Evolution Must Be Taught in Public Schools

[Freddy]

The National Academy of Sciences has released a new book advocating the teaching of Evolution in science courses in US schools and not the non-science ideas of Creationism and Intelligent Design. More than 60% of Republicans do not believe in Evolution, while about 60% of Democrats and Independents do not believe in Creationism.

Science and Society

[Eclogite]

In recognition of the importance of practical work in any good science education perhaps the NAS could also provide buckets of sand for those individuals who do not wish to read the booklet.

[REASON]

Here's another important reason why we should stay focused on promoting the teaching of evolution:

The persistent intrusion of those promoting ID.

Spectator Article - Is Darwin Losing the Battle With God?

[HydrogenBond]

I believe in evolution but the proof of the theory has conceptual problems. This does not discount the theory but makes it a theory and not proof. Let me explain this subtle problem.

The data we collect for evolution is discontinuous data. Many of the early life forms appeared so long ago there is no practical way to get every data point. Here is the analogy. Say you had a child. At the day they were born and every day until they reached 18 years old you made an entry in a journal. That would be the entire data set. What we have is analogous to asking someone to randomly pick maybe 500 out of the 7000+ pages and using only that data, explain why the child is like he is at 18 years old.

Obviously the child progressed or evolved, but if certain critical pages are missing in the analysis, the conclusions could be out of touch with reality. For example, say at 13 years and 200 days, he was in a car wreck with his mother. This one event could alter his path for many years. If it was not included in the data sampling, one may assume it is genetic.

All theories with initial limited data appear like they correlate. But as soon as more data appears, the theories are usually revived. But with evolution, it is sort of carved into stone, like religion, even with most of the data is not there. It is good to teach it, but honesty would have a data addendum. It could go something like this "Based on the data available evolution is the best theory that fits all this data. However, since we have about 2% of the data, this theory may be subject to revision as new data appears".

If you look at it logically, the most likely data will reflect the most plentiful life forms. If there are a million units of one type it is a million times more likely we will find fossils of this unit, than if there was only one. So what the data is, are big bulk items, which seen to appear discontinuous. If we had ten times as much data, then species with only 100,000 units would also be more likely to be found. Are these small perturbations or mutant leaps? The answer to that question affects the fundamentals of evolution. Without this extra data, it is easy to assume only one of the answers.

[Lemon]

Living in Bible thumping Alaska, I'm always amazed at peoples ignorance when it comes to evolution. I don't understand how they can believe that Jonah lived in a whale, and then completely deny that evolution is even possible.


Evolution won't be taught a lot of areas, until there is strong leadership advocating that it is possible, right now religious zealots picket on the platform of hositility with science, perhaps if there was leadership talking about how maybe the two can coexist, there would be steps moved to allow evolution in schools.

[modest]

What kind of science teachers are we hiring when we have to tell them to teach evolution and not intelligent design? This seems like one symptom of a much larger problem - we are obviously hiring some less-than-average science teachers.

- modest

[REASON]

Originally Posted by modest

What kind of science teachers are we hiring when we have to tell them to teach evolution and not intelligent design? This seems like one symptom of a much larger problem - we are obviously hiring some less-than-average science teachers.

- modest

The real question may be: What is the motivation of school administrators when hiring or firing science teachers?

[Dracontes]

Hear, hear! It's just a pity the book isn't actually freely available as *.pdf. There's just a measly 8-page brochure...

Originally Posted by HydrogenBond

The data we collect for evolution is discontinuous data. Many of the early life forms appeared so long ago there is no practical way to get every data point. Here is the analogy. Say you had a child. At the day they were born and every day until they reached 18 years old you made an entry in a journal. That would be the entire data set. What we have is analogous to asking someone to randomly pick maybe 500 out of the 7000+ pages and using only that data, explain why the child is like he is at 18 years old.

Obviously the child progressed or evolved, but if certain critical pages are missing in the analysis, the conclusions could be out of touch with reality. For example, say at 13 years and 200 days, he was in a car wreck with his mother. This one event could alter his path for many years. If it was not included in the data sampling, one may assume it is genetic.

Not that I entirely disagree with you but, usually, with the help of statistic methods, one does not need all data points to construct an informed model, and there is some economy of effort in not looking for all data points, obviously.
Your life journal analogy would be more apt if the parent would reffer previous pertinent important events in a succinct way as if to make each journal entry more or less self-sufficient. So selecting about 1000 pages would make good odds for finding a reference to the car crash
That's what happens with evolution, descent with modification, as populations' genetic pools change with time but carry with them the important events of their path as morphological or biochemical limitations.

The Tiktaalik case as presented in the brochure linked to at the end of the article linked above is a good example of the predictive abilities of current evolutionary models for basal tetrapod(omorph) evolution. True, it's just models, but it seems now they're pretty robust.

[Freddy]

The problem is not with science teachers. It is the state and local school boards located in areas where ignorance abounds. Many are trying to dictate a science curriculum that includes Intelligent Design, or Creationism's latest incarnation. It is about time the scientific community fights back with more vigor than in the past by making sure evolution is taught in science classes in all public schools.

[sciencegirl94]

I agree.. Evolution HAS to be taught in public schools. We can't always look at religion. Geez, there are sooo many! Everything taught at school could not be taught.. we can always find a religion which the subject hurts, or proves wrong.
Teachers should just say, scientist think it happened this way, you don't have to accept it...

This is interesting- I read it in National Geographic:
-45% of American adults do not believe in evolution.
-37% of them somehow believe in it- they say God created the Universe, but Evolution formed the shape of life.
-only 12% said that they believe in evolution, and that God did not take part in the creation of humans.