The "Miller experiments" (including the original Miller–Urey experiment of 1953, by Harold Urey and his graduate student Stanley Miller) are performed under simulated conditions resembling those thought at the time to have existed shortly after Earth first accreted from the primordial solar nebula. The experiment used a highly reduced mixture of gases (methane, ammonia and hydrogen). However, it should be noted that the composition of the prebiotic atmosphere of earth is currently controversial. Other less reducing gases produce a lower yield and variety. It was once thought that appreciable amounts of molecular oxygen were present in the prebiotic atmosphere, which would have essentially prevented the formation of organic molecules; however, the current scientific consensus is that such was not the case.

The experiment showed that some of the basic organic monomers (such as amino acids) that form the polymeric building blocks of modern life can be formed spontaneously. Simple organic molecules are of course a long way from a fully functional self-replicating life form; however, in an environment with no pre-existing life these molecules may have accumulated and provided a rich environment for chemical evolution ("soup theory"). On the other hand, the spontaneous formation of complex polymers from abiotically generated monomers under these conditions is not at all a straightforward process. Besides the necessary basic organic monomers, also compounds that would have prohibited the formation of polymers were formed in high concentration during the experiments. Further, according to Brooks and Shaw (1973), there is no evidence in the geological record that any soup existed.

"If there ever was a primitive soup, then we would expect to find at least somewhere on this planet either massive sediments containing enormous amounts of the various nitrogenous organic compounds, acids, purines, pyrimidines, and the like; or in much metamorphosed sediments we should find vast amounts of nitrogenous cokes. In fact no such materials have been found anywhere on earth."

Sorry, a lot of so-called scientific theories are just "cuckoo theories" in my opinion. Not to say all scientific theories being taught in school are "cuckoo theories", but some take a little bit of truth and mold it, as you said, to whatever they feel.

Normally, people assume that Creationism is unscientific for 4 reasons. First, it is not testable; second, it assumes supernatural powers; third, it is a dogma, based on a holy book; and fourth, it is rejected by scientists. However, from all those reasons you can not really conclude that Creationism is not scientific.

Creationism is just as testable as Evolution theory. From lots of scientific observations, such as DNA sequences and the fossil record, you can very well retrieve sufficient evidence whether all species were instantly created at the same time, or not.

A scientific theory does not automatically exclude supernatural powers. The nonexistence of supernatural powers is just an assumption: we see no hint of their existence, therefore we assume that such powers do not exist. However, if a world were governed by witchcraft, demons and gods as in some science fiction novel, you could do science in such a world as well.

That a theory is based on a holy book is also not an reason for being unscientific, because that book could happen to be correct. If people would worship Newton's Principia Mathematica as a holy book, it would not make its content unscientific.

Being considered as false by all scientists is also no reason because that happened to heliocentrism also.

The main reason why Creationism is considered unscientific is that it lacks two of the four requirements of a scientific theory:

External consistency: the theory may not contradict other established scientific theories; it must lend itself to being fully integrated into the whole of science.

and

Explanatory power: the theory must be able to either fully explain states of affairs hitherto unaccounted-for or serve as an instrument to derive them from more basic states of affairs.

http://unendliches.net/english/naturgesetz.htm

It also lacks of evidences. And creationism relys at a translation of a translation of a translation of a translation of a ...

I can't believe I'm having this discussion again...

First of all.. Because I don't think anyone wants to see me go in one of those monster rants about theory>law again, please read any of my previous posts here, just so we all mean the same when we use those words. If you're bored to do so then at least watch the first 2 and a half minutes of this video. I know it looks like evolution propagandish stuff and I don't care much for it myself, but these people are explaining the terms in question perfectly..

Now that we're up to date.. I also don't mean to imply that what actually happened was natural selection and NOT creationism, or visa versa. Or, if any of these topics should be taught in school (I've already expressed my opinion on this earlier in the thread). The only thing I have a problem with is calling Creationism a theory.

You can't just go around calling everything you like a theory. Even if we decide to ignore the fact that absolutely no-one from the scientific community accepts Creationism as a theory, there's a few simple reasons why it's not. For once, creationism can be disproven. And even though no theory can actually be proven, one CAN be disproven, as jcl said by seeing how well it fits into our current most generally accepted cosmology. As I've mentioned twice already, there's a Nobel prize and a hell lot of money waiting for the person that manages to disprove evolution. Right now, no one has. For creationism, there's no prize, because there's probably a billion acceptable ways to disprove Creationism as a scientific theory.

Ok so i took 5 minutes to come up with one of those ways.. I haven't googled it or anything, i just wanted to show how easy it is to do so.. Feel free to correct me if you like:

I looked up Creationism in wikipedia and saw there are many different schools of it.. The most popular one is called Young Earth Creationism and it says that 47% of Americans hold this view, and almost 10% of Christian colleges teach it. It implies that both the Earth and the entire Universe are less than 10,000 years old. So... my argument is this:

Light travels at 299,792,458 meters per second. Our Galaxy is 100,000 light years in diameter so even if we assumed that Earth is right in the middle, then by looking up at the sky or with a telescope, Young Earth Creationism dictates that we should have only been able to see 10,000 light years away from earth, demonstrated here in my l33t mspaint skills:



So if the universe was created 10k years ago, the light from any other stars further away than 10k light years away from earth wouldn't have time to reach our planet at all. This includes the bigger part of our galaxy as well as all the other billion galaxies out there with their billions of stars in them. However, we are able to see stars which are 13 million light years ago, thus proving that our universe is at least that old. Of course, there are other ways to prove that it's actually a lot older than that.

Now what do I win? Nothing. If this was actually a theory, this would be huge.. But since it's nothing but, as wikipedia puts it, a religious belief; using science to disprove it means absolutely nothing..

There's also other ways to separate stories from theories. A theory must be able to predict things. With the theory of General Relativity you can predict the position of stars at any given time. With Newton's theory of Gravitation you could predict the movement of objects in most situations(but not all of them as Einstein showed). The theory of Evolution predicted a lot of behaviors in microbiology which at the time was non-existent. Give me one thing that Creationism predicted..

Finally, I found this case, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (2005) where the outcome was pretty much the following:



Not that a decision by an American court actually means anything but I liked how the outcome was: "ID not science. What's it doing in schools?".

Anyway... I know you're just being the devil's advocate here saying: "Christians once suppressed science, we're now doing the same", but that's not the case. When Copernicus wrote his heliocentric model he feared for his life and almost didn't publish his theory. According to Church doctrine, the Earth had to be at the center of creation. Saying otherwise was heresy. But christians aren't hunted down for believing in their God. It's just that this subject doesn't belong in schools. Especially in United States where there are people from so many different religious backgrounds.

Even in my school (I'm from Greece), I remember these two Albanian students in our class, who were forced to leave class and stay outside during our religion module (the kids were muslim and their mothers didn't want them to participate in the class). Now, being in a foreign country and be different than everyone else is difficult enough without the school alienating you by excluding you from class. Just my two cents worth..

Cheers,
Aris

Creationist friends , please once again

One thing is to claim that a theory is incomplete an other thing that it is false
A theory , any theory, is not supposed to explain everything.
If so, you should refute 99 % of the scientific theories

Evolutionism is considered a valid theory beacause it is consistent with all the available evidences
Creationism is considered a false theory because it is not consistent with some available evidences

If you want to be taken seriously , you must prove that :

a) At least one evidence is not consistent with evolutionism
Example : A fossil of dino's with the fossils of a modern mammal in his belly

b) All the evidences are consistent with the creationism

I emphasize the terms " at least one " and " all"

firstly, it would be better to say that many flavours of creationism are considered unscientific. not creationism in general. assuming current scientific theories are correct, God could have set everything in motion -- been the "first cause". while i'm definitely not arguing that God has to be a first cause, it does have explanatory power and is externally consistent.

having a second look, though, it does lack Falsifiability, which jcl omitted in his example of creationism because his choice was of a specifically falsifiable flavour (i like how those three words sound together).

what's the point of this? the school didn't exclude them from their class. their mothers did. if their mum's felt that science was bad for their religious beliefs and asked that they left the class during their science module, is the school excluding them, or are their mums?

as i've already said, though, i don't support creationism being taught in science classes. but i'm sure no one would object if a student asked the teacher "what caused the first event in the universe's creation?" and their teacher said "we can't be sure... maybe time didn't exist; maybe our universe is part of a more complex system beyond our perception that caused the big bang; or maybe God did it."

julz

Why? Creationism is in general unscientific. That's fact.

Nobody would never argue about this kind of claim, but a teacher should not be allowed to claim that a litteral interpretation of the Bible might be a possible alternative because this has been proved to be false beyond any reasonable doubt

The original question was not
Should the atheism be taught at school ?
We are not in the Soviet Union
The question was
Should creationism be taught at school ?
The answer is no.
I am happy to see that you agree

I apologize for not having time to read this thread. I don't know if all of you are familiar with the following website:

http://www.icr.org/

I thought some may find it interesting.

smitty

The LORD by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding hath he established the heavens.
Proverbs 3:19

I definitely believe that Creationism should be taught in schools. Darwinism is just a theory. Why shouldn't Creationism be taught in schools?
I was taught Darwinism in school, but I was not taught Creationism. I believed in Darwinism until I asked God (not man) to show me the truth. Now that I know that God is truth and His word is truth, I cannot believe that I ever believed in evolution. I can see now that it takes more faith to believe in evolution then it does to believe in God and His word. Man tries to make everything so difficult. God wants us to come to Him with the faith of a child.
1 Corinthians 1
18For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.

19For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.

20Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?

21For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.

22For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom:

23But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness;

24But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.

25Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

26For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called:

27But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;

28And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are:

29That no flesh should glory in his presence.

30But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption:

31That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.