What to teach in schools (What should be taught in schools?)

by dhw, Friday, July 20, 2012, 19:29 (4508 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID (under "Evolution of Humans; Jerry Coyne", 18 July at 15.16): 
Coyne: We are here by a purposeless process:-http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/07/17/whats-the-problem-with-unguided-evol...-COYNE: "Theistic evolution, then, is supernaturalism, and admitting its possibility denies everything we know about how evolution works. It waters down science with superstition. It should be no crime—in fact, it should be required—for teachers to tell students that natural selection is apparently a purposeless and unguided process."
 
Actually NS is not synonymous with evolution, and atheists generally point out that NS is guided by the purposeful, non-random "survival of the fittest". But Coyne is following a different track. He tears into fellow atheist Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), recipient of this year's Richard Dawkins Award.
 
SCOTT: Saying that "there is no purpose to life" is not a scientific statement. We are able to explain the world and its creatures using materialist, physical processes, but to claim that this then requires us to conclude that there is no purpose in nature steps beyond science into philosophy. One's students may or may not come to this conclusion on their own; in my opinion, for a nonreligious professor to interject his own philosophy into the classroom in this manner is as offensive as it would be for a fundamentalist professor to pass off his philosophy as science. -COYNE: I am proud to proclaim, via the epistemology of science, that there is no Loch Ness Monster. There could have been one, and left evidence for its presence, but despite ardent searching we have no such evidence.-We have no idea how life and consciousness originated; and we have very little idea of how the universe functions. We do know that all these mechanisms are so complex, so interdependent, and so precise that even Dawkins admits that they appear to be designed, though he says that's an illusion. Coyne's comparison of the Loch Ness Monster (a legend linked to a tiny strip of water) to these unsolved mysteries encompassing origins and still unknown forces on a cosmic scale demonstrates the blinkered small-mindedness that alienates not only the equally blinkered religious fundamentalists, but also those of us who remain uncommitted either way. Eugenie Scott, on the other hand, represents all that is admirable in science: she does not allow her own atheist beliefs to blind her to the limitations of her own subject. As a non-scientist, I can only accept the scientific consensus on certain matters, such as the age of our Earth and the process whereby all forms of life are descended from other forms, and so like her I reject Creationism. Science has provided enough evidence to convince me. But science has not provided ANY evidence for the ability of chance to generate the unfathomable complexities of life and consciousness. Until it does, the assumption that everything is "purposeless" and explicable in terms of the material world as we know it is one of personal philosophy and should be acknowledged as such. All credit to Scott, who does just that. Coyne's attack on her betrays both his ignorance and his arrogance.-***********-Our education minister, Michael Gove, is sending free copies of the King James Bible to every state primary and secondary school in the country ... each copy marked: PRESENTED BY THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR EDUCATION. (You can draw your own conclusions about him from these facts alone.) He has also given approval to some so-called "free schools" that initially wished to teach Creationism as a scientific theory (Guardian, 18 July). This has, in my view rightly, caused a storm of protest, and the schools concerned have hurriedly changed their tune. However, two statements in the article caught my attention: 1) "We believe no scientific theory provides ... or ever will provide ... a satisfactory explanation of origins, i.e. why the world appeared, and how nothing became something in the first place." No excuse, of course, for teaching Creationism as science, but a powerful endorsement of Eugenie Scott's enlightened view of the boundary between science and philosophy. 2) Creationism or intelligent design cannot be taught in science lessons "as an alternative to the theory of evolution". It's sad that both theists and atheists have managed to put Creationism and ID together as virtual synonyms. For believers like David, Creationism is unacceptable precisely because it goes against current scientific knowledge; but intelligent design as such does not, and it is emphatically NOT an alternative to the theory of evolution. You can believe in the latter but also believe that chance is incapable of assembling the mechanisms necessary for its origin and its development, and therefore that those mechanisms have been designed. Science doesn't come into it. What should be taught in science lessons? The theory of evolution, including the fact that there is no scientific consensus on some aspects of it. What should not be taught in science lessons? Creationism, ID, and the personal belief that evolution is "a purposeless and unguided process". I wish we had Eugenie Scott as our Secretary of State for Education!