British Centre for Science Education

Hong Kong became the latest place where students will be taught science, just science, in science classes.

From here;

The Education Bureau has announced that creationism and intelligent design will form no part of the senior secondary biology curriculum.

The move has been hailed as a victory by leading scientists at the University of Hong Kong, who in February called for curriculum guidance on evolution to be upgraded to reflect current scientific thinking.

The four scientists, who include dean of science Sun Kwok and science faculty board chairman David Dudgeon, accused the bureau of encouraging schools to promote creationism in biology lessons through the guidelines.

The Concern Group for Hong Kong Science Education, which is lobbying for changes to the guidelines, has also welcomed the paper but says it does not go far enough.

The calls were prompted by a clause in the biology guide, which comes into force in September, that states: “In addition to Darwin’s theory, students are encouraged to explore other explanations for evolution and the origins of life.”

The bureau’s paper was drawn up for the Legislative Council’s education panel, after the Concern Group called for a panel debate on the issue. The panel demanded a report from the bureau and postponed a decision on the debate. Last month, the row intensified when the “group of 64″ mounted a counter-offensive calling for the clause to be retained.

The bureau’s paper points out that the curriculum aims to strengthen students’ understanding of scientific inquiry in biology and its links with technology, society and the environment.

“In the topic ‘Evolution’, the emphasis is put on Darwin’s Theory, as it is currently the most widely accepted scientific theory on evolution,” it states. “Students are expected to understand the process and mechanism of evolution based on Darwin’s Theory. Students should recognise that biological knowledge and theories are developed through observations, hypotheses, experimentations and analyses and [be] aware of the dynamic nature of biological knowledge.”

The paper also states: “In the biology curriculum framework, creationism or intelligent design, which was mentioned in the recent submissions to the Legislative Council panel on education concerning the biology curriculum, is not included. In addition to Darwin’s Theory, students are encouraged to explore other explanations on evolution such as that of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Sir Alfred Russel Wallace.” It stresses that non-scientific explanations are not included.

Professor Dudgeon said: “Th bureau has recognised that the Darwinian theory of evolution constitutes the core of modern biology and that intelligent design and creationism have no place in the modern science curriculum.

“It is a victory for the students and it will help to ensure that our science teaching remains world class. Clearly this guidance needs to be circulated to all secondary schools before the next semester.”

AIG recently re-posted this article from 2007 by Paul Taylor from AIG UK.

This chemistry graduate and ex-teacher takes a break from claiming that 99.9% of the worlds biologists are either incompetent or part of a worldwide atheist conspiracy, to claim that 99.9% of the world’s cosmologists are either incompetent or are part of a worldwide atheist conspiracy.

The point that should concern Christian parents and teachers is that only one worldview—a secular evolutionary worldview—is taught as if it were established fact, contrary to the actual requirements of the National Curriculum.

In Paul’s world he has his own definition of the word “evolve” that leads him to some unusual conclusions about the curriculum;

4.4c — how stars evolve over a long timescale

In 4.4c, the use of the word evolve is likely to cause confusion and is probably included to imply an acceptance of big bang cosmology.

He goes on to accuse the writers of the syllabus of simply assuming that the speed of light has always been constant.  Never mind Einstein and the careful output from thousands of experiments in fields ranging from cosmology, astronomy and physics, he thinks that the world is just six thousand years old beacuse he added up the ages of people in the bible.

This story from the BBC (William Crawley is excellent) shows that creationists don’t seem to learn from their mistakes.

After being widely criticised in the US for dishonestly setting up a front company and lying to scientists about a documentary about the intersection of science and religion in society, only to carefully cut quotes out of context in the film Expelled which blamed the Nazi holocaust on Charles Darwin, they are at it again.

Professor Peter Bowler, the author of a biography of Charles Darwin and many other books on the history of evolution, said he was interviewed for the The Voyage That Shook The World without realising that the film was being made by a Creationist group.

Professor Bowler, who has spent most of his academic career at Queen’s University, Belfast, researching Darwinism, says he is unhappy to be appearing in what he regards as an “anti-Darwinian” film which offers an historically distorted portrait of Darwin. He claims that the film’s narrative implies that Darwin’s theory led him towards racism, whereas recent historical work by James Moore and Adrian Desmond shows that Darwin’s scientific work was partly motivated by the naturalist’s passionate opposition to racism.

Professor Bowler says he, along with his colleagues Sandra Herbert and Janet Browne, only discovered that they had inadvertently contributed to a Creationist film a month before the film’s release. Peter Bowler also raised concerns about how the editing of his own interview could leave viewers with a false impression of his own perspective on Darwin.

Phil Bell of Creation Ministries UK said;

“Well, it could be called deceptive. But I think, at the end of the day, I would say that more people are concerned about how we’ve made a documentary, that’s a world-class documentary, clearly with wonderful footage, with excellent interviews, and balanced open discussion.”

Phil Bell also denied that his organisation had broken the ninth commandment by “bearing false witness” against Professor Bowler and his colleagues. “Nobody was told any lies,” he said.

Our own wiki entry on Mr Bell makes interesting reading.

Listen to Michael Shermer debate Kent Hovind’s son here.

. . . but most of modern science;

A short email exchange;

I would like to ask a question for the BCSE evolutionist to answer to clear up some confusion please.
1. What gender evolved first man or female to the first human state as we are today, or was there one person who was asexual to populate the earth and the other gender came later?

2. When the Big Bang happened, and all the matter in the universe came together and exploded to create our universe why is Venus, Uranus rotate backwards then the rest of the planets according to the solar system’s angular momentum?

Here was our initial response;

Hi XXXXXXXX,

1.  Humans evolved as a species so there were always males and females around.
2.  The early solar system formation involved many collisions,  this model can account for the solar system we see today.

Regards,

BCSE

The next questions;

1. Where did the matter come from to create the Big Bang, when all the matter in the universe came together and exploded?

2. Around what year did the first humans come into a state of a human, not half bread, of producing others kinds of humans, and if it was millions of years ago why isn’t the population larger today?

Our response;

Hi XXXXXXXX,

I am happy to continue this with brief answers but if you have access to the web there are plenty of reputable science sites to give you more details. Are you allowed uncensored web access.

Many religious people, including scientists see their god behind the big bang.  Whilst there is good evidence it happened there is not much good evidence why it happened.

1.  From e=mc^2 we know that matter and energy are both just forms of energy. When we carefully measure the total amount of energy in the universe we can see we get a total of zero.

2.  If you stop to think about common descent for a moment you will realize that one particular moment does not exist when we could say that was the time of change other than by application of our label. Just as you can’t point to the exact moment a boy becomes a man other than by human convention/ label. We don’t have a definitive way to describe a species even. Again a consequence of the inter relatedness of all life.  I have no idea why you think the age of a species should determine the population size. Population sizes go up and down because of many other factors.

Perhaps you would tell me a little why you are asking such questions of BCSE when there are so many reputable science sites on the web and we are a single purpose organisation focussed on keeping creationism out of science classes in the UK?

Regards

The response, which we have not dignified with an answer;

There are many reputable science sites, but I am opposed to keeping creationism out of science classes.  I just wanted to see different answers from evolution scientist, and I am seeing that someone has to have faith in evolution just like religion.

Of course from his we can all see just how much science content there is in creationism.

‘Intelligent Design’ (ID) is a new form of creationism that emerged after legal decisions in the 1980s hampered the inclusion of ‘creation science’ in the public school curriculum. In the 20 years since ID appeared, there has been no evidence of it being used to solve problems in biology. Although the scientific/scholarly part of ID has been a failure, the ‘cultural renewal’ part of ID has been a success, as supporters of ID seek ‘restoration’ of a theistic sensibility in American culture to replace what they consider an overemphasis on secularism.

A fascinating chat with Nicholas Matzke who explains how he contributed to the exposure of Michael Behe’s empty arguments in the Dover Trial.

Well worth a read.

Creationists are very fond of accusing science of discrimination and censorship when it comes to their beliefs. They seem strangely unaware that the scientific method exists precisely to weed out those ideas which are not supported by the evidence.

Even more strangely the creationists are the ones who ask for declarations of faith and indulge in censorship.