A horrific story in the Telegraph today, thousands of teenagers sitting a GCSE Biology exam here in the UK (prepared by the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance), I repeat, A BIOLOGY exam, were faced with a question that asked them to place the strict Biblical account of creation alongside the theory of evolution, they were also asked to discuss intelligent design and Lamarck. Whoever is responsible for putting questions like this in a science paper should be fired without hesitation, at best it represents gross incompetence and at worse religious meddling in science and education policy.Whatever next, the "stork theory" of reproduction or perhaps the "cheese theory" of the moon?
Creationism belongs in RE, even the government acknowledges this; creationism is NOT science, just like astrology, crystal healing and tarot cards are not science. Putting mythology like this into science exams suggests that these ideas hold equal scientific weight to proper scientific theories which is like equating an egg cup with the space shuttle, a complete distortion of reality.
Religion is like a malignant virus, always there looking for a weakness, always ready to indoctrinate the unwary; like the plague bacilli that lies hidden in the ground for millennia it patiently waits. All it takes is for the rational and the secular to be distracted for a moment and BAM! It inserts itself into our collective consciousness undoing the hard won progress that our species has laboured for and stultifying our brains into subservient mush.
6 comments:
Fundamentalist religion is like a malignant virus - not all religion is fundamentalist.
Maybe you'd be interested in this. How is it possible to be fundamentalist when the original sources are inconsistent?
Hi OP, I'm thinking about religion as a kind of meme here, i.e. the informational equivalent of a virus, something that moves from person to person and is specifically designed to replicate and spread. I think all religion fits this description. You are quite right of course that this need not be a destructive or bad thing per se unless it becomes fundamentalist/tyrannical, unfortunately that is often the case throughout history though (not just religions of course, some political systems went the same way).
Thanks for the link, really interesting. I read something like this and cannot help concluding that its just more compelling evidence that the whole thing is man made, others look at it and say "man is fallible" I guess we all see what we want to see, I simply apply Occam's razor.
'Religion is like a malignant virus, always there looking for a weakness, always ready to indoctrinate the unwary; like the plague bacilli that lies hidden in the ground for millennia it patiently waits.'
I love this line. You should keep it for one of your books that you will write one day.
Not feeling so great today. Will let you know if it turns out to be .....swine flu. At least I can't infect you cyber-ly.
E, sorry to hear you are still under the weather!, I hope you recover quickly - as for swine flu, how bad can it be.. [gulp] I shall disinfect my keyboard, just in case ;-)
Creationism bears precisely the same relationship to science that the Oija board does to the periodic table of elements.
Brad; less I'd say, at least with an Oija board there is a calculable probability of the right answer, with religion it's ALL made up.
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