You’ve all heard this kind of nonsense before, from the worst kind of ignorant creationist.
Evolution is not a fact. That’s why it’s called a theory! There’s more evidence that the Bible is true.
It’s just jam-packed with stupidity — if only we could condense science as densely as people do ignorance, we could educate everyone in a day. Evolution is a fact, there’s an immense amount of evidence for it; this person doesn’t understand the scientific meaning of “theory”; and no, there’s evidence that the Bible exists and was written by an assortment of human beings, but no evidence that it is of supernatural origin or contains a particularly accurate history of the universe.
Unfortunately, the person who wrote that pile of ineptitude was the head teacher at St Andrew’s Church of England school in Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire.
She is trying to defend herself against all the scorn being poured out against her.
Amid criticism and calls for her to resign on Twitter, Wilkinson issued a statement saying: “I’d like to make it clear that we teach the full national curriculum in school and that our pupils receive a fully rounded education.”
She also said her tweet was sent from a personal account and “represents my own views”. However, her Twitter handle was @WilkinsonHead, apparently referencing her role as headteacher.
That is not an adequate defense.
I’m glad to hear that the students are getting a proper education, in spite of the incompetence of the head teacher. But one has to wonder at her capabilities to implement that education when it defies her views of science, and one has to wonder why any institution would hire someone who rejects the values of their organization.
You are certainly allowed to have your own opinions. No one is saying that you can’t have strange opinions (I have a few of those myself) — the problem is that she’s promoting her own version of facts, which are contrary to reality and unsupportable, especially in the context of education. She can go to church, if she wants (and almost certainly does), but when she publicly hectors other teachers about the proper way to teach science, a subject she obviously has no talent in, then a response that tells her loudly and clearly that she’s wrong is not out of line. It’s actually necessary.
It is worth noting that by law schools are not allowed to teach that creationism is scientifically valid. Those that do can have their Head Teacher removed and replaced or their funding withdrawn and face closure.
I’m so sick and tired of the declaration “I have a right to my opinion” being used to shut down discussion. I keep hearing it pulled out like a sort of trump card (or, maybe, “Trump” card.)
There seems to be a widespread tendency to confuse expressions of personal preferences/ values with statements of fact — particularly when it comes to religion. The supernatural is supposed to be the source and embodiment of facts AND values. God is not just good, God IS goodness itself. Thus the butthurt complaints of people who are being told they’re wrong. You’re attacking The Good. You’re trying to prevent them from having and expressing their beliefs about the Good. Who would do that??!
I’m so sick and tired of the declaration “I have a right to my opinion” being used to shut down discussion. I keep hearing it pulled out like a sort of trump card (or, maybe, “Trump” card.)
There seems to be a widespread tendency to confuse expressions of personal preferences/ values with statements of fact — particularly when it comes to religion. The supernatural is supposed to be the source and embodiment of facts AND values. God is not just good, God IS goodness itself. Thus the butthurt complaints of people who are being told they’re wrong. You’re attacking The Good. You’re trying to prevent them from having and expressing their beliefs about the Good. Who would do that??!
They used to do a thing on the local NPR affiliate where they encouraged people to write in “the most important thing” and it was usually a glarp-bag of ‘trusting jeezus’ and ‘hugging puppies’* I submitted one that got rejected, but it was:
understanding the difference between fact and opinion
(*ok, that one’s good)
If it’s a C of E school, there’s a better chance that creationism isn’t being taught. But it’s been known for years and years now that the dodgy half privatised schools, started by new labour and carried on by the tories, are happy to teach creationism.
@guthriestewart #3:
Academies and free schools might still be able to slip a bit too much creationism or ID into their religion classes but they have to stick to the curriculum and not introduce creationism into science classes. There have been cases of this happening in the past, which is why the government was forced to strengthen the legal position.
I recall the Vardy academies in NE England were an example case about a dozen years ago. This is what you get if you encourage local sponsorship of education by giving a say in the ethos — and vanity naming — of a school to anyone who can stump up a million quid (in this instance, a millionaire Christian fundamentalist used-car salesman).
ummm, calling
uhh ain’t that the same fallacy as:
I understand the sentiment behind the title, but I fear quotemining, using it out of context.
preferable: creationism is NOT science. (in any sense).
.
if it is taught as a historical artifact of human psychology, (to construct stories to explain the unknown) and not as the competing theory to science, then maybe okay. if presented as the mistaken way to think about stuff, then “good to know”.
To many here think it is a valid alternative way of understanding reality. I don;t agree with that view.
^^typo —-
ToTooBad Science? Science? OMG…
Also a little horrified at the comment from the local MP (although he was generally supportive of teaching science):
Is that how education works?
I thought evolution was an observed fact and the theories are explanations of that fact. Do I have that wrong?
re 8:
yeah, EXCEPT, Science is not opinion. Shurr: Present opposing opinions (non-judgementally), so students can make up their own minds. But Science, not being opinion, cannot be presented within that set. One can have opinions ABOUT Science but Science, itself, is fact not opinion.
re closing question in @8:
true ___ education is not just presenting a laundry list of opinions to let the students decide for themselves. There should at least an accompanying set of arguments for and against each item of the list. (without asserting value judgements of each)
My usual responses to “There’s more evidence that the Bible is true.”
1. Ok, what is the evidence, Please be specific.
2. Why the Bible and not, say, the Upanishads, or the Buddhist sutras, or Hesiod’s Theogeny, or the Avestas, or any of the other many, MANY holy scriptures that have existed for longer than the Bible?
It is entertaining, all the sputtering and head-spinning that results.
I’ve suggested this to her, “By the way, maybe you shouldn’t drive over bridges, or go into large buildings? Since the late 19th C they’ve been designed using Theory of Structures. Just a set of theories, you know.”
I always point out that gravity is just a theory and that its been disproved for over 100 years, yet evolution still remains strong even after 150 years… I then ask why they are not fighting to have gravity removed from the curriculum when it is by far the scientifically weaker of the two theories.
Most people don’t seem to realize that, just like general relativity, evolution has practical applications upon which much of our civilization depends, including numerical predictions on the evolution of resistance against antibiotics or pest control agents.
If you are serious (maybe you are not) that is as bad as any argument they make. I don’t wish to do a pointless apples to oranges comparison of evolution to gravity–but to say gravity is “by far the scientifically weaker of the two theories” is simply nonsense.
You can acknowledge that Newton’s gravity has been replaced by Einstein’s gravity which may get replaced or incorporated into a quantum gravity etc., but that is quite a different matter altogether.
“a fully rounded education” sounds suspicious to me, and the MP’s quote “…pupils can make up their own minds” seems to come straight out of the ID playbook.
According to the ‘Peter Principle’ she has risen to the level of her incompetence.
Not necessarily. The mechanism if evolution is based on DNA. Something concrete and proven, with known properties.
Gravity is theoretically transferred via the graviton, which is a hypothetical particle, not yet detected by man-made instruments. Much weaker evidence for gravity compared to DNA/mutations until the graviton is detected and confirmed.
Some of us are helping to look gravitons from neutron stars/binary stars with LIGO experiments and distributed computing (Einstein@home).
#18,
Yes necessarily. One could counter that some tests in General Relativity are at the level 10^-16. Evolution can never (nor should it be expected to) claim that level of precision. I’m not sure it even makes sense to talk about evolution in terms of precision–but maybe it is. In any case, it’s apples v. oranges.
Nerd @18:
That’s just saying we don’t have a theory of quantum gravity yet. But we do have Newton’s law of universal gravitation and General Relativity (as Bill points out), and the successes of both. within their (very large!) domains of validity, far exceed evolution in terms of predictability and applicability.
But no proven mechanism of action, just that it occurs. You don’t appear to understand why the mechanism is needed, but it completes the scientific explanation of the phenomenon, making it more rigorous.
Creationism is bollocks. True story.
“You are entitled to your own opinion, you are not entitled to your own facts.” –Daniel Moynihan
Nerd @21: The ‘mechanism’ of GR is the effect of mass and energy on the curvature of spacetime, as described by the Einstein field equations. Something concrete and proven, with known properties. Are you saying DNA is more fundamental than mass or energy?
My daughter’s history teacher was complaining that only idiots believe in evolution. A middle school teacher taught that the plagues of Egypt were factual history. Public schools too.
@24
Right but what is the physical manifestation of the curvature of spacetime? Is it mediated by an energy field or particles, or something else — we know that mass and energy are constantly exchanging through gravitational curvature, but we don’t actually know how this comes about. We can predict how matter and energy behave but it’s not like all the mass and energy in the Universe is running a supercomputer constantly solving GFEs in order to determine what their worldline is. Scientific laws don’t “exist” in the way a chair does, in the end they’re just in our heads.
(If our cavemen ancestors were hyper-rational they could have had a “general theory of fire” where the product of heat energy and time is proportional to the mass of input firewood, and that would be a more or less valid generalization, experimentally verifiable to the extent of all contemporary instrumentation, but it doesn’t really explain what fire is.)
DNA is sortof the opposite problem, where we understand the physical manifestation quite well, but we are only scratching the surface of what it actually does, how it interacts with other biological processes and itself. Biology is all empirical and few hard-and-fast laws, and cosmology is full of hard-and-fast laws while empirical evidence is much harder to come by.
F.O. @ 14;
Hey, at least let me reach minimum safe distance before you start confronting creationists with the facts surrounding the practical applications of evolutionary theory upon which our civilization depends. When reality makes their heads explode I don’t want my clothes to get spattered with their brain-analogue; it is absolute murder to get that stuff out. I am just asking for a little consideration here…
Religious instruction is the teaching and preservation of long cultural traditions that pay constant attention to opinions about morals and ethics and the nature of the world ‘established’ in antiquity, under severe strictures designed to mete out afterlife rewards versus terrible repercussion and sundry punishments specifically designed to exploit the natural tendency of people to preserve their personal interests by dangling the prospect of an afterlife out of their natural fear and dread of death. The very prospect of change is anathema to religious culture, thinking and opinion. Nevertheless, religions EVOLVES despite their fiercest efforts to keep it pure – and specifically detached or ‘elevated’ above nature. (e.g., on the grounds of a ‘supernatural’ elitism…for which they cannot supply an iota of justification besides…opinion).
It is, fundamentally and ultimately, a mindset devoted to judgment – and the constriction of the innate and greatest capacity which humans possess, the conceptual creativity that may dare to dispute or merely ‘improve’ upon a work already sanctified with the perfection of an almighty god.
Scientific instruction, on the other hand, consists of the teaching and preservation of a cultural tradition of a methodology that pays attention to an observable world that all HONEST observers agree can be tapped for authentic information on the grounds of mutual corroboration and confirmation as well as the maturity to allow demonstration to refute any claim or opinion. The method instructs the course of scientific consensus on the nature of the world by deferring ONLY to observation of the natural world, not on pre-established opinions, and furnished considerable insight into the nature of ethics and morals practiced by sentient beings that must live in that real world, untarnished by ‘supernatural’ notions.
Science is, fundamentally and ultimately, a mindset devoted to equipping the mind with more information in order to frame a model consistent with all of what is so far established from a source that is unimpeachable: the natural world everyone is compelled to actually live in.
Religion lives entirely inside people’s heads. Science does too…but at least it allows a robust conduit to the world outside of the head to inform it. That makes all the difference in the world.
Religion resists the change that can emancipate the mind and free it of the terrors of mortality and the ignorance that continually fosters fear and a cynical distrust of knowledge acquired from actual evidence. Science embraces change: the world – nature – is its ‘holy book’. That book has barely been tapped – yet what has so far been extracted from it has bestowed upon humanity a fount and gusher of information and insight within a tiny fraction of the span that billions of devotees have applied to religious practices obsessed with one or another ‘scriptural compendiums’ like a bible or a koran or a vedas or any other purported ‘sacred text’ that pretend to speak for an authority responsible for the natural world that isn’t there.
Change is crucial to exploration of the real world. It is how sentient beings actually learn and form ever more accurate conceptual models…and yes, ‘opinions’ (however trivial that facility is in the glare of evidence from actual – natural – reality). The human condition is all about exploration of what we DON’T know – learning, growth, understanding, enlightenment – all of these involve changing – an evolution – in an effort to IMPROVE upon previous states of understanding…which is supposed to inform or amend our vaulted opinions.
This is the central dispute, the central argument. We should take religionists – including creationists – to task over the this particular peculiar situation: That they should so strenuously defer to ancient written texts of demonstrably dubious consistency, ‘holy scripture’ under the banner of a mythological tradition, the supposed inspiration or direct authorship of such texts, and require as they constantly do that it should represent anything anywhere NEAR as important let alone as credible as the pages of the book of the actual natural world that religionists constantly insist is the product of their creator being – well, maybe its just MY opinion, but I detect the strong odor of dishonesty, a thoroughly embedded tradition of disingenuousness, a behavior that automatically defaults to defending a completely indefensible position.
Why do they discount what they insist is god’s creation? Why do they dismiss the ‘direct word’ of god in favor of hugely disparate and exceedingly inconsistent written matter? Why do they despise the natural world so much?
I am reminded by a line in the film, “The African Queen”. In it, Rosie Sayer, a religious character (played by Katherine Hepburn) responds to Charlie Allnut (played by Humphrey Bogart) thusly: “Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above”.
Oh yes. That is what supernatural thinking precipitates: an idiotic and pernicious objection to nature because it does not conform to preconceived notions of an ideal or purity or perfection or god-like certitude. It is an appalling OPINION but the habit of thought behind it is the culprit. Religion is what fosters and promotes it.
And THAT is the gist of the rant (pardon) in a nutshell.
That head ‘teacher’ at St Andrew’s Church of England school in Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire is a disgrace to education, to her students, and to humanity. But oh, what a staunch supporter she is for religion, for ‘rising above nature’!
her Twitter handle was @WilkinsonHead, apparently referencing her role as headteacher.
… or other talents.
#13: “I always point out that gravity is just a theory and that its been disproved for over 100 years…”
Indeed? I hope you are pointing out that while Newtonian gravitational theory has been properly supplanted by General Relativity (a theory of gravity which has so far enjoyed the greatest precision in experimental and observational confirmation in all of physics) Newtonian gravitation still works phenomenally well. I trust you do not mean to suggest it is “just a theory” and therefore wrong under non-relativistic conditions.
You cannot claim that Newtonian gravity, as a workable non-relativistic description, is “disproved”. Take, for example, all the Apollo astronauts that traveled to the Moon to orbit and land upon it returned safely alive within the expected splashdown location as precisely calculated by Newtonian gravitation alone.
It is a mistake to imagine that more complete theories completely negate principles established in previous, if incomplete, theories. In this particular, it is a trivial exercise to extract Newtonian motion (under gravitation) from the more sophisticated yet inclusive General Relativistic premises. In any case, dismissing Newtonian gravitation without qualification is tantamount to dismissing the inverse-square rule…I’m pretty sure you don’t mean to suggest that this basic tenet of Newtonian gravitation was demolished by General and Special theories of Relativity that recognized the importance of extreme velocities, acceleration and gravitational fields and incorporated that in a broader description that involved the curvature of space-time.
@WhiteHatLurker
First, let’s not make our mockery of the woman about her ability to sexually service men when what deserves mockery is her arrogant ignorance.
Second, if you were, in fact, referring to oral sex skills, her position as “headteacher” wouldn’t necessarily be in relation to “other talents”.
Seriously: math teacher, english teacher, history teacher, head teacher (or headteacher, either way): who thought that was a good idea?
#18@Nerd:
“Not necessarily. The mechanism if evolution is based on DNA. Something concrete and proven, with known properties.
Gravity is theoretically transferred via the graviton, which is a hypothetical particle, not yet detected by man-made instruments. Much weaker evidence for gravity compared to DNA/mutations until the graviton is detected and confirmed.
Some of us are helping to look gravitons from neutron stars/binary stars with LIGO experiments and distributed computing (Einstein@home).”
Nerd, I’m surprised you find a qualitative distinction between observation in the motion of objects subjected to a gravitational field supplied by a given mass and what you are pleased to describe “alternatively” as “something concrete and proven, with known properties”. That is an amazing claim.
#31 — Seconded, wholeheartedly. The insinuation by WhiteHatLurker is there and it IS disgusting. For shame… unfortunately, a vanishing attribute increasingly considered to be insignificant in a culture pumping itself up on political (read: anti-humanitarian) correctitude.
#11 – Gregory in Seattle
There are alot of evidences that the Bible is entirely true: Biblical films and people saying “the Bible is the word of God™, can you share your money with the church please?”.
Been commenting on the Guardian (as Playonwords)
The dumb is incredibly strong, mainly being “it’s only a theory”
Thank you Crip Dyke @31.
1. What CD said
2. This woman is a symptom of an education system where from preschool to college we spend way too much time on teaching facts and way too little time on “how do we know”*
The number of highly educated people I know who believe in all sorts of woo is staggering. Not just your arts majors like me, but people with PhDs in biology or medicine. In college we had like one lecture “scientific basis of teaching” where we learned a bit about the history of science and philosophy of science and how you do and read a study. I doubt that much stuck with my fellow students.
CD @ #31, not to mention head boy.
Meanwhile the fundamentalist Christian arrogance of ‘Answers in Genesis’ continues unabated:
https://answersingenesis.org/blogs/simon-turpin/2016/02/04/teacher-ridiculed-saying-evolution-not-fact/
http://forums.bcseweb.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=3741
My comment about the theory of gravity (ie Newtonian) being disproved is technically true. The Newtonian theory was shown to be a non-relativistic (ie slow velocities) approximation of the theory of general relativity which replaced it. The fact that it is accurate enough for most space flight requirements is not disputed – still does not mean that it is a correct interpretation of reality. And despite its incredible accuracy at predicting universal phenomena, General Relativity is still a “theory” (pedantic, I know!).
Evolution, however, has reached a point where it could be argued that due to the amount of scientific evidence bolstering it, it is the closest thing to a mathematical proof that any field of science has produced. Evidence to overturn evolution would have to be so extraordinary that I believe that even proof of a god would not be deal breaker. No other scientific theory can compare to evolution for resilience to attack due to observable evidence and predictive outcomes!