Creationism — as a belief — is to be included in the syllabus for some state secondary schools in the UK. OCR, one of the three UK exam boards, will ask teachers to “explain that the fossil record has been interpreted differently over time (e.g. creationist interpretation)”. Creationism will not be taught as a scientific theory but as a “scientific controversy arising from different ways of interpreting empirical evidence”.
Academics fight rise of creationism at British universities
Most of the next generation of medical and science students could well be creationists, according to a biology teacher at a leading London sixth-form college. “The vast majority of my students now believe in creationism,” she said, “and these are thinking young people who are able and articulate and not at the dim end at all. They have extensive booklets on creationism which they put in my pigeon-hole … it’s a bit like the southern states of America.” Many of them came from Muslim, Pentecostal or Baptist family backgrounds, she said, and were intending to become pharmacists, doctors, geneticists and neuro-scientists.
The trend has prompted the Royal Society to confront the issue with a forthcomimg talk entitled Why Creationism is Wrong, to counter what it sees as a growing tendency to irrationality.
Or as The Register spins the story: Creationists want your children.
Scientists are questioning the safety of a Star Wars-style riot control ray gun due to be deployed in Iraq next year.
The Active Denial System weapon, classified as “less lethal” by the Pentagon, fires a 95GHz microwave beam at rioters to cause heating and intolerable pain in less than five seconds.
The discomfort is designed to prompt people caught in the microwave beam to move away from it, thereby allowing riot-control personnel to break up and manage a crowd.
It may be “less lethal”, but I find the prospect of a device that causes excruciating pain at a distance without any physical evidence more than a little disturbing. It seems that black magic and machinery are coming ever closer together.
And it’s interesting how Iraq seems to be becoming the laboratory of the US military technology industry.
David Heddle defends the Odyssean course that Intelligent Design advocates steer between “Creation Science” and philosophical naturalism:
- When the bible and science disagree, the bible is always right.
- When Christians and science disagree, science is usually right.
Taking the middle ground means coming under fire from both sides; ID’ers are regarded as “useful idiots for the enemy” by Young-Earth Creationists, and closet creationists by defenders of atheistic evolution. Personally I have a lot of regard for the Cosmological ID propounded by David Heddle. As I’ve said before, the place to look for God in Creation is in the things we know, rather than the gaps in our knowledge. The heavens declare the glory of God.
The Bloke at In the Outer questions the assertion often made by Christians debating the “conflict” between the Bible and science, that modern science only developed because of Christianity.
I’m not convinced he’s right, but I do agree that it’s a largely unproven assertion, that there were a number of other important factors, and that many of the supposed “Christian” founders of modern science were not really Christian at all. Isaac Newton, for example, was a unitarian who denied the deity of Christ.
There does seem to be a desire in some Christian circles to create a dicotomy between the “real” (theistic) science of the past, and “bogus” (atheistic) modern science. But in truth there is just science, which as a human activity is sometimes influenced by beliefs, but not nearly as much as our beliefs inform the way we respond to scientific discoveries, as Michael Spencer demonstrates in praising the God Of The Hubble Universe
With an article on Bird Flu, The Register cheerfully concludes:we’re all going to die.
An interesting factoid: since 1968 the human, pig and poultry populations of China have increased twofold, a hundredfold and a thousandfold respectively.
David Heddle finds God in the Details of at least one area of scientific knowledge:
The cosmological ID arguments are not “God in the gaps.” Quite the opposite: they are God in the details. Perhaps in biology one can claim that it is our ignorance that unreasonably opens the door to ID, but in cosmology it is our knowledge, not our lack thereof, that points to design. It is not the immaturity of cosmology (and physics) but its achievements that pave the way for ID.
Let me give an example…
Sims creator takes on evolution
The creator of the hugely popular Sims game is working on an ambitious title in which you can truly be God. Called Spore, the game allows players to determine the evolution of a species, from an amoeba to an inter-stellar race.
While I can’t see this game wowing the Answers In Genesis crew, a game that promotes the idea that a universe actually needs a designer can’t be all bad.