Should children be forced to learn evolution?

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
If the kid takes biology, he needs to learn evolutionary theory. Otherwise not probably.

Why exactly? I studied biology at high school when being taught evolutionary theory wasn't yet in fashion. Learning about all the different species and about their various distinguishing characteristics are not in any way impacted by an umbrella understanding of the interconnectedness between them. In terms of relevance in understanding the differentiation and specialization that occurs in the underlying cellular processes that govern all living organisms, knowledge of evolutionary theory makes for great dinner conversation, but hardly adds real depth or increased understanding of biological process.

Considering the rate at which dominant paradigms change in the field of evolutionary theory, why would you lumber anyone with a knowledge base that is under such constant revision?

For the same reasons that you would probably not teach high school students quantum physics or cosmology, you should not teach evolutionary theory other than making a passing reference to it. Maybe in a thousand years when the dust settles and the consensus of what it is has become more consistent, then maybe.

We teach physics and math to high school students based on concepts that are provable and that can be reliably demonstrated. We teach biological sciences that lead to an understanding of cells and the underlying processes that govern living organisms in a systematic and consistent manner that allows medical professionals, veterinarian specialists and agrarian experts to produce predictable results, when it comes to the intervention of disease, or the production of more bountiful crops.

For all the inconsistency among those in the forefront of the field of evolutionary theory, why would you teach it to anyone other than make passing reference to it, lt alone force anyone to learn about it?

You may as well teach courses in random speculation where the topic of the day can be drawn out of a hat!

Originally posted by kmax87
Why exactly? I studied biology at high school when being taught evolutionary theory wasn't yet in fashion. Learning about all the different species and about their various distinguishing characteristics are not in any way impacted by an umbrella understanding of the interconnectedness between them. In terms of relevance in understanding the differentiation an ...[text shortened]... well teach courses in random speculation where the topic of the day can be drawn out of a hat!

Missy, you're back in town!

Granny.

Originally posted by kmax87
Why exactly? I studied biology at high school when being taught evolutionary theory wasn't yet in fashion. Learning about all the different species and about their various distinguishing characteristics are not in any way impacted by an umbrella understanding of the interconnectedness between them. In terms of relevance in understanding the differentiation an ...[text shortened]... well teach courses in random speculation where the topic of the day can be drawn out of a hat!

Evolution, as it is taught in schools makes little more than passing reference to it. I don't know the American curriculum, but when I was in school, all we were taught was basic natural selection, it takes about a paragraph to get the concept across. From there, biology continued as normal. It's like your example of physics. In school chemistry and physics, kids are taught the Bohr model of the atom even though it has been conclusively shown to be false. Why? Because as a model it is simple to understand, it works in most cases and the only impact a deeper understanding of the atom would have on people is if they were continuing to a career in the area, hence they learn the orbital theory in college. Same with evolution, the changes being made to evolutionary theory with new insight are very much on the front end of the theory, with virtually no effect on the core principle of natural selection.
Finally, a basic understanding of natural selection helps even a student biologist when it comes to understanding why certain species exist today while otehrs have died out.

Originally posted by agryson
Finally, a basic understanding of natural selection helps even a student biologist when it comes to understanding why certain species exist today while otehrs have died out.

I can understand natural selection as a process and I don't think any one reasonable person could argue its basic premise, that those most suited to a set of environmental factors will prosper while those incapable of adapting to those circumstances die out. Its when natural selection which btw is the most common sense part of evolutionary theory is used as a springboard to suggest that with a bit of random mutation the adaptability of a particular species then gives rise to a slightly different one that then goes on the form a whole new class of animal that I say whoa hold your horses there.

The smoking gun of evolutionary theory has always been these common ancestors that bridge various species. They are presented as if they were unique and required to facilitate the emergence of a new species, yet with each passing year paleontologists discover the coexistence of species in the same strata of rock that were somehow as initially postulated supposedly separated by millions of years of evolutionary process.

Its not a wonder that at the cutting edge of evolutionary theory no one talks of an evolutionary tree anymore, but refer to an evolutionary lawn! It seems that the more fossil evidence is collected the more it appears that all of the species were present on the earth at roughly the same time, such that if evolutionary processes were to have occurred at all, they would have occurred over a very short space in time and not the millenia as formerly postulated!

Originally posted by kmax87
I can understand natural selection as a process and I don't think any one reasonable person could argue its basic premise, that those most suited to a set of environmental factors will prosper while those incapable of adapting to those circumstances die out. Its when natural selection which btw is the most common sense part of evolutionary theory is used as a ...[text shortened]... ould have occurred over a very short space in time and not the millenia as formerly postulated!

It seems that the more fossil evidence is collected the more it appears that all of the species were present on the earth at roughly the same time, such that if evolutionary processes were to have occurred at all, they would have occurred over a very short space in time and not the millenia as formerly postulated!

What? No. Where are you getting this nonsense from?

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
[b] It seems that the more fossil evidence is collected the more it appears that all of the species were present on the earth at roughly the same time, such that if evolutionary processes were to have occurred at all, they would have occurred over a very short space in time and not the millenia as formerly postulated!

What? No. Where are you getting this nonsense from?[/b]

Show me yours I'll show you mine!

Originally posted by kmax87
Show me yours I'll show you mine!

My what?

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
My what?

Sources for your opinions in a highly contested area.
It wouldn't matter who I quoted as mine, if you look far enough someone will be there denouncing them as an apologist or whatever. Stephen J Gould for arguments sake can be used as a source to support the Cambrian explosion of life and talk of an evolutionary lawn, but detractors of the Gould will say that he is just a populist who is tolerated by the professionals only because he at least bats on the same side against creationism.

If you want to believe algorithms of existence that are based on cranes building cranes and your belief is bolstered only by the fact that because we exist the only rational mechanism that could have arisen is some repeatable process that could have made all this possible, then regardless of all the nay saying that evolutionary theory is more than metaphysics and wishful thinking, the fact is the only thing dangerous about Darwin's idea is that so many people are willing to accept it.

What we have is simply proof by no other allowable alternative. Disallow God and creationism or ID by all means if your world view includes a distinction of Non Overlapping Magesteria between science and religion. But if in separating faith based belief systems from scientific reason we then allow a model or theory to become established that requires a suspension of disbelief at almost every turn yet is not discredited only because it purports to be the only logical truth then all we have established is a circular belief system that has as its cornerstone the view that because we are here and because we are not created then some process allowed us to develop this way. Whether we can explain the process or not is irrelevant but because we will not accept a supernatural alternative to it, we will entertain only those theories and postulates that start with randomness and time.

In fact what is actually being said, is that evolution doesn't have to be proven. The fact that we exist proves that it happened. To believe anything else is stupid so by that determination everything else becomes non rational and only in the realm of spirituality and metaphysics.

At some point though your cycle of logic will always dump you at a point of accepting some qualifying assumption. People dismiss a belief in a creator God because who or what caused that creation? If you ask evolutionists questions on origins they say, well that's not important, we don't care how or why there were exactly the right proportions or concentrations of the right sorts of molecular building blocks to fire up life, the fact that we are here now, is enough explanation that this earth had just the right preconditions, so that whether it was one in a 10 to the power 256 or greater the odds of it happening, the fact that it did is all that matters.

Why is that not an impressive reason to accept evolutionary theory as science? Why does it, the more you analyze it, sound just as circular and just as self serving as creationism? Why then if we are to junk the belief of one, do we uphold the other as science?

Originally posted by kmax87
Sources for your opinions in a highly contested area.
It wouldn't matter who I quoted as mine, if you look far enough someone will be there denouncing them as an apologist or whatever. Stephen J Gould for arguments sake can be used as a source to support the Cambrian explosion of life and talk of an evolutionary lawn, but detractors of the Gould will say tha ...[text shortened]... eationism? Why then if we are to junk the belief of one, do we uphold the other as science?

Well...
"They are presented as if they were unique and required to facilitate the emergence of a new species, yet with each passing year paleontologists discover the coexistence of species in the same strata of rock that were somehow as initially postulated supposedly separated by millions of years of evolutionary process"
that sounds a bit more like a statement of fact than opinion, especially the last bit. The evolutionary tree is very well worked out, yes a species needs to be shifted up or down as new evidence comes to light, but the basis, natural selection (which relies on difference and mutation, mutation being something you also called into question?!?) is sound and logical. Also, the whole idea of sporadic bursts of evolution in geologically short timescales (remember that, evolution is measured on a geological timescale, a million years is nothing in evolutionary terms). Look at us, less than a million years ago, it was neandarthals and us, as soon as we got bipedal (about 3m years ago) our advantages over the environment allowed our species to become dominant in a blink of an eye. So I think your confusing the sporadic nature of evolutionary developments for an evolutionary lawn.

As for your other points on evolutionary theory being tantamount to a faith system in itself, with, as you seemed to be inferring (though I may be wrong on this bit) about as much validity as religious belief due to its circular reasoning, well there's a slight problem there in your comparison.
Belief in a God, (generally) provides the answer to both the creation of life in the first place followed by the explanation for the existence of so many species. God gives you two for the price of one. The problem for science is that no process which describes speciation (which I think we can all agree requires replication) can describe the origins of life because evolution or any other theory, whatever it is which describes speciation, requires life first. To a scientist, the process of life developing (no matter the process, be it natural selection or aliens selectively breeding us, whatever you want to come up with yourself.) is one thing, while the first moment of life coming into being is another process altogether, generally accepted as a chemical one.

Anyway, it's not that hard to create life, all you need is a small bunch of replicating molecules (amino acids have been found in interstellar dust clouds, so they're not that hard to make) and probably a soapy solution to form mycelles that the chemicals can proeect themselves with. The earth is about 4 or 4.5 billion years old, it took about 1 or 1.5 billion years for the first cell to appear, another 2 billion before they moved onto multicellular organisms. Try thinking of how big a billion years is, it just becomes a statistical matter. Which is why evolutionists, not being chemists, generally use the anthropic principle, but most chemists should probably be able to tell you the basic bits you need are pretty simple.

Originally posted by agryson

Anyway, it's not that hard to create life, all you need is a small bunch of replicating molecules (amino acids have been found in interstellar dust clouds, so they're not that hard to make) and probably a soapy solution to form mycelles that the chemicals can proeect themselves with. ........ most chemists should probably be able to tell you the basic bits you need are pretty simple.

And theres the rub, for such a simple process, ie the creation of life, unless I get the meaning of "its not that hard to create life.." wrongly, your and every other evolutionists glib assurance that once you have a critical mass of amino acids the rest becomes a statistical certainty is belief in God of the highest order. Random groupings of amino acids of questionable chirality do not simply magically form into a cell which is its own factory. Statistically the chance of that happening is off the chart so using the notion of a probabilistic outcome of life occurring by chance based purely on the possible presence of its constituent building blocks is a crystal balling of the most inventive kind. Equivalent analogies would be to stumble across the rock-carved rose-red city of Petra in Jordan and reflect that given a multiverse of infinite opportunity on some planet somewhere this ingenious temple city could have been hewn out of the rock simply by the action of the wind. If people scoff and offer skepticism and disbelief you simply wack on the notion of infinite possibility and say it took billions of years.

Take a look at a lower probability possibility to life forming propitiously out of the presence of its constituent chemicals.

http://www.atlastours.net/jordan/petra.html

Originally posted by kmax87
And theres the rub, for such a simple process, ie the creation of life, unless I get the meaning of "its not that hard to create life.." wrongly, your and every other evolutionists glib assurance that once you have a critical mass of amino acids the rest becomes a statistical certainty is belief in God of the highest order. Random groupings of amino acids of ...[text shortened]... t of the presence of its constituent chemicals.

http://www.atlastours.net/jordan/petra.html

"your and every other evolutionists glib assurance that once you have a critical mass of amino acids the rest becomes a statistical certainty is belief in God of the highest order"
Well, no, God and statistical models aren't really in the same field at all. To be convinced (convinced, not believe, that'll become important later on) in the spontaneous creation of life from its constituent chemicals, I need to see how a living cell works, find the simplest individual components (strip it down basically, air conditioning isn't necessary for a car to run) and see if they can exist individually when not in a living cell. Amino acids have been found even in carbon poor environments, soap and water can provide the mycelles for the cell membranes (proteins act as soap molecules, forming the same mycelles, so step one leads logically onto step two) after that it's just a matter of replication, which is difficult in a bubble like that but probably started off like yeast, just multiply inside the cell and it'll bud out randomly before a process was stumbled upon that did it better.
There, all the basics of life, after that it's natural selection, which you saw as the only common sense part of evolution. As for God, well, all that says is "poof" and there you have the life, the universe and everything. Sorry, but I think you can see what I'm getting at here.
Also, I didn't simply whack on the infinite possibilities and billions of years, there really are a lot of possibilities, several good candidates in this solar system alone, 4.5 billion years with a single bacteria replicating every 20 minutes, so you can imagine how fast simpler basic molecules can do it (we're talking fractions of seconds here). I didn't just make up the planets and the age of the universe (as you suggest is reasonable to believe that someone did a long time ago).
If I was just making up the 4.5 billlion years thing, or the existence of other planets, then you might have a point, but I'm not, so you don't.

Originally posted by kmax87
And theres the rub, for such a simple process, ie the creation of life, unless I get the meaning of "its not that hard to create life.." wrongly, your and every other evolutionists glib assurance that once you have a critical mass of amino acids the rest becomes a statistical certainty is belief in God of the highest order. Random groupings of amino acids of ...[text shortened]... t of the presence of its constituent chemicals.

http://www.atlastours.net/jordan/petra.html

In any case, evolutionists don't say anything about the creation of life, and if it were to be taught in schools then the origin question wouldn't come up. It wasn't in my biology class. I specifically asked the question and my teacher said that that was chemistry, not biology. So I don't see what your problem with the kids going to school to learn about it is, when at the end of the day they're learning only natural selection (which you see as the common sense bit of evolution... though I don't really know what otehr bits you might be talking about...) and the origin can be left to the parents. The bigger issues are generally left til college. If the parents disagree with what's being taught then let them present their evidence against if it's so much stronger, surely their arguments can hold up against a 15 minute paragraph in the bio book?

Originally posted by agryson
"your and every other evolutionists glib assurance that once you have a critical mass of amino acids the rest becomes a statistical certainty is belief in God of the highest order"
Well, no, God and statistical models aren't really in the same field at all. To be convinced (convinced, not believe, that'll become important later on) in the spontaneous creati stence of other planets, then you might have a point, but I'm not, so you don't.

However you try and arrange your argument you are still constructing a room with 50 monkeys randomly punching typewriter keys and ending up with Shakespearian sonnets.

Simply calling some stripped back cellular organism simple does not make it so. You expect a suspension of disbelief that somehow not only do our amino acids have to be assembled together in the right order, they have to help form dna and rna molecules which are actually the means for the right types of amino acids to be sequenced. But you need dna first and a whole bunch of enzymes for your amino acids to be formed so you end up going around in a circle putting the cart before the horse before the cart and somehow the rider is supposed to just jump on in the middle of this juggling and get it all to work. So you need rna which provides a template for the formation of your dna which is the template for the right forms of amino acids to be sequenced.

Its like showing you pictures of the twin towers lying in rubble at ground zero and reversing the video to show them standing proud and tall and you saying as long as you have a big enough pile of rubble, given enough time you will have two majestic symbols of western capitalist democracy.

One of the most successful and pervasive ideas in the establishing of evolutionary theory has been this notion of a simple cell. It totally misrepresents the incredibly convoluted layering of systems and subsystems that are required to be present for the whole thing to function, yet by creating this 'simple' base unit, evolutionary theorists have managed to subvert reason, only because they have languaged and infinitely complex self replicating machine as being simple.

Next time you go online to DELL see how you go buying that self programming pc you've always wanted.

For an evolutionist to claim that there are simple life forms implies a certain lack of complexity in the most basic of cellular organisms. Making that assertion unchallenged has helped establish a speculation industry that can create any plausible reality on any reasonable sounding mechanism. Just add time, most people beleive thats all it would take.

Its like white supremacists such as the KKK claiming in the 19th century that Blacks were inferior human beings without the capacity for intelligent pursuits as were white people. Because they held sway in an era when whites held the(pardon the pun) whip hand, did it actually prove their point? How damaging was their assertion though? And to think eugenics followed on from the theories espoused by evolutionists and those who thought they saw natural selection at work in the dominance of the white western races.

If for no other reason than the science that helped establish evolution was also the basis for embedding and justifying racism amongst those who were too insecure of their *edit[imagined]factual superiority I will always remain a skeptic of the theoretical claims of evolutionists.

Originally posted by serigado
It's tough to hold the whole world on one's shoulders.[/b]

Indeed. And it got even tougher when Atlas Shrugged.

Originally posted by kmax87
Sources for your opinions in a highly contested area.
It wouldn't matter who I quoted as mine, if you look far enough someone will be there denouncing them as an apologist or whatever. Stephen J Gould for arguments sake can be used as a source to support the Cambrian explosion of life and talk of an evolutionary lawn, but detractors of the Gould will say tha ...[text shortened]... eationism? Why then if we are to junk the belief of one, do we uphold the other as science?

Highly contested? Not by scientists in relevant fields.

Which opinion of mine did you want a source for? You referred to fossil evidence and what it implies. I want to know what your logic is so I can either 1) challenge it or 2) accept it. As it is now you're just ranting and spewing unsubstantiated scientific claims.