Pandagon, discussing the Creationism debate, is refreshingly blunt:
There's a reason God doesn't belong in a science class: it's not science. I don't go to Mass to learn particle physics, I don't go to calculus to learn about Tolstoy, and I don't go to biology class to learn about Jesus. If the going definition for science is that it's not science unless it explains everything (remember yesterday, when it wasn't evolution because we couldn't directly prove macro-evolution?), then science has officially never existed, and will never exist. Perhaps that's the key to all of this - take a body of academic study based entirely on not knowing everything, and disqualify it immediately on those very grounds.
It's a fun thought experiment to consider what would happen if we added Creationism to the classroom curriculum. In reality, such an addition would never manage to somehow graft Creationism to the body of scientific thought. Science, by definition, is a body of knowledge derived through a rigorous method. So in essence, the addition would mean adding faith and belief to the curriculum. But then how should it be taught. Since it isn't science, should we insist that students believe it on the basis of religious authority or texts? Will tests assess our students ability to conjure up faith in the content of instruction?
While some people take umbrage at the Creationists attempt to weasel their way into the classroom, I sometimes have to let out an evil leftist guffaw. Because in the end, these people are painting themselves into a corner. It they insist on joining the scientific community then it isn't evolution that will have to pass scientific muster (it's already done so) but rather Christianity. So let them drag Christianity under the microscope. Let's be scientific about all this and search for evidence for a 10,000-year-old Earth, a planet initially occupied by the animals we all now know of but oddly void of dinosaurs, hyaenadons, entelodonts, indricotheres and other species found in the fossil record.
5 comments:
It may interest you to know that Creationists have found scientific basis for their ridiculous theories -- 'intelligent design' and 'guided evolutionism'. Think of it as evolutionism under God, if you want.
More dogmatic attempts include this infamous Chick Tract and the Creationist site which purportedly found 'scientific evidences' for their creationist doctrine.
Cheers.
Come to think of it, I did see something in Genesis that would accord with the scientific record, something like..."and God created the hyaenadons, entelodonts, endricotheres, and sabertooth cat, and he saw that these were good, but a little too big for the Earth, so he destroyed them, leaving their bones dispersed through the appropriate geological strata, and then he created the horse and the camel and the other beasts of the field."
Well, evangelists prefer to call it 'creative intepretation'. Brilliant, no?
Well, creativity's always a good thing-especially when trying to make the square facts of religion fit those round wholes presented in empirical data.
Christianity has already been heald under scientific scrutiny and found to be myth. People just do not wish to believe it.
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