Reply #37: The opening of my college Bio book [View All]

[thom1102]

Which I took last semester says that what we do in science is come up with ways to explain the world around us, the how and the why things work the way they do. He then continues, saying the how and the why things are the way they are, are questions for the philosophical (including the religious) community. It is no science's place to explain why we are here, it is it's place to try to explain the workings of the world around us. Therefore science and religion are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and can be used in tandem when the religion's doctrines don't insist on literal interpretations of sacred text.

No one today knows for certain what happened "In the Beginning..." none of us was there. In science, a theory is used to explain what we think happened based on the evidence available. It is fluid and malleable as more evidence sharpens our understanding. A scientific law is a description of a phenomenon which has predictable and definable charateristics that can be measured and solved for. A THEORY DOES NOT BECOME LAW, this is a misconception. I think that it is a mistake to say that evolution is the definitive answer while there is no way to prove the answer to the question of how life on this planet began. It may have been some omnipotent beings interference, or an electrochemical reaction in the primordial ooze, or maybe we are the result of some alien kid's science experiment gone terribly awry. But I think that a curriculum based on "Intelligent Design" has no place in a public school classroom. If there were a compelling scientific case based on the accumulation of scientific evidence to support it, I might change my mind, but "because the Bible says so, and the Bible's always right" is not what I classify as compelling scientific evidence.

PS: We were just discussing this in my "History of Science for Science Education Majors" Sci 420 class this week. We have an Evolution vs Creationism debate on monday