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Evolution and Religion

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vison
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Posted: Thu 31 Jan , 2008 10:17 pm
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Scientists, with the possible exception of Einstein, have never been much admired by most young people. And those who admire Einstein seldom understand the least thing he said. The cult of celebrity may indeed be more prevalent now, but it was the same when I was a kid and that's a long time ago.

Americans, like the rest of us, get what they want from the "infotainment" business. If no one watched/read/listened/googled, it would die away or at least be vastly reduced.

My grandson goes to a Christian school. This is a pretty "fundamentalist" school, too. So far, he hasn't come up against the "creationism" vs "evolution" thing: he won't, until probably grade 11 or 12. But right now, he's studying erosion. And right there in the "church approved" textbook he uses, they discuss rocks dated as being over 3.5 billion years old.

I don't care whether there was a god who started it all, it has nothing to do with me. I'm more interested in what happened after the beginning - and the beginning I mean is not life on earth, but the beginning of this universe. I think it is entirely reasonable to speculate that all life on earth had a common ancestor - there is simply no other explanation that makes sense. If it was god's idea, then it was a good one. There is no way of knowing.

halplm's objections to what is taught in school seem nonsensical to me, since his objections seem to be based on very limited data. The plural of "anecdote" is not "data".

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halplm
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Posted: Thu 31 Jan , 2008 10:27 pm
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So... is my objection nonsensical, or not supported by enough data? Those are two different things...

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Riverthalos
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Posted: Thu 31 Jan , 2008 10:45 pm
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TW: My understanding is, if you want to teach at the secondary level, you must have at least a bachelor's in the subject matter you wish to teach. My sister decided she wanted to be a teacher. However, philosophy and gender studies are not exactly typical subjects taught in HS (well, the HS we went to had a philosophy course but we were a bit exceptional like that), so rather than go back for a new bachelor's she decided to purse a master's in education and get certified to teach K-8. Her preference is second graders.

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Nin
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Posted: Thu 31 Jan , 2008 10:47 pm
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Hal as a teacher I can only say that whatever you teach it gives you strictly no guarantee for what the student really learns. You can not necessarily judge the teaching by the learning effect.

I teach German. I can explain dozens of times that grammatical gender between French and German is not identical. They will do the same mistake again. You can tell several times that evolution is not about why life happened - how many kids wil remember it, you have no guarantee. Nada, nothing. But it's easy to blame teachers.

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Dave_LF
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Posted: Thu 31 Jan , 2008 10:53 pm
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The Watcher wrote:
And, I hate to state it, but even those who go on to teach science themselves may not understand science as well as the person who took an undergrad or then further grad studies in a Bachelor's of Science course of studies.
In my (Christian) high school, science was taught by the baseball coach. In one particularly confusing chemistry class, he actually told us that he didn't understand the subject either, but that we had to go through it anyway. He's also the one who told us the Earth was 6000 years old and that there were dinosaurs on Noah's ark.


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Nienor SharkAttack
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Posted: Thu 31 Jan , 2008 11:44 pm
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I feel sorry for all the other animals...

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vison
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Posted: Thu 31 Jan , 2008 11:45 pm
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halplm wrote:
So... is my objection nonsensical, or not supported by enough data? Those are two different things...
Both. But that's only MHO.

You say you object to evolution being taught as "fact". Well, in fact, it is a fact: as factual as any scientific knowledge is at this time.

Despite your assertion that it IS taught as "fact", the fact is that an awfully significant number of Americans don't "believe in evolution" anyway. So I'd say the forces of ignorance are doing just fine.

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Ara-anna
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Posted: Thu 31 Jan , 2008 11:54 pm
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science answers how....not why.

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halplm
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Posted: Fri 01 Feb , 2008 12:46 am
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vison wrote:
halplm wrote:
So... is my objection nonsensical, or not supported by enough data? Those are two different things...
Both. But that's only MHO.
Ok, that's fine, it just sounded like you were saying itn was nonsensical BECAUSE of a lack of data, which is, of course, nonsensical...

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jadeval
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Posted: Fri 01 Feb , 2008 2:23 am
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halplm wrote:
It seems people on this board don't understand how US public schools work.

religion is not only frowned upon, it is AGAINST THE RULES.

you can't talk about God or religion, or you GET FIRED.

should someone question what is stated as fact in a scinece course, they are politely told that if they mention it again they will FAIL the course.

Is this true of all schools in the US? perhaps not, but it is true in California... granted California is second only to Mississippi as the worst school system in the country... but it's got one of the largest populations in the country.

Of course, I'm sure I'm wrong about all of this... I'm sure all High school science teachers are at the top of their fields and know everything we could all ever want to know about science.
Not true... I am a product of California public education (woe unto me!), and I can say that a student who questions the theory of evolution will as assuredly as the sun also rises NOT fail any such subject.

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Last edited by jadeval on Fri 01 Feb , 2008 8:08 am, edited 1 time in total.

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jadeval
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Posted: Fri 01 Feb , 2008 2:44 am
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halplm wrote:
However, extrapolating what we observe now, backwards in time, to theorize about common ancestry, does not follow from what we observe today. Yes, absolutely, some very closely related species have common ancestors. Perhaps many species have common ancestors. However, the further back in time you go, the more this becomes guesswork, and the less it becomes science. Yes, you can study the fossil record scientifically, and the conclusions reached about said fossils are scientific.

However, it is my contention, that expanding those conclusions to speculate on common ancestors of modern life is at best guesswork, and at worst scientists out to make a name for themselves by plugging in one more hole in a tree of life with far too many holes.

I don't mind teachers saying that many animals today share common ancestors, that much is obvious. I do mind them saying everything shares ONE common ancestor. Is that possible? Certainly. Is it the best guess scientists have about how things happend, Sure. Is it Fact? There's no way to know given our current level of knowledge.

That's what I would like to hear said. Because as soon as it is stated to be a fact, it's claiming that people who believe their religion says otherwise are wrong. I could say, I think God created a large number of animals a long time ago, and since that time, the animal kingdom has diversified much further. There is nothing in the fossil record to contradict this. There are no observations we can make that say this is wrong. But by claiming that the idea we all share one common ancestor is fact, you're saying my statement is impossible.

Is saying God created life scientific? No. Does that make it wrong? No. I'd just like science teachers not to be saying the opposite.
Think about what you are saying. You are proposing an alternative which contradicts the best scientific theories available, all the while without possessing any shred of evidence to support your view other than "it could have happened".

You are acting as if the scientific theory may one day be overthrown by the religious teaching, and this according to scientific discovery! You are demanding that science be held in abeyance on behalf of religion so that science may one day find the truth according to its own method! Absurd! Science simply takes the best theory according to the most comprehensive observations... that's it!

Now if what you propose is a "theory" about the course of events and which may be fundamentally inaccessible to the scientific method but yet is nevertheless empirical... well, then you are making statements about the empirical without the empirical evidence of science. Talk about biting the bullet!

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TheEllipticalDisillusion
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Posted: Fri 01 Feb , 2008 3:54 am
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Christians can be the biggest self-martyrs. How fragile can your's or anyone's views be that you worry about something making them wrong?

hal, you can propose any kind of theory or hypothesis, but unless it is science, a science teacher should not be required to treat it as a viable alternative. Science, unlike religion, uses observations of repeatable phenomenon to drive the theories that you seem to think are treated as "fact". How far political correctness has come that even a methodology that tries to be as objective as possible needs to cater to the sensitivities of individuals.

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yovargas
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Posted: Fri 01 Feb , 2008 6:11 am
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TheEllipticalDisillusion wrote:
hal, you can propose any kind of theory or hypothesis, but unless it is science, a science teacher should not be required to treat it as a viable alternative.
Has hal said that they should?


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jewelsong
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Posted: Fri 01 Feb , 2008 9:51 am
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yovargas wrote:
TheEllipticalDisillusion wrote:
hal, you can propose any kind of theory or hypothesis, but unless it is science, a science teacher should not be required to treat it as a viable alternative.
Has hal said that they should?
That seems to be what he is saying, yes.


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TheEllipticalDisillusion
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Posted: Fri 01 Feb , 2008 12:03 pm
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Quote:
However, extrapolating what we observe now, backwards in time, to theorize about common ancestry, does not follow from what we observe today. Yes, absolutely, some very closely related species have common ancestors. Perhaps many species have common ancestors. However, the further back in time you go, the more this becomes guesswork, and the less it becomes science. Yes, you can study the fossil record scientifically, and the conclusions reached about said fossils are scientific.
I took this to be his hypothesis. Am I wrong?

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halplm
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Posted: Fri 01 Feb , 2008 12:04 pm
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no, I don't believe I've said anything of the kind

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Ara-anna
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Posted: Fri 01 Feb , 2008 3:31 pm
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:scratch: You know I would like to see some actual scientific articles where actual scientists, archeologist and paleontologists give 'fact' statements.

I say this as a member of both the paleontologists and archeologists of New Mexico. I am neither an archeologist or paleontologist, but I do go on digs from time to time with both, and neither group claims evolution as fact and some of them even think there is a divine power guiding it all. And the two that most believe this are not from the US. One’s from Scotland and one’s from Germany. The Scottish archeologist is in my belly dancing group and I will be going to her house for the super-bowl so I can pointedly ask if there are any scientific papers out there that state that evolution is fact.

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Riverthalos
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Posted: Fri 01 Feb , 2008 5:10 pm
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FYI, "fact" is a word you almost never see in any scientific paper.

That said, I just ran a PubMed search on "evolution" and came up with 210069 hits, the earliest of which dates to October 11, 1876 and the most recent to yesterday. Didn't see Darwin's name. Apparently he's not up on PubMed. ;)

I AM NOT going to sort through all of that to find one that uses the word "fact"...especially when so many of them aren't even purely evolutionary bio - there's a lot of bioinformatics, molecular bio, biochem, psychology, anthropology and medicine thrown in there too. As has been pointed out earlier, nothing in biology makes sense except in the context of evolution.

Just for shits and giggles I searched a couple other terms. "Periodic table" came back with 370 hits. "Quantum physics" came back with 11386, the first of which was actually a biochemistry paper. "Thermodynamics" produced 124186 hits, the first of which was, again, a biochemistry paper. "Entropy" spit out 10542 hits and half of the first page was, again, biochemistry. Either biochemists are more prodcutive than anyone else or PubMed is a bit biased (I think it's the latter...physicists and straight up chemists prefer another search engine). "Science education" got me one paper from 1978. "Soul" produced 1208 hits. The first page was a weird mix of medicine and neuroscience and papers that used "soul" in the title because it sounds catchy.

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Wolfgangbos
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Posted: Fri 08 Feb , 2008 1:33 pm
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The only ridicule I have ever seen of Christian beliefs in high school or university has been by fellow students in psychology, humanities, or philosophy courses. These seem to be very appropriate places for such opinions to be stated, as the subject matter often involves religious notions that can be discussed in the context of psychological or philosophical method.

As long as the scientific method is unable to address religious notions, a course that uses the scientific method (and only the scientific method) cannot provide a legitimate context for religious discussion.

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Cenedril_Gildinaur
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Posted: Fri 08 Feb , 2008 6:43 pm
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In most states, to be a teacher you need a Bachelor's degree in Education, with either a minor or concentration in the field you are to teach. What is seldom required is a Bachelor's degreee in the field you wish to teach. It has been observed that some who are failing in the advanced classes of their field often switch to education of that field.

The field you are to teach is your primary field, but not necessarily the only field you will teach. If the school is short a teacher in some area, other teachers who might not have the knowledge necessary to teach will fill in. Coaches sometimes wind up teaching Chemistry, more often wind up teaching history.

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