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> While this may technically fit the definition of "indoctrination", that's a pretty loaded way to describe what parents teach their own children. I'm a former

> While this may technically fit the definition of "indoctrination", that's a pretty loaded way to describe what parents teach their own children. I'm a former homeschooler that had to watch countless Ken Ham and Kent Hovind videos. These videos were filled with strawmen and faulty logic. I distinctly remember one of them tearing into Lamarckism, a theory discredited in the 1930's, as if it were something that people actually believe in today. Indoctrination is exactly how I'd describe it.

ndriscoll 3y ago
Unless you wanted to be a research biologist, does the precise mechanism driving evolution really matter? And the ideas did turn out to have some merit with epigenetics, right? Sure it's largely wrong, but it's a strange sort of indoctrination to care about. Sort of like how we tell children the story about electrons being balls that orbit the nucleus. Wrong, but only important for physicists and chemists.
- waffleiron 3y ago
  The thing about creationism is that it also inherently tells you science is wrong, not to be believed and that scientists and the government willingly lie to you. That doesn’t set you up to get far and do well in the world as it is.
  - ndriscoll 3y ago
    Scientists and the government do willingly lie though? And a proper science education will have you go through the math and do experiments yourself so you don't need to believe it (well, you need to believe you are not being tricked by a Cartesian demon). If you're not doing that, then yeah all you have to go on is credibility of the people doing science, and several fields have replication crises, so it makes sense to not blindly believe them.
  - arkey 3y ago
    It does not. At least not in such absolute terms. Some science is wrong, but not science in itself. And mate, you don't need to go into religion or anything to find out that governments willingly lie to you. Also scientists, plenty of times, willingly or not. > That doesn’t set you up to get far and do well in the world as it is. There are loads of highly successful and relevant Christian people in every area, including science, right now and throughout history.
- minitech 3y ago
  “tearing into Lamarckism” as in using it to discredit evolution.
  - ndriscoll 3y ago
    Ah, right that makes more sense. I guess though it's still not clear that it really makes much difference. Like even when the intelligent design people acknowledge that plant breeding exists, but claim "macroevolution" is impossible or whatever, does that even matter? If you're not going to be a geneticist, it's basically just trivia.
    - nnf 3y ago
      The reason creationists push so hard against the teaching of evolution is that it fundamentally discredits their entire theology. It’s not just about the origin story. If there wasn’t a literal Adam and Eve, then Adam and Eve never sinned by eating fruit from the wrong tree, and thus they never passed that sin down to all of humanity, meaning we aren’t all born with “original sin” for which we need to be forgiven and saved from being sent to hell when we die.
      - humanrebar 3y ago
        Nothing about Evolution disproves Adam and Eve. If an all powerful person is in the story, it's a theological and metaphysical question how Evolution and Creation fit together. It's also kind of a boring question because there's no experiment we could run to explain how creation miracles worked. It's definitely a fountain of controversy, though.
    - arkey 3y ago
      Does plant breeding somehow imply macroevolution?
      - ndriscoll 3y ago
        What I mean is things like plant breeding and genetics ("microevolution") have practical uses, and modern anti-evolutionists shifted to acknowledge it because it's so easy to demonstrate. Knowing how we came to be ("macroevolution") doesn't have practical uses. Tautologically, it happens on time scales far beyond our lifespans. Almost everyone isn't going to do a deep dive into how it all works/become professionals in that area, so even the science is effectively just a story for them. If parents want to tell their kids a different story, it doesn't really matter much. Public school k-12 science is so basic that as has been said elsewhere in the comments, you can learn it all from Wikipedia in a few days anyway. The important topics are reading, writing, and math/logic. Ideally history and political philosophy, but it's not clear that schools meaningfully teach that anyway.
- PsylentKnight 3y ago
  > Sure it's largely wrong, but it's a strange sort of indoctrination to care about That was just one example of a particularly egregious strawman. It made "evolutionists" out to be a lot dumber than they actually are by misrepresenting what they believe. They made similar arguments against some of Darwin's since discredited theories, again, as if they were things that modern scientists believe. And there were plenty of other untruths and logical errors, so much so that I think it's very likely these people were not arguing in good faith. I agree that it's not a very important subject for everyday life or for most careers, but that kind of intellectual dishonesty being presented as the absolute divine truth is not good for developing a child's reasoning abilities imo. And as another sibling comment points out, creationism tends to pit people against science and intellectualism in general. The only thing that can be truly known is the absolute truth of the Bible.

ndriscoll 3y ago

Unless you wanted to be a research biologist, does the precise mechanism driving evolution really matter? And the ideas did turn out to have some merit with epigenetics, right? Sure it's largely wrong, but it's a strange sort of indoctrination to care about. Sort of like how we tell children the story about electrons being balls that orbit the nucleus. Wrong, but only important for physicists and chemists.

waffleiron 3y ago
The thing about creationism is that it also inherently tells you science is wrong, not to be believed and that scientists and the government willingly lie to you. That doesn’t set you up to get far and do well in the world as it is.
- ndriscoll 3y ago
  Scientists and the government do willingly lie though? And a proper science education will have you go through the math and do experiments yourself so you don't need to believe it (well, you need to believe you are not being tricked by a Cartesian demon). If you're not doing that, then yeah all you have to go on is credibility of the people doing science, and several fields have replication crises, so it makes sense to not blindly believe them.
- arkey 3y ago
  It does not. At least not in such absolute terms. Some science is wrong, but not science in itself. And mate, you don't need to go into religion or anything to find out that governments willingly lie to you. Also scientists, plenty of times, willingly or not. > That doesn’t set you up to get far and do well in the world as it is. There are loads of highly successful and relevant Christian people in every area, including science, right now and throughout history.
minitech 3y ago
“tearing into Lamarckism” as in using it to discredit evolution.
- ndriscoll 3y ago
  Ah, right that makes more sense. I guess though it's still not clear that it really makes much difference. Like even when the intelligent design people acknowledge that plant breeding exists, but claim "macroevolution" is impossible or whatever, does that even matter? If you're not going to be a geneticist, it's basically just trivia.
  - nnf 3y ago
    The reason creationists push so hard against the teaching of evolution is that it fundamentally discredits their entire theology. It’s not just about the origin story. If there wasn’t a literal Adam and Eve, then Adam and Eve never sinned by eating fruit from the wrong tree, and thus they never passed that sin down to all of humanity, meaning we aren’t all born with “original sin” for which we need to be forgiven and saved from being sent to hell when we die.
    - humanrebar 3y ago
      Nothing about Evolution disproves Adam and Eve. If an all powerful person is in the story, it's a theological and metaphysical question how Evolution and Creation fit together. It's also kind of a boring question because there's no experiment we could run to explain how creation miracles worked. It's definitely a fountain of controversy, though.
  - arkey 3y ago
    Does plant breeding somehow imply macroevolution?
    - ndriscoll 3y ago
      What I mean is things like plant breeding and genetics ("microevolution") have practical uses, and modern anti-evolutionists shifted to acknowledge it because it's so easy to demonstrate. Knowing how we came to be ("macroevolution") doesn't have practical uses. Tautologically, it happens on time scales far beyond our lifespans. Almost everyone isn't going to do a deep dive into how it all works/become professionals in that area, so even the science is effectively just a story for them. If parents want to tell their kids a different story, it doesn't really matter much. Public school k-12 science is so basic that as has been said elsewhere in the comments, you can learn it all from Wikipedia in a few days anyway. The important topics are reading, writing, and math/logic. Ideally history and political philosophy, but it's not clear that schools meaningfully teach that anyway.
PsylentKnight 3y ago
> Sure it's largely wrong, but it's a strange sort of indoctrination to care about That was just one example of a particularly egregious strawman. It made "evolutionists" out to be a lot dumber than they actually are by misrepresenting what they believe. They made similar arguments against some of Darwin's since discredited theories, again, as if they were things that modern scientists believe. And there were plenty of other untruths and logical errors, so much so that I think it's very likely these people were not arguing in good faith. I agree that it's not a very important subject for everyday life or for most careers, but that kind of intellectual dishonesty being presented as the absolute divine truth is not good for developing a child's reasoning abilities imo. And as another sibling comment points out, creationism tends to pit people against science and intellectualism in general. The only thing that can be truly known is the absolute truth of the Bible.