondering what they are. As to the time-on-earth/time-in-wider-universe argument, it's not a rebuttal to the Theory of Relativity, just (AFAIK, for I haven't worked out the numbers) a gross miscalculation, or failure to calculate. The effect is real, it just isn't as big as those creationists say it is. -phma

If the problem is "who has the last word", could we just move move the list further up the article, keeping the statement that "each of these arguments has a scientific rebuttal", or adding specific rebuttals if it is felt necessary, so that the article will finish on the same note that it did before? GrahamN

- What the article really needs is some real information. Would an article on any other academic topic be thought acceptable if it contained no mention at all of specific people who proposed the ideas, specific book titles, dates of important events, etc.? Legal rulings are a good start, but where's the beef? After someone who actually cares about this topic finishes writing it, then we can revisit polishing the tone and balance a bit. LDC

I added an explanation of #6, without which it sounds unbelievable even to someone trying to put his mind into a creationist's. Is there a similar explanation for #4? I regard the statement "the speed of light changes" as meaningless. -phma