Texas Board of Education Supports Evolution 344
somanyrobots writes with this excerpt from the Dallas News:
"In a major defeat for social conservatives, a sharply divided State Board of Education voted Thursday to abandon a longtime state requirement that high school science teachers cover what some critics consider to be 'weaknesses' in the theory of evolution. Under the science curriculum standards recommended by a panel of science educators and tentatively adopted by the board, biology teachers and biology textbooks would no longer have to cover the 'strengths and weaknesses' of Charles Darwin's theory that man evolved from lower forms of life. Texas is particularly influential to textbook publishers because of the size of its market, so this could have a ripple effect on textbooks used in other states as well."
Fracking Halleluja (Score:4, Insightful)
Things are turning around for the better :)
Finally Intelligent Design is getting the boot it deserves.
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You heathens are allll gonna regret this. How little do you realise the gravity of the mistake you're making. *shakes head*
- God
Re:Fracking Halleluja (Score:5, Funny)
Pshhhh haven't you heard? Gravity is just a theory....
Re:Fracking Halleluja (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Fracking Halleluja (Score:5, Insightful)
Still wondering about why you don't prevent bad things from happening [wikipedia.org] if you are in fact the loving god you claim to be. - Heathens
Re:God into Tech (Score:5, Funny)
404: Prayer Not Found
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Hmm. So, if faith is one of the highest virtues, and therefore God has hidden his existence intentionally as a test of faith, then all of the ID folks that point to various things as "irrefutable proof" of God's existence are therefore calling their God imperfect, non-omnipotent, and flawed. Or they are implicitly admitting that their observations are unprovable and rely on faith, and are therefore tacitly unscientific - thus NOT a scientific theory/fact.
This is one of the biggest problems I have with ID.
Re:Fracking Halleluja (Score:5, Funny)
"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It proves you exist, and therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
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In case the mention of the Babel Fish was not a dead giveaway, this is a quote from Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series of novels.
Any chance to introduce someone to the marvel of Adam's works should be pursued...
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Actually my first thought when reading the summary was "Thank God". Then the irony of that thought hit me :)
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Heh I believe that there is something beyond our understanding and that a lot of people name it God or Allah or whatever. ;)
If he/she/it/they/whatever created us, I find it more believable that he/she/it/they/whatever started with the Big Bang.
So ironic your thought may be, it's possible it's not far off
Re:Fracking Halleluja (Score:5, Insightful)
Weaknesses? (Score:5, Insightful)
As a biologist, I'm not aware of any "weaknesses," in terms of inconsistency with the evidence. I've read those promoted by ID/creationists, and all are false or downright fraudulent.
But there are certainly areas of evolutionary theory where unresolved questions remain. These are appropriate for discussion in classes at the appropriate educational level--graduate courses, or high-level undergraduate college courses--where students have the educational background to understand the issues.
Re:Weaknesses? (Score:5, Informative)
This is exactly correct, IMO.
Evolution is just a theory, and the article makes it sound like there is an attempt to hide all of its perceived flaws or shortcomings. The reality is, any discussion of science should begin with an understanding of the Scientific Method, what a Theory IS, scientifically speaking, and then discussion of Evolution should include the acknowledgment that it is incompletely supported by evidence, but there is no strongly compelling evidence against it, and for well over 150 years newly found evidence has continued to provide additional support for the theory, and even influence various corrections, but has not contradicted the core principles of the theory. And that, in fact, the theory has provided usable information that has pointed scientists towards where and how to find many pieces of the supporting evidence.
I remember before the whole Creationist agenda gained its current momentum the big buzz phrase for evolution was "the missing link". There were many "missing links", all of varying sizes, of course, but THE missing link was presumably the one that linked apes to humans, or more accurately some point in that progression. Some people used it as an argument against evolution, but the argument mostly went along the lines of "evolution is fine, but humans are special" rather than a dispelling of the whole theory. However, most people seemed to see the "missing link" for what it was - a gap in the evidence, and fully expected scientists to find it eventually. It was the Holy Grail of evolutionists - everyone knew it existed, it was just a race to be the one to discover it. Somewhere between then and now, gaps in the fossil record became proof against evolution in the eyes of major portions of America.
But at the grade school level discussion of the minutia of the existing gaps is typically more advanced than any other material they are learning at that time. It'd be like getting into the math involved in quantum mechanics in high school physics classes. Even E=mc^2, which typically is mentioned at some point in high school physics is left in its abridged form and the Taylor series (required for increased accuracy as objects approach c - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass%E2%80%93energy_equivalence#Low-speed_expansion [wikipedia.org]) is omitted.
The policy is designed more to prevent both muddying the waters and confusing students with false or unnecessary information than to "cover up" any gaps in the evidence for the theory of evolution, especially by promoting or providing undue emphasis on competing theories that are not widely accepted by the informed scientific community.
ID is not a theory. It does not stand on its own without evolution as its whole purpose is as an attack on evolution. If all the parts of ID that referenced evolution were removed from ID, all that would be left would boil down to "God created the universe and all the life we see within it more or less as it currently exists." That's simply Creationism. It may be non-denominational, but it is still nothing but religion and thus does not deserve to be mentioned even in passing in a science class.
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After all we've seen some people haven't evolved as fast as we hoped they would.
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Hell is a 5-star hotel, but they're overbooked and you have to share the room with a whiny, celibate Paris Hilton.
Re:Fracking Halleluja (Score:4, Insightful)
How do you know that you won't go to hell? I mean, maybe the Muslims are right? Or the Jews? Or the Hindus? Etc, etc.
Being a Christian is hardly an insurance against going to hell.
Science includes BOTH strengths and weaknesses (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Science includes BOTH strengths and weaknesses (Score:5, Insightful)
I would guess that they singled out evolution for this. They didn't demand that they teach the strengths and weaknesses of Newton's theory of gravity, or Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism, or Dalton's atomic theory of matter. Yet for some reason Darwin's theory of evolution gets picked out so that teachers must highlight its weaknesses. Why might this be?
Evolution vs Creationism (Score:2, Interesting)
Yet for some reason Darwin's theory of evolution gets picked out so that teachers must highlight its weaknesses. Why might this be?
The TFA said the scientific community widely accepts Darwin's theory, while biblical proponents reject the theory. Thus, the state board forced teachers to teach pros and cons in the 1980s.
I guess the debate was so serious that the state board had to compromise to satisfy the creationism parties (who can be rich and powerful).
I guess evolution is a really thorny part of religion (specifically, blind belief). If students understand that humans are developed from fish and apes, then creationists have a hard
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Re:Evolution vs Creationism (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, even though you think you're trying to help, you're wrong.
Homo sapiens are apes. We are one of 5 great ape species (in addition to many lesser ape species). Homo sapiens descended from earlier ape species. So yes, we did evolve from apes (just not the apes people tend to think of, which is usually gorillas).
All land mammals also evolved from fish. Not the modern fish most people think of, but fish all the same.
While we're at it, birds descended from dinosaurs too.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Yet for some reason Darwin's theory of evolution gets picked out so that teachers must highlight its weaknesses. Why might this be?
Perhaps because the theory of evolution has had a profound impact on Western thought, far more so than any other scientific theory I can think of.
And because although scientists can explain how they think evolution might have occurred, the scientific method can't be used to actually directly test the "origin of the species" - it isn't repeatable.
And perhaps also because the theo
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"Perhaps because the theory of evolution has had a profound impact on Western thought"
Whereas Eastern thought says "yeah, we knew that all along"???
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Science includes BOTH strengths and weaknesses (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with the GP's point: Pointing out weakness' in a theory is how it becomes stronger.
I agree with your caveate: All disagreements must be intellectually honest.
Evolution is nowhere near as contraversial as when I went to school in the 60's, a time when tectonic plates and black holes were also contraversial, science has convincingly won all three very public arguments over the last 40yrs (150yrs in the case of evolution). Of more immediate concern is the current FUD from global warming psudeo-skeptics (coinidentally they are also particularly strong in Texas). Not that I have anything against Texas but the reason these people make (subtle) anti-science and greenie bashing a political platform could be due to either power/money/ignorance, regardless of which one it is, ignorance amoungst their followers is the sole reason they get away with it.
IMHO Dawkins and Sagan are correct in that science is taught as a "dictonary of facts", the philosophy of science [wikipedia.org] is largely ignored by the education system and consequently misunderstood/ignored by the public at large. Evidence for this is not hard to find, just count the number of "climate fools" here on slashdot, they espouse all manner of nerdy sounding but thougoughly debunked scientific red-herrings [skepticalscience.com], not because they are stupid but becuase their lack of understanding as to what "scientific skepticisim" means makes them easy prey for intellectually dishonest politicians [realclimate.org] and their sponsors.
Due to the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence [ipcc-data.org] I can no longer belive a politician can (legitimately) keep using ignorance as an excuse to poo-poo global warming and/or evolution [youtube.com]. Therefore the root cause of the cherry-picked "science" found in the opinion columns of the mass-media and subsequently regurgitated by a million ignorant bloggers - must be money and/or power.
Premptive Al Gore reply: I'm not from the US, I haven't seen his film. I had already read the IPCC reports and didn't see the point, from the reviews of Gore's film by IPCC scientists, (and later their answers to critics), I would have to conclude his slide show was an accurate representation of the reports. OTOH: Just because the doco is accurate does not mean Gore's motivations for presenting it are intellectually honest.
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Not that I have anything against Texas but the reason these people make (subtle) anti-science and greenie bashing a political platform could be due to either power/money/ignorance, regardless of which one it is, ignorance amoungst their followers is the sole reason they get away with it.
The situation is the same as practically everything else in this world - the people in charge are either trying to not look like complete fucking idiots, or are trying to milk you out of all your money. If you have taken up an indefensible position, you can either admit that you're a tard, or you can defend it unto death. A lot of people will assume that means you're right, or at least have a point, even when this is the farthest thing from the truth.
IMHO Dawkins and Sagan are correct in that science is taught as a "dictonary of facts", the philosophy of science is largely ignored by the education system and consequently misunderstood/ignored by the public at large.
That isn't really a problem, though. The idea that we all
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I wouldn't advocate that either, except for the basics of reading/writing. What I am suggesting is that skeptical think should be part of the basics as it ENABLES you to learn. Skeptical thinking is a skill, it doesn't tell you what to learn, it tells you how to learn and can be taught in a short amount of time (less than what it takes to memorise multiplication tables). The difficult part is getting people to be
Re:Science includes BOTH strengths and weaknesses (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Science includes BOTH strengths and weaknesses (Score:5, Funny)
Now now, there's no need to bring RMS [wikipedia.org] into this...
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Re:Science includes BOTH strengths and weaknesses (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope they do teach the strengths and weaknesses of Newton's theory of gravity. It is after all:
Re:Science includes BOTH strengths and weaknesses (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm surprised that post hasn't been modded insightful. Newton is 'incorrect' in the sense that using general relativity can make more accurate predictions. It's a wonderful example of how an imperfect model can be a useful.
At the end of the day I don't care if high school students graduate without knowing their fermions from their bosons. The most valuable thing kids can take from it is that they develop rationality, critical thinking skills and the ability to understand how to reason objectively.
If someone can do those three things well it won't matter if people try to poison them with religious rhetoric.
Hmm, apologies - this post turned into something of a rant.
Re:Science includes BOTH strengths and weaknesses (Score:5, Interesting)
well, you might be right there. With all these battles about what to teach, there is probably no room for teaching critical/logical thinking. There are quite some ex-teachers that claim that the basic purpose of the school system is not to bring out the best in each student, but to deliver working and middle class drones. As few as possible top student should be delivered, as this favours the ruling elite that can afford to sent their kids to better private schools...
Not that I think that the people on this board are actively planning that, but if their main feature is what party they represent, I assume them not to be very educated in educational science.
Re:Science includes BOTH strengths and weaknesses (Score:5, Interesting)
There are quite some ex-teachers that claim that the basic purpose of the school system is not to bring out the best in each student, but to deliver working and middle class drones.
I know personally (though not well) a current teacher who straight tells his students that they had better listen because they are being prepared to go into prison or the military, and if they want a chance to escape that fate, they are going to need some tools.
Unfortunately there is definitely no time to teach these kids what they actually need to know. The curriculum requirements due to the No Child Left Behind shit leave the instructors at the school where he teaches with negative fifteen minutes in the day to teach other material, assuming that calling roll, getting students seated and on topic et cetera takes zero minutes. That is obviously not enough...
The problem is compounded by the fact that (the majority of) teenagers are biologically incapable of functioning at full capacity before about 10 or 11 am, and they rarely start school later than 8:15. I know that I myself regularly had mathematics in the first period... but anecdotes aren't really all that useful. Still, I am mathematically challenged today, a serious impediment for a nerd.
Add to that the culture of violence (little Lord of the Flies bastards) in the school that causes everyone to need to toe the line in order to be permitted to exist without physical abuse, let alone the continual emotional abuse, peer pressure, et cetera and it's a wonder anyone ever learns anything in public school. What is less amazing is that for the most part, people come out of school very much fit into a traditional mold. We are taught that our success will be measured by our fiscal accomplishments. Then they teach us to sit in rows and do as we are told. The system was originally designed to produce factory workers, and it works very well. Too bad we exported all our manufacturing jobs and convinced ourselves we were the smartest people on the planet who would surely find a way to pull money out of thin fucking air.
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This pinpoints something that has been weird about this debate from the start though.
The creationist made claims involving notions of absolute truths, and the evolution side responded by saying, "No, science is the truth!".
It is however not the job of science to figure out absolute truth. (Even the philosophers seem to have given up on that.) But to develop and evaluate candidates for truth based on how well it works when tested, and the strongest candidate becomes sort of provisionally true.
But there is al
Re:Science includes BOTH strengths and weaknesses (Score:5, Insightful)
But Newtonian physics is not wrong. It's limited in its useful scope. However, that useful scope happens to be vast. Indeed usefulness within a limited, well-defined scope might well serve as a definition of a scientific theory. Here "scope" means a set of phenomena, and "usefulness" means the ability to draw inferences from a set of facts in the scope that will correctly predict other facts within that scope.
Newton's theory of gravitation's usefulness doesn't extend to the range of phenomena that the modern theories of quantum physics and relativity cover. It should be noted of relativity and quantum physics that as yet, neither works where the other works. So by any definition of the word "wrong" that includes Newtonian physics, all of modern physics would have to be called "wrong" as well.
Imagine that there was a religious sect based on the propositions of quantum physics. It adherents would surely regard relativity as heresy, and point to many ways that relativity was "false". In fact, they'd have solid, empirical proof that relativity was "wrong".
What's broken here is the notion that science somehow deals with the truth of theories. This notion is so far off track that it isn't even "wrong"; it's just confused. The very concept of an absolute truth is inherently unscientific. How could you possibly know you had absolute truth? You could unify all the known branches off physics, but that wouldn't prove you know everything there is to know about the subject. In Galileo's time, physics was synonymous with mechanics. Any unified theory of physics in that time would miss entire branches of physics that have been discovered since then.
We've lost sight of this, but what Newton essentially did was to unify the physics of his day. His three laws of motion summarize a vast amount of that physics, in that the predict phenomena as apparently different as the trajectory of a cannon ball and Kepler's laws of planetary motion. Newton's laws remain "true" for every area of application that existed in his day. That they don't work for things like modern solid state physics or cosmology is undeniable, but thinking this matters misses the point.
Some years ago, there was a popular recording of humpback whale "songs". It's marvelous, and surprising that humans have an artistic response to whale communication. It's wonderful that that response leads people to be interested in whales, to appreciate their beauty and majesty. But if we lose sight of the fact that the whales communicate for their own reasons, not to entertain us, then the whole human cultural phenomenon becomes a farce.
So, it is fine and good to find religious inspiration in science, as Baruch Spinoza did. But imposing religious ideas like absolute truth on science misses the thing which makes science science: a focus on empirical usefulness rather than "truth".
Perhaps we should talk less of a theory's "truth" as a theory's "scope". Completely untrue theories would have an empty scope. All other theories have different scopes of utility.
Newton's Laws are wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
No, the equations of Newtonian physics are always wrong. Sometimes they are wrong by such a small amount that the error is not practically important, but being only a little bit wrong is not the same as being right.
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Really?
"Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, 'God' if you will, is pushing them down," [theonion.com]
Heck, even Isaac Newton knew better:
"To your second query I answer that the motions which the planets now have could not spring from any natural cause alone but were impressed by an intelligent agent." [wikipedia.org]
Clearly, Americans should be taught Intelligent Falling alongside Intelligent
Re:Science includes BOTH strengths and weaknesses (Score:5, Informative)
I think that we maybe have a stronger case for gravity than for evolution...
No, we haven't. Newtons theory is just one of many plausible models to explain the physics of the world. It has it's strengths and weaknesses like all the other models.
The theory of evolution is the only plausible model we have to explain/understand the diversity of life. It's also the most scrutinised scientific theory.
Unlike gravity, we have yet to find cases where the theory of evolution won't hold.
Re:Science includes BOTH strengths and weaknesses (Score:5, Informative)
Newton's theory of gravity is known to be wrong.
It incorrectly predicts the orbit of Mercury.
It cannot explain gravitational lensing.
It assumes that gravity is instantaneous, when we know it must be limited by the speed of light.
Newton's theory is a very useful shortcut, as it is right most of the time. But it's been proven to be wrong. It's just good-enough wrong.
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Re:Science includes BOTH strengths and weaknesses (Score:4, Insightful)
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I appreciate that, and I appreciate that we're just steadily refining models of reality and nothing more. That doesn't change the fact that Newtonian gravity has been falsified. [wikipedia.org]
If you read a little further on that article, you'll see that Newton was well aware that his theory was wanting. My fundamental point as it relates to this discussion is that gravity is *not* as well explained as evolution, no matter how incredible that may seem to the lay person.
Re:Science includes BOTH strengths and weaknesses (Score:5, Insightful)
The "Hell" we do. We most certainly do not.
Gravity is something we can "touch and feel". We cannot explain why it exists or how it operates. At all. We can observe that two objects will eventually be drawn together and we can clearly prove that a hammer will fall 1,000,000,000,000,000 times out of 1,000,000,000,000,000. That nobody has ever dropped a hammer and had it "fall" upwards or hang in space and been able to reproduce it. The best we can do is come up with some plausible theories of how gravity is actually created.
Gravity has been constant as long as human beings have been relating their experiences to one another. We have no records in our environment that indicate Gravity was missing for 2 years approx. 1,324,435 years ago.
However, Gravity may not be a law. That's right. Might not be. What if gravity fluctuated like an off/on switch?
Think about a fluorescent light. It is turned "off" and "on" about 60 times per second. Our visual processes fool us into thinking it is a solid light just as we are fooled by 30 images a second being movement.
Human beings which live about 75 years would see this light source as being constant. You could reasonably create the "Law of Light" not understanding how this light source works at all.
A fly can actually see this light source turn off and on and does not live even a year. A fly might reasonably create the "Law of Oscillation".
Now imagine a life form that only exists within a single 1/60th slice of time. These life forms could also create "Law of Light" and the "Law of Darkness".
You could create any number of lifeforms that experience reality at different rates and maintain that information over time with different degrees of success. All of their conclusions would be just as reasonable as the next life form, yet none of the life forms involved may ever be correct.
Evolution is more similar to Gravity than you think. Evolution, like Gravity, is an observable property of biological life on this planet. We cannot prove that Evolution (as a biological property) was ever ultimately responsible for humanity, or any other life form on this planet. If Evolution is going to solve our origins question then we must also solve the "chicken and the egg" problem. We have to trace Evolution back all the way to very moment a life form was created on that planet. Then explain why the life form was created. Go ahead I'll wait :) Of course you can say that an unbroken chain of species going back all the way to the master life form is unreasonable, but we can't even do it with an inordinate number of breaks in the chain.
We also cannot prove that Gravity always existed (always being a very long time of course) and that it will continue to exist. Note I said, PROVE. In order to prove that you would need a fundamental understanding of Gravity we just don't possess.
All of our theories about Evolution explaining our origins are just as "strong" as our theories about how Gravity may actually operate and what creates it.
Re:Science includes BOTH strengths and weaknesses (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. There are well described and observed mechanisms for evolution, more so than gravity believe it or not.
Of course this is probably because evolution occurs at the smallest level on a macro-molecular scale, whereas gravity occurs at the deep sub-atomic level, making it much harder to explore the mechanisms of it.
Nevertheless, we can explain how evolution works. They why is normally more complicated, because you have to work out all the selection pressures.
Re:Science includes BOTH strengths and weaknesses (Score:4, Informative)
I'm all for teaching evolution but would someone please explain to me what the issue was with teaching the strengths and weaknesses? If science teaches us anything it is that we should always continue to question and refine our studies, not idly stand by and accept them as fact.
I absolutely agree. The Scientific Method should certainly be taught as part of any High School science curriculum, and perhaps before.
But it shouldn't be focussed on one branch of science and ignored from all others. That the earth orbits the moon is as subject to the Scientific Method as evolution, as Black Holes exist and that a chemical reaction does not happen because the Flying Spaghetti Monster makes it so.
Scientific Method should be taught as it relates to all of science. Not singled out on any single branch by Special Interest Groups, whatever that branch of science, or special interest, that may be.
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Oh sure, I can already see High Schools teaching their kids to challenge and test what is taught to them to see the flaws in the logic and improve the theory. The school should prepare our kids for their life. And if life told me anything, then that the guy that "does what he's told and shuts up" gets promoted...
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In my experience, the guy who your manager worked with a few years ago, despite being less qualified for the job and keeps screwing up his current job, gets promoted.
Nevertheless, I prefer my nose to not be brown.
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Well, my argument to avoid sucking up too much is that I will be in the bathroom in the morning, a razor in my hand and I'll put it to my throat. I do not want to hate the person I see enough to do something I could probably regret...
Re:Science includes BOTH strengths and weaknesses (Score:5, Insightful)
You're absolutely right in principle, but in practice, the specific "weaknesses" that are used by opponents to evolution have been shown to be absolutely wrong. Usually 150 years ago.
If there are significant weaknesses in Darwin's theory, they should be presented through peer-reviewed mainstream science, not shoved down students' throats by official decree.
(And before one argues that scientists aren't willing to hear objections to their beloved theory, it's worth pointing out that there *are* some well-accepted biological oddities that add wrinkles to Darwin's theory, such as horizontal gene transfer. But nobody outside the sciences talks about them, because they don't require a supreme being.)
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Evolutionary biology has changed quite a bit since Darwin. Many specific things Darwin said are wrong. But his fundamental idea is still right.
Re:Science includes BOTH strengths and weaknesses (Score:5, Insightful)
Well the whole point is that they don't understand it, they don't want to understand it, and they don't want anyone else to understand it. They want their religion to have the same universal credability as science, but that can't happen as long as science is standing in the way. Many of these people, 600 years ago, would have been standing with a sword in their hand ready to plunge it into your chest cavity if you answered "Convert or die" incorrectly. Ultimately, religion is based on arbitrary bullshit that was invented by someone, and without total consensus agreement it quickly falls apart. When you base your cultural stability on everyone buying into the same bullshit, and people start to question, it creates danger for the power structure and for those who depend on that structure. These days, we have a working secular replacement that can hold together just fine without Religion, but the memetic momentum has carried the very idea of supernaturalist pap right into the current day, and will probably continue to carry it for a while to come. The coming worldwide disasters due to global warming will push many people back into religion's embrace, despite the fact that the whole reason they feel threatened (global warming) is yet another piece of evidence that their interventionist God does not exist.
I find there are a multitude of these already. My favorite is this: If an interventionist God exists and designed humans from the genetic level up, why do some babies self destruct when they get sick?
Re:Science includes BOTH strengths and weaknesses (Score:5, Insightful)
The subject of certainty in science is best covered by teaching about the scientific method, not by pausing during lectures about one particular bit of science that some people don't like to remind students that science can't say for certain that it's true.
Re:Science includes BOTH strengths and weaknesses (Score:5, Insightful)
That would be fine... if they said that at the beginning of every science related subject. It would be even better if they also explained the scientific method so students would also understand why 'facts' provided by science can change.
But this was no such thing... Evolution was singled out very specificly, and that is just wrong.
This had only one purpose, and that is to sneak in 'god did it' into a science class.
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I found this rather hilarious. You might like it too. Creation Science 101 [youtube.com].
A guy called Roy Zimmerman sings about teaching creationism.
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No one is saying we have to introduce creationism or try to make evolution appear only as a theory (which some might argue it still is), but there is no reason we need to teach our students to blindly accept it as fact, without doubt or admission of weakness.
Some people are saying exactly that. However, I accept that you are not. Your use of the phrase "only a theory" suggests that you do not understand what constitutes a scientific theory. A theory explains the available facts. Fact by themselves mean very litte. Consider "the car is red," which is a fact, versus "red cars get pulled over more frequently than other colors because etc" which is a theory. Clearly the theory means more and is more useful than the fact alone.
Beyond this, the word "evolution"
other "theories" (Score:5, Interesting)
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Here's a hammer, I dangle it above your toe, let's test the theory.
The problem with gravity is that it's easy to test it. Don't believe it, try it. You usually don't have that luxury with Evolution, unless you got access to a time machine. I'd fear that if you teach theories this way and point out that every other theory taught can be proven, while it's kinda hard to "prove" Evolution to a school student, the message could be the wrong one.
Re:other "theories" (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, gravity is easy to test.
Theory of evolution is also fairly easy to test, and that was done before. Scientists from around the world used populations of fast-reproduction species (mostly bugs), and placed them in specific conditions. After some time - features useful for living in these new conditions were developed. This looks like definitive proof done in the lab for me.
On the other hand you just can look into fossilized bones of ancient species, or remains of our own predecessors - go, figure out yourself.
I understand that a "weakness" of theory of evolution would be a claim that changes in species appear randomly vs. deterministic. But knowing how strong anti-evolution-redneck-lobby is in USA, I would expect something like "it's not the way it's described in the Bible".
I live in Europe, in *very* conservative an catholic country (90% of populations are catholics), but anyone who would say evolution is bullshit would looked at like he was crazy.
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Bacteria can evolve in the timescales needed for class work.
You could even use an outbreak of the common cold as an experiment; a new strain of the virus which has evolved to dodge the class's immunity.
The other thing is what do you mean by theory of gravity? Do you mean "things fall', Gallilean gravity, Newtonian, Einsteinian? You can't distinguish between those last two in class, but they each make fundamentally different claims about what gravity is.
Testing gravity is hard (Score:2, Informative)
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Actually you do have that luxury with Evolution to an extent. Evolution is always twisted to whoever is talking about it at the moment. I am not accusing you personally of doing that, but you certainly are demonstrating a misconception about evolution. That's the real problem with constructive dialogue regarding this whole stupid issue.
1) The "religious nutballs and born again
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Indeed
http://www.notjustatheory.com/ [notjustatheory.com]
Emphasis on the word "just"
"Evolution is not just a theory, it's triumphantly a theory!"
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Not saying that I do not support said theory, but let's be up front about the difference here.
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Well then, I guess we just need to start testing evolution in school too.
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I suppose that Texas schools should teach the "strengths and weaknesses" of the Theory of Gravity, too.
I guess it could go something like "gravity is stronger for fat computer nerds because they weigh more than fit healthy people"
School = Child Assembly Line (Score:3, Insightful)
I entirely appreciate that this is a debate about I.D. and about religion in the classroom.
But that aside it is a great shame that we teach all science as hard "fact" with little experimentation or room for asking "Why?"
If you've gone though a Science education you know that you learn from the textbook and everything you read is gospel.
God forbid we'd ever want kids actually thinking for themselves or questioning anything, if that happened they might, you know... Push the field forward...
But in the academic world the "geniuses" are those students that can memorise the most trivia (see TV game shows for example). While truly intelligent lateral thinkers get put in the bottom classes and made to feel dumb.
I hope we like the world we made for ourselves...
Re:School = Child Assembly Line (Score:4, Insightful)
I see you have never had a science lab class. It's a pity, you don't know what you've missed.
I remember even the meanest bullies in the class loved the part where we measured the speed of a BB, or the frog dissection.
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That said: I remember science labs quite vividly. They rarely asked you to question anything, and mostly involved following a set of instructions with little room for variation or asking "what if." So today we measure the speed of a bb, rather than asking "how might we do that?" and then investigating, most HS labs I've seen say "we do that by..." with a checklist.
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As for lateral thinking, you can have a natural leaning towards a certain kind of mental activity because you're better than usual at it, or because you're worse than usual at everything else. In the latter case, it's perfectly possible to be a dumb lateral thinker.
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Asking why could expose the teacher's stupidity. Do you want the last glimpses of order to break down at schools?
Honestly, I had great teachers, and I had poor teachers. And usually I noticed their greatness when I asked questions. How did they answer? The really crappy ones started to make things up to shut me up. The better ones admitted they don't know, but they'll look it up. If they were outright good, they actually did look it up and answered me later. The great ones answered and opened up another que
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Everything requires a basis, and assumptions.
In Science textbooks, all the stuff presented there is either "wrong, but to all intents and purposes for the level that people studying it at the time are concerned, observably correct", or actually correct to the best understanding at the time of writing (though unless you're studying at the highest level, it may omit large parts of the story that you just don't need to know).
Each of these books is available to scrutiny, and if they get it wrong, I can pretty m
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But in the academic world the "geniuses" are those students that can memorise the most trivia (see TV game shows for example). While truly intelligent lateral thinkers get put in the bottom classes and made to feel dumb.
This isn't quite the case. In a lot of cases the "truly intelligent" ask questions that even the teacher hasn't thought about or really can't answer properly. Instead of the teacher admitting defeat they get defensive. I saw it a few times even at post-graduate level. Humans are fallable but they don't want to be seen to be in front of their peers.
I have noticed a trend in society that seems to be getting worse, and that is rewarding rampant stupidity. Some of the most highly paid people are some of th
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Gospel. Yeah, pret
Hi Texas (Score:3, Funny)
Welcome to the civilized world.
I know why they did this... (Score:2)
.... Since a monkey can hack a Diebold voting machine.... And Bush has been determined to be the worst US president... There has to be a connection.
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So logic tells me that someone who can hack a Diebold machine becomes president...
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I know a lot of monkeys that would be tremendously insulted by that statement, if only they knew how to read.
Teach Methods and Logic (Score:4, Interesting)
I think it would be valuable if schools taught methods and logic. Not just knowledge, but also the way of how knowledge can be arrived at. Teach people what is and what isn't a conclusive argument, point out the factors that complicate deriving valid conclusions from one's observations, and show that how experiments can be set up to minimize those factors. Preferably also teach statistics, so that people can calculate the probability of two things being corerlated vs. the probability that an observation is due to other factors.
All these are valuable skills, not specifically in the evolution debate, but in every aspect of life.
As for my stance on religious issues...I am convinced that we have no conclusive evidence one way or the other on most of them, and I would say that, until we do (which I think will never happen) everyone should be free to believe as they do. Nothing gives me the right to force my beliefs on you, and the same applies in the other direction.
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Nice idea, but if people at large were taught how to think, then the government as it exists today would not last long. You will find that in almost every aspect, government players depend heavily on people who think that thinking somehow hurts their brains.
I find it interesting to see patterns that even I fall into myself. When someone thinks differently, we want to stamp it out. It is just the aspects and details by which we determine differences that change. I want people to think critically of EVERY
Re:Teach Methods and Logic (Score:5, Interesting)
Nice idea, but if people at large were taught how to think, then the government as it exists today would not last long.
You cynical bastard..... Of course, you're 100% right. As a science teacher, I can clearly state that School isn't about learning to think, and developing logic. School is about learning to engage/disengage when you hear the bell. It's about being able to work the line, downtrodden with the rest of your social peers.
I had some high ideals for what Education was once. That was before getting a Master's degree in Education, and working in a public high school. I could be the best science teacher ever, do original research and instill thought and logic into my students. Except for a system that doesn't let me. By the time I see students in 9th grade, the #1 question they have is "What's the answer?", followed by "Am I right?".
As a science teacher, that kills me. Science is the PROCESS of FINDING that answer, of PROVING that you're right. When the base mechanic that all students operate under is right/wrong, with the answer as the most important thing, Science (and Education) has already lost.
Our state standardized test for Science is a largely multiple-choice, "do you remember what you were taught in Science?" test. Since WHEN is Science about regurgitating facts? It's not. But designing a test where students must figure something out on their own is hard to do, hard to score, and entirely outside much of their skillset, due to a life-time of fact regurgitation. This ties directly into religion as well, for such qualities are REQUIRED to be religious. You must be able to spit out the tenets of your faith. You must noe use use logic and question what's mashed into your head by those above you.
As a Science teacher, what am I to do? If our scores drop too much due to students being unable to barf out facts on command, then the administration takes a look at the department to see if we're doing our "jobs". And as our job is clearly to stuff the heads of mindless automatons with facts, until the bell rings and they move to the next filling station, those not doing that need to be seriously worried about their jobs. And that's as it should be - our society doesn't run on millions of individuals, having individual thoughts and doing individual things. It runs on Industry and Media. It runs on 3 types of beer, 2 types of soda, 3 major sports on TV, 2 types of reality show formats, 5 types of car, etc. It runs from bell to bell, then people drive in their similar cars, on the same roads, to their similar houses, and eat the same sorts of dinner. Anything else, and it all falls apart. And that, of course, must be weeded out and crushed somewhere - luckily school is mandatory, even if religion is not. The most effective schools and states have somehow combined the two.
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Is there a joke or reference I am missing in your use of catched for caught?
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Ohhh, you mean how the empiric way of thinking has caught in:
Pakistan
India
Israel
Gaza
Syria
Egypt
What-was-Yugoslavia
UK
Ireland-North and South
China
Australia
Brazil
Peru
Argentina
South Africa, or any of the African hell holes
Iraq
Iran
The collective "stans"
Holland
Indonesia
Saudi Arabia
Dubai
.
.
.
.
It's nice to single out the US, but there is not a single country on earth where the "empiric" way of thinking rules in government
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Progress, but they still miss the mark... (Score:2)
wrong direction (Score:2, Interesting)
Evolutionary theory is vastly unimportant compared to a lack of Scientific Method. I see the requirement of showing weaknesses in Darwinian Evolution as forcing the employment of Scientific Method on difficult, emotion laden, and controversial issues. Beating the method into young impressionable skulls is far more important than whether they believe in creation by amoeba or creation by God. Teach them to think, don't tell them what to believe.
Jus
weaknesses are important to science too (Score:3, Insightful)
In the context of this hot-button topic, this is an important and necessary decision, but it's probably in general a good idea to impress upon students that scientific theories are never perfect, they all have strengths and weaknesses and even the most successful (e.g., evolution, Newtonian mechanics) leave plenty of room for refinement. Scientific theories have their own kind of Darwinian evolution, and while I don't necessarily want introductory classes to undermine everything they're teaching, it might be helpful if a part of science education were to provide better insight into the nature of the scientific enterprise than they do currently.
unhappy title (Score:4, Insightful)
Texas as far as I can see takes no position on what specifically currently is accepted by scientific community as science, leaving that once again as it had always been before, up to publishers of science books. That seems a wise choice.
And Texas likewise makes no limitations on what may be presented in courses on history, literature, comparative religion, anthropology, and so on. That also seems wise. The only problem was teaching religion in a science course. That problem is now solved.
Re:Won't someone please think of the children? (Score:5, Insightful)
Should we teach alternative theories to the reason why things fall down? (Intelligent falling perhaps) After all, the Theory of Gravity is only a theory, not a fact.
Or perhaps that "the weight of a body on the surface of a heavenly body is the reaction force caused by the acceleration of the surface of the heavenly body away from its centre."
http://www.copples.clara.net/gravity.htm [clara.net]
This is an alternative theory of Gravity. It may even be true, however, no one seems to be trying to teach kids the controversy... because there isn't one. The science taught in high schools is well supported and, as mentioned above, not challenged by academia in any real way.
We have an obligation to our children to shield them from ideas which masquerade as science because they lack the skills needed for proper scientific inquiry. I can go to an average high school class and, assuming they don't have any smart asses, teach them about the horrible problems associated with dihydrogen monoxide. Chances are I can convince every one of them to firmly assert that they would be willing to ban water.
http://www.snopes.com/science/dhmo.asp [snopes.com]
86% of freshman supported a ban on water,
12% were undecided
2% correctly identified it as water.
It's not that difficult to dupe the public as a whole, let alone children in an authoritative setting. You teach the best science available and continue to teach it until a better theory presents itself. It may take years for this "better theory" to get from not accepted to partially accepted to almost universally accepted, however, IMHO we shouldn't be teaching it until it gains the support of the majority of the scientific community.
Leave the debate on alternative theories of gravity to the Ph.D's who (probably) know what they are talking about. Teach it in the schools when you've convinced a gross majority of them. Convincing a gross majority of the general public does not make it a scientific theory.
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Children are impressionable. They are (usually) unable to weigh the pros and cons of arguments and instead defer to authority figures. There are some theories which are not legitimately challenged in today's scientific world.
Maybe in grade school - but I don't think I've ever met a high schooler (myself included when I was in HS) so impressionable.
The whole DHMO thing is really an unfair example, as it involves misleading scare tactics (100% of people who consume it die, for example). That's not presenting an opposing idea and letting people come to their own conclusion, but rather intentionally presenting well-known facts in extremely misleading and overcomplicated ways in an attempt to trick them - it's more of a trivia test
Re:Won't someone please think of the children? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not presenting an opposing idea and letting people come to their own conclusion, but rather intentionally presenting well-known facts in extremely misleading and overcomplicated ways in an attempt to trick them
Congratulations, you've just summarized creation science, intelligent design, or whatever they're calling it at the moment.
"Creationism" is as simple an idea as "water". To fool people into thinking it's science, its proponents rely on the unfair DMHO trick you object to.
Re:Won't someone please think of the children? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not like a high school freshman is going to be scarred for life by hearing two sides of an argument. "These people believe this for this reason. These other people believe this for this other reason."
They might not be scarred for life, but they won't learn much science. Scientific debate isn't about valuing everybody's opinion - its about objectivity, logic and evidence.
This isn't even about a debate between science and faith: its a debate between science and bogus pseudo-scientific FUD which attempts to dress religious fundamentalism up as science. Even mainstream religion [catholicnewsagency.com] thinks the debate is absurd.
There are almost certainly gaps and weaknesses in the Theory of Evolution. However, it still explains more than any other theory on offer, and you don't throw it out because it fails to dot a few "i"s - at least not until you have a new, better theory.
When Newton's theory of gravitation failed to accurately predict the orbit of Mercury, the scientific community didn't throw Principia on the fire and go back to crystal spheres and epicycles - it went on to make good use of the understanding given by what Newton's theories did predict, until that smart guy with the bad hair came up with a better theory which someone then went out and proved. That's how science is supposed to work.
PS: I'm all for books on evolution having a label in them which points out that its a theory with which some people disagree provided that, in return, every copy of the Bible is required to have a preface by Richard Dawkins. Fair's fair, eh? :-)
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Any theory has its weaknesses.
There is no reason not to teach them, but there certainly is no reason to single out evolution. There are a lot of theories thought which are far more contested, yet nobody thought it necessary to make a fuss about it...
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Re:Christians (Score:4, Insightful)
This may become a problem in the UK and other parts of Europe, as Muslims will probably react to secularism much in the same way American Evangelicals have. We're starting to see it happen.
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Indeed. And I'll admit to being a bit surprised at my home state. Pleased, but surprised. We have a LOT of anti-intellectual, "Christian" conservatives here...