Teaching science in schools

[zoogs]

Not everything's a matter of politics or opinion or belief, CN. Sometimes it's just a question of scientific literacy.

[C N Red]

Not everything's a matter of politics or opinion or belief, CN. Sometimes it's just a question of scientific literacy.

Scientific literacy unfortunately can conflict with spiritual beliefs and people will form their own thoughts and beliefs on what both teach and come to their own conclusions. Im christian but dont take everything the bible says as fact in a literal sense just as everything ive learned with my biology degree i dont always take as fact and literal when aspects of things havd never been proven. I like to have an open mind to both worlds.

 

Something i found online where people were asked if one can believe in creationism and evolution is an answer by one person. It basically explains kind of how i look at things.

 

"I don't think of it as evolution in the same way the evolutionists do, though.

 

I believe God created all that is seen & unseen.

 

Do things naturally evolve?

YES! And, we have plenty of proof for this. Some of it we have caused (Horses didn't ask us to ride them. Dogs didn't ask to live with us. Parakeets didn't beg us for cages).

 

Surely, the male peacock with the most beautiful feathers is going to attract many female peacocks. The 2year old male oriole is going to have pick among the finest females of his species...and so on.

 

Do I believe everything Darwin theorized? No. But, I don't discount him as a scientist for it. I pray for people to 'evolve'. Some do and some don't. With animals I believe their surrounding force evolution as we humans are causing them to thrive in conditions they wouldn't have had to prior to our 'progressive' movement.

 

So to answer as consisely as possible, I believe we were created and I believe we evolve gradually over time."

[Husker_x]

Not everything's a matter of politics or opinion or belief, CN. Sometimes it's just a question of scientific literacy.

Scientific literacy unfortunately can conflict with spiritual beliefs and people will form their own thoughts and beliefs on what both teach and come to their own conclusions. Im christian but dont take everything the bible says as fact in a literal sense just as everything ive learned with my biology degree i dont always take as fact and literal when aspects of things havd never been proven. I like to have an open mind to both worlds.

 

Something i found online where people were asked if one can believe in creationism and evolution is an answer by one person. It basically explains kind of how i look at things.

 

"I don't think of it as evolution in the same way the evolutionists do, though.

 

I believe God created all that is seen & unseen.

 

Do things naturally evolve?

YES! And, we have plenty of proof for this. Some of it we have caused (Horses didn't ask us to ride them. Dogs didn't ask to live with us. Parakeets didn't beg us for cages).

 

Surely, the male peacock with the most beautiful feathers is going to attract many female peacocks. The 2year old male oriole is going to have pick among the finest females of his species...and so on.

 

Do I believe everything Darwin theorized? No. But, I don't discount him as a scientist for it. I pray for people to 'evolve'. Some do and some don't. With animals I believe their surrounding force evolution as we humans are causing them to thrive in conditions they wouldn't have had to prior to our 'progressive' movement.

 

So to answer as consisely as possible, I believe we were created and I believe we evolve gradually over time."

 

Can you explain what it is the bible teaches about the natural world which is either lost on or superior to modern science? Additionally, can you explain how you concluded that the bible is a document even worth consulting on scientific matters? I'm especially interested in this "things unseen" part. That seemed especially vague.

 

In that quote by an unidentified person, you brought up a mistake from another thread: there is no such thing as an evolutionist. You don't have to add I-S-T onto every scientific theory you accept. I'm not a germ theorist, a gravitationalist, a relativist, or an evolutionist, even though I accept them all. Creationists like to misuse this word because it makes them feel--emotionally, desperately--that there are only two competing theories and you are free to choose whichever "world view" best suits you. Which is technically true, you can decide between them, free country and all that. Except reality is a bitch. And in reality, creationism is not classified as a theory; it can never be, because in all its myriad forms (Young Earth, Old Earth, Day-Age, Intelligent Design, Theistic Evolution, etc.) it is only ever the claim that magic is an explanation for some aspect of the natural world. That really is it. "I can't explain phenomenon X, therefore God/Magic did it." In your personal life you are free to call this untestable, untenable belief whatever you want--a theory, faith, absolute truth--but when you step into the arena of scientific discussion, the standards are a bit higher.

 

This person you quoted also said something mind-blowing. It's hard to tell whether he meant it as a joke, but when he said "I pray for people to evolve," the implication is that he means evolution is observable in the course of a single lifetime. (And he whispers to a nonexistent entity in the hopes of witnessing it.) This is absurd beyond description. Then he goes on to write some incoherent Glenn Beckish non sequitur about progressive (shield your eyes, children) human activity doing . . . something . . . uh . . . that is something to do with . . . evolution . . . I guess. If you mean the color of moths' wings change next to a coal plant spitting clouds of acrid smog into the air for decades, okay. How that explains dinosaurs --> birds is a mystery. I assume your source is aware that human beings have existed on this planet for, at most, a few hundred thousand years, and thus cannot account for the entire explanation for the diversity of life on the planet.

 

One final point. If we woke up tomorrow and found a chimpanzee skeleton from the Jurassic Period--something that would cause the theory of evolution to instantly implode--creationism would still be false. There is no debate between the two. There is nothing we can learn from creationism, because it is in no sense science and in no sense does it represent learning or progress. It's just the same repackaged crap all ancient peoples basically agreed on because they had no reliable method of explaining the natural world. It's also by definition unfalsifiable in that it appeals to an untestable supernatural force as the agent of creation and/or evolution. It's a waste of ink and oxygen.

[tschu]

You believe what you all want to and i will believe what i want. Done. Hate arguing about this sh#t cause everybody has different definitions for things and its useless to try and prove one right or wrong.

 

I dont believe in what many consider evolutionary theory where we all evolved from a single cell organism over time. I do believe in the concept of evolution as species adapting over time. Its not hard to understand if you pull your head out and think. I understand what others think, i just see it different. And im pretty sure science hasnt been lost on me with a BS in Biology.

 

http://www.talkorigi...ution-fact.html

 

Live and believe what you will and things will shake out how they shake out at the end. In the end thats all any of us can really do.

It's not up for belief. It's not a question of belief. Belief has zero to do with it. You're actively ignoring scientific evidence because you just arbitrarily choose that you don't like it? And you have a degree in biology? Yeah...sorry but your college education failed you based on what you've posted in this thread.

 

I'm sorry, science. I'm trying, science! I'm trying to fight the good fight!

[tschu]

Husker_x, +1. Very good post.

[ZRod]

Can we all agree that no one knows how the tides work? Tide comes in Tide goes out. You can't explain that!

[tschu]

Sometimes I wash my clothes with Tide. Seems to work okay I guess.

[C N Red]

Tschu-

 

Theres belief everywhere. Do you ever believe in the Huskers? Either way im not going to change anyones mind nor do i care to. Im just trying to explain what i believe. Some take all science as hard proof but many times you can find faults in what many try to sell as true. Its like stats, you make them support you depending on what opinion you are coming from. I take evolution and evolution theory separately. Im not saying im right or you're wrong, i just choose to believe and see things ive learned differently than you and probably many other people. Didnt think i'd get pummeled over trying to explain how, what, and why i believe in what i do.

 

Anyways, feel free to continue and belittle me, my education, and the way i choose to believe things. Carry on.

[zoogs]

Some take all science as hard proof but many times you can find faults in what many try to sell as true.

 

Eh, seems like there's a rather fundamental misunderstanding about how science works here. But that misunderstanding is one that can be corrected (without, by the way, encroaching into any spiritual domain). There's no analogy between the scientific understanding of the bedrock upon which biology rests, and sports journalist who doesn't understand math using statistics to write their op-ed pieces (which happens all the time). The fact that people do that doesn't undermine the scientific method, or chip away at the foundation of any well-understood scientific theory (a word which as I'm sure you know, does *not* mean 'Well, hey, we don't really know. Could be anything.') Seems like there are some semantics arguments elsewhere but that seems tedious to even get into

 

Props to you for remaining incredibly civil, by the way, and we can all use a reminder, from time to time, to learn from your example in these forums.

[C N Red]

Some take all science as hard proof but many times you can find faults in what many try to sell as true.

 

Eh, seems like there's a rather fundamental misunderstanding about how science works here. But that misunderstanding is one that can be corrected (without, by the way, encroaching into any spiritual domain). There's no analogy between the scientific understanding of the bedrock upon which biology rests, and sports journalist who doesn't understand math using statistics to write their op-ed pieces (which happens all the time). The fact that people do that doesn't undermine the scientific method, or chip away at the foundation of any well-understood scientific theory (a word which as I'm sure you know, does *not* mean 'Well, hey, we don't really know. Could be anything.') Seems like there are some semantics arguments elsewhere but that seems tedious to even get into

 

Props to you for remaining incredibly civil, by the way, and we can all use a reminder, from time to time, to learn from your example in these forums.

Thanks zoogs. Hey, i understand as well as anyone that science is based on hard scientific proof. I get it, i learned it.

 

Im not refuting evolution as its definition being "A gradual process in which something changes into a different and usually more complex or better form. The process of developing." Like animals in the same species having different camoflage depending on environment they live in.

 

Im just not completely sold on the Theory of Evolution having the definition: " Evolutionary theory is defined as a number of explanations that attempt to explain the occurrence of natural selection. It is called a theory because certain claims made by evolutionists have not been proven as correct. This theory was first put forward by Charles Darwin, who proposed that all life originates from the same simple ancestors and is related in one way or another." For instance, humans came from, or are at least related to, single celled organisms.

 

 

I guess to me the two are not necessarily the same as per definitions given. Thats really all i was trying to impart. My beliefs i guess lie somewhere between creationism and evolution. Some people want to put a title on it like maybe theistic evolution may explain me the best, but i dont honestly think theres just one "title" out there that envelopes all my beliefs, but theistic evolution probably comes the closest.

 

Heres a link to an interesting article talking about creationism, abiogenesis, and evolution.

http://www.examiner.com/article/creationism-evolution-abiogenesis-and-the-big-bang

[tmfr15]

CN Red... a couple of points.

 

First off, science doesn't deal in absolutes. It deals with theories as being the best models to understand things. A theory isn't an unfounded idea that some scientist has put out there. There is a process by which observations are made, those observations are tested, results recorded, papers written, pier review, a series of attempts at falsification and so on until a robust theory is developed. That operates as the best model for understanding. If anyone can disprove it, they are invited to do so. If no such falsfications are put forth, then the theory continues. It's a theory as opposed to absolute fact because that allows room for the possibility of new evidence at some point. Evolution is a robust theory. Those who want to take it out of the schools need only disprove it. That's the mountain to climb. It's a steep climb, but that is the task. The idea of saying, well, the Theory of Evolution could be wrong there for don't teach it fails in that it represents a common misunderstanding of how science works.

 

On the evolving better point, animals, plants and other living things on this rock do not evolve to better. They evolve to fit or they cease to exsist. As the atmosphere changes, living organisms evolve. Natural selection is the name given to this process where by living things that don't fit the environment die out and those that do continue on.

 

It might be possible for an evolutionary process to take place where one organism survives the environment by developing certain traits. And that, after some other changes in the environment, those changes end up being the death of the organism later on down the line.

 

If it was a situation where living organisms evolved "better" than those organisms would likely always be favored going forward. We don't see that happening with evolution as we understand it.

[zoogs]

Sorry, I had to.

 

"Top 5 IMO -- would go again"

Pier Review by Johannes Kepler

 

The history of our species is pretty interesting. There's that one guy recently, who I think actually has a "Dr." in front of his name and is labeled an "expert" on something or other in the articles, who postulated that humans came into being from the mating of chimpanzees and pigs. That appears to be totally idle speculation based on a two external characteristics (pigs' eye color and hairless skin) and ignoring what I think is a pretty darn broad consensus on the common descent of humans and modern-day primates (rather than 'from').

[knapplc]

I'm sorry, science. I'm trying, science! I'm trying to fight the good fight!

 

[BigRedBuster]

I tried my best not to comment in this thread but....finally.....I'm diving in.

 

I'm in the same boat as whoever said above that there really isn't some label that best describes my feelings on this topic. I believe in science and have no problem with the subjects that it has proven. I also don't have a problem with the thought there is a higher power that has it's hand in it.

 

I personally really don't want Christianity to be taught in school simply because they would find a way to do a pathetically horrible job of it. AND, it's not their job to teach that stuff and I get sick and tired of religious people who act like the world is falling apart simply because their school might not pray or teach creationism. However, I would have a problem if my kid came home telling me that his science teacher told him/her that all religion is full of crap and you shouldn't believe a word of it.

 

The teacher's job is to teach the subject at hand. There would be no reason to bring their own particular feelings about religion into the class room.

 

I would have just as big of a problem with a minister that tries to teach my children that science is a bunch of hog wash. You don't need to discredit one to believe in the other.

 

My personal feelings are that there are certain things that science just has not been able to prove to me personally to prove there isn't a higher power involved. That is my personal opinion and I have no problem if you disagree or agree.

[ZRod]

My personal feelings are that there are certain things that science just has not been able to prove to me personally to prove there isn't a higher power involved. That is my personal opinion and I have no problem if you disagree or agree.

I think that's an easy conclusion to come to. Personally I have yet to hear a valid explanation of how there is something instead of nothing. I think Knap referenced Lawrence Krauss in another thread about something from nothing, but I don't really find his argument fulfilling. He's definition of nothing is, I think, dark matter and dark energy. Which to me is something not nothing. I think the more we learn about our world and universe the more "god" becomes a receding idea used to justify things we don't have an explanation for yet. To me it would be much more beautiful and elegant if this "creator" set all his rules (that we know as physics, biology, etc.) and then just said go (the big bang) and left everything else alone, and it's played out the way it has.

 

 

 

Here's my question, where to neanderthals and the like fit in with the creationist view?