Creationism, and Elvis is alive and living on Mars

“Children should be taught about creationism in science lessons to avoid alienating those of strong faith, according to new research.

A study by academics at the University of York claims creationism should be tackled by science teachers in order to engage their religious pupils.”

Oh dear, here we go again. That’s from today’s Times

I wholly agree that young people studying the sciences should learn about Creationism, but it has nothing do with ‘faith’. Scientists of any age need to be able to distinguish between good science and science-hocum, into which latter category the cult of Creationism falls neatly and wholly.

Creationism, New Creationism, or Intelligent Design, is the second attempt by a group of Christian fundamentalists in the US to argue for the existence of a Creator God by denouncing Darwinian evolutionary theory and pointing to apparent scientific ‘truths’ in their garish, populist literature – the absence of a fossil record in Pre-Cambrian rocks, or the impossibility that evolution alone could account for the existence of the flagellar motor. The problem with the quasi-science of Creationists is simply that it’s bad science, and it needs good science, and good scientists, to knock this non-science on the head once and for all and stop it polluting young minds.

So by all means put this stuff on the science syllabus in schools and universities, but don’t pretend that it has anything to do with faith. 

Oh, and make sure that the reading list includes this:

Young, Mark, and Edis, Taner (eds). Why intelligent design fails: a scientific critique of the new creationism. Rutgers University Press, 2004.

It’s a collection of essays by leading scientists in their fields, but the editors’ introduction alone is worth the cost of the book. It’s 10 years old now, but the Discovery Institute, home of Intelligent Design, is still turning out its garish propaganda

When I checked a couple of months ago it was £68, so I borrowed a copy, but it now has to go back to the issuing library. I’ve just ordered a second-hand copy from the US via Amazon - £12, incl p&p.

There should be a copy in every science classroom in the country. Scrap that other cultish non-science, Brain Gym, and put the money to better use.

And as for Faith – why should anybody think that there is a conflict between knowledge, understanding, and faith?

Knott End bus services - pt 2

Lancashire County Council has relented in the matter of closure of evening and weekend bus services in some of the most remote villages and townships along the Fylde Coast. Faced with such a huge tide of opposition from local residents, including a petition organised by a very competent and forceful young woman (still in her late teens, I believe) who is currently Garstang’s Youth Mayor, the council has done a good job of spin so that voters will feel reassured and not protest through the ballot box, something that always terrifies party leaders.

Yes, the county council has to make colossal savings in services and jobs, but it’s not all to do with the state of the economy or where the money is coming from for HS2. It is, of course, because of national, not local politicking. When government policies go badly skew-whiff it's much easier to blame local councils and cut their budgets as punishment. If there is a finger to point at all in the miry world of politics it should point at just one man – Eric Pickles, the minister for communities who, in a paraphrase of his own words (apparently), just loves bashing local government. Mr Pickles is, you might think, an intravenous Tory, but his biography on Wikipedia tells a slightly different story –

“...He was born into a Labour supporting family – his great grandfather was one of the founders of the Independent Labour Party, and described himself as "massively inclined" towards communism as a boy – but he [ie Mr Eric Pickles MP, basher of local government – ed.] joined the Conservative Party in 1968 after the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia ...”

Eric Pickles achieved  prominence by becoming the Leader of the Conservative Group on Bradford City Council in 1988 – his first significant leg-up on the political ladder, and afforded by a local authority, you will note, that organ of government he affects most to despise. But on the (Tory) Mayor’s casting vote in September 1988 Pickles’s Conservative group took control, and one of Pickles’s first triumphant acts was to axe the small Equal Opportunities section, SERIS, set up by the previous Labour administration in the city library. It was a political act of almost supreme hypocrisy, because Pickles was at the same time chair of the Joint Committee Against Racism, now leader of the council of a very large and multicultural city, and this section of the library had been set up specifically to help to counter racial and gender prejudice.

But ‘Equal Opportunities’ was a no-no for Tories in the Thatcherite 1980s – and hardly surprisingly, because social equality and tolerance have never figured high on the agenda of the party of the privileged classes. And while the Iron Lady’s closest chum, Dame Shirley Porter, was flogging off homes in exchange for Tory votes in Westminster, for which she was later personally fined £12,300,000 by the District Auditor under Tory legislation originally designed to punish illegal spending by Labour councils, social inequalities were increasing and the race riots of 1995 and 2001 were imminent, though not foreseen.

Now Mr Pickles is in government and engaging in his favourite sport, and, to wrest the latest Tory no-brain cliché from them, ‘hardworking families’ (ie us plebs) are suffering, (and by the way, 'hard-working' is a compound adjective which still needs a hyphen.)

One of the reasons they are suffering is that the coalition government thinks that Eric Pickles is a suitable person to be local government minister. A distinguished CofE cleric this week wrote of the paucity of (male) candidate parsons for the episcopacy thus: 'this shallow pool [of suitable people] has been overfished', and the metaphor is also apt when applied to the Coalition government.

The Conservative Party has lost something like half of its supporters since the last election, most of them disenchanted women, and in the words of Tim Yeo, deselected this week by his local party:

“We have a shrinking membership which means you tend to get predominantly among those remaining activists people with probably more extreme views than the average Conservative voter, and that applies to issues like the EU, on issues like gay marriage..." reported in the Daily Telegraph, here

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/10625690/Tim-Yeo-interview-Fear-of-Ukip-will-drive-the-Tories-to-defeat.html

So don’t blame our county councillors for a funding crisis which led them to look for savings in rural bus services. Stop blaming Lancashire CC and pin the blame where it belongs. On Mr Eric Pickles, MP, Communities Minister, and now, heaven help anybody who doesn't live on top of a mountain, Minister for Floods. Or perhaps he should be given a new title – Minister for Local Government Bashing.

And don’t for a moment think that I’m rabidly anti-Tory, because I’m not. We have some very able Tories serving on our parish, district and county councils, and several of them are good friends. It’s when politicians of any hue lose the idea of service to those who didn’t elect them, as well as to those who did, and start to act in self-interest or party self-interest, that the trouble starts. And there's an awful lot of trouble about.