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

by dhw, Tuesday, September 20, 2011, 19:39 (4812 days ago) @ David Turell

DHW: In my view, it is totally in order to teach evolution as a scientific theory (not fact), and it is totally in order to point out the possible flaws in some of its arguments. All that is needed in schools, folks, is a sensible, well-balanced, genuinely scientific approach, videlicet an agnostic approach.-David: Ah, the picket fence again. Don't you recognize what I am doing in the Nature's Complexity thread? How can it be that complex starting from inorganic matter? Because it has to be to create life as we know it. Where did self-correcting mutations, invented by the living organisms come from? If they arrived initially by Darwin's hunt-and-peck random mechanisms, how did they survive the initial mistakes to arrive at the perfect DNA formula? These genome processes had to be there from the beginning. Where did all the information come from in the layer upon layer of genome codes we are finding? My answer as always is our friendly UI.-The question posed by this thread is what should be taught to our children. The articles to which you have drawn our attention under "Life's biologic complexity" and "Nature's Wonders" are hugely revealing (thank you for this constant supply of goodies), and your final question ... "Where did all the information come from...?" ... is absolutely the crux of the matter. But your answer ("our friendly UI") already raises questions which in my view have no place in science lessons, and should only be dealt with as hypotheses in other lessons ... perhaps philosophy (including but going way beyond religious studies), which some intellectuals are campaigning to have taught in schools. -What questions does your answer raise? Please sir, where did the UI come from? Which is more complicated, a UI or DNA? Why do you expect me to believe in an undesigned UI but not in undesigned DNA? Why do you call your UI friendly when it blew a tree down on my Dad? Why did your friendly UI invent evil/death/ disease? What's the use of a UI to me if it isn't friendly? Whose version of the UI is correct: Rabbi Cohen's, Father Ignatius's, Imam Ahmed's? Why does Professor Dawkins say your UI is a delusion? -I repeat, let the children be taught the theory of evolution, pointing out possible flaws, but in answer to the question of origins, let them be offered a choice of answers ... not just yours, or the Pope's, or Dawkins'.