BBC: Scientist/priest says teachers are scared to teach evolution

5 October 2007 · Comments 

Professor Michael Reiss, scientist, priest and head of science at London’s Institute of Education, has written a new book aimed at encouraging teachers, who it seems are avoiding the teaching of evolution in schools for fear of the “controversy” and not wanting to dismiss creationist pupils’ beliefs out of hand.

This could leave pupils with gaps in their scientific knowledge, he says.

Prof Reiss says the rise of creationism is partly down to the large increase in Muslim pupils in UK schools.

He said: “The number of Muslim students has grown considerably in the last 10 to 20 years and a higher proportion of Muslim families do not accept evolutionary theory compared with Christian families.

“That’s one reason why it’s more of an issue in schools.”

The days have long gone when science teachers could ignore creationism when teaching about origins said Reiss.

Reiss’s book, Teaching About Scientific Origins: Taking Account of Creationism, argues that there is an educational value in comparing creationist ideas with scientific theories like Darwin’s theory of evolution because they demonstrate how science, unlike religious beliefs, can be tested. (BBC)

While I admire Reiss’s efforts to help get science where it belongs, I wonder if he also thinks that these other ideas should be considered in science lessons, so that they can be summarily dismissed also:

There’s just as much evidence for these as there are for creationism (i.e. none whatsoever).

Read the full article over at the BBC.

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BBC: Science You Can’t See

16 July 2007 · Comments 

I wasn’t aware of this until I saw an advert on News 24, but the BBC are planning to show a series of science programmes under the banner of Science You Can’t See.

The press release names the three programmes as Dangerous Knowledge, Atom and Absolute Zero.

The premise of this season of programmes is described in the press release:

The 20th century saw scientific breakthroughs unprecedented in history, but the most important weren’t just invisible, they were barely comprehensible, even to the geniuses who pioneered them.

This series attempts the impossible – to make these breakthroughs not just visible, but also understandable.

From the particles that go to make up the atom, and the bizarre laws they obey, to mathematics so staggeringly abstruse that they have driven mathematicians to insanity and beyond, welcome to a short season of Science You Can’t See.

Such scientific luminaries as physicists Sir Roger Penrose and Faraday prize winner Jim Al-Khalili feature in these shows, and hope to make some of the more recondite scientific understandings a little more transparent and accessible to those who don’t have much or any exposure to the bleeding edge of hard science.

The season begins on BBC4 on Tuesday 24th July, with Absolute Zero – The Conquest Of Cold at 9pm. Put it in your calendars.

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Truth

30 January 2007 · Comments 

Truth

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A perspective on the universe

16 January 2007 · Comments 

Futility Closet has an excellent image of the Earth from 4 thousand million miles away that should put any ideas of the “enormity of creation for the benefit of mankind” squarely into the back of your head.

It also quotes one of my personal heroes (as much as I have such things) although I’ve quoted a little more in context here:

That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.

The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ’superstar,’ every ’supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

…

Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

…

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.
Carl Sagan in Pale Blue Dot

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Faith schools, why not faith hospitals?

28 December 2006 · Comments 

Atheist Ethicist has written an interesting and thoughtful article about the idea of faith hospitals.

I wonder if/when the UK government, to back up it’s proclivity to support faith-based institutions (as demonstrated in it’s increasing promotion of faith schools), will begin introducing the concept of faith hospitals. We’ll need something to replace the many hospitals that are currently being closed, and the churches seem to have plenty of money to spread their madness.

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The ‘arrogance’ of science

28 December 2006 · Comments 

I see, especially in theistic literature (as opposed to scripture — but it’s there too), that science is often denounced as being arrogant. Those who claim such things usually have a reason to: it contradicts their own dogmatic view of the universe, usually in some quite fundamental way.

There are many levels of confidence: in science, confidence means that a theory supports new evidence that it is tested against, it can make accurate predictions, it is repeatable and reliable. There are, of course, scientific ideas (hypotheses) that do not have overwhelming masses of evidence to support them, but time provides the necessary framework for evidence to be gathered to support (and hence increase the confidence in) good hypotheses (which in turn can become ‘theories’) or oppose bad hypotheses, which are either re-worked to make them fit the evidence, or discard them completely.

Confidence, where there is an overwhelming, and increasing, amount of evidence to support good hypotheses, is justified in this case.

Then there is the confidence of faith. This generally takes the form of simply accepting that which matches the worldview of the faithful, and simply ignoring, naysaying or shouting down that which contradicts it.

To say that 1+2=3 is not arrogant, it’s confident: it’s correct. No amount of metaphysical wrestling is going to make this wrong, no matter how loudly one campaigns against or tries to vilify it. Conversely, shouting louder than anyone else doesn’t mean that a weak hypothesis is valid nor justifiable. Confidence in this case isn’t about the support of an idea of “truth”, it’s just self-important conceit.

The only arrogance is perceived, possibly as a result of a failure to understand what’s actually going on. This could be chalked up to another example of the projection of the failures and narcissism of faith onto the scape-goat of science by those who don’t begin to understand the principles of it.

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BBC: ‘Maverick’ risk to science debate

3 December 2006 · Comments 

Scientists have been urged to become more involved in public debates about their research or risk it being dominated by minority “maverick” views.

The warning comes from Lord Martin Rees, president of the Royal Society.

He said debates on issues such as climate change and stem cells needed to be based on sound scientific research.

Read the full article at BBC News

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The Independent: Dawkins takes fight against religion into the classroom

27 November 2006 · Comments 

In today’s The Independent there is a feature about zoologist Richard Dawkins and his new foundation, the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.

Professor Dawkins will also be the subject of You Ask the Questions in The Independent next Monday.

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The Evidence Race

6 June 2006 · Comments 

I think it’s amazing that there an increasing tendency for those of faith to claim that there’s more and more evidence (e.g. intelligent design/creationism) to the answers of life, the universe and everything, when in fact no new evidence for any of it has emerged in the past however-many years (or whenever it was that the church leaders of the day for any particular religion decided what was ’scripture’ and what was not).

Take intelligent design: this pseudo-science (although nothing of the sort) tries to debunk scientific evidence with opinion, bluster and general nay-saying. There’s no evidence for any of it.

I was listening to a podcast of an interview with Kent ‘Dr Dino’ Hovind the other day, and every single one of his arguments was based upon bone fide scientific articles, taken out of context, and then he attempted to debunk them based on semantic jiggery-pokery, or just ignoring the actual conclusions that were reached. However, at no point in this interview, even when asked directly, did he even try to pretend that he had any actual evidence.

So, my question to the creationists is this: what evidence do you have, apart from the contradictory nonsense of the first two chapters of the book of genesis (or whatever your cultural creation myth of choice is)?

  • lack of specifics in past scientific research is not applicable, as this is simple straw-man nonsense.
  • “because god did it” is not evidence; it’s opinion.
  • “because the pope/bishop/imam/Bush/my granny says so, and they wouldn’t lie!” is not evidence; their authority is no more than that of myself.
  • ‘holy book’ references are not evidence; one can read almost anything into the bible if you want to ‘interpret’ it enough.
  • personal “revelations” are not evidence; they’re purely subjective and can’t be experienced by anyone else.
  • ‘irreducible complexity’ is not an argument; there is no evidence that evolution cannot have arrived at the same conclusion. It is also only opinion.

Bring us evidence - real evidence. Something tangible, something measurable, something observable and repeatable - something that can be tested by anyone who has the wherewithall to do so. Then you’ll be allowed take part in the discussion.

Otherwise you’re out of the race. Sit on the bench, be quiet, and contemplate your navel.

This article was originally posted at In Defence of Reality.

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