Slashdot Mirror
Alabama Will Require Students To Learn About Evolution, Climate Change
An anonymous reader writes: For the first time, public school students in Alabama will be required to understand evolution, thanks to new curriculum rules behind implemented next year. Teachers in the state will also be required to discuss climate change. Not only did the 40-person, Republican-controlled Board of Education pass the standards unanimously, but nobody even spoke out against them at a board meeting. The new rules say, "The theory of evolution has a role in explaining unity and diversity of life on earth. This theory is substantiated with much direct and indirect evidence. Therefore, this course of study requires our students to understand the principles of the theory of evolution from the perspective of established scientific knowledge. The committee recognizes and appreciates the diverse views associated with the theory of evolution."
...for something that not only should have been in place already, but is tepid in comparison to how science is taught almost everywhere else around the world.
That's how much the religious zealots have been able to twist the narrative in their favor, to the point where every civilized person breathes a sigh a relief when they AREN'T shoving their creationist mythologies in students' faces and indoctrinating them with dogma. Are we supposed to congratulate Alabama for not being backwards fundamentalists? That's the intellectual equivalent of giving them a medal for promising not to lynch any more black people.
Agenda? To catch up with the rest of civilization.
The topic of whether it's human-caused or not is so controversial that even mentioning this will probably get my post modded down.
It's controversial to those with an agenda. The rest of us can still maintain a rational discussion about it.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Like evolution, science itself is subject to survival of the fittest. The best theories ultimately pass peer review and gain mainstream acceptance. Presently, when it comes to the origin of species, evolution is the fittest. And do remember, that even though we have a general understanding of mutations and natural selection, the precise explanation of how we got from mere amino acids to multi-celled organisms still remains a mystery for the most part, and our understanding of it continues to change as we make more discoveries.
So until we've gotten it 100% figured out, I'm fine with somebody saying that it's "just a theory", even if they say so multiple times. Besides, this action here is leagues better than saying some invisible man did it.
Disclaimer: I'm an atheist libertarian.
I say drop the origin of life topic all together from public education.
Evolution is about the diversity of life, not it's origin. Evolution is what happens after you have life (which I think of as almost, but not quite, perfect replicators.) Abiogenesis is the term used for the process of life arising from non-living matter. Last I checked, there are some nascent theories regarding abiogenesis, but nothing solid yet. I'm not sure why you would want to drop mentioning that in public education.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
I went to public school in the northeast and not once was the bible used in school. Nor did any religious topics come up in any of my classes, beyond your standard Greek and Roman mythology. I wish they had dug deeper into other mythologies from around the world. I don't recall prayers in school, but at events it definitely came up which is inevitable given that the Hispanics comprised the majority of the student body.
If you don't think these topics aren't debated overseas then you clearly haven't traveled enough. I've seen both Europeans and Asians question evolution and not necessarily on religious grounds. While living in Asia one guy went on a tirade about it and how dissenting views should be taught in schools; similar to the crap we see here in the US. I disagree completely, but it's just not worth arguing with some people. I take it you've never met a born again Buddhist, because they're not all that different than your average fundamentalist Christian.
You're an idiot. Evolution has been proven if you would only read a little)
FTFY
Also, that could be considered a dangling modifer. What little thing should be read? A little rock? A little prince?
You make great points about some of the missing pieces in our understanding of evolution. You should consider applying your own approach to the alleged merits of Libertarianism which has far less empirical evidence backing it up than evolution.
The current fittest system is mixed economies rather than extremes of pure capitalism or communism. It makes a lot of sense that a proper definition of freedom includes elements of both state and private sector. A distribution of power rather than all-in approach.
I'm not. Evolution is a fact. In so far that science can say anything is a fact, evolution is a fact.
When science uses that word to describe a process, it's not saying that description is a "best guess". It's not a guess. It's a complex description of how things work, which, to the best of our understanding, is a fact.
Can certain parts of that understanding change? Of course. But the general statement "Species evolved from previous species over time" is not a guess. It's a fact.
Straw man. Evolution does not purport to explain the creation of life, only how it changes.
Good, because if you were a Christian libertarian you'd be a complete fucking moron.
Evolution isn't "just a theory", it's 100% fact. It may not cover 100% of every development, but it's not "just a theory".
It is both a theory and a fact.
We see species change over time in the real world. That observed phenomenon is called evolution, and it is a fact.
There is a theory in biology to explain the phenomenon that is observed in nature. That is called the theory of evolution. Over time, the theory has changed as it is modified to be in compliance with all observed facts (this is not the theory 'evolving'). As more factual evidence is uncovered the theory is checked against the evidence. The theory is either found to be in compliance with the evidence, or changed to be in compliance with the observed facts. Often, the observed facts must also be tested to be found factual as well.
As an example, think of the moon. The moon exists. It is observed in nature. Theory A) states that the moon formed from cheese after a cow jumped into space. Theory B) states that the moon is a rocky body formed in the same way as other rocky bodies in the solar system. The theory that is kept is the one that is in best compliance with the observed facts.
Evolution is both a theory and a fact. It is the name of a phenomenon observed in nature, and the name of the theory of how that phenomenon functions. Does this help?
Maybe the church should get on board
Many churches have done so, or at least have asserted that religion and evolution are not in conflict.
It depends on the enemy they need. Many fundamentalist versions of religion need enemies that they can rail against. Hatred is a integral part of humanity, and in some it is more needed than in others. They become fundamentalists, and have successfully created their god in their own image. So there ya go.
But the problem is people who need to reject and apply hatred, cannot stop. If for some reason, we were to reject the science behind Evolution - bearing in mind that means a rejection of all biology and most of physics - a new target will have to be found. Basically, a return to the dark ages after their success.
So Good on Alabama! I'm hoping so much that the Republican party can extricate itself from the iron grip of the social conservatives and their batshit insane ideas. Then we can get back to a proper conservative/liberal mix of governance.And yes, we do need both. Although I do have to confess, I was a 80 percent Republican voting until GWB and his Trotskyist crew came around. Sweet Jeebuz, where is Barry Goldwater when you need him?
When an otherwise intelligent Republican is forced to answer questions about evolution and global warming with "Well, I'm not a scientist", or "there are controversies", because he or she is worried about offending the kookwing segment of the party, but doesn't want to outright lie, its just indicative of where the kooks are going to take you.
Because the normal Republicans can see that in a state where the religious can reject physics and force their views on others, makes for a workforce that simply isn't worth shit for anything other than menial jobs.
And in many respects, already has.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Evolution is a conclusion based on facts.
It is not a fact in and of itself.
We can use evolutionary theory to make testable predictions. Animal breeders, regardless of their religious feelings use evolutionary theory to breed their animals (because money is at stake and any breeder that was too religious would go bankrupt and be selected out of the animal breeder population).
The development of new species has been observed in the real world among insects including specifically some mosquitoes in britain.
The theory of Evolution does not cover bio-genesis (the first living thing). Partially by definition.
The word theory is used today where the word "Law" used to be used. So the Theory of Gravity and the Law of Gravity are synonymous.
If we still used the word "Law", the "Law" of Evolution would be how we referred to it. The Theory of Evolution is a very strong construct.
Personally, I find the long term bacteria experiment the most interesting. It shows that multiple random mutations separated by thousands of generations which had no effect for thousands of generations were required to develop the ability to consume "Citrate" as a food. Very cool stuff.
Every generation has mutations. The average rate of 60 mutations among surviving humans compared to their parents has been observed. Most of those mutations have no immediate bad or good effect. But thousands of years later, they might result in higher or lower reproduction rates when a selective pressure is applied to the population.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Good, because if you were a Christian libertarian you'd be a complete fucking moron.
Well a true Christian libertarian differs from me only in terms of their viewpoint of the world around them. If somebody is a Christian libertarian, then they believe in their god, the bible, and Jesus, but doesn't believe that their beliefs should be law.
A professor of mine said something along the lines of, "Evolution is a fact -- but it's a lousy theory."
Your an idiot. Evolution has been proved if you would only read a little
Be more precise, please.
Evolution has been observed to occur, in nature, within our observational timescales. There's absolutely no question that evolution happens.
In addition, evolution provides the best available explanation for vast numbers of detailed observations of what we see in the fossil record, the relationships between current living species and many, many other aspects of the living world around us. Further, the explanatory power of evolution has been used countless times to make predictions about ancient and modern life forms, and has never been contradicted. The scientific support for evolution as an explanation for the development of life is extraordinarily broad and deep.
That said, no scientific theory is every "proved" in the sense that, say, a mathematical theorem is proved. Evolution is one of the most powerful and compelling theories in modern science; it's right up there with Newtonian mechanics in terms of the level of evidence... but there are still corners we don't understand and there may well be ways in which it's wrong. I strongly suspect that if it is wrong, it's wrong in the same way that Newtonian mechanics is wrong: it doesn't account for the extreme cases where we need to add in relativity or quantum mechanics, or both. But it's not totally inconceivable that some dramatically better explanation could arise that replaces evolution entirely (though said explanation would have to predict outcomes that look pretty much exactly like evolution).
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Besides, we cannot positively exclude the possibility that we are all power units in The Matrix, and everything we think we know is false. There is no good reason to think that this is true, but that is not sufficient (especially under the circumstances) to prove it false. The same is true for the religious explanations -- there is no evidence worthy of the term to support them, but provided you are willing to believe in an insane deity who built a deliberately deceptive Universe and who runs it strangely like a reality simulation for absurd purposes, you can't rule them out logically or empirically, you can only state that they are very unlikely to be true, in a very precise statistical sense. Evolution, on the other hand is very likely to be true in general even as almost any given particular theory of evolution is likely to be false, or at least incomplete. Not as likely as it is that gravitation is a true theory to a much, much higher degree of approximation, but still enough to be casually referred to as "fact", part of the self-consistent network of mutually supported scientific beliefs that represent a system that is at least nearly completely consistent with observational data across the board.
Solipsism cannot be logically or empirically ruled out. Magnetic monopoles cannot be ruled out. Absence of evidence is not sufficient evidence of absence, but it can be used to set probability bounds, and when there is no empirical support for a hypothesis that stands in the company of a near-infinity of alternative equally unsupported hypotheses, the comparatively small family of hypotheses that have reproducible empirical support and that are consistent with other observationally verified and mutually consistent hypotheses have a huge, huge edge in the probable truth game.
rgb
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
if the christian or jewish bible had any real meat to it, it would have told us things that could not possibly be known 'way back then' but are found to be true, today.
is there any single thing in any of those bibles that indicates there was true knowlege communicated to man that man could not have known on his own (or just made shit up)?
sure, there is no vocabulary for atoms and black holes and such, but there is also no real attempt - that I'm aware of - to say anything other than 'it was magic!' in any of those bibles. in fact, any of the world's bibles or religious papers.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Curiously, Carson did not reject natural selection – the engine that drives evolution – saying he “totally believe[s]” that useful genetic traits are more often passed on than less useful traits. But he could not draw the connection between that process acting over millennia and the human eye: “Give me a break. According to their scheme – boom, it had to occur overnight.”
So he doesn't believe evolution nor does he even know enough about it to understand that the evolution of the eye happened over time and does not have to happen overnight. The fact that he can be a doctor and hold these views just shows how extreme cognitive dissonance can be.
Aint that da truth!
Ugh - the human eye isn't even close to perfection. You want the raptors for that.
But the weird thing about fundies bringing up they eye, again, and again, and again, is that the irreducible complexity argument has been debunked, again and again, and again. But just like Chucky, it refuses to die.
For the uninitiated, an eye like ours would definitely not spring up overnight. But it didn't have to.
Light is electromagnetic energy. And since energy always has some sort of effect on the thing the energy strikes, wherther warming for IR, sensing the energy is a pretty normal thing to happen.
A lot of chemicals, fully natural, will undergo changes when hit by light. If an organism happens to have these chemicals within it, it might end up reacting in some way to light.
Sound far fetched? Well, it has happened, and still does.
There are bacteria and tiny little critters in the ocean that have day/night feeding cycles based on sensing light. No "eyes" as such, but a chemical reaction
There are relatively primitive critters like bivalves that have primitive eyes. Not focusing, but many have multiple eyes that sense light, and can determine the direction of the light, or more important, the direction where the light goes away, as in a predator.
Then from there, we run an entire gamut of eyes, all leading up to where we are today. In the end, although an amazing organ, it is anything but magic, and needs no divine intervention to exist.
Hey creationists - any other examples of irreduceable complexity you need skewered - again?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
It very much does. Evolution as a whole deals with how species change from one to the next. You're just picking an arbitrary cutoff point of where nonliving matter becomes nonliving matter and saying "ok this isn't evolution", even though there's an evolutionary process to get there.
There's an utterly obvious cutoff point, and it's not at all arbitrary. When you first get a self-replicating molecular structure that is sufficiently stable that some modifications don't destroy either its stability or its ability to replicate, that's where evolution begins. Until that point, you cannot have any evolution. Abiogenesis is the question of how that first self-replicating structure arose and what it looked like.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Most evolutionists seem to think they have the answers to everything as well. I always enjoyed asking questions in school that I knew were bedeviling scientists about evolution. Watching a know it all snobby professor dance around and then get pissed off about it was amusing. I'm happy to admit I really don't know how God created the Universe. I'm also happy to pick at know everything jerks who don't know how evolution created it either.
The reason I think being authoritarian is the best approach in certain times is because it objectively is. Let me explain:
I have a close family member who's a cancer survivor. She is a child. She received treatment and she is fine now (more or less).
There are sizable numbers of people who would have not treated her and instead prayed to God. She would have died. That is a fact. What ever else you believe or don't believe that is a fact.
This is not hypothetical. There have been cases where folks with strong religion had their children taken away from them because they choose to "Trust in the Lord".
I know you've got a dozen things to say to my story above about how/why it was OK to be authoritarian in the cases above. But the fact is you're being authoritarian. There is such a thing as an authority. It's possible to be right and it's possible to be wrong.
Then again you might just wash your hands. Sorting out right and wrong is _hard_. It requires real work and real compromises. It's much, much easier to just wash your hands and say "Oh fuck it, I don't want to impose my beliefs". It's especially seductive because it lets you ignore all the real world suffering by telling yourself you'd only make things worse. But that's a half assed cop out that doesn't save any lives.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Most evolutionists seem to think they have the answers to everything as well.
Calling some one an "evolutionists" in an attempt to reframe it as a mere belief rather than a theory that's stood the test of time is silly.
I always enjoyed asking questions in school that I knew were bedeviling scientists about evolution. Watching a know it all snobby professor dance around and then get pissed off about it was amusing.
Sounds like you had bad professors, or equally likely, you asking stupid questions that you thought were smart. Probably a combination of both.
I'm happy to admit I really don't know how God created the Universe I'm also happy to pick at know everything jerks who don't know how evolution created it either.
But you pretend to know that a God created everything. You probably pretend to know the exact nature of that God. But "evolutionist" are the know it all jerks.
Final thought. Not knowing everything is not the same as not knowing anything.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.