The British Humanist Association is behind a new campaign called “Teach Evolution, Not Creationism“.

Of course any reasonable person is going to support the campaign. No-one wants creationism taught to children as fact in science lessons. But there are a couple of subtleties that should probably be explained in detail.

Firstly, I’ve seen this as described as an attack on faith schools. Whilst I’m sure that the BHA is no fan of faith schools, it’s important to note that this current campaign has nothing to say at all on this subject. The evolution vs creationism debate is a completely separate one. It’s worth noting that the vast majority of faith schools in the UK are run by religions that don’t subscribe to creationism and won’t be teaching this nonsense to schools. Creationists are good at making their movement seem more important than it is, but most British christians are Catholics or Anglicans and neither of these churches subscribe to these ideas.

This campaign says nothing about the status as faith schools. It just says that creationism should not be presented as scientific fact in state-funded schools.

Secondly, people say that creationism should be taught at school as long as it isn’t presented as fact. And I agree with that completely. I’m very happy for creationism to be discussed in religious studies classes or even as part of a course in the history of ideas. There’s even an argument for covering it in science courses where it could serve as a case study of applying the scientific method to a problem and examining the evidence to come up with the best theory. I don’t want schools to produce children who have never who heard of creationism. I want them to produce children who know about creationism and who know enough about evolution to be able to counter the obvious nonsense that the creationists come up with (“There are no transitional fossils.” “What about this almost complete sequence demonstrating the evolution of the whale?”)

Finally, a friend pointed out that he doesn’t want facts taught in science lessons. He wants science lessons to teach “how science works”. By which he means critical thinking and the scientific method. And I can’t argue with that. That’s exactly what I’d like to see too. My experience of the school science curriculum is over thirty years out of date, but I’d hope that it isn’t just “here’s a fact learn it”. It wasn’t like that when I was at school.

Please read the campaign’s position statement and the progress that has been made so far.

And if you’re in a petition-signing mood, please sign their petition.

From the front page of today’s Guardian:

Dozens of schools are using creationist teaching materials condemned by the government as “not appropriate to support the science curriculum”, the Guardian has learned.

The packs promote the creationist alternative to Darwinian evolution called intelligent design and the group behind them said 59 schools are using the information as “a useful classroom resource”.

The group behind this are called Truth in Science – which must be a joke as they seem determined to lie about science whenever possible. It’s also worrying that that they are a completely different group to the one that has been lobbying MPs recently.

The story goes on to say:

A teacher at one of the schools said it intended to use the DVDs to present intelligent design as an alternative to Darwinism. Nick Cowan, head of chemistry at Bluecoat school, in Liverpool, said: “Just because it takes a negative look at Darwinism doesn’t mean it is not science. I think to critique Darwinism is quite appropriate.”

This man is head of chemistry. A post that is traditionally held by a scientist.

Now let’s be clear on this (as I’ve been misunderstood when writing about this before). I’m all for pupils being taught the history of belief and comparative religion. But the only way that creationism (or “intelligent design”) should be covered in a science lesson is to illustrate how far our understanding of the world has increased in a relatively short time.

And, yes, I’m all in favour of questioning Darwin’s theories. That’s how science works. Theories are tested and questioned. But any questions need to come from scientific research, not from idiots who are upset because science disagrees with their favourite fairy story.

It’s not all bad news though. The government has said that this material should not be used in the classrrom.

The government has made it clear the Truth in Science materials should not be used in science lessons. In a response to the Labour MP Graham Stringer on November 1, Jim Knight, a minister in the Department for Education and Skills, wrote: “Neither intelligent design nor creationism are recognised scientific theories and they are not included in the science curriculum.”

So, I wonder what will happen to the teachers who have used it already? In my opinion people who teach this nonsense to children should be banned from teaching. But I’ll be very surprised if that happens.

Update: The same story on the BBC.

I’ve just spotted this article from Tuesday’s Education Guardian which talks about the teaching of creationism in schools and concentrates on the visit to the UK of mad Australian creationist John Mackay. Of course, Richard Dawkins can always be relied on for a good quote:

“The spread of Peter Vardy’s creationist beliefs into the academies run by the Emmanuel schools foundations is extremely worrying,” says Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist and author of The Selfish Gene. “In March 2002, Stephen Layfield – Emmanuel’s head of science – delivered a lecture in which he openly listed ways creationist teachers should provide alternative biblical explanations for evolutionary data. This is a man charged with the responsibility of teaching our children and whose department received a star rating from Ofsted. “We cannot afford to take creationism lightly. It is not an amusing diversion, but a serious threat to scientific reason. People like Mackay thrive by drip-feeding misinformation. We need a much more open public debate, both in schools and elsewhere, so that his ideas can be seen for the rubbish they are.”

And then today we have AC Grayling writing about religion and atheism. He includes a call to complately ban the teaching of religion from schools.

Let us challenge religion to leave children alone until they are adults, whereupon they can be presented with the essentials of religion for mature consideration. For example: tell an averagely intelligent adult hitherto free of religious brainwashing that somewhere, invisibly, there is a being somewhat like us, with desires, interests, purposes, memories, and emotions of anger, love, vengefulness and jealousy, yet with the negation of such other of our failings as mortality, weakness, corporeality, visibility, limited knowledge and insight; and that this god magically impregnates a mortal woman, who then gives birth to a special being who performs various prodigious feats before departing for heaven. Take your pick of which version of this story to tell: let a King of Heaven impregnate – let’s see – Danae or Io or Leda or the Virgin Mary (etc, etc) and let there be resulting heaven-destined progeny (Heracles, Castor and Pollux, Jesus, etc, etc) – or any of the other forms of exactly such tales in Babylonian, Egyptian and other mythologies – then ask which of them he wishes to believe. One can guarantee that such a person would say: none of them.

It’s a nice idea, but unfortunately it doesn’t stand a chance whilst the PM is a believer in an invisible sky pixie.

I’ll just add that to the list of reasons why Blair must go.

After what I wrote yesterday about the christian influence on education, there’s a good article in today’s Guardian about how creationism is on the rise in British universities.

In the United States there is growing pressure to teach creationism or “intelligent design” in science classes, despite legal rulings against it. Now similar trends in this country have prompted the Royal Society, Britain’s leading scientific academy, to confront the issue head on with a talk entitled Why Creationism is Wrong. The award-winning geneticist and author Steve Jones will deliver the lecture and challenge creationists, Christian and Islamic, to argue their case rationally at the society’s event in April.

“There is an insidious and growing problem,” said Professor Jones, of University College London. “It’s a step back from rationality. They (the creationists) don’t have a problem with science, they have a problem with argument. And irrationality is a very infectious disease as we see from the United States.”

Yesterday, I focussed particularly on what the christians are doing. But it seems that the muslims are at it too.

Leaflets questioning Darwinism were circulated among students at the Guys Hospital site of King’s College London this month as part of the Islam Awareness Week, organised by the college’s Islamic Society. One member of staff at Guys said that he found it deeply worrying that Darwin was being dismissed by people who would soon be practising as doctors.

Well, yeah. I don’t want to be treated by a doctor who disagrees with the fundemental scientific principles of human biology!

A 21-year-old medical student and member of the Islamic Society, who did not want to be named, said that the Qur’an was clear that man had been created and had not evolved as Darwin suggests. “There is no scientific evidence for it [Darwin's Origin of Species]. It’s only a theory. Man is the wonder of God’s creation.”

He did not feel that a belief in evolution was necessary to study medicine although he added that, if writing about it was necessary for passing an exam, he would do so. “We want to become doctors and dentists, we want to pass our exams.” He added that God had not created mankind literally in six days. “It’s not six earth days,” he said, it could refer to several thousands of years but it had been an act of creation and not evolution.

Someone with views like that should not be allowed anywhere near patients.

And finally, there’s this

Most of the next generation of medical and science students could well be creationists, according to a biology teacher at a leading London sixth-form college. “The vast majority of my students now believe in creationism,” she said, “and these are thinking young people who are able and articulate and not at the dim end at all. They have extensive booklets on creationism which they put in my pigeon-hole … it’s a bit like the southern states of America.” Many of them came from Muslim, Pentecostal or Baptist family backgrounds, she said, and were intending to become pharmacists, doctors, geneticists and neuro-scientists.

It’s time that rational people stood up and said “enough is enough!” Where do I sign up to fight the forces of medievalism?