Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

I found this to be interesting, It has information about teaching evolution in it!

http://www.youtube.com/user/Coughlan616#p/u/15/evfnaR-rxuQ

This is the part of the video that won Pwnage Olympics Education 2011

Evolution!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TONWyYK8F1k&feature=channel_video_title

This is pretty much an opinion thread. Im not bitching at posting youtubes , but that somehow subverts any personal content. So what do you find in these videos that is worth recommending?
Put it in your own words. I avoid videos missing any intro of substance.
Just because a video mentions the word "evolution" so what?.

Well I do allot of research on many subjects and evolution is one of them!

It seems that I have read some where that you are not much of a fan of Richard Dawkins's approach of teaching evolution but anyway he did a interview with a lady that in my opinion was very closed minded and she was anti evolution.

The video was about what school would be like if we used her approach of teaching science in a high school science class!

Ive nothing against Dawkins "teaching evolution" as long as he stays in his realm of expertise and stops trying to demoralize the religious.
He has many really good scientific and "history of science" publications. Its when he steps outside and starts some unfair critiquing the religious who are NOT challenging evolution as a scientific discipline. He misses his aim many times.

Innstead of just trying to demolish sloppy anti-science, he often takes aim at many of the religions that have actually embraced the precepts of the sciences. Im atheistic in its truest sense, I am religion-free and dont really give a damn about something I have no need for or use for in explaining my craft or life. To merely take on evreything religious is a waste of time and should only be undertaken when some group challenges the science as "uncorrect". This is usually reserved for the ultra Fundamental religious sects who try to invade scince and its teaching. Dawkins has, in the past, stepped on some of sciences greatest supporters just because they were Catholic or Protestant or Jew.

Hes gettin a bit better now because , with age, hes learned how to take better aim.

I have never followed Dawkins at all. Never cared much for ranting like that.

Are you really that naive rl? From what evolutionary first cause was the video generated. It's seminal moment. Everything after that is conditioned by it and is in the service of it. Hence it is unscientific to the extent that it is both subjective and circular. It is, dare we say, intelligently designed and had it not worked out to his satisfaction he would have binned it and tried again.

Thus it implies a creative ego and satisfies the idea that everything is created by an ego or is artificial. Staged. Probably edited as well.

Spendi--I guess you and I could never get along--me being of simple mind and all.

Sorry for this short blurb but you see it's Sunday morning & I'm getting ready to go to a UU fellowship and I have to shave with my razor named Ockham.

Rap

And here was me thinking you waxed.

Same here, although I find it interesting that his companion is able to understand what he says verbally.

It's me rap that has the simple mind. Ask cic. imp. One doesn't need to have seen a photograph of Einstein's cat to know that there was a seminal moment when the thought first struck of making a video with a sitting duck to help further one's glittering career. Like Yossarian said--"What's shithead up to now?"

It's not an original thought though. Henry Miller did a version in Opus Pistorum if you remember.

After that it's plain sailing but it means nothing beyond it. I can do a nine dart outshot with a video camera. Every time.

Then faith is nothing. You're just a romantic Luddite.

Spendi, sounds like you long for a sentient species without hands.

Sorry about your bad luck, man. On this planet, at this time, it's moderately intelligent monkeys--and hands is a monkey structure.

Rap

The interesting thing about the romantic Luddite is whether he was right. Now--we'll never know. Or I sincerely hope not.

I have often had reason to think that four hands are not bad.

My regret is that several million years ago chance didn't favor moderately intelligent monkeys with prehensile tails.

Rap

Yeah--but it must be a bit of a trial to miss getting a cold beer out of the fridge and settling down to watch the footie with a bet on.

Have you got a problem?

I have, Ray Winstone.

I have watched about 20 videos from Dawkins and out of them I have seen some where he speaks about religion and it is not normally very harsh in my opinion! Maybe I have seen some of his recent work and he has gotten better in time.

Do not get me wrong because I think that he could come across better behaved at times but then again we all get it wrong at times!

I have seen where some people try to make him out to being worse than what he is!
Dawkens was reading some of his hate mail sent to him and someone took some of his readings along with some of his own ideas and made this video to make him out to be worse than what he is!

How would you feel if you were very well known and there were millions of Spendius type people that hated you because you were teaching truth and many Spendius type people were saying false things about you and making videos like this one?

Would you eventually lose it with those Spendius type people?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUBJ_TTLCYc&feature=related

I think the English in particular are fond of using the jab of implied superiority as a defense mechanism. Ive heard Dawkins come out against some biology Teacher at Notre Dame, one whose entire career was in molecular genetics. Dawkins didnt discuss commonalities in approaches, he, instead went after the Jesuits religion.
He was rather brutal about the CAtholic Churches poor records in support of womens equality and issues totally irrelevant to their discussion on air. He looked like a fool and what could have been an interesting on-air feature was just wasted.
Ive attempted to look it up as one in which "Richard Dawkins goes totally off" , but havent found it. Probably PBS, in its wisdom, just trashed it from archives.

As far as spendi, DAwkins at kleast knows of what he speaks in the subject and doesnt go all over the barnyard to find references that may have some commonality only because they are constructed of English letters of the alphabet. Dawkisn is a real evolution scholar especially in the hsitory of the subject. His areas of reserch has always been plants and angiosperm evolution. Hes sort of gotten away from that and has been an outspoken generalits. His last book (of which Im aware ) is the "Greatest Show on Earth" and its a really good compilation of heavy evidence that natural selection is in action in everything alive. Its a student's "must read", unlike Goulds final (and most massive work) "The STructure of Evolutionary Theory"

What have I said about Dawkins that you object to rl?

That his literary ability is quite average is not something I can't defend. And his white trousers are a matter of taste and I never make disparaging remarks about that sort of thing.

Would you dispute that he's a wanker?

Well--bless my soul. Do people have to wade through hundreds of pages of turgid prose to find a thing like that out. Half an hour in the pub on Sat. night is quite sufficient to discover that simple and obvious fact, which doesn't take anybody anywhere just as knowing entropy is at work doesn't either, and you can wash it down with a couple of pints of John Smith's Extra Smooth (Silk in a Glass) and have a blimp at Charlotte's and Henrietta's not so subtly disguised secondary sexual characteristics.

If NS was not in action in everything alive it would never be in action.

Heaven preserve us from these pseudo-intellectuals.