Random thoughts. Can you hear them?

I'm still spending a lot of time fighting the garden (most of which has now been deleted). I'd like to plant fresh things but I'm not yet confident the frosts have passed. The snow has at least gone but it's still pretty cold.

This isn't 'climate change'. I remember a fishing trip in April in the 1980's where the line froze to the rod rings. I also remember a May 1st, about ten or twelve years ago, where I had to seek shelter in a hurry because of hailstones that came down like buckshot. They actually punched holes in many plants.

The last ten years or so have seen warm April weather but it's just a natural cycle and nothing to get all worked up about. Unless, of course, you've set up a career or a tax income based entirely on lunatic scare stories. As, indeed, many have these days, and not just on climate change. Scares range from third hand smoke (comical) to deleting salt from the diet (dangerous) and they are everywhere now.

Funnily enough, nobody seems to be doing much about pollution, which is a real problem. They're all too involved in what kind of light bulbs we use and never seem to mention that the low-energy ones are full of mercury vapour. Whatever you do, don't break one of those things. They are far, far worse than the old filament types.

The logic has gone from science and the world, I think. This week I read an article in 'Fortean Times' about telepathy. It's not a subject I study but it's interesting because there are tantalising hints that there might be something in it. No proof, just hints.

My only possible experience was when my grandmother died. I knew she had gone even though I was hundreds of miles away at the time and when I was informed of her time of death, the time matched my experience exactly. However, that is not evidence of telepathy, but of an entirely different phenomenon which I've experienced more and more since then. Personally, I have not experienced anything I could definitely call telepathy.

The problem I have with studies on things like telepathy is not that they are too likely to find an effect, but that they are too likely to find no effect.

The current method for testing telepathy is, basically, this:

The receiver wears headphones transmitting white noise, half a ping-pong ball taped over each eye and is in a dimly-lit room with no contact possible with the outside. Okay. They can't hear or see anything.

The sender chooses one of four pictures and attempts to send it to the receiver. Then the receiver comes out of their sensory deprivation room and, with the sender cleared away so they can't give any hints, points out the picture they 'saw'.

On pure chance they would choose the right picture 25% of the time. Statistically that is correct. However, it assumes something. Something very important.

It assumes everyone is a telepath.

It assumes everyone can 'send' and everyone can 'receive'. Well, I don't seem to be able to do either of those things. Some might be able to receive but not send and vice versa.

The 25% result due to chance must be modified by the proportion of people in the population who are actually able to use telepathy. What proportion of the population can do that? I have no idea and neither does anyone else. Every test assumes it is a standard human trait.

Which is rather like assuming every human can run a mile in four minutes, or pull a railway carriage, or land an arrow in the bullseye every time. A few people can but most people can't.

I suspect telepathy is like that. I am certain that mediumship is like that. Using randomly selected people means that the few who might be genuine are lost among the noise of those who have no ability at all. So when a telepathy study turns up a 38% success rate, that is not 'just above chance'. That is astoundingly above chance.

What to do about it? I leave that to those who actually study telepathy but I would suggest devising some sort of 'pre-test' procedure which can select for those who show promise as 'senders' and those who would be best placed as 'receivers'.

The sceptics will say that this is introducing bias, but how so? If telepathy is not real then no amount of pre-selection will result in improved results. The results would be the same every time if there is no effect, no matter what criteria you use to select the participants.

If there is a real effect and if it is not in every person, then pre-selection will show an improved set of results over random selection. It will weed out those with little or no ability in the same way that successive races weed out the slow runners until only the fastest are left. If there is no real effect (as in, if everyone always ran at the same speed anyway or if nobody can transmit thought) there will be no difference.

So, take the participants who scored accurately and test them again as a subset. If telepathy is not real then the success rate will be about the same. If it is real then the selected group will score much higher than the random group. Treat it like a competition.

Worth considering, perhaps?

Snow!

My new decking is covered in snow. All preparation for the greenhouse has stopped.

Mood: murderous.

Corporeal visitor.

This little fellow lives in my garden. He's less than an inch long (excluding tail which is twice as long as he is) and he's photographed in the act of raiding the bird-feeders.

He wasn't bothered by my presence and I like him, so he can stay.

I'll put in a lower-down feeder for him.

Ghosts and aliens and filled-in ponds.

I have been scarce lately because of the effort involved in entirely remodelling the garden. The pond is filled in, the wrecked lower lawn dug out, the dead plants bagged and ready to take to the dump. I'm putting in decking - or rather, someone who knows what they are doing is putting in decking and I'm getting in their way. For a wooden structure, there seems to be rather a lot of concrete involved.

There is some haste in this because the weather forecast says we are to expect snow next week. That's nothing unusual, I recall having to seek rapid shelter because of a hail shower that punched my hostas full of holes one year and felt like it was doing the same to me. It was the first of May, I think it was 2001 or maybe 2002. So it is not 'climate change' but it will soon be illegal to say that.

Garden centres and supermarkets have been selling garden plants for over a month, but only an idiot would buy them now. Unless he had a greenhouse, which I will order as soon as the weather calms down. I decided on polycarbonate rather than glass because it's less likely to break in a hard frost, or when rampaging mobs of drooling children-shaped demonic entities decide that throwing stones at random strangers' property is some kind of a good idea.

I might also build a pillory, in case I need it for something.

It has been an excessively long break from investigating but it's not just me who is affected. There are few reports in the news these days, nobody is willing to freeze to death on the off-chance of a photo that no sceptic will believe anyway. What is interesting is that my 'guest' appears to be active again. It's been silent throughout the cold weather and I thought it had left.

There are far more reports of ghostly activity when the temperature is comfortable than when it is cold. I'd always put this down to the investigators, rather than the ghosts, and assumed that cold weather might not affect activity anywhere near as much as it would affect those looking for it. Then again, ghostly activity is associated with a drop in temperature so maybe ghosts (human or otherwise) don't just absorb heat, but require it. The ability to generate a temperature differential might be important. That would be harder to do in severe cold and might also be hard in severe heat. This will take some thinking about.

On the UFO side of things, an American professor says that the subject should be studied properly, in universities. I agree absolutely. Sceptics will howl 'Waste of time' because they are true believers in what they think science should be about.

Science is, or should be, about investigating. Many people have reported seeing something unusual. Dismissing them all as cranks is not science. Maybe what they see is not from another world, maybe it's a phenomenon of this world and if that's the case, should we ignore a natural event on the say-so of true believers in the logic of 'I haven't seen it so it's not real'?

Maybe, just maybe, some of those sightings are totally inexplicable by science as we currently understand it.

The sceptics will say 'Then we should ignore it. It's inconvenient. Stick your fingers in your ears and sing "La-la-la". It's not real. Stay with the herd.'

I say, that's when science gets really interesting.

The death of education.

Another birthday passed. Still, it's better than the alternative. Perhaps it's time to give some consideration to what I plan to do with my life. Then again, I think that way every year... for about a day.

I have to admit, my life is considerably better than the one facing this country's youth. They now leave school fully versed in Socialist dogma and the tenets of Climatology but barely able to read or add up. When I went to school, it was clear that we were there to learn. Political indoctrination was around, depending who was in power at the time but it was never so blatant and never so intense. Teachers were allowed to enforce discipline but now, any teacher who tries that is likely to end up in court on child abuse charges. Over half the schools in this country have a 'no contact' policy which means that teachers cannot lay a finger on the horrible little monsters in their charge, on pain of instant dismissal and arrest. The outcome was predictable from the start.

Even New Scientist, a magazine I thought was about science, push the Green God's agenda with religious fervour while decrying religion as mumbo-jumbo. They have reacted to calls that the actual scientific debate around global warming be taught in schools (rather than This Is So, just shut up and believe) by saying they are the same as teaching creationism.

So if you don't believe in the global warming religion, you are a heretic and must be burned. I have a very good book on the Spanish Inquisition they might like to read.

For me, creationism in schools is no problem as long as it's in religion class, not science class. It is religion, after all. I don't demand that all religions give equal sermon-time to 'alternative interpretations' so I regard it as unfair that religion demands time in science class. So yes, teach creation, but in the right classroom. Give the children all the information and let them decide for themselves which to go with.

I know, Archbishop Dawkins of the Church of Nothing would be incensed at that attitude. To him, people must be forced to not-believe for their own good. Just as Tomas de Torquemada forced people to believe in Catholicism for their own good. Exactly the same, but he'll never see it.

Let's face it. It really doesn't matter most of the time. Whether a plumber or a barrister or a policeman or even a medic believes in creation or spontaneous generation of the universe is of no relevance at all to their jobs. If you are a creationist, you're not likely to want a job studying evolution. If you take the scientific path, you are not likely to study for holy orders. It really does not matter in the slightest.

You can even be devoutly religious and not follow the '6000 years' thing. That was calculated by a man, not a god, and men are fallible.

So I would say, give all those children all the information from all sides and let them work out which they will follow. Just... in the right classes.

Now we have a government who demand that children shop their parents for smoking, believe without question in the Climatology doctrine, nag their families with utterly inaccurate and frankly dangerous assertions on salt and fat and meat consumption, and learn about all forms of sex from the age of five.

Writing and maths are not important any more. New Scientist and Archbishop Dawkins are fretting over creationism and demanding everyone follow science, but have failed to notice that nobody is teaching science any more.

When I was at school, the acceleration due to gravity was 9.8 m/s/s (how fast something accelerates when you drop it, no matter what it weighs). Now, children in school are being told it's 10 m/s/s because it makes the sums easier. So if you have gained weight, have no fear. You have not gained mass. Gravity has increased, which just makes you seem heavier.

This is far more serious than whether the children learn about God. They are being told factually incorrect information in science class, facts that apply to the here and now - and New Scientist is worried that they might learn something wrong about the past?

Where is the credibility of that science class when they change definite physical laws to make the sums easier? There is no child in the class without a calculator. I didn't have one when I learned to work out square roots and quadratic equations on paper. Calculators were not allowed in exams then. Make the sums easier? Calculators already do that. This is not about making life easier. It is pure dumbing-down of an entire generation.

A supermarket chain has complained that candidates for jobs are increasingly useless. A supermarket chain. What must the universities be thinking - oh, I forgot, they think only about money these days. Once places of study and exploration of science, they are now businesses where income trumps truth. The stuff coming out labelled 'research' nowadays might as well have been written by the funding company's marketing department and in some cases, probably was. There is little science left in universities, and less in New Scientist.

So we return to the days of Copernicus and Galileo, where individuals free of State interference perform real experiments with no outside influence forcing their conclusions.

Lucky for me, I'm already there.

Twiddling thumbs.

31st March 2010. Yesterday, and this is what it looks like here. Not too deep, but it's back. It's melting again but slowly and I'm wishing I had put a bet on for a white Easter. It could still happen.

I defy anyone to report a 'cold spot' anywhere within five hundred miles. Nobody could possibly tell if the temperature dropped. It's already low enough to numb exposed skin. I also defy anyone to try to convince me that the world is warming. I can't remember the last time we had a white Easter here. My clematis should be rocketing with new growth by now - it's barely formed buds. Daffodils are only now rising above the soil. I still have snowdrops!

As for investigating hauntings - not a chance. A night out in this weather and I'd be the haunting.

I think I'll put a greenhouse where that pond was. With a heater in it.


I've just realised something. I often label photos with an abbreviated date, day/month/year, two digits each. 31st March 2010 comes out as 310310. Anyone know anything about numerology? It's interesting, but far too mathematical for me.

The Writers see sense.

It's a funny thing, but most of the sensible people in the world seem to be writers. Maybe it's because writers tend to think about things rather than accept them. Maybe it's just that most people are too busy to read up on the details of things they are told and just accept them. Writers look up details for a living.

Many scientists are sensible, but then science also involves a lot of reading, writing and researching. Far too many scientists are too busy to look outside their own fields, and end up accepting far too much dogma without really thinking about it. And of course, scientists are human, and any group of humans will include some crooks.

Today I read that smoking can cause bacterial meningitis and asthma. These are not mistakes. These are out and out lies. Bacterial meningitis is caused by bacteria. Smoke has been burned and is therefore sterile. You cannot catch any form of infection from it. It is not possible for any real scientist to make that mistake. It is a deliberate lie.

The main causes of asthma (which is increasing, while smoking is in decline) are the day-to-day changes in modern life. We now have fitted carpets rather than wood or flagstone floors. Dust mites love carpets. We also seal our homes against the weather - especially true this last winter. Few of my windows have opened at all over the last months and it's all set to come back again this week. That's if the weathermen are right. I notice they aren't pushing their 'global warming' line quite so hard at the moment.

We used to complain about draughty old houses and we'd huddle around the coal fire in winter but there was a benefit. The draughts, combined with the constant flow of air up the chimney, meant that the whole of the air in the house was changed for fresh air every few hours.

Now we have double glazing and insulation and draughtproofing and radiators. No chimney. In many houses, it would take well over a week to get a complete change of air. Dust mites, trapped dust, vaccuum cleaners blasting fine particles into air that doesn't leave the house for many days, all a recipe for respiratory disease. Smokers are healthier than non-smokers these days. They spend much more time outside.

These things are among the reasons for the rise in asthma and a lot of other diseases. It's all being blamed on smoking simply to push a Puritan world on us all. I'm still Electrosmoking rather than real smoking, but they want to ban that too. The reason? It looks like smoking.

Seriously. That is the reason.

On global warming, smoking, drinking, butter vs. plastic butter-like substance, salt, fat, driving, all sorts of things, those who want controls and bans are the shrill, hysterical ones while those who consider the matters with reasoned arguments are, in one form or another, almost always writers. Most of those who come here are writers and it's about time I started linking to them.

Perhaps writers should be put in charge. They would certainly show much more imagination than the drooling oafs who currently rule us.

I came across another writer today. So, I'll start a 'writers' bloglist in the sidebar.

Well, I can't do much as far as investigation goes. The snow is coming back. So I'll fiddle with the blog and try not to break it.

Email messed up.

The Email account linked to this blog has a 10 Mb capacity which is fine most of the time - as long as I remember to clean it out periodically.

I haven't been active online very much over this winter, so the Email filled to capacity without me noticing. I only realised something was wrong when I logged in and saw a comment which Blogger hadn't notified me about.

So if you've sent me an Email and it bounced, or left a comment and you think I'm ignoring you, it's all down to a full mailbox and me being far too lax about clearing it.

Sorry about that.

Dead fish.

Thanks to global warming, which has resulted in my pond being continuously frozen for three months, all the fish are dead. The floating polystyrene device that should have kept a patch clear of ice just wasn't enough. It's never frozen under that thing before, but this year it did. The ice even cracked the retaining walls around the pond!

The lawns are now yellow and composed mostly of moss after being under snow for all that time, and most of my well-established plants are dead too.

Well, I had been planning to overhaul the garden anyway. Looks like this is the year for it.

Since it's been virtually eradicated, and since it's not sensible to put out new plants here before May, some of those more ambitious schemes are now possible.

A good ghost movie.

Most ghost films are depressingly predictable. You know who the ghost is pretty quickly and from there, the ending is easy to work out.

Passengers is the first one in a long time to actually surprise me. It follows the survivors of a plane crash and the psychoanalyst charged with helping them. It's not even clear at the start that there's a ghost involved at all!

I wish I could go into detail but that would ruin it. A film well worth watching while you're waiting for the weather to stabilise (although if you're in the UK, the definition of 'stable' is 'you might not need your hat but best take it anyway').

Weather is warming here, the equinox approaches (March 20th) and I'm dusting off the investigation equipment. Also the gardening equipment - I usually have the clematis trimmed back to first buds by this time of year but I still have snowdrops! No sign of the daffodils at all. I'm also wondering if there are any fish left in that pond after three months frozen.

I've never seen or heard of a ghost fish. I wonder...

Life in the ice.

Six hundred feet below the Antarctic ice is not somewhere you'd expect to find much of anything. There's no light, it's well below zero (Celsius) and it's only accessible from underneath.

When scientists cut a borehole and lowered in a camera, they were not expecting a shrimp-like creature to land on the cable.

Is there anything bigger down there? They pulled up something they think is a jellyfish tentacle but aside from that and the shrimp, they report nothing more.

It depends on how many shrimp there are. If there are enough to support a predator further up the food chain, then there might well be one. If that predator is numerous enough to support a bigger predator, there might be one of those too. How far up the chain you can get depends on how many are in each level. On the other hand, the shrimp might be the biggest thing there. I still think it would be worth looking further, although I'm not going to do it. Antarctica is even colder than Scotland. Even so it would be interesting to see what strange things lurk in the icy darkness.

Jupiter's moon Europa is encased in water ice. There is considerable speculation that there might be an ocean of water under it. If so, might there be something living there too? Something a bit more interesting than a few bacteria?

If life can exist under six hundred feet of ice, in total darkness, then it is indeed possible. Life (the kind we know) needs liquid water. That's the basic starting point. It can be a sub-zero brine but as long as it's liquid, something can live in it.

If there is life on Europa, it would be very interesting indeed to compare it with life under the Antarctic ice sheets. I would expect it to be very different, as a scientist. If it turned out to be exactly the same, certain people are going to be very pleased and certain other people are going to be very annoyed.

So if there is a trip to Europa in my lifetime, I'll be settling down with popcorn to watch the show.

That trip is not likely to happen. Not while everyone's taxes are going into mad schemes.

Still, it's fun to speculate.

Revenant.

I'm back from the dead. I've been climbing the walls for the last three months because the snow has prevented any sort of investigation of anything, and most days I couldn't even get to the lab. Global warming? I wish.

With the UK's decline into Soviet squalor, and the impending general election, there has been nothing in the news beyond the corporeal. Nothing even to comment on.

Now the snow has pretty much gone - just a few piles of it here and there - and life should get back to normal soon. There is rain but at least rain doesn't hang around in big piles and get in the way. Temperatures are warming, almost 40F some days, and I'll be out and about soon.

Then perhaps I'll have something worth writing about.

It's just not British.

Our government and legal system have sunk to levels of pettiness and spiteful vendetta that you'd expect from some tyrant-run banana republic somewhere.

This week they have imprisoned a pub landlord for allowing people to smoke in his pub. Even though 90% of his customers are smokers and even though he does not sell tobacco and does not actively encourage smoking and even though his pub is private property, not a State owned institution and even though he is a publican, not a policeman.

He, like all publicans, is expected to enforce the prohibition of a legal substance on his own private property. The antismokers claim there has been 'widespread acceptance' of the smoking ban. In fact, the reason publicans observe the ban is that they will get six months in jail if they don't.

This week, a woman who found an ancient coin when she was nine years old has had it forcibly removed by the State who claim it as 'treasure'. She will get no compensation. What she did get was a fine and a criminal record.

Now I read of a man who claims to be able to heal cancers, who is being prosecuted under a law that states that the advertising of cancer cures is illegal. He is not advertising. The case hinges on a website full of testimonials by others. It's not his website, he doesn't run it and was not aware of its existence. His patients set it up. Patients who, in all cases, were under standard medical care throughout and whose doctors were surprised at their recoveries. The faith healer made no attempt to dissuade anyone from seeing medical doctors. Whether he can really do what he claims is not the issue here. He is being prosecuted for something he has not done, just because his claims offend the State.

'British' used to mean 'fair play'. Not any more. It now seems to be associated more with 'spite', 'malice' and 'petty officialdom'. Those are just a selection. If you want to know why there is an epidemic of high blood pressure in the UK, just browse the UK newspapers.

The country has gone to pieces. The worst part is, hardly anyone seems to have noticed.

In five minutes it will be the first of March. It's still snowing. I'm climbing the walls here!

Fire or ice?

There has been more snow. Again. There have been thaws but there has not been a single day of zero snow since before Christmas. Temperatures locally have hit -20C (-3F) and even though it's currently just above freezing, the snow steadfastly refuses to leave.

So it has now been over two months of solid winter. Much more snow than in recent years although we didn't get it as bad as Washington, and there have been nastier winters here in the past although they didn't last as long. There have been reports of snow in Florida and Texas, places I've never visited but which I would be unlikely to associate with snowmen and toboggans.

Yet, in the face of all this, we have the Church of Climatology once more spouting its insistence that the world is warming.

"It's not warming the same everywhere but it is really quite challenging to find places that haven't warmed in the past 50 years," veteran Australian climate scientist Neville Nicholls told an online climate science media briefing.

Is it? Really, really challenging? Newspapers here have carried satellite images of the UK on which you can play 'spot the green bit' because the entire country was covered from end to end in snow. It didn't look very warm from up there and it certainly didn't feel warm down here.

"January, according to satellite (data), was the hottest January we've ever seen," said Nicholls of Monash University's School of Geography and Environmental Science in Melbourne.

Huh? You mean it's been colder than -20C here in previous years? Odd, I don't seem to recall that. How about Washington under a mountain of snow? Perhaps the insulating properties of all that snow kept it warm.

"Last November was the hottest November we've ever seen, November-January as a whole is the hottest November-January the world has seen," he said of the satellite data record since 1979.

You might want to check the calibration on those satellites. You might also want to make clear that these references to '...we've ever seen' refer to satellite information that started in 1979 and they are not the same satellites. They've been upgraded and replaced. More accurate instruments watch the planet now, and the previous data wasn't as good so don't pretend it's a continuous and reliable measurement. While you're at it, stop pretending that 30 years of measurements have any meaning at all when applied to global climate.

Data has been conveniently 'lost'. Data was cherry picked from specific tracking stations, most of which had been overtaken by urban sprawl and were therefore affected by urban heat generation. Absolute lies and invented threats have been exposed. The planet is freezing and still, still they shout 'It is warming. The snow is an illusion. All hail the Green God' and then they complain that people don't respect scientists any more. Respect? You are lucky you haven't been tarred and feathered.

Then there is the massive iceberg that has just broken off Antarctica. No, it is not 'evidence of global warming'. Another massive iceberg crashed into an already-cracked ice shelf and broke it. It's something that would have happened even if there wasn't a single human on the planet.

What this thing can do is of far more immediate concern that scrabbling to hold on to grant money while the global warming scam implodes.

Massom said the shearing off of the ice tongue and the presence of the Mertz and B-9B icebergs could affect global ocean circulation.

Not some imagined effects that might or might happen in a hundred years. This can happen now.

The area is an important zone for the creation of dense, salty water that is a key driver of global ocean circulation. This is produced in part through the rapid production of sea ice that is continually blown to the west.

"Removal of this tongue of floating ice would reduce the size of that area of open water, which would slow down the rate of salinity input into the ocean and it could slow down this rate of Antarctic bottom water formation," he said.

This lump of ice could wreck the distribution of warm water across the oceans by stopping what amounts to a 'pump' that drives ocean currents. Warming? That will only happen between the tropics because the heated water there won't be able to go away. As for the rest of us, well, better stock up on thermals because we live where that warm water used to go.

While the idiots continue to lie to protect all the money that's tied up in global warming, there's a switch being thrown in Antarctica that could start the next ice age. Not in decades. Next year.

What are we going to do about it? Nothing at all. We are still shutting down power stations and forcing people to turn off their heating with massive taxes and cranked-up energy prices and subsidised wind farms that don't work. The threat of freezing? No, can't do anything about that because it's not politically expedient. The money is in warming, not cooling.

It's always been about money. Ask Al Gore (if you can ever get a straight answer out of him). He has become very rich indeed by sending the rest of us back to a Middle Ages existence.

These people are not merely fools. They are very dangerous people indeed. While they demand we prepare for deserts, we should be preparing for ice.

While people freeze to death because they can't afford heating, these fools are calling for higher fuel taxes. While companies shed jobs to pay for increased beurocratic interference, the fools call for more penalty charges on emissions. Meanwhile the snow falls in Florida.

They should be tried for treason.

Creating evolution.

The creation/evolution fight is firing up in the UK again. Should creationism be taught in schools? It's about time something was! They get precious little science education these days.

I've thought about this a lot over the years and my conclusion is... I don't care.

I don't care if this planet is six billion years old, six thousand years old, or was created as an illusion just before I was born simply to annoy me. Which it does. Every day. I don't care if dinosaurs roamed the earth. They don't now and that's good enough for me. Being stepped on by a careless brachiosaur is one risk I'm happy to lose from my daily routine. If I was a palaeontologist I would care, but I'm not, so I don't.

Was it deliberately created or was it formed through random physical accumulation of bits of stone? Doesn't matter. It's here now and it'll still be here long after I'm finished with it. Long after everyone has finished with it.

Then again, as a scientist, shouldn't I be violently and religiously opposed to teaching children creationism?

I would be opposed to teaching it in science class because science isn't taught in church. That's a matter of being fair about it. I would have no objection whatsoever to teaching it in schools, whether it was in religion class or in a new class entitled 'alternative science' where they could also learn about things like homeopathy and feng shui and make up their own minds about it all.

That 'making up their own minds' part is the reason I don't oppose it. I oppose any attempt - by anyone - to force their own view of the world on others. Especially in schools. Schools should be places of learning and should include things I don't believe are right as well as things I do. What if I'm wrong? What if I were to spend my life forcing schools to teach only those things I believe are important, and then find out I was wrong?

When you get right down to it, we have religion saying 'God made the universe' and science saying 'It just sort of happened'. Not much to choose, really. A big bang, or 'let there be light', which are the same thing in the end.

For almost everyone on the planet it simply doesn't matter. A bricklayer isn't going to be affected one jot if the big bang is right and religion is wrong, or vice versa. An accountant won't find his numbers suddenly change from base 10 to base 13 if the story of the flood is finally proven or disproven. The reality is, the entire issue matters at all to very few people. It affects a few very specific scientific disciplines and it affects a few religious doctrines which aren't going to change anyway.

Which is right, science or religion? Sometimes it matters. If I ever get cancer I'd put my trust in chemotherapy over prayer, but would I refuse to let people pray for me? No I wouldn't. I don't believe it would work but I don't have proof that it won't. It won't harm me to try. Even so, I wouldn't refuse the chemotherapy and rely entirely on prayer.

With creation, it really doesn't matter which is right. Don't we all have enough problems without arguing about where we came from? I'm more interested in where we're going because with the current state of the world, it doesn't look like it's going to be Disneyland.

In schools, children should have the opportunity to learn everything. Everything. Even stuff I personally think is complete nonsense which can't possibly be true, like Marxism and Belgium. Armed with all the information they can hold, they can then decide which to trust and which to discard. For themselves. Like people used to do in the old days before they all decided to let someone else tell them what to think.

Few of those children will become priests and few will become scientists who study evolution. For them, the argument matters.

For the others, the ones who become architects and plumbers and bankers and electricians and even those who become chemists and most other kinds of scientist, it really doesn't matter at all. There is no conflict in being a chemist who believes in God. Not even a biochemist. The two mindsets are not mutualy exclusive at all.

Although I would caution against any scientist, faced with inexplicable results, writing a paper that concludes 'God did it'. Most scientific journals need a little more detail.

Teach those kids everything. Let them decide.

Although, looking at education in the UK at the moment, perhaps that should be 'Teach them something'.