Shadow! Here Here!

EVO

EVO,
If you are going to accuse me of ignorance, it would help if you could spell it correctly. Do you have a spell checker?

Grim,
Thanks for doing the research on Neo-Darwinism. You’re a better man than I am. What I said was coming from my recollections of sitting in the back of science class in high school. And that was a long time ago.

Adam,
I think this forum is fine for debating. However, I said that it wasn’t a great place for formal debate. By that, I refer to the fact that this forum has no formal convenor or adjudicator, has no formal finishing point, has no set number of people debating each side of the question, has not even a formal question on the table to debate, etc.

As for your assertions about Christian education, teaching, indoctrination, abhorrent coercion, brain washing, or whatever other emotive word you care to choose, I think you need to get out a bit more and see what is really happening out there.

In my experience, most Christian schools and home schoolers of which I’m aware who teach creation are also very conscious that evolution must be taught alongside. They do this for various reasons. One is the benefit of comparing conflicting theories, which helps to teach kids how to think rather than just what to think.

Their attitude often is that they want their kids to know all there is to know about evolution. As they say, evolution is a bit like Marxism, the more you know about it, the less likely you are to believe it.

Sir Vivor,
Thanks for the dictionary definitions of science and theology. I’m not sure why you’ve included them, but I can agree with them as useful definitions.

As for your questions:
Yes, the Bible teaches that the world was made in 6 days.

Yes, humans were distinctly created. I can’t see any link to animals in the sense of their creation in Scripture other than that they were all created about the same time. There are also many distinctions that could also be made between humans and animals from everyday observation: clothing, language, worship, etc.

I wouldn’t necessarily agree with your first or fourth statements. These are trickier as they are heavily dependant on word definitions.

For the first statement, no. Whenever you read anything, you are entering a process of interpretation. Scripture should be interpreted along common sense rules of exegesis. The main questions usually asked by scholars are: what was the intention of the author, and what did the passage mean to the original recipients of the writing? Also, Scripture needs to be interpreted by other Scripture. In particular, in this case, we could ask what Jesus’ understanding of Genesis was. Jesus and all Bible writers interpreted people and events within Genesis as straight forward historical accounts. This is also what Hebrew language scholars see the authors attempting to describe. They used a style appropriate for Jewish history. If they were trying to be poetic, they would have used different style and mechanisms well available to them.

Finally, the word ‘evolve’ is loaded with many different meanings and connotations. If by ‘evolve’ you mean ‘change over time’, then of course, this will always be true as living things do change over time. For example, I am shorter and have less hair on my head than my dad. If evolution means ‘from goo to you via the zoo’, then no, I don’t accept that as being true.

I hope that helps makes things clearer.

Dan,

To describe creationism as a theory is incorrect. It is a belief.

To say that religious schools teach both concepts to compare competing theories is rubbish.

There are two main reasons why they even mention evolution

1) To avoid their students failing science through total ignorance
2) To rubbish evolution by pointing at gaps in the fossil records and claiming that this is proof that evolution has failed.

There is a good reason why the US has banned the teaching of such mythology in class.

Dear AdamD,
Our controversy is not about Darwin or evolution, but about language, the use of terms “child abuse” or “indoctrination”. As for “child abuse” try to tell a father whose education methods you did not like that he was guilty of “child abuse”, and see the reaction.

I agree that there is a big difference between ‘indoctrination’ and ‘religious education’ as there is a difference between a bad and a good education into anything, say, mathematics: the difference between the child receiving just a superficial knowledge of data, rules, theories and facts, and when he/she receives also a deeper (critical if you like) understanding of these data, rules, theories and facts.

However I was not so much concerned with RE at school. That is a different problem, not at all easy, also because of the rights of the child‘s parents.

What I was concerned about were instruction (OK, I accept you do not want the state to interfere) on how Christian parents should or should not educate their children. For instance, what you call “coercion methods used by some parents to ensure their children uncritically believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible“ are the only methods you can instruct a very young child about not only religion, but anything. How would you explain a five-year old what “literal interpretation means” when you read him/her stories based on the bible? How do you explain to him/her that e.g. “hell” stands as a symbol of absolute punishment, and had its justification and served its social purpose in the prescientific age? How can a child at such an age believe anything critically? The parent - whether fundamentalist or “enlightened” - can talk to him/her about mathematics, evolution, political or religious beliefs etc. only using language he/she can understand.

The child at such an age will accept his/her parent’s world view uncritically - irrespective of whether that parent was a fundamentalist or not - and use it as a point of departure when forming his/her own world view in later years. (ctd)

(ctd) It is only then that school, mainly high school, comes into play. At this stage the parent might want to not only complement but also correct the general world view that is offered - consciously or unconsciously - by the school. But under normal circumstances the parent‘s influence could not prevail over the school’s, unless the young person can see his/her parent as more open minded, “critical”, than what was offered at school, e.g in matters of science and religion (as e.g. in my case when my father could easily prevail over my narrow minded marx-leninist teachers). In either case I do not see a space for something that could rightly be called parental indoctrination (I did not consider the possibility of “home schooling”).

If you cannot accept my definition of creationism (and evolutionism), and do not offer an alternative, there is nothing we can base our discussion on. Also, I never said you could indoctrinate somebody into atheism. I agree it is as impossible as to indoctrinate somebody into having a very poor understanding of mathematics. If you read my post more carefully you will see that I spoke of “education into AN (not “the“) atheist world view“. There is a variety of respectable (tolerant) and less respectable world views that are compatible with - or even based on - atheism (however you define it) as there is a variety of respectable and less respectable world views that are compatible with theism, e.g. with Christianity.

>> ‘hell’ ... is psychological abuse and the only reason it isn’t outlawed is because religion holds an untouchable status in societies.<<
Could you explain how you would outlaw the mentioning of “hell” even if religion did not hold “an untouchable status” in society? Anyhow, what do you mean by “untouchable status”: did anybody force you to be religious, accept the moral authority of a Church or not to verbally attack the Pope or this or that Archbishop? I think emotive language, be it “child abuse”, “indoctrination” or “untouchable status“ does not help us to understand each other.