Only for verrrry small values of “teach”.
I teach college students. At a school. I just got done teaching Genesis. In Confirmation class, inside a Lutheran church. I think the difference is crucial.
Oh, and we do teach alternate views of Creation (my favorite’s the exploding pumpkin and we are all the seeds… and some got burnt and turned black).
But I’m careful to call them Creation Stories… “theory” is a scientific term that does not mean “a guess that I really wish were true”.
So what does science teach us about creation? That we came from Apes? Is that the best we can do?
We really don’t know and until we do we should keep an open mind.
Amen! Put them in power and they are all the same. After Reagan I really started to notice that party alignment meant little or nothing. I can’t stand Jean Shaheen anymore even though I voted for her. Is it Washington that corrupts them or do they just sell out?
That is interesting, and pretty much means my point about overrepresented groups in the poll doesn’t matter.
Genesis is taught in schools - by English and history teachers. It’s a historic work of fiction, like Paradise Lost or The Canterbury Tales. The problem is not teaching Genesis in schools - it’s teaching it in science classes.
How can you do better than the truth? Sure, science doesn’t have all the answers, but it has plenty, and the gaps in our knowledge are immaterial. Don’t believe in gravity either? Tough - you’ll still fall.
In any case, we didn’t “come from apes”. We are apes - members of the biological order of primates.
This really indicates that you don’t understand evolution AT ALL, and I would recommend that you read the numbers of very interesting and informative threads available on this website regarding the mechanisms of evolution.
Of course, evolution does not address “creation.” In other words, it does not address what is called abiogenesis, the formation of life.
What evolution DOES address is the mechanisms of change in organisms over time. And it’s a scientific theory (as well as fact) because it meets the definitions of a scientific theory - testable, falsifiable, etc. Again, there are many excellent threads on this board that contain better explanations than I can offer, explanations from real live scientists.
In SCIENCE class, we should teach SCIENCE. Creationism and/or Intelligent Design are not SCIENCE - they are religious stories and therefore valid in a religious setting. Not in a SCIENCE class.
Apes and man share a common ancestor, according to everything we know(fossil records, DNA evidence). And yes, a stringent, honest attempt to interpret everything we know to be true, while realizing we must always be open to finding and interpreting new data, is very much the best we can do. You are acting as though you don’t want to learn. You’re handwaving away significant scientific evidence and holding it equal to the story of Genesis, which reads like a parable.
BTW, I thought I might mention here that there are scientists who believe in God, just in case you might think that God and science are an either/or proposition. Some folks think that acknowledging science means the death of religion. For some people, perhaps. Others choose to see science as a means to learn about the world, and the universe. If you keep an open mind, as you advocate, you might see that learning about God’s creation could be one more way to understand God.
I’m not a religious man, but if there are things that make me wonder if there is a god, they aren’t found in old, self-contradictory texts, but in a microscope, and a telescope. Honestly, the Krebs cycle seems like a miracle to me, I don’t need water into wine.
We really don’t know what? We don’t know that there is a consistent fossil record laid down in geological layers supported by a radiological record consistent with DNA evidence? God put the physical evidence there for you to use. Do you think you should ignore it?
“Creation” doesn’t have a scientific meaning, so science doesn’t teach us anything at all about it. Scientific method can tell us some things about the origin of the universe, and that’s a separate question from the origin of life on earth, and THAT’S a separate question from the origin of species. The latter is the thing that scientific method has already told us the most about. Humans and apes had a common ancestor. All species are commonly descended from the first organisms.
Actually we do really know. We aren’t guessing. But as long as you wnat to keep an open mind, how open are you willing to keep it? Are you open to Aztec creation myths, the Matrix, the Demiurge? What are you willing to rule out prima facie, and why?
Any poll that doesn’t include two other, separate questions:
isn’t a poll that should be extrapolated from.
Those both fall comfortably under “not sure”.
Not when someone grabs the not sure demographic to their side in order to skew debate one way or the other.
The “not sure” is significant when it’s something like “Does the President want the terrorists to win?”
ETA if you don’t care to answer, you don’t have to.
Again, not if the “not sure” really means “I don’t care or I don’t know”
It means exactly the same as “I don’t know,” and if you don’t want to answer, you don’t have to.
If you actually don’t care whether the President wants the terrorists to win, that’s fine, but that’s a separate question from whether you think he wants to. It doesn’t belong as an option to the question because it’s not an answer to the question.
Fair point.
Are you really debating that the “not sure” demographic is synonymous with Yes or No (as the case may be)?
Not sure is not the same as I don’t know. One implies a knowledge of the subject, the other is answering truthfully that they don’t know.
I don’t understand what you’re asking here. “Not sure” is an answer to a question, not a demographic.
How is confessiing a lack of knowledge different from saying you don’t know?
He said “implies a knowledge”, not “implies a lack of knowledge”
Evolutionary processes are understood a little more deeply than that. And it’s a far more interesting story than some creation myth. But what do you mean “best”? You expected to be the descendant of a spiffier creature? What is it about being descended from, say, seabass that would be better?
But we shouldn’t pretend an opinion has merit just because someone holds it. Nor do I see a reason to think this universe creator would have anything to do with what Christians or Jews or Muslims or Hindus believe. Even if we grant you the assumption that there’s a god, why should we take the word of Christians as to what, if anything, this god thinks and does?
Well, I don’t know about blacks, but on the question of 9/11, 61% of Democrats not sure Bush didn’t know about 9/11. 35% believed he knew in advance, which mirrors the 36% of Republicans that believed Obama wasn’t born in the US.