Science is the slave of religion in curricula, textbooks, and complementary materials
http://www.secularhumanism.ro/index.php/lang-en/press-releases/77-stiinta-este-sclava-teologiei

The secret of the famous Lucy
http://www.secularhumanism.ro/index.php/lang-ro/comunicate-de-presa/91-the-secret-of-the-famous-lucy

My best wishes!

Remus Cernea
President
The Romanian Humanist Association
http://www.secularhumanism.ro

Oh, mister CLM, I’m sorry to dissappoint you, but “that part of Hungary” (Transylvania and Banat) are regions populated from the oldest times by daco-romans, which became Vlachs (Vlachs and Romanians are the same thing, but Vlachs was the first name given by the strangers who came into this area). Hungary conquerred those territories around 13th century because the people who lived there were not so well organised, and they were regularily invaded by migratory tribes. What happened on December the 1st, 1918 was a historical justice for Romania (until the First World War, Romania was divided into small territories controlled and governed by the neighbour empires, only a small part of today Romania was independent since 1877). So, mister CLM, I should say that you have to read and learn more history before expressing your opinions about any countries from the Central and Eastern European countries.

Nothing has changed in the policy about education.

The Ministry of Education has been constantly dodging any responsibility in teaching evolution.

To Nigel: I think this discussion is off the topic,

You are right, but it looks like we have it to ourselves.

but just a short note – these are not fighting words and I am no creationist.

OK, I was exaggerating with the “fighting talk” comment. I also did not mean to imply that you were creationist. However, that argument (that scientists expect the public to take everything on faith) is often used by creationists. And it is wrong.

The creationists may argue this, but the fact is that a layman can no longer check the scientist.

While this may be true at the forefront of research, it is not true for some of the basics that are taught in high schools.

Taking Darwin as an example, The Origin of Species was written for an educated lay audience. While it has, obviously, dated and some of its points are wrong (for instance, Darwin made an estimate of the age of the Earth based on a method that was wrong), the core points are still comprehensible, eloquent and persuasive today. All that is needed to understand it is a firm grasp of English (writers in the 19th century tended to the verbose) and some fairly basic high-school biology.

A great deal of the more advanced high-school-level science is based on understanding the experiments that have led to our present understanding of the universe. For instance, Michelson and Morely’s experiment to detect the ether can be repeated in a high school, albeit one that is better equipped than average. Understanding special relativity can be assisted with Einstein’s thought experiments and confirmed by measuring the speed of light in different directions.

Actually, even scientists from different fields can’t check each other’s results most of the time.

I disagree.

I am a biochemist by training and, although I cannot check the quality of a physicist’s science, I do have at least half a chance of being able to assess the quality of a paper in organic chemistry or cell biology.

Yes, the process of peer-review is reassuring for those of us who know what it is. But what I argue against is the dismissive attitude that most scientists take toward creationists, that they simply should shut up and go with (our) party line.

I conjecture that you have not ever engaged in a debate with a creationist.

Creationists insist on repeating arguments that have been repeatedly torn to shreds as if they were somehow convincing or conclusive. They do not accept when they have been shown to be wrong. Consider Michael Behe in the Kitzmiller v Dover Area School District trial: when presented with a huge stack of scientitic literature that supports modern evolutionary theory, he dismissed it as “not enough”. He refused to accept that he was wrong, and he is the only example of a creationist who sometimes seems to be reasonable.

After refuting the feeble and fallacious arguments of the creationists for the fourth or fifth time, any scientist would indeed simply dismiss them. The creationists have no wish to engage in a rational debate. They have no wish to learn how the universe actually works. All they seek is confirmation of their preconceptions. If they have no desire to learn and no wish to engage in a debate, why should any scientist not dismiss them?

Creationists are not stupid, it is a mistake to think that.

The majority of them certainly seem to be. They swallow any old garbage that fits their preconceptions, but refuse to consider even the possibility that these preconceptions are wrong. On the other hand, a minority of them are very clever, and deliberately lie and mislead the remainder to achieve their ends.

I think we are failing partly because we do not discuss enough with them – we advocate the path of Reason and then we tell them to believe that our system of peer-review and result-reproduction works, even though they have no way of testing that (unless of course they want to become scientists themselves).

There are many resources for a lay audience to learn about science. However, it must begin with a desire to learn, or at least open-minded consideration of the rational side of the argument. In the most vocal creationists, this desire is absolutely absent.

But what I was actually saying earlier was simply this: people in some Western secular countries feel superior to Romanians or Poles or Russians because in the East now there is a trend of religious revival – and I’m saying, this superiority is unjustified, because it’s based on the number of people willing to go along with the scientific community, not on the number of people who understand the theory. I.e.: these percentages don’t mean much to me, because they can change very fast – and that’s exactly how it has happened in Romania. During communism, religious education/interference was zero, and everyone had at least heard of evolution in school. I’m pretty sure that had those surveys been carried out in 1990, the numbers would have been different. But, well, some regime change, some socio-economic change, some America-envy, and see what you have. That doesn’t mean one ought not to be happy that in one’s country everyone agrees that Darwin’s theory is correct. But one ought not to sling mud or feel so smug about it.

But even there, I do not necessarily think we are dealing with a real understanding of Darwinian evolution, but rather a cultural acceptance of it as a given, i.e. on faith.

Hey, that’s fighting talk. The creos often claim that evolution relies on faith, not evidence. They are wrong, because the evidence is overwhelming.

You seem to miss the distinction that people who are not experts can accept the consensus view of the experts without having to take anything on faith, because of what it takes to become an expert. The biology community ensures that if anything that is published is wrong, it is quickly challenged and repudiated. More frequently, of course, the peer-review process ensures that wrong conclusions almost never reach print. Thus, the scientific consensus is reliable, not because I am asking anyone to have faith in it, but because anyone can check it out for themsleves if they care to take the time to become sufficiently informed.

Most people I’ve met who say they ‘believe in evolution’ or who wear t-shirts with “I Heart Evolution” would not be able to give an evolutionary account of how something as complicated as the eye could have evolved from more primitive structures, or how the ear bones were developed.

This is a non-sequitur. To understand evolutionary theory and the vast mountain of evidence that supports it does not require that anyone be able to explain how specific structures evolved. As it happens, there is a very credible scenario that explains how the mammalian eye could have evolved – but we may never know exactly how it did evolve. The evidence required to deduce the exact sequence of events may simply no longer exist.

For the mammalian inner ear, the evidence is slightly different: there is a great set of transitional fossils that indicate how bones from the reptilian jaw migrated into the skull to form the inner ear bones. However, any specific individual’s failure to be familiar with these fossils does not indicate any lack on their part, unless they claim expertise where they have none. Someone can believe that evolutionary theory gives us the correct conclusions about the origin of diversity in living things without knowing about that particular transitional series and simultaneously without requiring blind faith in anything.

1) the words “evoluționism” and “Darwin” do not appear in the curricula for IX-XIIth grades. However, these curricula deal with subjects such as genomics and human ecology, which are fairly complex for high-school training (in the US genomics hardly makes into university curricula). It is correct that “evolutie” in these pdfs refers to the “evolution from simple to complex” life forms, which is not the best way to put it, but, again, there is nothing at all creationist about the curricula.

2) the curricula for the V- VIIIth grades explicitly deal with evolution (see Section V.) reproduced below (original from http://www.curriculum2008.edu.ro/Ciclul_secundar_inferior/Matematica_si_stiinte/ – click on Biologie):
Evoluţionism (trans: Evolution (in the darwinian sense))
1. Unitatea şi diversitatea lumii vii. (trans.: the unity and diversity of Life)
2. Evoluţie şi dovezi ale evoluţiei (definiţia evoluţiei, exemple de dovezi directe şi indirecte). (trans: proof of evolution (definition of evolution, with examples of indirect and direct evidence))
3. Factori ai evoluţiei (ereditatea, variabilitatea, suprapopulaţia, lupta pentru existenţă, selecţia). (trans: Issues regarding evolution (heritability/heredity, variation, over-population, competition for resources, and selection) – presumably they cover at least natural and sexual selection
4. Specia ca unitate a evoluţiei. (trans: The species as the unit of evolution)

These 4 chapters seem to me to form a very good outline – however, this is for kids aged 10-11 to 14-15 or so, and I do think a recap during the high-school years would be beneficial.

THAT BEING SAID, I am aware of the revival of Orthodox religious feeling, and of creationism in Romania. It is normal that, after 50 years of communism, when religion was suppressed, religion can appear as somehow ‘cool’. Ivan’s maps show that religious sentiment is strongest in the former Soviet Bloc and in Southern Europe, where there is a strong Catholic tradition. I suspect that really small countries like Slovenia, Estonia, the Scandinavian Countries, and Luxembourg should have very high rates of evolution education, simply because most people live in big cities with high per capita incomes and good schools. But even there, I do not necessarily think we are dealing with a real understanding of Darwinian evolution, but rather a cultural acceptance of it as a given, i.e. on faith. Most people I’ve met who say they ‘believe in evolution’ or who wear t-shirts with “I Heart Evolution” would not be able to give an evolutionary account of how something as complicated as the eye could have evolved from more primitive structures, or how the ear bones were developed. So, if you are from one of these countries that scores so high, I would not be so disdainful of the others.

I have nothing to say to the commentators who discuss Trianon and other such things, except – please stay with the topic.

Finally, I have to agree with the German poster and Ludmila and several others who disapprove of the article title. I came upon this doing my weekly Google News Search for “romania” and I must say that titles that are disparaging, dismissive, or otherwise deprecating of a whole country are found in abundance, with respect to Romania, it’s become a fashion – but they don’t help anyone. They contain no real information, and, to those who don’t know much about the country, they help to fix a negative image of it. Especially when the news source is linked to the Discover Magazine. My suggestion: next time, try to substitute mentally with “Romanians are backwards idiots” and put that as a title – if you find that acceptable, then go ahead and put “Romania: Doomed”.

How do you do the blockquotes? I tried getting them once before but it didn’t seem to work? Is it ‘blockquotes’ or ‘quotes’ inside the greater than / lesser than symbols or what?

Hey, cool it, man! Like this: <blockquote>somebody’s bloody quote here</blockquote>

Don’t know why this isn’t working & why I’ve lost quoted text above?!

@ Nigel Depledge

“Well, I think you may be the only one putting quotes in italics, but I didn’t see no bolding.”

Oops. That’s something else I’ve stuffed up in my post .. I usually do have names in bold anyway.

“As you may be able to deduce, I have been using the “blockquote” tags to distinguish text I am quoting from my own words (at least, when I remember to put the bleedin’ tags in place!).”

How do you do the blockquotes? I tried getting them once before but it didn’t seem to work? Is it ‘blockquotes’ or ‘quotes’ inside the greater than / lesser than symbols or what?

Is there a page here somewhere or on the BA blog(s!) generally, that explains how to do the html (or whatever it is?) codes here?

If not it’d be great to add and have the BA display prominently for us all.

I know how to do a few things .. mainly bold & italics and a couple of the emoticons (oh you noticed? ) but NOT a lot else.

“I think it matters insofar as it makes it easier to distinguish one’s own words from words one is quoting.”

I try to make myself clear – and sadly I usually fail. Hence the constant correcting which I can only do by adding another post. Sigh. It gives me the absolute irrits but I really want to be understood and get things right and that is often surprisngly hard. Esp. when you end up with typos in names, running words together, ad nauseam .. I could swear havelf therrors are added by my computer after I click submit & not me!

Of course it may not help that its late at night over here in Oz and I’m pretty tired ..

…& here we go yet again. Sorry it’s frustrating me no end as well folks.

Will this actually work this time?