Debate: Should schools teach creationism?

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Presented by the Edinburgh Group of the Humanist Society of Scotland, in association with the Institute of Ideas and the National Library of Scotland on Wednesday 11 February 2009 18:30

Speakers include

Alex McLellan, Founder and Executive Director of Reason Why
Dave Perks, Head of Physics at Graveney School in London,
Christopher Brookmyre, Novelist, including Boiling a Frog
Julian Baggini, writer and philosopher
Marc Surtees, Paradigm Shift

Chair: Dr Tiffany Jenkins, Institute of Ideas
Wednesday 11 February 2009 18:30
Venue: National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, George IV Bridge, EH1 1EW

Tickets are free. To book your place(s), get further information, or join the events mailing list, phone 0131 623 4675 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

The debate over Creationism is one of the hottest flashpoints in the battle between secularism and religion. While the US has seen extended conflict over the theory of evolution, new challenges to Darwinism under the guise of intelligent design (ID) have arisen in the UK. Concerns centre on school science education, from Sir Peter Vardy's Emmanuel Schools Foundation to the controversial teaching packs distributed by the anti-evolution group Truth in Science. Although the Royal Society and much of the scientific establishment have denounced the teaching of Creationism, and the Royal Society's embattled director of education resigned last year after causing controversy by suggesting teachers should discuss Creationism in class, a recent MORI poll revealed that over 40% of the public believe that creationism or ID should be taught alongside evolution in school science classes.

While few seriously endorse the literal Biblical story of Creation, ID on the other hand claims to highlight Darwinism's shortcomings on scientific grounds. Evolution is 'just a theory' after all. Surely in the spirit of encouraging critical thinking we should 'teach the controversy'? As science is about questioning received truths rather than establishing certainties for all time, does this not permit a more flexible approach to science education, where debate is encouraged? Further, the sheer complexity of evolutionary theory leads ID advocates to claim it is best to cultivate a critical eye in pupils, rather than have them take as truth a misunderstood Darwinian theory.

Is science, or 'scientism', just as fundamentalist as religion, arrogantly claiming to know everything, or are doubts such as these a reflection of scientists' failure to make the case properly for what science does have to offer? Is this merely another case of the 'balance fallacy' the mistaken belief that even falsehoods should be given air time? Or should schools teach creationism in science lessons?

Comments (1)

1 Written by John Wiltshire, on 13-02-2009 01:24
Controversy? What Controversy?

Ok so let’s get controversial and try to get a feel for what that might involve:

Doctor Mark Surtees is a member of the Edinburgh Creation Group and, during the academic terms, they present weekly expositions of where they stand. They do this in the Buccleuch Free Church, Buccleuch St. (next to The Human Bein, opposite Edinburgh University - David Hume Tower) and the sessions are pitched to appeal to students.

http://edinburghcreationgroup.org/

As can be seen from the website, Doctor Surtees is a biologist and a zoologist. Just below his profile we see a contribution by Prof Andy McIntosh who is a director of \"Truth in Science\" and a professor of thermodynamics and combustion theory at Leeds university.

So let\'s look at how Doctor Surtees and Prof McIntosh go about questioning received truths. We can do is very easily by selecting two central issues that are encapsulated in the following statements that are routinely promoted during the ECG sessions and also appear in Prof McIntosh\'s book. These statements represent grossly simplistic assertions that are designed to undermine the credibility of the very basis of evolutionary biology. So how controversial are these two statements? a good way of probing that is to suppose that they are true and analyse the consequences.

This can be done quite simply as follows:

\"1) Simply adding energy to a lump of matter will not turn this into a machine which can do useful work.\"

That statement is up there on the ECG website as part of Prof McIntosh\'s contribution in which he goes on to argue that Darwinian evolution is prohibited by the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

What Prof McIntosh seems to have forgotten is that the Earth qualifies as a lump of matter and energy is added to it in the form of radiation from the sun. This radiation induces a thermodynamic cycle in which water is evaporated from the oceans, blown by the wind over the land masses where it is precipitated as rain. In addition to performing the very useful work of watering my lawn, this process dissolves soluble chemicals and washes them down to the oceans where they remain in increasing concentrations. So this natural thermodynamic machine is the engine that generated separate seawater and freshwater habitats for life.

It follows, that if what Prof McIntosh says in 1) is true then rain is impossible.

\"2) Information cannot be added to DNA\"

The human immune response to infection involves the maturation of antibodies that bind to invading disease organisms known generally as antigens. Part of the maturation process involves a stage of hyper-mutation in which the replication fidelity of the DNA encoding the binding protein is dramatically reduced so that copying errors occur with a much greater frequency than normal. Antibodies resulting from the mutated DNA re-enter the circulation and encounter the antigen.

A very small proportion of them exhibit an enhanced binding affinity and this results in differential reproduction of the B-Lymphocyte cells that contain the DNA. This process is repeated many times and, because high binding affinity is correlated with a favourable reproduction probability, it converges on DNA sequences that result in binding affinities many orders of magnitude greater than that available at the start of the process.

In other words the antibody maturation process involves the natural selection of random mutations to DNA. Darwinian evolution taking place in our bodies every day of our lives. This results in information about how to bind to a previously encountered antigen being stored in DNA and this is retained and used to deliver immunity to infection should the antigen be encountered at some time in the future.

This same information collecting mechanism is also invoked by vaccines which mimic features of known disease organisms and thereby stimulate the immune system.

It follows that if the creationists are correct in their statement number 2). Then protection from disease by vaccination is impossible.

Darwin expressed the crucial idea of his theory in a single paragraph in his book on the origin of species. This idea is so astonishingly simple that its essence can be captured in a single sentence.

\"If there is: Descent, Variation and Natural Selection, then evolution will occur. \"

The consequences of that very simple sentence in the biological realm are indeed complex in the extreme -- life on Earth. However, if there is a controversy then we should start right there with that sentence where the issues are very simple and easy to understand .

No, this is clearly not arrogant scientism. The scientific case that rain in not impossible and that vaccination does indeed deliver protection from disease can be made rather robustly and honestly leaving little room for doubt.

My personal view, is that the creationist’s falsehoods represented here should be given considerable airtime so that their true nature can be properly understood by the general public. However, this should not be done in school science lessons and I think the reason for that is rather obvious.

Students engaged in the study of science have better things to do.

Truthzyme

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