John said:
I'm not advocating teaching religion, but rather mentioning various
theories of the origin of life, and pointing out that none are proven.
but if one wants to mention the creationist theory, in a science class,
should one not point out the wealth of evidence that tends to suggest
its crap? like, for example, the creationist insistence that the earth
is 6,000 years old (best not to think about the 7,000 year old artefacts
of human civilisation that archaeologists keep digging up).
(all ID proponents appear to be creationists)
surely the real point re. ID is that its NOT a *scientific* theory. it
makes no predictions, testable or otherwise.
(OK, you can still call it a scientific theory, its just a very bad one)
as opposed to, say (I forget the guys name) the idea that DNA et al came
from cometary material, which is what kick-started life here on earth.
OK, it wouldnt be to hard to come up with a more scientific ID theory -
eg we were developed as a meat species by a bunch of aliens living near
Alpha Centauri, who are still there, and periodically come back to
harvest us when the planet fills up (which is why the dinosaurs died
out, they were tasty); alien abductions are just quality control.
And science, historically, has not been repeatable. Actually, religion
has probably been *more* repeatable than science. How many 3000-year
old science texts are still in use?
John
thats a little bit unfair. how many 3000-year-old scientific principles
are still in use? hydraulics have been around for a long time, as have
compression structures - hell, civil engineers have only been able to
build tension structures for a few centuries. Pi anyone? Astronomy, to
work out eclipses (a-la stonehenge)? Geometry? those things still hold
true today.
OTOH the book of genesis contains two contradictory stories of the
beginning. And I defy you to cough up a 3,000 year old bible that looks
even vaguely like the modern ones (a 3000 y.o. new testament would cause
no small amount of problems for the jesus-based faiths). The entire
jesus-based thing isnt 3,000 years old (IIRC its 2007 Anno Domini).
Mohammed was circa 600AD. I dont think there are many followers of Ra
still around, and the mormons didnt exist 200 years ago. Hell, the
scientologists didnt exist 60 years ago.
Cheers
Terry