Evolution Teaching: Asinine, Unfocused and Erroneous. Time to get HOLISTIC!

Great Debates
21

Before trying to teach evolution of life it might be better to impart to a student some knowledge and understanding of the origin of the building blocks of life. How they came into existence and an idea of how long the process took. This would be most useful to someone encountering the concept of evolution for the first time.

If most people of school age already had some knowledge of how old the universe was and how galaxies came to be then, I agree, it would not be necessary to cover the topic in full. Unfortunately, only a minority of high school students have this knowledge so learning the subject from the ground up would be an improvement to the appraoach currently adopted.

Although the “processes” might be different, without the evolution of matter and stars, there could be no evolution of life. The word “evolution” is not reserved for the exclusive use of bio-evolutionists.

22

No, it portrays a grossly inaccurate creationist caricature of evolution. That’s the point wse’re trying to make here; your idea makes evolution easier to misunderstand.

23

My take is that evolution fits into the broader account of Natural History whose different aspects unfolded in parallel. To dismiss evolution as “Darwinism” does nothing to dispel the Big Bang, nor the 4.6 billion-year-old Earth, nor the ice age. These things are not “Darwinism” and yet they contradict the Bible. Instead of allowing the idea that “life came from nothing” to be singled out for ridicule, we should maintain that the development of life took place alongside many other events about which scientists know a great deal.

24

I’ll point out that you’re missing a step- the Creation of Life. The Abiotic Creation of life is not even a Theory, it’s a Hypothesis. So far, there is *no *scientific Theory of the appearance of Life. For all we know- Panspermia might be correct. Or even- a Greater Being. :dubious: Or Panspermia through the Agency of a Greater Being, who knows?

Have you seen that cartoon of a scientist with a blackboard of calculations and work, and in the middle it says “and here, a Miracle happens”. That’s about what we scientists have. Sceince is missing a critical step, sorry.

25

Do you believe that science is taught the same way in every high school in the country? Textbooks, approaches and techniques vary even from classroom to classroom within the same building — depending on the school system, the teacher, and the level of ability of the student, among other things. Certainly it’s going to vary across the country.

Would it be a grand thing if students leaving high school knew the history of the science of the earth “from the ground up”? Absolutely! It would be an incredible improvement!

It would also be just marvelous if they were familiar with every piece of important British and American literature, every principle of math, the details of every defining moment and turning point in American and world history, and so on. But that’s not what high school is about. Even in undergraduate school, we still take courses that say “a survey of…” and “an introduction to…”

26

http://www.artistmarket.com/artists/harris/pages/harris%20-%2001.htm

:wink:

27

True. Maybe it happened spontaneously, maybe it involved divine intervention, maybe it was a spore from space.

But there are enough known facts to confine it to a time frame of 3.9 to 3.5 billion years ago, so it’s a pretty narrow issue compared to the claims that are being made by Biblical creationists.

28

Fine, but what you then actually have is just a semantic argument, masquerading as a grand unifying theme.

Next up we combine mathematics, vehicle maintenance and architecture, because they all make use of the word ‘construct’.

29

THANK YOU! I’ve loved that cartoon for years and it is now my wallpaper.

When the OP said it was “time to get HOLISTIC!” did anybody else think we were supposed to pop a capsule of St John’s Wort and brew some chamomille tea before reading Darwin? No?

I’ll leave then.

30

I join dropzone in offering hearty thanks for finding that! :cool:

sqweels- sure, it blows away the Fundies. But it leaves Intelligent Design in.

31

Intelligent design is commonly thought to have happened during the development of life, not during abiogenesis only. Sure, someone or something could have designed the first DNA, but even if true the supposedly impossible to evolve structures the IDers like to talk about would still be impossible. I’d say that ID makes no sense if you think there is a young earth, except in the trivial sense that a creator deity is an intelligent designer. Lots of creationists seem to be using ID these days without even understanding what it means, to avoid using the term creation. A sad field indeed that can’t even keep its own terminology straight.

32

You’re welcome guys.

My google-fu was pretty good this morning. I wish it were that potent the other 364 days a week.

33

Damn, and I though my work-week seemed endless… :smiley:

34

Yeah…the year’s like one long week for me…and I never see Saturday. :slight_smile:

Why do you think I chose this name? heh

35

I think it’s actually that way on purpose*; if it can’t be adequately set forth, it can’t be properly criticised, and any criticism it receives can be met with plenty of weaselling (for which plenty of space has been left), or with insinuations that the critic must be intellectually inferior if it isn’t just obvious.

*Perhaps not actually on purpose - perhaps ID in its current popular form just happens to have been the most durable (because of it’s vagueness) out of a number of variants - perhaps in this sense it could be argued that ID evolved.

36

At this point in time, merely blowing away the fundies will do nicely. ID is a euphemism or smokescreen that they use to smuggle in creationism. I’m willing to entertain ID so long as it’s kept strictly within the context of the conventional scientific history of the Old Earth. “God of the Gaps” thinking may be frowned upon, but it sure beats singing fundamental-doodle all the day.

37

Absolutely not. Kids at a pretty young age can understand something like, “Bats have evolved many different traits that help them find food,” along with an explanation of the differences between fruit bats, insectivorous bats, and vampire bats. They’re not going to understand about amino acids at this stage. Kids aren’t pint-sized adults; they go through stages that limit what concepts they can grasp, and the idea of creatures adapting to their environment is a helluva lot easier to grasp than organic chemistry. 'Sides which, kids seem naturally interested in animals, whereas you’ll have a hard time finding a kid naturally interested in DNA.

Have you looked at how science is actually taught in this country? Start here. The recommended standards for K-4:

Emphasis added. Note the bolded stuff is evolution writ simple, described in a way that a six-year-old can understand. This is exactly how it should be done, IMO: kids should learn simple versions of such fundamental concepts at a very young age, and as they grow older, they should learn the details of such concepts.

I agree that science is generally taught poorly in this country. That may change in the next couple of years, as it becomes the subject of high-stakes testing; then again, it may simply stifle the good science teachers and encourage more rote memorization of science facts instead of encouraging the teaching of science skills and scientific thinking.

Daniel

38

Nature presents evolution to us in a more or less back-to-front fashion*, so that’s not a bad way to learn it.

*By which I mean you see the organisms and the way they fit in their environment, then you see the way they procreate, mutate and inherit, and you see how various environmental factors limit and control this. Then you can dig a bit and discover the biological mechanisms that drive, say, heredity, or mutation, at the same time you can dig physically, in the ground and discover fossil evidence of their ancestors, and you can scrutinise the genomes of living organisms for traces of inter-relatedness and ancestral legacy.

Backwards, starting with the simple, obvious stuff, is actually the completely natural way to discover/learn about evolution.

39

The fact of the matter is that life started. It definitely happened.

We don’t need to know precisely how it happened to be able to infer that the beginning of life, under a range of conditions, is as inevitable as a chemical reaction. (No, I did not say that life started as a chemical reaction).

It’s reasonable to be confident that the causes will be explained someday. In the meantime, there’s no need to bring in a metaphysical explanation.

40

But that contradicts your original argument that it all needs to be built up sequentially, step-by-step - each step dependent upon the previous one. Have you changed your mind?