Discuss: Evolution Theory in Schools

[Laura]

Changes may be made to the way science teachers in Texas present the theories of evolution and intelligent design. What do you think?

http://bigcountryhomepage.com/content/fulltext/?cid=43871

[howdy ya'll]

I was taught Darwin's theory it did not turn me into an atheist. I think it should be taught as a theory, that is what it is, with flaws. The lesson usually turned into a class discussion and turning into Creationism anyway.

[800trunkerman]

I think for a long overdue refreshing change, they should be taught the TRUTH of God's creation of man!

If we came from apes, there wouldn't still be apes. From fish, ditto!

[sparky-4]

Listen to this..... A Texas Board of education(probably a bunch of Austinites) says what can and can't be taught to Abilene kids in Abilene Schools, by Abilene Teachers paid for by Abilene taxpayers

is that why we call it the Abilene Independent School District ?:eek:


Yeah independent alright.... Parents pull you children out of the vile Government School system before their minds are poisoned, home school, private school, do something do anything but the Government Schools.

The radical liberals have ruined the education system and they keep telling us all we need is a few more programs like "no child left behind" and a few more of your tax dollars to fund them and a few more administrators making over $200,000.00 per year

The good teachers who are still there, can't "teach" they are now "Educators" making sure the kids can pass a TAKS test so the school can get high marks and the administrators can keep their big salaries and keep driving that fleet of district cars around to training courses all over the state.

In case you haven't noticed they have enough Suburbans they have them stacked up like piles of cord wood

I always, I mean always see people driving Suburbans from other school districts here in Abilene during the weekends with the back of them full of bags from the mall. Good for our stores.. but I wonder why the taxpayers of their districts have to pay for their personal shopping trips?:confused:

Yeah, evolution takes more faith to believe it occurred than does the Creation account.

Where are the intermediate fossils? If man descended from apes, why would the entire sum of fossil evidence fit in the trunk of a compact car?

sorry this post was so long, but you did ask what I thought..:D:D

[howdy ya'll]

check this out from www.kwtx.com

(September 28, 2008)--Four members of the State Board of Education, including one from Central Texas, are promoting a Bible curriculum for Texas public schools that has been criticized as favoring certain Christian views and has already landed some districts in court.

The board members sent an e-mail to school districts encouraging local control in deciding which Bible courses to adopt and recommending a curriculum that some officials are predicting will lead to more lawsuits.

The e-mail was sent by board members Terri Leo of Spring, Barbara Cargill of The Woodlands, Cynthia Dunbar of Richmond and Gail Lowe of Lampasas.

The e-mail backed the National Council On Bible Curriculum In Public Schools, which supporters say has been successful in several school districts and meets state curriculum guidelines.

But Mark Chancey of the Southern Methodist University religion department said the curriculum favors Protestant perspectives of the Bible at the expense of others.

He called the e-mail "jaw dropping."

Lowe said the e-mail was an effort to inform and reaffirm that the curriculum has been around for a number of years and has always satisfied the state's requirements for electives.

Leo, Cargill and Dunbar did not respond to requests for comment, The Associated Press reported.

Last March, Odessa's Ector County Independent School District reached a settlement in a lawsuit that required the school system to drop the national council's course.

Chancey says a Florida judge ruled against the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools 10 years ago.

[DayMolly]

I remember the teaching I had in school about the Evolution Theory. "Theory" is the key word. I ABSOLUTELY, WITHOUT A DOUBT, believe in Creation; but I see no problem teaching about a man who believed differently. But, we MUST teach BOTH!

Personally, I think the theory of Evolution should be taught in a History class, not as a fact of Science! As said in a previous reply, it takes a LOT of faith to believe in the Theory of Evolution!

[howdy ya'll]

*****Look at what I found this morning AND check out the schools in which these particular scientist are from....even more amazing!


www.kwtx.com this is from Waco, home of Baylor!!!

(September 30, 2008)--Scientists from major Texas universities including Baylor and the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in Central Texas are uniting to oppose efforts to introduce supernatural and religious teaching into public school science courses.

They say any attempts to teach students "weaknesses" in evolution should be blocked.

The newly formed 21st Century Science Coalition announced Tuesday it has 800 scientists in its growing group.

Biology professor David Hillis of the University of Texas at Austin says the coalition plans to spread its message in the coming months as the State Board of Education considers new science curriculum standards.

Some state board members favor teaching weaknesses in evolution, but the scientific group says that wrongly waters down what's been proven in science.

Because Texas is such a huge state, it' ongoing science debate will affect textbooks nationwide.

[CodeSculptor]

If you know of ANY weaknesses or flaws in evolutionary theory, then bring them up. There are not any.

Challenge 1 : "I was taught Darwin's theory it did not turn me into an atheist. I think it should be taught as a theory, that is what it is, with flaws. "

Well, first of all, it's not Darwin's theory. Darwin came up with Evolution by Natural Selection.
The theory, to which you refer is Biological Evolution.

It is abundantly clear that most people still don't understand the meaning of a scientific theory.

Evolution is a theory because it's been proven. You can't call it a scientific fact, because scientific facts cannot be proven, nor even challenged.
It's a theory because there have been no data presented, no evidence found, no experiments which have any results that even remotely challenge, much less disprove evolution.
It's a theory because all the data, all the evidence found to date from genetics, fossils, morphology, physics and geology completely support evolution.

A scientific theory is a special model built to explain observed phenomena.
It's special because it makes predictions, all of which (when tested) have been accurately predicted.
It's special because it has a falsifiability clause, which means that it must present experiments that would show if it were false, all of which must fail for the model to be a theory.
It's special because it it requires the support of experimental data, physical evidence and can not be in opposition or contradict any known rules of science.

Thus, evolution has no flaws. It has no weaknesses.

A spectacular example of "prediction" would be the tiktaalik. Scientists realized that between certain fish lived 380 million years ago and certain land-animals lived 365 million years ago.

So the scientists figured that a good place to find the missing link (transitional fossil) would be around 375 million years ago. And the understood that a good place to look for such fossils would be a place where the land and the water met (called a beach or shoreline) at that time.
Thus, the scientists made a bunch of slaves (students) dig in Canada, in a place called Ellesemere Island, Nunavut. They found the fossilized remains of just such a creature.

Q : "If we came from apes, there wouldn't still be apes. From fish, ditto!"

Whilest not an actual question, the reply to that is : 'because you didn't study evolution.'

There are three problems with what you'd asked that demonstrate an ignorance of evolution :

You mention "if we came from apes" which evolution doesn't declare. We come from a common ancestor, so there might be apes which are very similar to those we branched from.

Evolution by natural selection declares that when the environment for an organism changes, then the organisms which eventually fail to adapt will perish.

Apes are still around because their environment still exists in a fundamentally unchanged state.

Fish are still around for the same reason. They have changed a great deal since our common-ancestors existed, but the water they live in is still mostly limited to a narrow range of salinity, ph and temperature (save for extremophiles).

Q : "Where are the intermediate fossils? If man descended from apes, why would the entire sum of fossil evidence fit in the trunk of a compact car?"

Wow, everything really is bigger in Texas. In New York, compact cars can hold a stapler, two bottles of soda and an extra large pair of jeans (sort of kidding). The number of "intermediate fossils" is in the millions. But you probably meant the number of transitional human/primate fossils, right?

In that case, the trunk that you mention would have to be large enough to hold over 9000 bones. There are at least 38 skulls prior to homo-sapiens. And the evidence is not merely the structure, nor shape of the skull, but it's radiologically dated position confirms it's predicted place in the chronology of history.

Also, even more strongly, is the genetic evidence for which we can trace back to when we split from apes. Apes have 24 pairs of chromosomes, yet humans (being more evolved) have only 23, and we can see in the human chromosome #2 that our genes perfectly match two of the primate genes attached back-to-back.

[howdy ya'll]

That is all and good, but to be honest with you, I would rather believe that I came from a higher intelligence.

You know what separates us from animals, knowledge. The knowledge to know that the smell that comes from humans are unpleasant to the nose and the knowledge of knowing how to make those smells go away, or keep them at bay, and not thinking of them as mating smells.

Knowledge of knowing that we do not have the same good bacterias in our mouths to keep our teeth from falling out as animals do, so we brush our teeth to keep them from rotting away.

Basically, if one chooses to believe the wonders of our past thru fossils, watching frogs, and every other incredible developments of nature and call it evolution, that is great. It is one of the most interesting studies on the face of the planet.

I love science. But man has that natural desire to look to the heavens at a supreme entity, I choose mine to be God. Some choose the stars. I like the idea of coming from a supreme intelligence and not an ape.

I think one is very capable in believing in science and yet praising God. But I am still not sold on the evolution theory.

[rusty1955]

If it is true that man "evolved" from apes, why are there still apes?? Shouldn't ALL the apes turned into man by this time??

Just wondering about this:confused:

Besided, the Bible says that, "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him: male and female created he them." Genesis 1:27

That kinda says enough for whom I shall believe about creation.

Have a nice day now, ya hear!:)

[howdy ya'll]

From what I understand is that evolution just took place in a point of time for a limited time and then the process stopped. I also understand that some forms were 'stuck at the end of the evolution cycle' and never made it all the way to their new form of body. That is why we still have apes and that is why some fish and other water mammals have 'hand' looking fins.

That is my answer. codesculptor seems pretty smart in this area and i am sure they can give a more educated answer.

[sparky-4]

codescupltor

Micro-evolution or variations within a species does happen

You breed a big dog with a small dog and you might get a medium sized ...dog
not a giraffe, porcupine, or plant

Macro-evolution is unproven and unscientific, has never been observed and takes faith and a magic ingredient called "millions of years" to make it work

If the big bang happened about 14 billion years ago, (it used to be 20) and about 4.6 Billion years ago the earth was formed and developed a hard rocky crust

and it rained on the rocks for millions of years until a soup was formed and one day..the soup came alive!
from that life came ocean life then life on land, plants and animals and finally man

if it sounds like a fairy tale, its because it is


so, if you want to believe you came from a rock, that is fine with me.
I wouldn't want you to feel bad about dropping all that money on your fine college degree only to find you were spoon fed a fairy tale

[pauldrinkard]

"CodeSculptor" wrote "If you know of ANY weaknesses or flaws in evolutionary theory, then bring them up. There are not any."

You asked for it:

Summarizing some of the unsolved problems confronting evolution, Francis Hitching observed: “In three crucial areas where [the modern evolution theory] can be tested, it has failed: The fossil record reveals a pattern of evolutionary leaps rather than gradual change. Genes are a powerful stabilizing mechanism whose main function is to prevent new forms evolving. Random step-by-step mutations at the molecular level cannot explain the organized and growing complexity of life.”

Then Hitching concluded by making this observation: “To put it at its mildest, one may question an evolutionary theory so beset by doubts among even those who teach it. If Darwinism is truly the great unifying principle of biology, it encompasses extraordinarily large areas of ignorance. It fails to explain some of the most basic questions of all: how lifeless chemicals came alive, what rules of grammar lie behind the genetic code, how genes shape the form of living things.” In fact, Hitching stated that he considered the modern theory of evolution “so inadequate that it deserves to be treated as a matter of faith.”--The Neck of the Giraffe, pp. 103, 107, 108,*117

However, many advocates of evolution feel that they do have sufficient reason to insist that evolution is a fact. They explain that they are just arguing over details. But if any other theory had such enormous remaining difficulties, and such major contradictions among those who advocate it, would it so readily be pronounced a fact? Merely repeating that something is a fact does not make it a fact. As John R. Durant, a biologist, wrote in The Guardian of London: “Many scientists succumb to the temptation to be dogmatic, .*.*. over and over again the question of the origin of the species has been presented as if it were finally settled. Nothing could be further from the truth. .*.*. But the tendency to be dogmatic persists, and it does no service to the cause of science.” --The Guardian, London, “Beginning to Have Doubts,” by John Durant, December 4,*1980, p. 15

[bigfatfurrytexan]

Evolutionary theory is just that: theory.

The thing is, we will not know what our origins are until we have the ability to view past history first hand (LANL has this. It is called "The Looking Glass", and works via Phase Conjugation. I am just unsure how effective it is).

What i CAN say is:

1. Genetic drift is an obvious given. We can see genetic drift within our history (dogs are a great example), and it is logical.

2. Darwin doubted the Theory of Evolution, and at times thought it was a blunder

3. If Evolution is correct, it could very well be a mechanism by which our Creator used...so intelligent design folks should not worry.

4. There is a severe lack of data to support Evolutionary theory. There is no missing link going from ape to man, fish to land animal...what we have are finds that might suggest evolutionary action, but these are merely suggestions. If this theory is put up against the same scientific scrutiny that is used in physics, it fails severely. And if it were a murder trial, we have what is called reasonable doubt.

5. Evolution assumes constant, gradual change. there is no room for change brought on by cataclysm outside of a few narrowly defined era's (such as the Permian extinction). We know these cataclyms happened frequently in humans short history (almost all civilizations have cataclysm stories, and they show no evidence of interconnectedness...a great example being the flooding events at the end of the youger Dryas period, which are seemingly related to impact events, and possibly related to the Carolina Bays...which is the only region that you can find the Venus Flytrap in).

I could go on...but these are enough for me on a personal level. Of primary concern to me is the ignoring of Younger Dryas events, and their analgous more ancient events that must be contemporary with the extinction events that we know of.

Further, there are occurances which we have no idea of. Take for example cosmic radiation. do we assume a stagnant level of cosmic radiation throughout the Earth's past? What of the currently weakening heliopause? Would that not indicate greater levels of radiation were likely present in the past? And what of the new information dicussing the EM portals that have been discovered between the Earth and Sun? And the Sun's activity?

Have we considered the impacts of planetary alignment? Ancient man referred to Saturn as "The True Sun", indicating that it was locked in a position at our northern pole. If this is true, what of that?

There are far too many unknowns.

We should teach evolutionary theory, but not as fact. Instead, we should use it as an example of what might have happened, and instead teach critical thinking skills which students can use to apply towards new discoveries. This prevents the need to overturn previous dogma and allows for a better educated and more open minded people.