16 Percent Of US Science Teachers Are Creationists

Ray Comfort. Watch his video on youtube and imagine that it's ... something else and it gets a lot funnier.

Are you saying the Flying Spaghetti Monster has not been disproved?

Great; I would be hard pressed to provide evidence as I ate it all last night.

Tell us what predictions you consider it reasonable to make from the proposition that there is a Flying Spaghetti Monster, and we will be able to test the thesis.

May his noodly appendages caress you.

Since when did evolution become a proven fact? I thought it was still a theory?

By your specious counter: since when is your existence a so-called "proven fact"? I thought your existence was so-called "still a theory".

If you are talking to me Chumly, you are putting words in my mouth I think. :wink:

My existence can be proven quite easily, just as yours can. So I think I'm missing your point.

Go ahead and prove your existence is a so-called "proven fact".

May the sauce be upon him.

I wonder if we could get a poll indicating how many teachers think it's ok to sleep with their students.

Seems like could be a large number,

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=39783


and I think it's more dangerous to the kids than that their teacher might be (gasp!) a creationist.

The face of ignorance wears many masks.

There are many rules that we expect people to abide. It is not an "either , or situation". PErhaps RL has problems walking and chewing gum so he is unable to understand what we xpect of people , vis a vis, our code of laws.
Does RL know that we frown on murder and robbery also?

First of all, many of those women were accused and not convicted, so it's reasonable to assume that at least some of them are innocent, in which case it's practically a crime that they now have their pictures plastered onto a web page along with convicted offenders.

Putting that aside, I agree that Creationism has about as much to do with a child's education as sexual predation does.

Alright, I'm going to assume you're serious here. I'm not trying to be insulting, but I'm always surprised when people say that kind of thing, since it's all over da interwebs as to why this distinction is misleading.

I'm going to set it up in numbered points to keep myself organized and the explanation simple.

In regards to strict scientific terminology:
1. a "fact" is a data or direct observations, observations so confirmed by repeated experiment that one looks very silly when doubting them in a scientific context. An example would be that say... dry maple leaves burn when lit on fire. I've simplified this, of course, but this is the type of thing I'm talking about. Simple observation, confirmed many times, very direct.

2. a "theory" is a scientific hypothesis or set of hypotheses that is put into a general statement. A theory tends to draw from a fairly wide range of confirmed hypotheses, facts, models, etc, and the 'theory of evolution', as is usually stated, is a very general scientific hypothesis. There are more specific theories, for example those that make up make up evolutionary theory, all of which then feed back into the general theory of evolution. It gets a bit confusing, but the basic point is that it's higher up on the structure of scientific hypotheses than most when it comes to how general a statement is.

The entire point of a theory is to explain a large set of data and confirmed hypotheses.

3. a "law" is a more specific statement or hypothesis concerning very specific phenomena, for which conditions are usually stated. Not only this, it is again one which is confirmed by many observations. They do tend to be well-confirmed, leading people to accidentally attribute greater certainty to laws than theories entirely by label, which is not so.

In common vernacular:

1. a 'fact' is something which is substantiated or essentially 'true' or accurate. It's fairly similar to the scientific version, but not so much that they are truly interchangeable.

2. a 'theory' is like a hunch or a guess. When your car breaks down you say you have a 'theory', often based on little actual testing, etc. This is much, much different from the scientific version.

3. a 'law' is a principle which cannot be violated without consequences. Rather than describing phenomena, it sets up an a priori rule of behavior. This is essentially the opposite of a scientific law.

So, now hopefully you can see the differences between these words. Laws are not automatically more confirmed or accurate than theories, facts are incorporated into both (in the scientific sense) but are not synonymous with either one (scientifically). Combining scientific terminology (s) with common vernacular (c), we can easily and validly make this statement: the theory of evolution is a fact (c) and a theory (s). It is something so confirmed by observations that it is most certainly accurate, or true. It is also a scientific theory.

All of those silly laws you hear about teaching evolution as a theory don't damage the science one bit nor should they cast aspersions on the theory of evolution's validity. Of course, there's often a lot of BS riding along with those bills that do damage science education.... :/

Finally, the word 'proven' muddles things as technically-minded people like scientists, mathematicians, etc, recognize that in a technical context, 'proofs' and something being 'proven' are entirely in a mathematical or logical realm. If you're talking about something that's very, very, very well-supported by evidence, evolution is 'proven' in that sense.

Edit: Here's a decent resource for these distinctions: http://www.springerlink.com/content/21p11486w0582205/fulltext.pdf

The source of the very statement "fact and a theory" is by Stephen Gould in 1981. Someone has taken the time to collect a S J Gould archive.
Enjoy!EVOLUTION IS A THEORY AND A FACT




)

Is not the term 'law' more specific than 'theory?

I had always thought the steps in scientific inquiry were:

Observe data (evidence, facts)
Question
Hypothesis (trial answer, guess)
Test
Theory
Test
Law
Application (Really just advanced testing)

And, in reality, even long established 'laws' are sometimes subject to revision.

Am I missing something here?

The evidence, data, and 'facts' are the same regardless of what you believe.

At what point does a theory or law become fact?

And how in the world does one test the hypothesis of evolution?

no. A law can be part of a theory but is usually any explanation that can be presented in an equation, wheras a theory will have many LAWS attached to it.

WE apply portions of theories every day, eg Atomic theory has components that allowed the development of radiation detection, spectrography,and metallurgy(lots more, those are mere examples)

Here is "Kirchhoff's Current Law"

The current entering any junction is equal to the current leaving that junction.

I thought that would more properly be called a 'discipline'.

The term isn't more specific but the laws themselves are usually for much more specific conditions and describe very specific results. You could say they are slightly fleshed-out hypotheses that have been very well-supported by evidence. So in that sense, they are more specific, because theories tend to be more general explanations for phenomena. Note the difference: description of results, explanations for phenomena. It's a confusing one, I know, but compare Kirchhoff's loop law to the general theory of relativity

Kirchhoff's Loop Law, stated *very* simply: all the voltages around a circuit, when combined together, are equivalent to 0.

General theory of relativity: Gravitation is explained by the curvature of spacetime.

Now perhaps I've biased this a bit, as both can actually get more specific (and do), but you get the general idea.



nonononononono

Theories never become laws unless we've been using the word 'theory' in the layman's sense. Scientific theories never become laws, there is no direct, linear hierarchy. Our school systems suck!



Of course they are. Scientific conclusions and explanations are always tentative and must be consistent with future observations. If they are not, caveats must be recognized and people tend to come up with new explanations which both incorporate the new data and produce testable hypotheses.



If we're talking in the strict scientific sense I illustrated above, never. And facts would never become theories or laws, etc. But when it comes to relative certainty or accuracy of a theory or law, they can become fact quite quickly after they have been repeatedly tested to the point where doubting them is similar to doubting heliocentrism, etc (which I'll add was and is itself a theory or hypothesis). Now sure, we can go up and see the sun, send probes up to confirm the kinetics match the sun being the gravitational center of the solar system, but that doesn't explain how that is like the science does and that explanation is concrete: gravity, which can be modeled as an inverse square of the distance (we're using Newton's theories here).



Well like I said, the theory of evolution is a general statement and it incorporates other theories, hypotheses, data, models, etc, into that general statement. Think of it as a tree: at the base is the theory of evolution, the general one. As it branches out, you get big splits like 'natural selection as the explanation for complex adaptations' and 'the neutral theory of evolution' and 'principles of evolutionary developmental biology' and 'conclusions based on the fossil record (PE, etc)'. In the general sense, the theory of evolution implies common ancestry among organisms and a number of explanations for the mechanisms of diversification as well as genetic continuity, etc. If it were found that neutral mutations simply do not exist, the neutral theory of evolution could be cut off and cauterized, still leaving the general. Given the evidence and what we know about evolution, however, a falsifying test would be studying the Burgess Shale and finding a mule. It would shake the principles of common descent and our understanding of the history of life to its core, if verified. This is because science must incorporate all observations into its framework and if a conflicting observation arises, it no longer explains all of the data (and sometimes this conflicting data can be huge).

Alternatively, evolution is tested with every fossil found or genetic study done. We're just never quite as surprised anymore since everything fits the general theory of evolution, even though hypothetically there's nothing built into it that actually prevents falsfiication. We don't find whales in the Carboniferous, for example, which could contradict all the data concerning mammals and genetic studies related to artiodactyls, etc, and render evolution as the explanation seriously injured.

Um... a discipline is like a field of study or methodology.