British "teacher" encourages challenging Darwin

[SirNitram]

Why appeal to any authority when you can explain how Creationism violates Occam's Razor?

Way to entirely miss his point; you called appealing to the relevant authority of the scientific community an appeal to authority fallacy, and he called you out on it.

If I may suggest, appealing to any authority in an educational setting may constitute a minor fallacy for "political" reasons, as it is equivalent to saying, "I don't know why this is so, but people with lotsa impressive letters after their names say it is so, so I'll take their word for it." A canny student could take this as a sign of a teacher's fallibility, and reply that Kent Hovind(?) has lotsa impressive letters after his name, and he says ID is so. From there it could devolve into "It's so because I/they say it is so" or it might become simply "Preacher says this ain't so, an' I trust him more'n I trust teachers." Either way, class is over.

Ah, so we shouldn't discuss anything of what Einstein said, as that's appealing to an authority? We should derive everything from the start?

[Surlethe]

If I may suggest, appealing to any authority in an educational setting may constitute a minor fallacy for "political" reasons, as it is equivalent to saying, "I don't know why this is so, but people with lotsa impressive letters after their names say it is so, so I'll take their word for it."

Bullshit. How the fuck is appealing to a relevant authority the same as saying, "I don't know why this is so, but people with lotsa impressive letters after their names say it is so, so I'll take their word for it"?

Whether or not a move is a fallacy has nothing to do with whether it's politically applicable.

A canny student could take this as a sign of a teacher's fallibility, and reply that Kent Hovind(?) has lotsa impressive letters after his name, and he says ID is so. From there it could devolve into "It's so because I/they say it is so" or it might become simply "Preacher says this ain't so, an' I trust him more'n I trust teachers." Either way, class is over.

A canny teacher wouldn't let the student interpret an appeal to a relevant authority as "he has lotsa impressive letters after his name, so he must be right".

[brianeyci]

More typically, debating in its current common usage is used to mean an analysis of the merits and weaknesses of different stands by any number of people. People debate with themselves. Friends debate an issue, but neither of them is necessarily tied to his position. It's more of a collaborative attempt to understand the logic of a situation and figure out what's right. If you'd like to call this something else, I'll gladly drop "debate" and use the term of your choosing. I settled on debate because it seemed to be a step up in intensity from "discussion."

Are you a man? In a debate typically one person loses and one person wins. The winner may be the creationist, if he employs enough rhetorical tricks.

Discussion is still a waste of time in most cases, as the teacher will basically be saying "this creationist argument is wrong because I say so" and arrogant students will not understand why the teacher with two science credits in university can't explain further. Therefore your idea will achieve its opposite intended effect, furthering creationism. Have you read what the other posters said, including RedImperator and Kuroneko, both teachers? But I guess you'll draw on your no doubt vast experience with arrogant high school geniuses.

If a debate necessitates a winner and a loser, then sure. It's a waste of time. The point is not to divide the class into winners and losers, just to get students to analyze both sides of an issue.

Get it through your brain, high school students and even high school teachers are not qualified to analyze evolution's validity. How many times must that be repeated. Teachers can lecture, students can absorb.

What happens when (as it assuredly will) little Bobby raises his hand and says:

"Teacher, this evolution stuff is pretty cool, but what about creationism?"

The teacher can then say:

"That's not science because I say so" (appeal to authority)
"That's not science because the curriculum doesn't cover it" (appeal to authority)
"That's not science because the school board says so" (appeal to authority)
"That's not science because no one in the scientific community thinks so" (appeal to authority)

I suggested "That's not science because it violates the principle of Occam's Razor. It introduces unnecessary components to the model that overly complicate it."

It is not an appeal to authority as bashed by other posters. You cannot simply refute creationist lies with a one-liner. Look at Mike's site, it's vast. You'd have to spend hundreds of hours wasted on explaining why a lie was a lie when it could have been spent learning real science.

In real life, science teacher goes, "learn creationism in religion class." This idea you want to ferment, that there has to be a war between science and religion, is playing exactly into the creationists hands. They want discussion of creationism in the classroom to gain an air of credibility. Put it another way, scientific journals do not discuss creationism. Why should science class discuss it. This is not logic class, or rhetoric class.

Why don't you want to teach evolution in religion

Assuming it's a public school religion class, it's simply teaching about what people believe. You don't need to prove them wrong or right.

Teach the controversy dumbass, what's the matter you don't like the standard being applied on the other side. Science class teaches science, not rhetoric (which is what the creationist side is, a whole bunch of rhetorical tricks).

or history class.

Why would you discuss evolution in history class? There's a difference between teaching something and refuting something for the benefit of the kids.

Again, if you want science class to teach rhetoric, why not have history class teach science. Go teach the controversy! Don't like it when your own fucked up logic turns around on you do you? After your views in the PC Christmas thread and this, I have a nagging feeling you're a fundamentalist, trying to get credibility by appearing to play both sides. Or maybe someone who believes in the golden mean. Get it through your brain, one side can be completely right and the other wrong.

[darthbob88]

To SirNitram: If you have the time, that's a wonderful idea. What I meant was that accepting scientific authority may appear, from a simplistic and childish perspective, to be similar to accepting any other authority, which is the source of my objection.

To Surlethe: Appealing to authority, of any kind, may be considered to be either buck-passing on the teacher's part, or admission of one's fallibility. Either way, with young children, it is usually unsafe to lose control of a class like that. If we were considering this tactic for older, college-age students, then I concede the point and my own ignorance. That's what I get for not reading the entire thread.

To both of you: Please note my use of "may", "some", and "usually". The majority of intelligent students past 4th grade will not suggest that "Dr" Hovind has the same authority as a PhD. Some, however, may think so, and I feel that it is healthy to avoid putting a class in that kind of situation.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

1. Well, for children in elementary or highschool, when you are in a lecture-discussion class, it would be highly difficult to have any real discussion, for the people to whom you are addressing the lecture--the audience--doesn't have the prerequisite knowledge to be able to make a good back and forth discussion.

I don't know what good a discussion will be on a complex topic when they haven't even learned the material first. How can you discuss the validity of something you are just learning?

I mean, you can have a discussion about the topic that's informative, but how much can the students contribute? Very little. They are just intro students. Honestly, even in non-science classes it seems difficult for low level students, and even when you get into college, to challenge the information. You rather have to take it on faith that the professor and teacher isn't bullshitting you until have had a firm background.

For instance, in some of my college and highschool classes, I just recently learned I was being mislead when it came to meterology. The texbooks, as well as the teachers, seem to have been wrong about how exactly absolute humidity works. Then, there would have been no way for me to know otherwise. Even now, though, don't really know who is right. I have seen different textbooks say different things. There's no way a highschool student could possiby know. My damn teachers didn't know, and they had masters in the subject.


As for the issue of what consitute's an appeal to authority, I always get confused on this. When I do searches, I find sources that seem to imply there are technically two versions of it: appealing to authority and appealing to improper authority.

In one case, they claim that it's illogical to claim X is true simply because person Y says so, regardless of his credentials. There are meterologists, for instance, who wrote my earth sciene textbook in highschool that gave us completely wrong explainations of humidity concepts that I didn't learn were wrong until I got into college.

I think it becomes a fallacy to appeal to authority when people treat an authority, regardless of the credentials, as determining the truth value of the statement. They sseem to imply that it is the information which matters, not who said it, but it can be heuristically sound that people without proper credentials, in specialist fields, likely don't know what they are talking about, whereas it is probable that trained technicans in the field know what they are talking about. They might not, but they have a greater chance than a non-expert.


This is how they describe it:

Form:

Authority A believes that P is true.
Therefore, P is true.

Sometimes, appeal to authority is called appeal to irrelevant authority or misuse of authority.

You can have a "good" appeal to authority, but it is valid when you don't have expertise yourself and need to rely on the information from others, and if you don't seriously believe that P is true simply because A believes so, whether or not he's an authority. It's the information that counts, not really who says it. Who says it is merley an indicator of reliablity for people who don't know themselves.

E.g.

1. The "authority" cited is not an expert on the issue, that is, the person who supplies the opinion is not an expert at all, or is one, but in an unrelated area. The now-classic example is the old television commercial which began: "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV...." The actor then proceeded to recommend a brand of medicine.

2. The authority is an expert, but is not disinterested. That is, the expert is biased towards one side of the issue, and his opinion is thereby untrustworthy.

3.While the authority is an expert, his opinion is unrepresentative of expert opinion on the subject. The fact is that if one looks hard enough, it is possible to find an expert who supports virtually any position that one wishes to take.

http://www.fallacyfiles.org/authorit.html

[darthbob88]

^I second those notions. What I was failing to get across this dude just posted. Thank you sir.

[Darth Wong]

Why appeal to any authority when you can explain how Creationism violates Occam's Razor?

Because you can't explain it to a high-school kid. The majority of high-school kids won't understand that even if you explain it to them a dozen times. Do you have any idea how many websites out there were written by adults and attempted to refute the Occam's Razor with a variety of incredibly dumb-shit ideas?

To humour the high-school student's arrogant delusion that he is qualified enough to decide these things on his own is a mistake. If I had to make this clear to them, I would suggest taking some peer-reviewed molecular biology papers (full text, not just the abstract) and asking them to critique the methodology. If they can do that, then they're qualified enough to judge these theories rather than simply accepting what far more qualified people are telling them.

[Magus]

::snip::

Fair enough. I'm bowing out.

[Surlethe]

To Surlethe: Appealing to authority, of any kind, may be considered to be either buck-passing on the teacher's part, or admission of one's fallibility. Either way, with young children, it is usually unsafe to lose control of a class like that.

How would a competent teacher appealing to a relevant authority (e.g., the scientific community's opinion on evolution) be sufficient to lose control of a class?

If we were considering this tactic for older, college-age students, then I concede the point and my own ignorance. That's what I get for not reading the entire thread.

No, we're talking about high school students.

To both of you: Please note my use of "may", "some", and "usually". The majority of intelligent students past 4th grade will not suggest that "Dr" Hovind has the same authority as a PhD. Some, however, may think so, and I feel that it is healthy to avoid putting a class in that kind of situation.

I see no reason that the existence of students who may question the authority of the scientific community should stop teachers from appealing to that authority; if a student is disruptive, then it's well within the teacher's authority to remove him from the classroom.

[cadbrowser]

Yes I'm very nitpicky. I apologize if it was annoying, that wasn't my intention.

I think the only ones who should classify the validity of a scientific theory are those who are out there doing the research, writing peer reviewed articles, and etc... IOW, scientist!

I look at it this way:

I wouldn't ask a baker how to rebuild my transmission, right?

In the same token, I wouldn't ask anybody but a scientist what science is.



Darth Wong:

I wanted to let you know that I was a struggling Christian. I had doubts about my faith and about the Biblical God. I came across your website (creationtheory.org) and read, and read, and read. You changed my life. At first I became angry. Then I realized that many of my ideas were rooted in superstition and christian dogma. You really opened my eyes.

I no longer believe in the existence of any type of supreme being. My feelings towards other people have been replaced with secular humanistic views. I had always thought I wasn't racist, but after reading your website I realized that I did have some feelings rooted in intolerance. I realize that some of the things I've said were wrong, and I am changing it.

Now I consider myself an athiest. I don't know if you get many thank-you notes, I did want to make sure you got this one.

[RedImperator]

To Surlethe: Appealing to authority, of any kind, may be considered to be either buck-passing on the teacher's part, or admission of one's fallibility. Either way, with young children, it is usually unsafe to lose control of a class like that.

Huh? There are lots of ways to lose control of a classroom, but saying "for 150 years, people who've spent their whole lives studying science have all come to the conclusion that evolution is right" isn't one of them, unless you have creationist students who will argue, and they'll argue with you anyway. As long as you don't try to cultivate an image as a guy who knows everything, they'll accept an appeal to authority. For Christ's sake, that's the whole idea behind school: the teacher is an authority who is passing on his knowledge to his students.

You'll do a lot more damage if you end up scrapping your previous plans to teach an impromptu Occam's Razor lesson, and have to constantly backtrack and restate things because

1) You didn't plan for it, and teaching without a plan is just as difficult as acting without a script, and

2) You're probably not qualified to teach it anyway.

[darthbob88]

I will concede the point. All of my experience with teaching other people involved people my age and a willow training aid. I maintain that control in the classroom is necessary, but I will concede that, short an incompetent teacher, appealing to a relevant authority will not lead to classroom chaos.

[Sikon]

Direct argument and debate is often particularly ineffective due to many people falling back on their emotional loyalties to an ideological tribe and not wanting to admit even to themselves that they might be wrong. If one reads web forums a lot, one can see how at least around 90% to 99% of arguments end without the side logically defeated ever admitting they were wrong, often just disappearing to later repeat similar arguments elsewhere.

Yet there are ways to more subtely, gradually influence people. An effective illustration is how those with a college education in science don't tend to support creationism. Certainly it is impossible to give the equivalent with just one or more high-school courses, but it would be possible to design a high-school curriculum more effective than it is now.

There should not be debate, and not so much as the word "creationism" or the phrase "intelligent design" needs to be mentioned in the textbooks. But the course material could give students some of the most relevant knowledge, preempting creationist arguments without ever mentioning those arguments.


Here are some examples of what should be in the required curriculum:

• Basic astronomy: The limited knowledge of much of the public is illustrated by more than 40% of Americans not knowing that the earth goes around the sun once a year (2001 survey). It is bad that such is the result despite $100,000 to $200,000 of cumulative educational spending per person. Imagine if all were taught how the speed of light is known and measured, about the billions of stars in the Milky Way galaxy alone, etc. That would help the absurdity of YEC (Young Earth Creationism) become obvious to more people, like how the universe being a few thousand light-years in diameter is impossible, and pretending the universe is only a few thousand years old would require God faking everything.
• Cover probability more, helping people better understand natural selection. Perhaps give an illustration of genetic programming, showing how the theory of evolution indirectly leads to working applications. (For the concept of genetic programming, see here, here, and here). That way, not as many would incorrectly imagine evolution with natural selection as just random chance. As said on the main site, creationists "use the analogy of a tornado going through a field full of airplane parts, and leaving a fully assembled 747 jumbo jet."
• Be sure to mention natural selection in bacteria like the development of antibiotic resistance, also getting suitable illustrations with insects.
• Mention some of what is on this page, and give examples of genes shared and not shared by branches of evolutionary trees. Too much of the public seems to think the evidence for evolution only consists of looking at fossil bones alone.

At least most of the above seems to be currently missing from the education received by many high-school students, with many not even taking any biology course. Such would not eliminate YECs entirely, as too many are immune to logic, but it could reduce the percentage of students graduating high school yet still highly susceptible to their arguments.