Good news in Britain, bad news for creationists.

[Archae]

Schools that teach creationism in any of it's mutations no longer can recieve government money.


Leading scientists and naturalists, including Professor Richard Dawkins and Sir David Attenborough, are claiming a victory over the creationist movement after the government ratified measures that will bar anti-evolution groups from teaching creationism in science classes.

The Department for Education has revised its model funding agreement, allowing the education secretary to withdraw cash from schools that fail to meet strict criteria relating to what they teach. Under the new agreement, funding will be withdrawn for any free school that teaches what it claims are "evidence-based views or theories" that run "contrary to established scientific and/or historical evidence and explanations".

The British Humanist Association (BHA), which has led a campaign against creationism – the movement that denies Darwinian evolution and claims that the Earth and all its life was created by God – described the move as "highly significant" and predicted that it would have implications for other faith groups looking to run schools.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/jan/15/free-schools-creationism-intelligent-design

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. All right! That's really good news!

Now, if we could just get that to happen over here...

[HillWilliam]

9. To leverage a phrase

I devoutly hope

[Solly Mack]

2. K&R

[caraher]

3. Meanwhile in the colonies...

my state (Indiana) has a bill soon to come before a Senate committee allowing local school systems to require teaching "creation science"

[sakabatou]

13. That'd be illegal if it were taught in public schools

[fujiyama]

4. The British have Darwin on some of their currency notes I believe

I think controversy over evolution ceased long ago over there...

This country can be an embarrassment on the world stage especially on this issue. People educated in biology typically do not view things like evolution in the same politicized light the right wing does in this country. It's truly bizarre and indicative of very primitive thinking among many conservatives that basic scientific concepts can be completely dismissed...

I know if I had a child I would not send him or her to a school that taught garbage like intelligent design or creation science. Such nonsense has no place whatsoever in a science class of any sort.

[Prophet 451]

23. He's on the back of the £10 note

All of our banknotes have the Queen on the face with various notable British people on the reverse. Darwin replaced Charles Dickens on the reverse of the £10 note in 2003 (partly because his much more impressive beard made his portrait more difficult to copy).

What's strange is that the BBC did a survey on the 150th anniversary of "The Origin Of Species" and found that only about half the populace think evolution is definately or probably right. This is despite the fact that all of our public schools teach evolution, all of our (serious) politicians and even most mainstream clergy accept that evolution is more-or-less accurate (they might quibble on the details but they don't deny the general gist).

[JI7]

5. isn't it mostly in US where this is an issue ? in the rest of the world they are considered fringe

but here you have a major political party politicians pushing for it .

[bhikkhu]

6. Creationism is the rule in Saudi Arabia

...and probably other backward arab states as well. I don't know about the rest of the world, but even the vatican has recognized evolution!

[Archae]

7. In some Muslim countries they teach and believe in creationism too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_views_on_evolution

[Prophet 451]

24. Of the western world, sure

As others have noted, there's a few Muslim nations that teach creationism but of the west, it's only really an issue in the USA.

[Archae]

8. Even my avatar drives creationists buggy.

It's an atnhropomorphic archaeopteryx.

[RainDog]

11. this post is the personification of stupidity

from a right winger bible literalist who has no expertise in this topic.

I hope you are not as ignorant as this post.

[RainDog]

12. actually, it seems you are as ignorant

since your "reason" for denying scientific fact is that the 19th c. was full of racists. lol.

Lincoln was a racist too. So do you deny the Emancipation Proclamation b/c Lincoln was a racist?

The founders of this nation were racist. So, do you think that discredits the theory of democracy b/c those who put it into practice in its initial iteration were racist?

See how stupid that line of thinking really is?

[Kaleko]

15. Mincemeat.

Served by a unanimous jury I was just serving on.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
At Mon Jan 16, 2012, 03:26 AM an alert was sent on the following post:

Speak for yourself OP

REASON FOR ALERT:

This post is disruptive, hurtful, rude, insensitive, over-the-top, or otherwise inappropriate. (See <a href="http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=aboutus#communitystandards" target="_blank">Community Standards</a>.)

ALERTER'S COMMENTS:

This is right wing nutcase crap with articles on the site that are critical of Obama and Af-Am politicians in general. The source of the link, iow, is over-the-top to the max and wingnutty.

JURY RESULTS

You served on a randomly-selected Jury of DU members which reviewed this post. The review was completed at Mon Jan 16, 2012, 03:36 AM, and the Jury voted 6-0 to HIDE IT.

Juror #1 voted to HIDE IT and said: I agree it's rightwing nuttery and should be hidden.
Juror #2 voted to HIDE IT and said: No explanation given
Juror #3 voted to HIDE IT and said: Agree with the alerter. Even if it were a valid argument, it is easily sourced to RW nuttery.
Juror #4 voted to HIDE IT and said: WOW! This is just...WOW!
Juror #5 voted to HIDE IT and said: Hilarious wingnuttery.
Juror #6 voted to HIDE IT and said: RW racist crazy BS

Thank you very much for participating in our Jury system, and we hope you will be able to participate again in the future.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[RainDog]

16. ...

[kentauros]

17. Juror #1 here!

The poster has been here since August of last year. Kind of surprised they're still here with a post like that...

[RainDog]

19. If it's sincere

it just goes to show you the harm that certain religious groups do to this nation.

to make the claim that evolution is racist is to appeal to emotion, not fact. it's to pretend that every branch of science is merely opinion and that's crazy - or simply ignorant.

It's a lot easier to believe someone's heated rhetoric that plays to the beliefs you were taught as a child concerning religion that it is to look at evidence and understand that NOTHING about evolution speaks to racism.

[RainDog]

14. not to mention the essay is full of lies

you probably also think Hitler was all for abortion and use that to justify your belief that you can tell others what to do with their bodies...

when, in fact, Hitler made abortion illegal. he executed one of his military leaders for giving his girlfriend an abortion. Jews who were sent to camps were simply raped repeatedly and then shot in the head so the issue of abortion wasn't big for them either.

Atheism wasn't part of Hitler's mass movement. Hitler moved against the socialist and communists who were fighting against the Nazis and the corporate class before Hitler took power. Hitler appealed to religious beliefs and had church figures stand with him to support his hatred of Jews.

The anti-semitism that was rife in Germany and across Europe stemmed from the CHRISTIANS throughout European history who regularly persecuted Jews for their beliefs. Atheism had FUCK NOTHING to do with Nazism.

I am SO SICK of the religious nutcases in the U.S. who argue using BULLSHIT to try to justify their fear of facts.

[Charlemagne]

25. wel....

Did allow abortion for certain groups of people. It was encouraged for Africans in Germany and for any other "lower races." Everyone else it was illegal. This was in the 1930's before Hitler went on his European tour. My HS govt told us that if a government can tell you that you cant have an abortion....they can also tell you when you have to.

[RainDog]

29. But the reality is that the Weimar Republic had more liberal abortion laws

That Hitler undid.

He also mistreated the mentally ill, those with mental retardation, gypsies, homosexuals... No doubt he was an awful bastard who changed the world for the worse. He hated entire groups and had the power to destroy them. But his special antipathy was for Jews - and this follows upon a long history of Christian persecution of Jews in western Europe so it makes no sense to try to say Darwin was the cause of this. It make no sense to tie Hitler to Africans specifically - to single him out - b/c all of Europe had been treating Africans horribly for centuries. As had white Americans.

Jews were expelled from Spain a thousand years before (where they had been made welcome by the muslims who had conquered parts of it) - it was the acts of Christians that provided the impetus for the holocaust- this was long before Darwin existed. Christians massacred Jews in Spain or forced conversions - during the time that Columbus was coming to the new world. Christians tortured all kinds - so, if the asshole who wrote that essay wants to honestly look at history, he would have to acknowledge that Christians were the reason western Europe was the location of one some of the most shameful acts of hate, torture, murder and attempts to destroy entire groups of people in history. Compare hundreds and hundreds of years of murder in the name of god to one hundred years of murder in the name of another ideology - i.e. Stalin or Pol Pot or the French Revolutionary terror creators - all inspired, btw, by the American Revolution in one way or another - that's much more honest.

Because reality is complicated and nothing and no one is all good or bad. Napoleon was a dictator but he created a better society for Europeans across the continent by universal education. He freed slaves. The American Revolution was great, but our govt has a horrible legacy of slavery in the midst of proclaiming all are free... that's reality - and, just like evolution, changes in our societies are not guaranteed to be good or bad - they are just guaranteed to change. It's the humans behind those changes that make something worthwhile or not - how they treat their fellow humans - and there is NO IDEOLOGY that has EVER not mistreated people - none.

Additionally, as noted, yes, history is full of racists, especially in the 19th c. b/c this was a time of colonization. Western European nations, and the U.S. wanted the natural resources of other countries and they dehumanized the people there to get them. We see this in our time, as well, in the middle east.

But history is also full of people who use what are called "naturalistic fallacies" to make arguments. That's what social Darwinism is - and it doesn't even understand what Darwin was trying to say. That's what the writer of this essay is doing as well. One way you can tell people don't know anything about science, btw, is when they talk about "Darwinists." This is a right wing nutter term that misses a hundred years of science. for future reference. lol.

Because- Darwin isn't even the be all and end all of evolution. Since Darwin's time, the mechanisms of evolution were revealed through genetic mutation and inheritance - something that was not known at the same that Darwin made his observations.

This synthesis was brought about from the work of a Christian, Gregor Mendel, who was working at the same time as Darwin, but whose work was largely unknown until the beginning of the 20th c. His work had nothing to say about race - it was about the mechanism by which our genes pass along traits and mutations. So, a Christian is one of the most important scientists concerning the issue of evolution.

Evolutionary theory is now "the modern synthesis" because genetics, unknown by Darwin in his time, has shown how adaptation occurs - and evolution has no "direction," i.e. there is no move toward some "higher life form" because of evolution - the miracle of life is that life is, in whatever form it is. Evolution has no purpose other than for living things to be. That's not nihilism - that's amazement and wonder that life, in all its glorious permutations, exists.

[Warren DeMontague]

18. K&R.

[LeftishBrit]

20. Good news

To clarify a bit: all state schools in the UK, including those with links to churches, are expected to follow the National Curriculum, and this includes learning about evolution as a fact in science classes.

Recently, we have seen the introduction of academies and free schools - rather like charter schools in the USA - which receive government funding but, especially in the case of the 'free schools', have more freedom to select their own curriculum. This led to concerns that some faith groups would find loopholes to use taxpayers' money to teach creationism. Fortunately, these loopholes have now been closed.

Private schools can still teach creationism, though this is rare. 'Fundies' are simply not as much in evidence in the UK as in the USA, and most parents who choose private education do so either for academic reasons or for snobbish reasons, rather than for religious reasons.

[CanonRay]

21. That's what we need to do here.

but it'll never happen.

[Shadowflash]

22. You are correct.

The rest of the world is moving forward and we keep sliding back.

[Scuba]

26. Meanwhile, in Kansas, it's 1835 and Darwin doesn't exist.

[Scurrilous]

27. K & R

[LibertyorDeath]

28. Thank God!