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Re: Teaching science and religion

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RonO wrote:
> On 8/11/2026 4:05 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
>> On Mon, 27 Jul 2026 18:36:46 -0500, RonO <rokimoto557@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> https://phys.org/news/2026-07-science-religion-stem-engagement.html#google_vignette 
>>>
>>>
>>> https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13617672.2026.2679953#summary-abstract 
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> In the UK they have compulsory religious education,
>>
>> It is compulsory in that it is one of a number of subjects that every
>> school has to offer. It is not compulsory for children to take it as a
>> subject; parents have a *legal right* to opt their children out of
>> Religious Education or any form of religious worship without giving
>> any reason.
> 
> They claim that it is compulsory religious education, and do not claim 
> that students can opt out.  They just claim to have created a lesson 
> plan to integrate science into the religious edcuation, and they claim 
> to have tested it out on 1100 students.  This doesn't matter because you 
> are wrong in everything else that you have prevaricated about below.
> 
> You know that the lesson plan misleads the students about the way in 
> which science is compatible with their religious beliefs.  The 
> anti-science creastionist have the same issue that you have with the 
> Bible.  You lie to yourself about "misinterpretation" of what the Bible 
> claims, but the anti-science creationists do not want science to 
> demonstrate that their Biblical beliefs are wrong.  They do not want the 
> Bible to have been misinterpreted, they want science to be wrong so 
> their literal interpretation can go unchallenged.  Anti-evolution 
> creationists like Sticks and MarkE exist because they do not want to 
> believe that the Bible has been misinterpreted.
> 
> Just as you have to lie to yourself about the geocentric Biblical cosmos 
> being a misinterpretation when you know that it was just what the 
> authors of the Bible believed about the creation is your dishonest way 
> to deal with the conflict between science and religion.  You know what 
> the cosmology was for the authors of the Bible, and you know that they 
> were just describing what they thought existed, but what do you do?  You 
> know that early Christian thinkers understood that the Bible was just 
> wrong about some things.  Probably none of Church Fathers were flat 
> earth creationists because of what the Greeks had come up with a couple 
> centuries before Christ was born, but there are still flat earth 
> geocentric Biblical creationists (both Christian and Jewish) today.  You 
> fall on your face because all the Church Fathers remained Biblical 
> geocentrists, likely because it was not inconsistent with how they 
> perceived reality.  Origen was not a young earth creationist and Saint 
> Augustine did not believe that the authors of the Bible had gotten the 6 
> day creation correct.  These Biblical beliefs were already questionable, 
> but we still have 6 day young earth creationists existing today.
> 
> The Biblical literalists are not anti-science due to science determining 
> whether some god exists or not, but they are anti-science because of 
> what science can tell them about nature, and nature is not Biblical.
> 
> These researchers created a lesson plan to lie to the students about 
> this reality.  They can tell them the truth that science can not make 
> any determination as to whether some god exists or not, but they did not 
> honestly tell them how to accommodate that aspect of science with their 
> Biblical beliefs.  They deceived them about how something like 
> biological evolution could be accomodated by their religious beliefs by 
> telling the students that just because science can demonstrate that 
> something like biological evolution has occurred in nature, but that 
> science can't rule out that some god exists, nor can it rule out that 
> that god had a hand in evolution.  Something like evolution can be 
> compatible with the existence of some god, but it obviously is not 
> consistent with a lot of literal Biblical beliefs.
> 
> Since the lesson plan did not make this distinction very clear it just 
> lied to the students about the situation.  Students like MarkE and 
> Sticks would likely understand how they were being lied to, but the 
> claim is that a lot of students found that it made science more acceptable.
> 
> Just ask MarkE and Sticks (they have to deny all the science concerning 
> biological evolution) if this lesson plan would have changed their 
> minds?  Their beef is how what science has determined conflicts with 
> their literal interpretation of the Bible.  Their conflict has nothing 
> to do with the fact that science can make no determination about the 
> existence of any gods, nor what those gods might be doing to make things 
> as they are.
> 
> You accomodate the science by claiming that the Bible has just been 
> misinterpreted by past believers, but you have to know that you are just 
> lying to yourself.  The authors of the Bible just wrote about what they 
> believed.  I recently put up a post where Google claimed that the 
> Protestants came to accept the demise of geocentrism by the principle of 
> accommodation.  It was a view that the authors of the Bible described 
> things as they understood them and could put into every day language, 
> but that understanding and description did not have to accurately depict 
> what actually existed.  So the authors of the Bible could be wrong about 
> the earth being the center of the universe because they were just 
> describing things as people could understand them.
> 
> I put up a post where an orthodox jew understood that the authors of the 
> Bible were just describing what they understood to exist, and he put up 
> a reference with the original Biblical cosmology.  There was a 
> geocentric cosmos with a flat earth with a solid dome firmament above 
> it.  The sun and moon had been created and placed in the firmament.  The 
> firmament could be opened by God to let the rain fall through.  The 
> orthodox jewish author put up the references claiming that historical 
> Rabbis had believed in the solid dome firmament over the earth until the 
> failure of geocentrism after Copernicus.  Kepler was likely the last 
> Biblical creationist seriously working with the firmament with his 
> crystal spheres when he had to accept heliocentrism and came up with his 
> eliptical orbits and droping the last vestiges of the firmament ever 
> existing.  The Bible was just wrong about the firmament and geocentrism. 
>   Creationists were anti-heliocentrism because it conflicted with their 
> Biblical beliefs.  Science doesn't care about anyone's religious 
> beliefs.  MarkE and Sticks know why they are anti-science, and it isn't 
> due to what these education researchers lied to their students about.
> 
> Ron Okimoto
> 
>>
>>> and this news
>>> article is reporting a study done where they incorporated science into
>>> their Religious Education program.
>>
>> No they didn't; please go back and read again the papers you cited.
>>
>>> They mislead the students about
>>> science being compatible with their religious beliefs.  Like the ID
>>> perps they lie to the students about how their religious beliefs can be
>>> compatible with science, and they somehow integrate a biology example
>>> into the program.  They claim that the students gain a better outlook on
>>> science.  It seems stupid to prevaricate about how science can't deal
>>> with their religious beliefs when that has never been the issue.
>> So much bullshit in there that it is hard to know where to start.
>>
>> First of all, you demonstrate yet again your lack of comprehension
>> skills where you clearly don't understand what "compatible" actually
>> means.
>>
>> Secondly, the schools involved in this were *state schools* where
>> Religious Education does not promote any specific religious beliefs.
>> Unlike religious run schools which do teach RE in line with their
>> religious beliefs, state schools have their syllabus set by their
>> local council/education authority. A typical example is this one for
>> Derbyshire County Council:
>>
>> https://www.westhouses.derbyshire.sch.uk/_site/data/files/migrated/religious-education/2025-30-derbyshire-agreed-syllabus-for-re.pdf 
>>
>>
>> It says:
>>
>> <quote>
>>
>> We want pupils to develop rich knowledge of
>> religions and worldviews and use this to
>> increase their levels of religious literacy and
>> conceptual understanding.
>>
>> We want them to be able to articulate, with
>> confidence, their own positions and ideas
>> about religion, beliefs and spirituality - and
>> then to change their minds, if they choose to
>> do so.
>>
>> </quote>
>>
>>> The
>>> issue is how religiously motivated creationists have to deny the science
>>> because nature is not Biblical.
>>> It isn't the fact that science cannot
>>> make any determination as to whether there is some god or gods, but what
>>> science can tell us about nature.  Accommodations have always been made
>>> as science knowledge has gained acceptance.  Religion has always had to
>>> back down and change their views.  MarkE and Sticks and even Harran are
>>> examples of Biblical creationists that can't accept the fact that their
>>> religious text has been known to be wrong about some things that we can
>>> figure out for ourselves since before Christ was born.
>>
>>
>> Yet again, you try to bolster your bullshit arguments by making up
>> bullshit lies about other people.
>>
>>
>>> The Hebrew were
>>> giving up on their flat earth cosmology before Christ was born.
>>> Eratosthenes had used physical measurements to estimate the
>>> circumference of the earth a couple of centuries before the birth of
>>> Christ.  I recently put up an article written by an Orthodox Jew where
>>> he noted that the Biblical firmament was believed by historical Rabbis
>>> to be a solid dome above the earth until the failure of geocentrism
>>> after Copernicus.  The descendants of the authors of the Bible had to
>>> give up on their geocentric cosmology and the firmament over 1500 years
>>> after Christ was born.  There are still geocentric flat earth
>>> creationists both Christian and Jewish that exist today in spite of what
>>> science has determined to be the case.
>>>
>>> Creationists like MarkE, Sticks, and Harran that still want to believe
>>> that the Bible accurately describes nature have to lie to themselves in
>>> order to believe that science is compatible with their religious
>>> beliefs.
>>
>> More Ron bullshit.
>>
>>> If science is ever able to fill the origin of life gap with
>>> some god, it will just be more science for MarkE to deny.  He is
>>> currently in denial of all the scientific evidence for biological
>>> evolution (Behe is a theistic evolutionists and believes that his
>>> designer is responsible for a lot of the evolution that has created the
>>> diversity of life on earth) and MarkE will be in denial of any science
>>> filling the Top Six gaps that the ID perps have claimed as the best
>>> evidence for the existence of their god.  The god responsible for the
>>> Top Six gaps is not the god described in the Bible.  The young earth
>>> creationists at Answers in Genesis understand that to be true, and want
>>> the ID perps to more clearly lie to everyone about the issue.  They do
>>> not want the Big Bang, fine tuning and origin of life on earth to be
>>> taught in an honest fashion that would demonstrate how each is dependent
>>> on the others.  If the students are not told that very clearly, the
>>> educators have just lied to them about reality.
>>>
>>> What the Religious Education course should do is be direct in telling
>>> the students that the Bible has never been a good source for telling us
>>> about nature.  Science is just the study of nature and nature is not
>>> Biblical.  The students need to be confronted by that reality, and deal
>>> with it.
>>
>> That is exactly what does happen this side of the Atlantic -- once
>> again, you make the mistake of conflating what goes on in the USA with
>> the rest of the world. The contentious intertwining of religion,
>> science and politics that goes on in the USA is non-existent in the
>> UK. That suggests that the UK approach is  a more effective one.
>> Instead of attacking it, you should be trying to encourage it in the
>> USA.
>>
>>
>>> Some will never accept the fact that the Bible is not a
>>> science textbook, and will end up like MarkE and Sticks.  Guys like
>>> Harran will always have to lie to themselves about "misinterpretation"
>>> when the authors of the Bible just wrote about what they believed about
>>> nature, and they were just wrong.
>>
>> Even more Ron bullshit.
>>
>>> The Top Six should tell anyone that
>>> if we rewrote the Bible today that we could still be wrong about some
>>> aspects of nature.  Saint Augustine thought that the 6 day creation was
>>> wrong, but his alternative would have also been found to be incorrect if
>>> he had written the first chapter of Genesis.  These are things that the
>>> UK's Religious Education program should make sure that the students
>>> fully understand about their Biblical religious beliefs.
>>
>> You are calling for them to do what they already do. You really should
>> focus on sorting your own mess out.
>>
> 
But it has been misinterpreted. Jesus said, "I am the Light the Way and 
you only come to God through me." He was playing a word game. He could 
have just as well said, "I am the goat the cow and you can milk me." 
This kind of word game shows up in literature and children's games 
everywhere.

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Thread

Teaching science and religion RonO <rokimoto557@gmail.com> - 2026-07-27 18:36 -0500
  Re: Teaching science and religion Martin Harran <martinharran@gmail.com> - 2026-08-11 10:05 +0100
    Re: Teaching science and religion RonO <rokimoto557@gmail.com> - 2026-08-11 09:35 -0500
      Re: Teaching science and religion Lane W <cactus_DAC@yahoo.com> - 2026-08-11 08:43 -0600
      Re: Teaching science and religion Martin Harran <martinharran@gmail.com> - 2026-08-12 13:48 +0100
        Re: Teaching science and religion RonO <rokimoto557@gmail.com> - 2026-08-12 09:17 -0500
          Re: Teaching science and religion Martin Harran <martinharran@gmail.com> - 2026-08-13 08:09 +0100
            Re: Teaching science and religion RonO <rokimoto557@gmail.com> - 2026-08-13 11:05 -0500
    Re: Teaching science and religion sticks <wolverine01@charter.net> - 2026-08-11 13:30 -0500
      Re: Teaching science and religion RonO <rokimoto557@gmail.com> - 2026-08-11 19:02 -0500
      Re: Teaching science and religion Martin Harran <martinharran@gmail.com> - 2026-08-12 13:59 +0100
        Re: Teaching science and religion sticks <wolverine01@charter.net> - 2026-08-12 10:13 -0500
          Re: Teaching science and religion Martin Harran <martinharran@gmail.com> - 2026-08-14 11:23 +0100
            Re: Teaching science and religion Lane W <cactus_DAC@yahoo.com> - 2026-08-14 12:09 -0600
        Re: Teaching science and religion x3 <x@x.net> - 2026-08-12 11:55 -0700
          Re: Teaching science and religion Lane W <cactus_DAC@yahoo.com> - 2026-08-12 13:47 -0600

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