Draft: "Why We Should Teach About Creationism in Science Classes"

From: Cygnus X-1 (cygnusx1_at_mac.com)
Date: 03/10/05

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    Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2005 22:59:03 -0500

    Still trying to track down some references (and pointers from those in
    the group would be appreciated). References are linked on the web site
    version (see bottom of the main page).

    =======
    Why We Should Teach About Creationism in Science Classes
    W.T. Bridgman, Ph.D.
    cygnusx1@mac.com
    "Dealing with Creationism in Astronomy",
    http://homepage.mac.com/cygnusx1/

    Draft

    In recent years, the proponents of teaching "Intelligent Design" and
    it's precursor "Scientific Creationism" have redoubled their efforts to
    impose their pseudo-science in the classrooms of our public schools.

    Yet, in all the turmoil created by these battles in the school boards
    and courts, there is one solution that has been overlooked, or perhaps
    avoided. In the true spirit of turning a problem into an opportunity,
    if we wish to improve the critical thinking skills of our students,
    "Scientific Creationism" provides many examples of a pseudo-science
    that can be analyzed in detail to teach students why it just doesn't
    work.

    My particular field is astrophysics, and over the past ten years I've
    examined a number of claims by the "Young Earth Creationists" (YEC) who
    object to modern cosmology's evidence that the universe is on the order
    of 14 billion years old. Creationist "theories" such as claims that
    the speed of light was significantly higher in the recent past (to
    solve the light-travel time of seeing galaxies billions of light-years
    away in a less than ten-thousand year old universe) have errors so
    obvious that they can be addressed by students with a high school (or
    advanced middle school) understanding of physics or mathematics. YEC
    claims using general relativity might have to be dealt with in
    undergraduate to graduate-level physics classes, but nonetheless will
    better prepare future physicists for dealing with these issues. Many
    amateur and professional scientists have analyzed creationist claims
    and the results are available through a number of resources such as
    Talk.Origins.

    In college level physics classes, many Creationist claims can be
    examined directly. Gigabytes of astrophysical data are already freely
    available online to support such a project. For primary and secondary
    education, curriculum developers need to be able to convert the
    analyses of pseudo-science claims into workable lesson plans and then
    deliver the resources and necessary training to the schools and
    teachers. This is not an easy task, but the price of NOT doing it is
    the loss of American leadership in science and engineering. I have
    done some work from the astrophysical side of the problem, but
    geologists and biologists need to take a similar approach.
      
    Advocates of "Creation Science" and "Intelligent Design" fear such an
    approach. While it's not received much attention, some have publicly
    admitted that their 'theory' (actually a hypothesis) has had no success
    in the laboratory. That's why they fall back to "teaching the
    controversy" as it is an easy way to avoid this problem while they try
    to maneuver other components of their agenda into the classroom (this
    is why the Discovery Institute describes it as the "Wedge Strategy").
    "Intelligent Design", as a real scientific theory, failed a century
    ago, and belongs in the dustbin of failed theories with the
    luminiferous aether and the plumb-pudding model of the atom. The claim
    that "Evolution is a theory, not a fact" is just playing games with
    words. Electromagnetism is a theory. Quantum mechanics is a theory.
    Even gravity is a theory. I've yet to see anyone demonstrate a useful
    better antenna design, a better semiconductor component design, or
    develop a trajectory to send a spacecraft through the Solar System
    without using these "theories". We've sent spacecraft to distant
    regions of our own Solar System, but I've yet to see a Biblical
    geocentrist compute the trajectory to send a spacecraft to the Moon or
    Mars. This might be an important issue for human crews in the
    not-to-distant future.

    Creationists like to claim that we can't "know" what's happening or
    what happened in distant regions of the cosmos or far back in time,
    yet physicists have done this from the time of Galileo with great
    success. Newton's theory of gravity was explaining how planets and
    stars move in empty space nearly three centuries before machines and
    humans could travel in space to test it. Einstein's revision to that
    theory was explaining observations in the distant cosmos years before
    some of the predictions could be tested in Earth-based experiments
    and decades before it's effects were incorporated into the Global
    Positioning System (GPS). Quantum theory was explaining atomic
    behavior in rarefied regions of distant space and the incredible
    high-density structure of stellar remnants such as white dwarf and
    neutron stars decades before the conditions could be even partially
    reproduced in the laboratory, even before it became a key component in
    the development of microelectronics. When astrophysicists discovered a
    deficit in the number of neutrinos emitted from the Sun in the late
    1960s, called the Solar Neutrino Problem, Creationists touted this as
    evidence that the Sun was not powered by nuclear reactions and the 4.5
    billion year age of the Sun was not possible. Real scientists checked
    their calculations and concluded that a neutrino mass (up to that time,
    the neutrino was assumed to be massless), far smaller than was possible
    to measure at the time, could explain the deficit. In recent years,
    we've been able to confirm this effect in Earth-based experiments.
    We've even discovered properties in the atomic nucleus based on
    cosmological constraints. Cosmology isn't just something that happens
    'out there' - it has often provided guidance on physical phenomena
    years before controlled laboratory experiments were possible. There
    have been no similar successes or utility from Creation "science" or
    "Intelligent Design". Cosmology has real implications for our
    technology and life on Earth.

    Since the dawn of the atomic age in WWII, science has enjoyed the
    grateful generosity of taxpaying public. Scientists have used this
    generosity to unlock the tiniest secrets of the atom to the most
    distant regions of the cosmos and has generated useful products and
    methodologies in the process.

    In spite of all this advancement, the American scientific community has
    left behind an intellectual vacuum in the education system that
    crackpots and con-artists have been all too willing to fill. The
    scientific community has ignored this growing problem and now it
    threatens to infect our society. Our nation would not be the first to
    take this self-destructive path. Stalin dismissed Darwinian selection
    in favor of Lysenko's theories on adaptation, allowing the political
    process, instead of the scientific process, define the science. When
    they applied Lysenko's ideas to Soviet agriculture, crop failures
    ensued. This was the reason for the U.S. grain sales to the Soviet
    Union in the 1970s. Their resulting inability to feed their own people
    was a contributor to their collapse. The Nazis despised "Jewish
    Physics" and touted their own "Aryan Physics". The famous "Einstein
    Letter", advocating the development of the atomic bomb, was sent to FDR
    in August of 1939. At that time, all the research with nuclear energy
    weren't much more than tabletop experiments. The only indication that
    the energy release would extrapolate to levels necessary for an atomic
    bomb were the successes at that time of explaining the energy
    production in the Sun and other stars. "Aryan Physics" touted the
    superiority of experimentalists over the 'extrapolations' of theorists,
    and (thankfully) may have hindered their own thinking on such a weapon
    .

    And we don't need to limit the debunking to creationism. There are a
    plethora of pseudo-science claims with their adherents, many who post
    their ramblings on the World Wide Web. A perusal of Crank dot Net
    yields a cornucopia of pseudoscientific claims from free-energy scams
    to "proofs" that relativity is wrong, with a broad range of
    sophistication. Teaching students how to analyze these claims with
    real science gives them a valuable tool not only for their professional
    future but also for their role as citizens in a
    technologically-advanced society.

    I've raised this issue with scientists and teachers who express
    reluctance to address debunking pseudo-science in the classroom.
    However, the scientific community can no longer afford the luxury of
    letting this battle play out in the courts and hoping for the best.
    Over the past five years, this problem as grown from a single state to
    challenges all over the United States. The approach I propose gives
    the scientific community the chance to take control of the issue rather
    than continuing in this guerilla war strategy of the Creationists.

    The scientific community holds all the cards in this debate, it's time
    we play them. 

    ---
Acknowledgements: The author would like to express appreciation to all 
those who reviewed drafts of this document and provided citations.
======
Dealing with Creationism in Astronomy
http://homepage.mac.com/cygnusx1                        
cygnusx1@mac.com
"They're trained to believe, not to know.  Belief can be manipulated.  
Only knowledge is dangerous."  --Frank Herbert, "Dune Messiah"
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