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Guide to Patagonia's Monsters & Mysterious beings

I have written a book on this intriguing subject which has just been published.
In this blog I will post excerpts and other interesting texts on this fascinating subject.

Austin Whittall


Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Skepticism, science and religion

 

Theory of Evolution

A nice thought; Creationism should be kept inside the churches.


A skeptical entry today. As most of you know, in the U.S., there still is a debate on Evolution vs. Creationism (Believe it or not!).

Basically the situation is the following:

Evolution is the foundation of modern biology and it explains a wide range of phenomena, such as the the origin of different species by adaptation to the changing environmental pressure and microbe's resistance to antibiotics. It is a satisfactory theory and has to constantly face the challenges posed by new scientific findings.

Creationism on the other hand upholds the (non-scientific) biblical notion that God created Earth and its life forms a few thousand years ago–should, just as it is written in the Scriptures.

If religion would keep to the churches there would be no problems but, as biology is taught in schools, American creationists want their belief to get equal footing with evolution in public school science classes.

In the U.S., there is a constitutional mandate to keep religion and state separated, so there is no legal basis to teach religious beliefs at public school (ran by the state). For this reason, creationists have been trying to sell their creationism as science, and promote the idea of "intelligent design", that is: life is too complex to have evolved all by itself without divine intervention.

Their latest attempts involve penalizing teachers who do not present "objectively" the "scientific strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian theory". Let wisdom prevail over religious bigotry!.

Below I add some links (See [2], [3] and [4]) to sites which give an overview of what Creationism is, what Evolutionary science is, and an interesting review of the legal controversy involved plus essays and links on both sides of the conflict.

So, I found an interesting website [1], with some cool images, which, as I quote below, proposes that those of us with a scientific and unbiased mind use sarcasm as a weapon in this silly debate:

You don't have to be an atheist to want to keep science in science class, and sporting one of these graphic tees sarcastically urging schools to teach other pseudosciences, myths and discredited theories is a fine way to show your pro-science stance. Darwin would be proud! Humorous geek friendly apparel intelligently designed by Jeremy Kalgreen.

Below are some of the images that you can print on your T-shirts. I disagree regarding cryptozoology, which in my previous posts (Here and Here) explained that should be considered scientific.

Cryptozoology

Some "cute" Cryptids and "monsters" (which are not science according to: Teach the Controversy. From: [1]


And here is a group of other non-scientific stuff:


this is not science?

Teach the Controversy images of pseudoscientific junk. From: [1]


I hope that you enjoyed the post, and that I have not hurt your religious feelings. The fact is that, quoting the Bible:

Then Jesus said to them, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's."

Which I interpret as follows: Let science delve in things scientific, and religion in its own religious field.

Sources and further reading.

[1] Teach the Controversy. See it Here.
[2] Intelligent Design network. Online Here.
[3] Evolution, Theory and Science. Online Here.
[4] The Evolution Controversy. Online Here.



Copyright 2009 by Austin Whittall ©

Patagonian Monsters

3 comments:

  1. Let science delve in things scientific, and religion in its own religious field.

    I like that. Well said.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's.
    ...Let science delve in things scientific, and religion in its own religious field."

    And of course you are taking it out of context. It was in reference to taxes not science.

    ReplyDelete
  3. "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's"
    Jesus was answering a tricky question about taxes but as in most things his message was wider. Basically don´t mix spiritual stuff with material stuff.

    ReplyDelete

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