Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

Ive met a few bad teachers. (Mostly those who were incapable of delivering their subject). My forst diff equations course was taught by a XChinese grad student who could barely speakEnglish. We taught the subject to ourselves but didnt deny the math's structure.
I think Ionus is trying to make a point that assumes we learn DESPITE not BECAUSE of teachers. I believe we make advances on the shoulders of others. Once and awhile, somebody's shoulders can sag, sure, but as a rule?? NAHH.

Whats yer point besides trying to get my goat here ? you seem to understand everything else (I think) why are you engaging in trying to make silly subsets of my posts?
I dont believe you understand how the system works. You need to understand that at least half of "my"" grad students get their funding from me and my research funding.The faculty pores over the candidates and (besides the academics) they each put together a statement of their research interests and we invite them in to give a seminar to the present class Some (those that I choose or are assigned as my students) are therefore committed to do some aspect of one of my projects. This is how it has always worked. Other of my grad studenst will make a proposal to study something entirely different but I would assist them in developing the funding proposals.

I didnt avoid it. I specifically atated to you that I didnt even understand what youre getting at. Too many negatives and conflicting statements. Try to dumb it down a bit.

It seems as though a debate is going on here between intellectuals, Would you all consider this also to be a intellectual debate?

Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9j9q8hGwMyw

Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeyYRLlqE_4


Paert 3 ? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZkOuviTr0M

I want nothing to do with your livestock.

We have a different system here. I have however seen how the USA system does not work, though clearly in the majority of cases it does.

All will be revealed..stay tuned to this station.

Whatever I think of you, FM, dumb is not one of them......

My Question :

"Doesnt it follow that if you believe evolution is the way life has survived then straying from its principles is endangering our species ?"

Breaking it down :

Assuming - survival of the human race is a "good thing"
- evolution has enough facts to make broad statements about it
- the human race has the ability to follow or not follow the requirements dictated by evolution required for survival

If evolution is the way a species survives, then there are certain tenements of evolution that a species has followed in order to survive , albeit instinctively or beyond its control.
For example, not wasting resources, not overpopulating without a mass kill-off, a method to kill off the old and the sick as a survival of the fittest mechanism to prevent wasted resources, etc.

Extinct species have had one or more tenements that they could not fulfill. If we are to control our environment, shouldn't we allow in these tenements or risk evolving into an unfit species and becoming extinct ?

As a result of my working with people who like to call themselves intellectuals (I call them ineffectuals) I feel deeply insulted.

. The above concepts (the word I believe you want to use is "tenets" ) wre the bases by which Darwin had compiled his theory. He was a student of MAlthus and by considering various means of environmental "Pressures", he was sure that , scarce resources or overpopulation,were the :"mechanisms" of evolution. SO if we consciously try to avoid these "rules" we can avoid extinction events that are self imposed.(I dont think we can becuase we, as a species, have created too much anthropocentrism and xenophobia in our societies. (We dont help out our fellow humans and most governments in need of help wont accept it and will allow their people to starve)


Personally evidence clearly shows that we danced on the edge of extinction many times . The most recent and therefore the most famous, and one that is recorded in our genes is an extinction sized event that occured about 70000 years ago with the eruption of Mt Toba. Toba was a "supervolcano" and the eruption caused several years of resource pressures from mini "nuclear winters". The resultant die off of the human race was supposedly quite severe. We were whittled away to a few thousand to not more than 10000 individuals PLANET WIDE. If the Snake River caldera were to blow (It has the shape of our entire Yellowstone National PArk) like it did 700000 years ago, the US would no longer exist as a nation and half the people on the planet would be killed either initially or as the resu;t of several years of NO SUMMERS. (There is a marked tilting of this caldera since the 1930's when the seismic network was installed)

We try to control as much of the environment as we can. (We are a pretty fucked up species so we are always being faced with starvation in several spots on the earth .However, most of the environmental pressures that may cause us to go extinct as a species are exogenous, in that they are beyond our controls. (eg Bolides "smack downs", supervolcanoes(there are at least 5 of these all over the planet), extreme climate change due to axial wobbles or our sun going supernova or (as we are experiencing now--a sunspot minimum); As our magnetic dipole begins to erode as the poles flip, will a portion or more of our atmosphere be whittled away so that only sherpas (now considered a sort of sub species) will survive and thrive?). Theres gotta be a bazillion ways that we can go extinct , but the biggest rule we have broken in successful "evolution " is that we are only ONE species. SIngle species have always been the ones to have gone extinct over genera with multiple pecies.

I dont think we can knowingly avoid extinction. Theres too many exogenous things out there with our name on em. According to Ellis and Lleaky we have already gotten to the edge of sustainability (That was from some half baked theories of the 90's).

There are several international "Think tanks" that are studying these phenoms but , like any think tank, I know of nobody coming up with any answers.

May we live in interesting times.

@ reasoning logic

Are you going to comment on the error in logic here:


"Doesnt it follow that if you believe evolution is the way life has survived then straying from its principles is endangering our species ?"

Could you raise the level a bit? Jeez you are simplistic.

Obviously, compassion is a trait that originates in a highly evolved individual.

Besides, you ignored a the most obvious statement of all: parents raise, feed and teach their off-spring across many species. The survival of the fittest does not mean leaving infants of any species without food, feathers, sight or instructions on how to think, fly or walk.

Thanks for your post from the journal Science. Ionus will attack it because its source is professional journal.

The belief or disbelief of any one or 100 humans has nothing to do with what evolution is: a description of a process that exists in nature.

Humans can not "stray" from its principles. False logic.

When I was in college and (particularly) in graduate school, left-wing students took the personal responsibility of educating themselves in the field(s) they wished to teach and not in "education" classes.

That education majors still are turned out by colleges and universities is sad.

I would like to see the teaching of science totally changed, made more challenging.

I am glad to see your second point: Many parents wish their children to remain ignorant.

Yes you are correct. If they find a cure for being sylexadic I want to be first in line. You wouldnt believe the mistakes I make before proof reading. Sometimes I just stop totally unable to spell a word. I see whole sentences, not really words. I had to train myself to think in little slices.

I think your coverage of some of the threats to our existence to be rather well done. Wouldn't our chances of survival be greater if we eliminated the weak ? Arent things like a social safety net and medical services for the poor ensuring that when the next disaster hits we will be a weaker species ? Anti-biotics, food for the starving that will grow up brain damaged and consume more resources and have starving children in their turn, aren't these and similar things exactly what someone who believes in evolution should do away with ? The healthier and stronger we are by eliminating the weak, the better we are as a species.

Do you agree ?

You may feel free to do so yourself....

?????WTF???? Are you just trying to sound important without knowing what you are writing ?Tell me you are not that stupid. Animals will walk away from an infant that has any abnormality. Most mammals will eat their young in a desperate situation. Males will commonly kill off spring not their own, and in some cases will kill them even if they are their own. Predators love the young. They are tender and juicy.
There is the pot calling the electric jug black arse.

Youre staring to scare me. We fought a war over some of these views.

So aiding a dying person can be seen in the animal world....really ? Where ?

Yes and as I recall the people in charge of the enemy were atheists.