Slashdot Mirror
Correcting Misperceptions About Evolution
Beagle writes "The science of evolution is often misunderstood by the public and a session at the recent AAAS meeting in Boston covered three frequently misapprehended topics in evolutionary history, the Cambrian explosion, origin of tetrapods, and evolution of human ancestors, as well as the origin of life. The final speaker, Martin Storksdieck of the Institute for Learning Innovation, covered how to communicate the data to a public that 'has such a hard time accepting what science is discovering.' His view: 'while most of the attention has focused on childhood education, we really should be going after the parents. Everyone is a lifelong learner, Storksdieck said, but once people leave school, that learning becomes a voluntary matter that's largely driven by individual taste.'"
Women are still considered "items" *owned* by men in many countries of the world. Most of these countries tend to have some sort of "fundamentalist religious system". For example, Pakistan, Nigeria, Sudan. India and Bangladesh is another example where corruption and the cast system allow people (especially women and children) to be treated as property. Child labour?
Slavery exists *today*. It only almost disappeared in the developed world, but it still exists even there. Underground. See the sex trade trafficking of women.
Religious dogma and irrationality will take even longer. Let's hope we have enough time before that dogma kills all of us - see nuclear weapons in hands of these fanatics, be it 'christian', 'islamic' or 'jewish'.