Should Charles Darwins Book " The Origin Of The Species" be a compulsory book in British Schools ?

Question

They teach that rubbish the Bible in schools why not tell tell the kids the truth about where man came from and about the
"Big Bang"
Instead of falseities and lies like Genesis etc etc
Baz

Answer 1

For many years Darwin's "theory" of evolution has been taught as fact in many schools arround the world. I fear that in many schools the subject of Creation never gets covered.

Our children should be taught both sides of the arguement without bias. Lay all the facts out (all that we have) and then a conclusion can be drawn from that. Although Science and Religious education should be taught in separate classes with perhaps a "cross over" at points such as this, so that a fair debate can be had with students.

More importantly the evolution theory is flawed and this has been pointed out by many scientific and religious leaders...Darwin included!!

Renound scientists such as Stephen Hawking have said that there is such order to the universe that to think it was created by chance is complete folly. Life emerging by accident on the planet earth is one times ten to the power of 40,000.

Have an open mind and visit http://www.csm.org.uk/expo1.php

Answer 2

Evolution is a scientific idea that predates Darwin by more than a thousand years and was written about by dozens of authors including Anaximander, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Erasmus Darwin (Charles grandfather) and others. Charles Darwin got the fame for publishing the first book directed at the general populace. The co-discoverer of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace, is forgotten by most. Replace the Origin of Species with the Bible and Koran and you have a point.

Answer 3

No, because science has advanced a long way since Darwin. For instance, Darwin did not know about genetics - he had no idea of the mechanics of inheritance, and envisaged some sort of "blending". It was only in the 20th century, when his theory was combined with Mendel's work on genetics, that the "modern synthesis" was born, which is the basis of current science.

The ideas behind Darwin's work, of course, should be and are being taught, because he was right.

There is no point teaching "both sides of the story" as some posters want, if one side is simply wrong. That would be like teaching "both sides" on the question of whether the earth goes round the sun or not. It does: there is no question. Same for evolution.

Answer 4

Children are taught both theories about the universe from an early age so that they can make their own minds up and not be forced into any belief. As far we know there could still be a God, there is no evidence to disprove the existence of such a power, so children should still be taught about religion. But they are also taught about the Big Bang, Evolution, e.t.c, so most(like myself) choose the most logical explanation by themselves- although it did take me many years to see through the lies of the Bible.
I doubt "The origin of species" would be a good thing to force children to read as it is not exactly child friendly.

Answer 5

Why should it? The theory of evolution has advanced significantly since "The Origin of Species" it was written, taking into account the discovery of DNA etc, it would be like trying to teach chemistry from a 16th century text. Surely there are more up-to-date, complete and detailed books on the theory of evolution available?

As far as I am aware, the Bible (and other religious texts) are only ever discussed in RE lessons, not science lessons, even in the Catholic secondary school I attended.

Answer 6

The big bang is no more proven than the existence of god and as a side note, Where in is the big bang (there was nothing then suddenly the universe was formed) any different from in the beginning it was void and god said let there be light? its the same thing! No issue with the school giving them the origin of the species to read but I found it very dull, but then Leviticus is pretty dull too.....

Answer 7

The Bible is not meant to be taken literally...word for word. God created the world, yes, but not in seven of our (24 hour) days. He did it in 'days' of millions of years. It is no coincidence that the order that things appeared in the Bible...fish, reptiles, mammals, birds,humans have been shown to be the correct order by scientists.The atheists would say..'fluke' as usual.
They think our eyes are sensitive to light...by accident, our ears are sensitive to sound.... by accident, our stomachs contain exactly the correct chemicals to digest food...by accident.It makes much more sense that it was planned by a higher being. Unprovable but it's still true.
The big bang is a theory but can they prove it???No. What was there 10 hours before the big bang??? They don't know.

Answer 8

It is not compulsory in the UK, we teach science in science classes, and Religion in RE studies. Unlike the US we are not backward and teaching ID or creationism in our science classes, so there is no need to make laws to teach what is understood as a proven theory of science?

However, Teenagers will be asked to debate intelligent design (ID) in their religious education classes and it is now compulsory to read texts by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins under new government guidelines.

The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority has for the first time recommended that pupils be taught about atheism and creationism in RE classes. We have taken this move in because some of the world's top scientists have expressed outrage over the teaching of creationism and ID in American school science classes.

Faced with similr moves iun this country, we have used the law to prevent any idiot trying to smuggle fundamentalist Christianity into science teaching.

Rather than go down the rocky road, and move science back to the dark ages like they have in America, in England we have choosen to debate the relationship between science and religion in their RE lessons. The teaching of stupid theories like ID and creationism should prove less contentious in this part of the curriculum

Pupils will be expected to understand terms such as creation, God as creator of the universe, intelligent design, the Big Bang theory, the sacred story and purposeful design, as well as words that are specific to a religion, such as Bible, Rig Veda, and Qur'an.

The new guidelines for key stage 3 (11 to 14-year-olds), aims to deepen pupils' awareness of ultimate questions through argument, discussion, debate and reflection and enable them to learn from a variety of ideas of religious traditions and other world views.

"It explores Christianity, Hinduism and Islam and also considers the perspective of those who do not believe there is a god (atheists). It considers beliefs and concepts related to authority, religion and science as well as expressions of spirituality."

Answer 9

So long as its in science, and the Bible stays in religious studies, so never the two shall meet.

If we teach 'both sides of the story' it should be done in a mythology class and include Hindu, Aztec, Celtic, Greek etc origin myths as well as Judeo-Christian. The Christian posters seem to think they have a monopoly on origin myths.

Answer 10

It should certainly be included as a major part of the history of biology. Students need to know not only what is true, but also how we know it's true - In fact the latter is probably more important. The Origin of Species contributes importantly to that theme.