Re: paleonet Creationism to be taught in UK schools

["Kenneth A. Monsch" <kmonsch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Breandán (and everyone else on-line)

I just sent the following message to two of the e-mails that you mentioned.
I hope that something like this should do the trick (especially if we send
many such messages).

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To whomever this may concern,

I have been, in part, educated in the UK. In 2000 I got my PhD at the
University of Bristol. The reason why I write is the news, that Creationism
is to be included in the science curriculum for GCSE's. I speak in unison
with many, whom I suspect will react to this news, as well as those who for
some reason do not react in saying  that this should not happen. The
decision to include creationism with science courses should be retracted. I
would like to urge you to review evidence from either the media, and (even
better) scholarly journals or academic books, from which follows unanimously
that neither creationism nor Intelligent Design is considered science. In
the classroom, ID can be used, at best, to explain what science is not, and
what it is. Creationism belongs to religion class. In science classes,
teachers could mention that some people reject SCIENTIFIC evidence, because
they just BELIEVE that God created in 7 literal days. Full stop. In religion
class, the teacher could say that scientific evidence produces a different
scenario than the LITERAL biblical stories, but that scientific evidence
doesn't prove that God doesn't exist. Full stop. Whatever the pupils want to
believe or accept then, is up to them, but nobody's feelings are hurt.
However, putting pseudo-science and non-science such as ID and creationism
on a par with science is just the start of forcing one sort of belief system
to the masses (I am a Christian but do not agree with creationism and
certainly not with aggressive creationist evangelism!). Another consequence
will be, that you will educate potential science students that will not
really know what science is, or what it is not, and thereby you would waste
lots of scientific talent in the UK. I hope you will consider my and other
people's letters and will thus take responisble decisions.

Yours sincerely,
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Dr. Kenneth A. Monsch                           tel +48-71-3754017
Department of Vertebrate Zoology           fax +48-71-3222817
Institute of Zoology
University of Wroclaw
ul. H. Sienkiewicza 21
50-335 Wroclaw
POLAND