Dr Noel Patson has written an excellent submission in response to the draft national science curriculum. He has given permission to publish it here:

Regarding ACARA National Curriculum reference S10SU1 and S10SU4.

I write concerning the implication in the draft National Science Curriculum that discussion of origins in Australian school science classes should be limited to only the materialistic paradigm. The following selected points taken from the draft indicate that alternate origins theories are not part of the curriculum.

• They are able to use scientific theories and models to explain phenomena (e.g. evolution)
• Evolution by natural selection and the diversity of plants and animals (S10SU1)
• The evidence supporting the big bang theory and the major processes that have produced galaxies and planetary systems (S10SU4)

These points taken together with the recent comments from South Australian Non-Government Schools Registration Board (see comments below).

1. ''teaching of science as an empirical discipline, focusing on inquiry, hypothesis, investigation, experimentation, observation and evidential analysis'',
2. ''does not accept as satisfactory a science curriculum in a non-government school which is based on, espouses or reflects the literal interpretation of a religious text in its treatment of either creationism or intelligent design''

and comments from the deputy Prime Minister to questions at a recent Principals’ meeting in Rockhampton suggest a dangerous precedent in education and the freedom of speech in Australia is about to come upon us.

It should be noted that to be consistent with the South Australian Non-Government Schools Registration Board comments, all discussions about origins should be removed from science classes since all theories regarding origins are by definition interpretive rather than empirical and therefore belong more to the field of philosophy and religion rather than to the field of empirical science. All origin theories fail many definitions of science. For example despite attempts and claims by physicists using the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, the conditions of the big bang cannot be reconstructed anymore than the first day of creation could be recreated.

I do not believe that the discussion of theories of origins be removed but merely wish to point out the inconsistency.

To understand this, consider the prominent cosmological perspective, the Big Bang theory. The theory considers that everything in the universe began in an instant perhaps some 20 billion years ago. This is supposed to be inferred from observations of present day processes and involves many assumptions and appeals to yet unobserved phenomena. It falls out of the empirical domain and into the speculative domain. The Big Bang has features which are inconsistent with observations. To overcome these inconsistencies the existence of unobserved features such as dark matter and dark energy are postulated. This is reminiscent of the unobserved ether that was required to explain superseded theories of electromagnetic radiation propagation. These developments in science should be discussed in classrooms because it was in the search for nonexistent ether that other advancements and discoveries were made. These investigations contributed to the theory being superseded. The previous paradigm, the steady state model was rejected because new observations did not fit the model.

At the heart of Big Bang cosmology and evolutionary theories is a materialist philosophical presupposition which is not in the domain of science and more closely aligned with the domain of religious philosophy. This would also apply to the theories proposed by young earth creationists and intelligent design proponents or any other origins theory. At the heart of each of these views is a belief which cannot be empirically tested:

• Materialism: Everything in the universe has a materialistic cause.
• Creationism: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
• Intelligent Design: design is ubiquitous in nature so there is an intelligent designer behind it.

There is nothing “scientific” about any of these beliefs.

It is repugnant and draconian to suppose that only one of these paradigms should be presented to Australian school students in their science classes. In agreement with this point taken from the draft:

• They explain how scientific theories have, and continue to evolve, from a range of evidence.

students should be encouraged to investigate all competing origin theories without being subjected to the interfering biases of some legislators. Surely it is clear from the history of science that in the competitive arena of scientific inquiry, the survival of the fittest idea will eventually take hold without the interference of the state dictating and legislating in favour of only one theory.

For example consider the evolution of ideas for theories describing the motions of the planets.

• Ptolemy’s geocentric view that required epicycles
• Copernicus’ heliocentric view with circular orbits
• Kepler’s heliocentric view with elliptical orbits together with Newton’s laws of motion
• Einstein’s gravitational theory

Eventually each theory was superseded or improved by a better theory which had more explanatory power and was more parsimonious.

Some historians hold that the Catholic Church persecuted Galileo for supporting Copernicus because his theory was counter to the dominant Greek philosophy held by the majority of church academics/scientists in his day. Should Australian schools be forced to comply with this biased attitude by only presenting one origins theory. Isn’t today’s pluralistic society in Australia robust enough to acknowledge competing origins theories within science classrooms without fear of raising a generation of fundamentalist zealots. I should think that Australian students do not need to be inflicted with the repressive interferences of the state in stipulating what must or must not be discussed in relation to origins in science classes. If things continue in this vein, we are in danger of becoming like the totalitarian states that our forefathers fought against in the world wars to maintain our freedom and democracy.

Are the Big Bang and Evolution theories so weak that they need to be sustained by the state? Should Australian science students be lead to believe that scientific theories cannot be brought into question by opposing theories? Whether proponents of opposing theories believe in literal interpretation of religious texts is not a measure of the validity of their questions. Many of the greatest scientists throughout history were believers in the literal interpretation of the bible. Newton, Maxwell and Mendel to mention a few. In fact it can be argued that the very belief in a creator God gave them confidence to conduct scientific investigation because of their hope that the universe was established on rational principles that could be discovered.

Consider this small sample of the large number of inadequacies to the Theory of Evolution (TOE) being brought forward by Young Earth Creationist’s (YEC) and Intelligent Design (ID) proponents:

Origin of information:

Meaningful information as coded in the DNA of every living being is essential for life. All empirical evidence and the law of entropy support the proposition that information originates from an intelligent source. This proposition is falsifiable, which is a very important criterion for consideration as being scientific. Evolutionists only need to conduct one experiment which generates one example of spontaneous information creation to disprove this proposition. Such an experiment should be easy to conduct given today’s available computing power. These experiments are not being conducted because probability theory already shows them to be doomed to failure. Since TOE is supposed to account for the existence of all living things, spontaneous information creation should be ubiquitous in the world but it is not.

The well established and universally accepted theory of natural selection shows that the information content of a species DNA pool decreases over time where genes coding for traits that are not suited to the particular environment in which the species is living are not selected and therefore are lost from the gene pool.

Evolutionists invoke natural selection as the means by which new species arise from ancestor species. In the sequence from simple bacteria to Homo sapiens it is clear that there is an increase in the information contained in the DNA of each species gene pool. This contradicts the predictions and observations of natural selection. This is a big problem with evolutionary theory that is being brought forth by the YEC and ID camps and should be discussed in Australian science classrooms. YEC and ID scientists have proposed theories which overcome this obstacle. These theories should be presented without fear alongside the TOE.

Inadequacy of Miller-Urey like experiments:

All attempts at producing amino acids in an artificial prebiotic earth environment result in racemic mixtures that are deleterious to life. In addition it should be considered that these experiments are very carefully “designed” by the experimenters to produce the random mix of amino acids. Also it should be noted how far these random mixtures are from the carefully programmed and designed cell with complex structures such as cell wall, mitochondria, nucleus etc. that is required for life.

Inconsistent observations in the geological record:

The prominent geological paradigm proposes that the geological column has been laid down over some 4 billion years and sedimentary layers take millions of years to form. However, fossils are routinely found which penetrate many supposedly millions of years of deposition. It is absurd to suppose that dead plants or animals were exposed to the elements without decaying for millions of years while they were covered over with sediment, yet when I was a high school science teacher this was exactly what was being presented to students in their textbooks.

YEC models have been proposed which explain these features much more cogently than the prominent paradigm. These models match the empirical observations much better. For example present day observations of catastrophic events such as were observed in the eruption of Mt St. Helen’s and the subsequent events relating to Spirit Lake and the Toutle river in 1980 empirically demonstrate how significant stratified deposits hundreds of metres thick can form in minutes and deep gorges can be cut through these deposits very quickly. Also significant is that the Potassium Argon radiometric method which is supposed to measure the time since solidification of lava gave a value of 2.4 million years to samples that were known to be less than 6 years old.

Dinosaur fossils found with haemoglobin and other proteins in blood cells:

It is well known that proteins cannot survive for millions of years yet recent discoveries show that these are being found in dinosaur bones. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dinosaur.html?c=y&page=1

In conclusion I submit that it is not in the nature of scientific endeavour and true education to limit the free discussion of opposing theories. It is true that origins theories including materialistic ones do not form part of the domain of empirical science but nonetheless all theories should be allowed to freely compete unhindered in the minds of all students of science. Prominent paradigms need to be challenged so that they can be either strengthened or discarded. The history of science records many instances of this.

Yours sincerely,

Dr. Noel Patson