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Texas Board of Education Supports Evolution
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."
Things are turning around for the better :)
Finally Intelligent Design is getting the boot it deserves.
This is the sig that says NI (again)
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. 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. This is not the spirit of science and frankly not in the best interest for those who probably already don't care that much about it. Whats gives?
When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up... reading.-Henny Youngman
Evolution is not the only theory taught in school. Gravity is another theory. I suppose that Texas schools should teach the "strengths and weaknesses" of the Theory of Gravity, too.
Welcome to the civilized world.
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.
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
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
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.
"Dictator Flakes. They WILL be delicious."
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.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
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.
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 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? :-)
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
If by "The rest of the civilized world," you mean to exclude predominantly Muslim countries such as Turkey, then yes, it's just an American problem. (I wouldn't say "North American" problem; evolution isn't much of a problem in Mexico or Canada.) Muslim versions of Creationism are gaining ground.
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.
We didn't develop from fish and apes, we developed from something which also developed into fish and apes, who are at the same point in evolution as us. It's this sort of thinking which doesn't help.
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.
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.
We are apes!. And it is very likely that a fish, likely to be a Sarcopterygii of some type, was one of our ancestors. The Sarcopterygii includes the lungfishes, which as the name implies, were fish that evolved lungs and whose fins developed into stubby "limbs", allowing them to "walk" on land.
If the GP had mentioned a specific ape (like a monkey) or a specific fish (like a trout), then yeah, the objection would have been correct for that, but apes are a superfamily, not a specific species, and fish are similarly not a species but an enormous group of centered around, but not including, the tetrapods. Apes did evolve from something that evolved from fish, and our ancestor was another ape, just like us.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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.
404: Prayer Not Found
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
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.
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.