Wednesday, September 08, 2004

SHOULD SCHOOLS TEACH CREATIONISM?

British Prof. Christie Davies thinks that creationism is a lot of nonsense but still supports the idea of schools teaching it. Excerpt:

"Why then should we permit and encourage the formation of secondary schools in which the creationist alternative is taught either in addition to Darwinism or as a substitute for it? The reason is simple. Schools in which creationism is cherished are the kinds of faith schools that succeed in instilling decent moral principles in their pupils. Creationist schools are able to generate the kind of moral authority that will combat crime, teenage pregnancy and drug addiction in amoral inner city areas and they can do this without creating political or communal animosities. Parents who want their children to be protected from the problems associated with inner city seek out schools that condemn sin. They want schools that are judgmental and moralistic. Those schools which believe in the literal truth of the Book of Genesis are likely to provide this.

Parents do not care about the waxing and waning of trilobites or moths that turn black in Lancashire or the species of bottom feeding sea-urchin that became extinct when its anus slowly migrated round its perimeter until it coincided with its mouth. Such esoteric knowledge does not appeal to the parents of Govan or Splott, Bon-y-Maen or Chapeltown. They know that the wages of Darwin is sin and they dislike sin. Democracy as well as reason demands that we go back to the seven days of creation and the quelling of confusion to create order. The story of the flood and Noah's Ark has a moral dimension that Darwinism lacks, for it links changes in the natural world to the need to restore moral order at a time of social confusion.

Should creationist schools spring up all over Britain and their academically successful pupils obtain a qualification in creationist science rather than on an evolutionary syllabus, it will have no deleterious impact whatsoever on British technology and competitiveness. Only a few specialists need to assume in their work that the theory of evolution is true let alone have a detailed knowledge of it. What does it matter if a computer scientist or a mechanical engineer or an inorganic chemist believes in creationism? The United States is full of such people and it does not seem to have inhibited scientific progress, technical innovation or economic growth in that materially successful country....

No doubt I will be accused of cynically advocating the teaching of something whose truth I doubt in order to pursue social betterment, the treason of the Jesuit and the Benthamite. The critics forget that our entire educational system is based on this principle. Even as I write colleagues in schools and universities throughout Britain are teaching on a grand scale the lie that human nature in general and sex roles in particular are infinitely malleable, a doctrine based on Margaret Mead's grossly incompetant studies of Samoa. Margaret Mead's work has long since been discredited by later researchers and the author shown up as a naïve unobservant fool when young who later became a closed minded ideologue. Yet her work is still taught as gospel and her critics either ignored or mentioned only to be shrugged off. Teachers and lecturers are willing to do this because they wish to uphold the myth of human malleability and the lie that men and women are interchangeable".

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