Which would you rather be taught in schools ?

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Oh wow. Granted Hume is the only one of those philosophers of science that get covered pre-university over here, maybe because he was Scottish and possibly (probably) the greatest British philosopher. We do Hobbes as well mainly because he was British (we're a bit thin on the ground for 'great' philosophers.) I wish they did Popper at 17 over here.

Ok, here it goes.

Sounds like very poorly trained teachers without much background in science. The earth, like the other planets, originated from the gravitational settling of the early solar disk, and started out quite hot due to the friction and compression of multiple impacts of very high energy.
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/scitech/dis ... ?ST_ID=446
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12161&page=R1
http://faculty.weber.edu/bdattilo/fossi ... earth.html
Note that the links above include the data, observations, and experimentation that has lead scientists to think that the Earth started out hot.

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tr ... al_fossils
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrar ... e/lines_03
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrar ... vograms_03
http://chem.tufts.edu/science/evolution ... lution.htm

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/10/ardi-2/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1571304/
http://www.livescience.com/19333-homini ... alism.html
The geologic column is proven geology, observed in various forms all over the planet. Transitional forms are proven biology, observed not only within genera (extensively, in great detail), but also between families, orders, classes, and even phyla. Charts that show stages of human evolution all having modern human feet are inaccurate artistic interpretations; heck, even all modern humans don't have the same feet and ankles. One of the most recent discoveries, 'Ardi,' had feet with grasping large toes.
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com ... evolution/

Yes, different disciplines use the word in completely different ways, referring to completely different processes.

Most biologists don't make a distinction between macro and micro evolution, since the former is simply the accumulation of the latter; information does not need to be added, only changed. The distinction between 'macro' and 'micro' evolution is a creationist gambit invented when popular knowledge of small-scale changes in species became too widespread for creationists to deny as believably as they had in the past; they changed their song from, 'evolution doesn't happen' to, 'large steps in evolution don't happen.' They used to claim that 'micro evolution' doesn't result in new abilities or new organs, but now are having to abandon that as well since observations have proven them wrong.

You are simply incorrect; the fossil record is both the origin and the best supporting evidence for evolution (see above), and predictions continue to be borne out over and over as new fossils are discovered. For the 'millions of years' concept to be wrong, atomic physics would have to have changed at some time in the past.
Your entire set of arguments betrays a complete lack of knowledge of the subject, as if you have been trained entirely by the ICR and never bothered to look up the subject beyond that. What's the matter, are you afraid? Go read those links thoroughly, I dare you.

^ Once you understand more of how life has evolved on this planet, you never see the world in quite the same way. Even if you reconcile your religious beliefs (somehow) to something with so much evidence to support it, you change. It actually creates more awe and wonder at the world and not less. I think some religious people are scared that it will destroy their sense of wonder but they have nothing to fear on that front.

So yeah, Moviefan, go and read.

Definitely Flying Spaghetti Monster. It is much more obviously ridiculous, so I would have realised at a younger age that it was lies, and would have built my current understanding a lot faster. Hopefully that would apply to the other students as well.

Yes Moviefan, all of your "information" about this subject is wrong. Got that? You have been LIED to. Now if you want to continue to wallow in ignorance, misinformation and lies that is fine, but don't try to force religious views into a science classroom. That is harmful to truth, to our country, our species and our planet.

Everything you claim to be wrong about evolution has been thoroughly debunked many times, but somehow the lies keep being spread and keep being believed. IF evolution did NOT happen, that would make God a malicious prankster because everything we can observe and measure, basically every scientific observation ever made, is consistent with and supports the idea of humans having evolved from other forms of life. There are multiple lines of evidence of many different types from every branch of science that all point to the same reality. It is really amazing how much evidence there is that shows humans DID evolve, and even more amazing that so many people are so incredibly misinformed about this subject.

Now how the universe began and how life started, those are different questions and evolution does not address those questions nor answer them. That does not change the fact that evolution is quite possibly the best supported scientific idea of all time for the questions it does address and answer.

Who... are... "we"?

British people.

I know that sounds naively patriotic but I sometimes get a kick out of the idea that someone amazing lived here once.

Things may be lost in translation, but last time I checked, "thin on the ground" refers to "if things or people are thin on the ground, there are not many of them"."

Off the top of my head: Adam Smith, David Hume, James Mill, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Hobbes, Francis Bacon, Edmund Burke, John Locke, Bertrand Russell.

That list includes:

- David Hume
- The founder of utilitarianism
- The founders of both liberalism and conservatism
- David Hume (In case you missed it)

And finally... The Clash of The Titans:

... Karl Popper and Ludwig Wittgenstein were both British (though neither by birth)

Oh, the poor British. Such a deficiency in philosophical thought.

I got the impression that she meant, "right now."

I agree with you that Britain have produced many great philosophers, that's why I put 'great' in quote marks.

When British people think of philosophers, they don't generally think of British philosophers - or if they know about British philosophers, instead of calling them philosophers, they call them political theorists, economists or scientists. Adam Smith is always thought of as an economist, Burke as a political theorist, Bacon as a scientist, Locke and Mill as political theorists more than philosophers (even if that's inaccurate). Hobbes, Hume and Russell are the exceptions - and they (wrongly) aren't regarded as 'great' in the same way as Descartes is.

When British people think of a philosopher it's either Descartes (usually), Kant, Sartre or Socrates. British people think philosophy is something that happens on the continent and we have economists and scientists over here instead. Yes, I know they're wrong, but I can't change the attitude to philosophy in this country.

Oh, and Britain wasn't like this back in the day when science was seen as 'natural philosophy' - back then the British were positively brimming with confidence in their philosophical ability. The current attitude has come about with the increasing specialisation in academia.

The OP didnt even touch upon the central debate of our time.
That being the contraversy over lunar composition.


The theory that the Moon is made of green cheese should niether be promoted nor disparaged.

They should teach the contraversy.

Present both the rock and cheese theories of lunar composition. And let the grammer school students decide for themselves.

Same with the Lysenkian biology, the Flat Earth Theory,the theory of bodily humors, and the belief by the Aztecs that the Sun needs to be fed dismembered human hearts or it will fall out of the sky, and so on.

Just my modest proposal for reforming the education system.

Last edited by naturalplastic on 19 Oct 2013, 10:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

No. That would be a waste of printed paper.

Creationism goes in the same category as flat-earthism and other fairy tales.

I might have done a different exam board to you or things might have changed since you were in school, but we did a module (8 hours of contact time) on Verification and Falsification in Philosophy, and the same again on meta-Ethics in Ethics, so we covered Popper, and his followers like Flew and Mitchell, as well as A.J. Ayer, R.M. Hare and G.E. Moore.

Hume was brilliant- every topic we studied in Philosophy, he'd wade into, point out three fundamental problems, and then wade out.

^ That's really cool. I didn't get to take philosophy in the end because not only am I too stupid to get a good grade in it, but I went to a Catholic college where the course was mostly based around Theology (the course doesn't exist now, there's Theology and Ethics, but back then it was Theology and Philosophy.) The non-faith college I didn't go to offered a philosophy A Level, which my sister and I read her textbooks and essays. They covered Hume but the rest of the course was Descartes, Kant and Nietzsche - but they did study J.S. Mill and Locke, who came up in other subjects like Politics.

John Lennon is thought of as a musician, Douglas Adams as a novelist, and yet both of these men were arguably great philosophers. One is not defined merely by the job one does.