I heard this story on XMPR last week. How thoroughly horrifying.
These are indeed dark times for thinking people…
Cartooniverse
( I suspect this will wind up in G.D. soon )
Ha! These are definitely going on my office door.
Cartooniverse, read more than just the first couple of those disclaimers…
What is your problem with the disclaimers?
Shouldn’t students be allowed to make up their own minds about whether or not to accept evolution?
I approached science class with an open mind and never ended up believing in evolution…anyway I don’t see how these disclaimers are bad.
Evolution is just a theory and not everybody believes in it, so what’s wrong with having a short disclaimer to address that?
Unless I missed it the stickers don’t say something like “Creationism is a much better theory…” if it did I could see your point but it seems harmless to me.
“This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered” how is that dark times for thinking people? :rolleyes:
I imagine that for most people, what really upsets them about this whole mess is the almost back-handed, dishonest way that the word “theory” is used.
A scientific Theory is far more supported by facts and evidence than the “theory” I came up with at 3 a.m. 10 years ago as to why people stutter (a traffic jam of unspoken syllables from words we turn into contractions or shortened versions before speaking), or the “theories” some of my coworkers came up with after a few hours around the bong. A scientific Theory only arises when scientists observe something, propose a hypothesis for why it happens, test it, find that the hypothesis satisfactorily explains the observations, and then continue to test & scrutinise the hypothesis over a long period of time. A Theory is the explanation behind a pattern of observable facts, an explanation which has no discrepancies that haven’t been explained, that withstands the test of time.
Many people who say evolution is “just a theory” are really using the word “theory” as if it were “hypothesis” - if evolution was still a hypothesis, and hadn’t been shown to be consistent with the progression of life forms time and time again, then I could understand dismissing it this way.
It is admirable that the sticker says:
but I don’t feel that obfuscating the nature of a scientific theory actually encourages critical thinking.
I don’t believe that evolution and a belief in the events described in Genesis are incompatible - evolution isn’t saying that god didn’t create life, it’s really just describing the way that life differentiated a horse from a donkey from a lizard from you and me. (In the interests of full disclosure, though, I’m an atheist.)
…
I like the rest of the stickers, though! Especially the one about gravity, I often use that example to show how silly it is to discount evolution as “just a theory” 
This post contains irony. Irony is a controvertial theory that has not been fully excepted by the comedic community. Many comedians disagree about the nature of irony. This post should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and then be completely ignored.
Because “just a theory” describes gravity and relativity, as well (among other things). The fact that these stickers single out a particular theory shows their true motivation isn’t one of fairness, but of defending their personal religious beliefs against science.
As far as “not everybody believes in it”, that should have no bearing at all. These are science books, and should represent the current body of scientific knowledge. Not all people believe that the earth is round or that we ever sent a man to the moon, but no one’s pushing to put disclaimers in geography or history books, which once again makes it clear that their true motivation is not simply to ensure that students have an open mind and examine others’ beliefs.
As the link in the OP says, if they’re going to require disclaimers about the theory of evolution, they also need to have disclaimers about the theory of gravity (which actually was disproved by Einstein) and the theory of special relativity and every other scientific theory and model, including the spherical Earth model and the heliocentric model of the Solar System.
The theory of evolution is a scientific theory that is well supported by evidence and is accepted by almost every working scientist (I can’t say every, because there are always a few cranks out there, but it’s damn near every) just like the theory of general relativity or the theory of quantum mechanics or germ theory. Singling out evolution for special disclaimers is an attempt to undermine students’ confidence in this specific theory and give them the erroneous impression that it, in particular, is on shakey ground within the scientific community, which it is not. Lots of people who don’t know much about science don’t beleive in evolution, but science isn’t a matter of popular vote. Science is done by people who are trained and knowledgable in their field, and they almost unanimously believe that the theory of evolution is correct.
It’s great to teach students to be skeptical and to question any scientific theory. In order for science to work at all, every scientific theory must constantly be questioned and tested by informed people operating in a scientific manner.
Exactly. Note that one of the stickers partway down the page reads:
The link leads to an explanation of the differences between scientific laws, hypotheses and theories, with an analogy to demonstrate the difference between a law and a theory.
I don’t think that any students who believe in evolution will stop believing in it after reading the disclaimer, I doubt they would even question evolution very long because after taking 9 seconds to read the sticker they have 9 months of pro-evolution teaching.
I never complained, I approached all my science textbooks with an open mind and still never gained a belief in evolution. If I can go through a whole semester and keep my beliefs then I know that students who accept evolution as fact will still do so after reading the disclaimers, in fact it may make their beliefs stronger.
My science teacher told me that in order to really study evolution one had to assume “no outside forces” so in other words no God and he never ended up under any scrutiny but these disclaimers (which can be peeled off) have everybody upset, what’s the frequency…? :dubious:
I think the stickers are more to help the students that *don’t * accept evolution, when they see this sticker that has been placed on their textbook by their school district they feel that their beliefs against evolution have some merit, which they should feel particularly if those beliefs are based on a strong religous foundation.
For some students whether or not they accept evolution as fact is the difference between them keeping a religous belief or not, people don’t usually come to school to be converted. My thought is that the stickers exist so that students will not blindly accept or reject evolution.
When a religous student studies the material and reads the disclaimer, he is reminded that he has an option of becoming less religous, *intergrating his faith with evolutionary principles or becoming more entrenched in his faith, the stickers are a tool to help with this process.
*The stickers say “psst! hey kid this evolution thing is a good scientific theory but it’s not the only one”.**not saying that is a bad thing
I would have put this in GD if I wanted a debate.
START, please open a new thread in GD if you must debate. I was only sharing some amusing thing I found, which is why this is in MPSIMS.
Was I the only person who thought the stickers were meant as a joke? I mean, when you see the last one on the page,
it’s hard to believe that the person who made them up meant anyone to take them seriously.
The misspellings are in the original text. Just so you know.
I’ve seen (not in person, Og bless, but on the news) an evolution sticker that was, if not word-for-word as in the OP’s link, pretty damn close. My understanding was that the stickers were meant to gradually increase in terms of A) humor and decrease in terms of B) odds of seeing them in a public school (text). I mean, for all people talk about “Theories aren’t proven,” the only scientific theory of which I am aware that gets so much flack from religious conservatives (if there’s another nontrivial group that wishes to be included on this side of things, let me know) is evolution. I’ve never heard of anyone seriously positing “We shouldn’t teach just gravity; it’s only a theory.”
Morgyn, if you follow the links in the page linked by the OP, you’ll find a scan of the original sticker (with wording of the first sticker on the page), and a link to a press release that contains a link to the decision of the Cobb County, GA school board to put stickers in science books which discuss evolution.
The rest of the stickers are, as punha says, parodies of the original.
Ah, I see what happened. I stopped reading at the last sticker and never even noticed that there was more on the page. Georgia, huh? The guy I was best friends in high school with lives in Georgia. I ought to ring him up one of these days. It’s been a while.
Their beliefs don’t have any merit, and the school has no place slyly endorsing them.
They are amusing (mildly), but this one is wrong:
The author appears to have confused natural selection with abiogenesis, and faith with stupidity.
But the theory of evolution is wrong because a few guys in white robes think people who wrote a bunch of letters and rants some 2,000 years ago that eventually was put together to make a bestseller were an educated bunch.
I think too that there is confusion over fact and theory. Scientists (by which I mean scientists who are involved in the field and are not seen as unmitigated crackpots by their collegues) accept gravity and evolution as observed facts, with huge amounts of data demonstrating the falling objects and descent with change have happened in the past and continue to happen. They have proposed the Theory of Gravity and the Theory of Evolution as explanations of the observed facts, to explain how the cannonball gets to the bottom of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and how dinosaurs become birds.
Creationists and others use scientific disputes over the details of the theory to try and discredit the fact.