Miss USA delegates on evolution in schools

All of them were over 20, and many were in their mid-20s. There really is no excuse for this, other than your surmise that it's glossed over in small town schools. I learned about it at home, but we covered it in the schools. In the 1950s and -60s, it wasn't a controversy as it is now.

I'm not making excuses for them. I'm just speculating on what I think is causing it.

Unfortunately, it means that there are a lot of ignorant hotties running around. Just think how much better they would be

So let me get this straight:

Ann Coulter, talk show blabbermouth and failed lawyer with no scientific credentials whatsoever = credible

Steven Gould, PhD, paleontologist, author of scientific texts, teacher of paleontology at a major university, but not an evolutionary biologist (a field which, ironically, gungasnaKKKe would probably consider on par with phrenology) = not credible

Evolution is still called a theory, isn't it? Math is fact so I don't think you can equate them. Personally, this is one thing I think the parents should have the final decision on.

Scientific theories are more than an idea. A Scientific theory is a hypothesis (idea/concept) that is supported experiment or observation. The theory of evolution has been strongly supported by 150 years of scientific observation .

Math, on the other hand, is a logically based upon axioms (rules). By these rules mathematical theorems are developed by proof as based upon axioms. Consequently, the theorems are always true if the axioms are valid.

Note--- math is not science--math is closer to a system of philosophy. The application of math; however, models reality only if the axioms are based upon reality. For example Euclidean geometry is a good model for the earth on a microscopic scale as the surface of the earth approaches a Euclidean plane on a microscopic scale. However, euclidean geometry does not apply to reality when considering the earth as a sphere.

Rap

Okay raprap. Thanx for clarifying that for me.

It's also a theory that germs cause diseases. Would you refuse antibiotics for an infection because the use of antibiotics is based on germ theory? Would you propose others not be allowed antibiotics because it's only a theory?

That is not the same thing. We know antibiotics cure things. If you feel evolution should be taught then that is what you feel. Like I said, evolution (like a few other things) I think should be left up to the parents.

Principles of evolution explain how antibiotics work. If you take antibiotics and your symptoms come back, the same antibiotics will have a lower success rate. In the few days since you quit taking a specific antibiotic, several generations of the virus have reproduced. These new generations may have adapted to resist the specific antibiotic that you were taking. Your doctor may need to prescribe a different antibiotic.

To some extent the germ theory and the theory of evolution are strongly linked.

Experience with antibiotics is a good example of evolution in practice. As antibiotics are used, some bugs (germs) mutate and become immune to the antibiotic. The mutated, immune bugs profligate and reproduce until that antibiotic no longer is effective.

Rap

I went to a Catholic school. Science was science and religion was religion. My science teachers were often nuns. Evolution was the curriculum, just as it was in the public schools. Never the twain shall meet... In fact, I'd never heard of "creationism" till after I left school.
I have relatives that put their kids in Christian school and I am astounded at what they've been taught. Creationism is doctrine. Evolution is sneered at, taught with the objective of ripping it apart, proving it false. Hardly an objective or balanced viewpoint, in my opinion.
Even as a very young child, I just couldn't swallow the whole Adam and Eve story. Where exactly did the wives come from? It implies we got our start in a very incestuous way. It always made more sense to me that instead of imploding, we humans or creatures of the earth, are attracted to the different, the strongest, the unique, thus expanding, in a healthy - immuno building way.
Evolution just makes sense. In a world where kill or be eaten was pretty much written in stone, I'm always amazed at the amount of things we have found. Gaps hell ya, as if there aren't in the bible? Religion calls for faith, science calls for data. We don't even understand the human brain or body fully and we live in them 24/7. We are a mystery. Every day there are new discoveries.
Why do creationists insist on seeing everything before believing? To play on some well know words...
The earth is older than imagination. It's older than comprehension. As the Earth changed why wouldn't it's inhabitants? Adaptations and mutations would seem the appropriate means for ultimate survival. We can see it in all manner of living species now, from plants and trees to frogs and viruses. We see it in human disease and cures. Is it not possible, that part of God's great plan, if you believe in such a thing, is the race towards perfection, or his/her image of us?
In every article above, when creationists have used science - such as complaining about scientists using rocks to date fossils, yet hypocritically ignoring, that even by agreeing to the dates on the rocks, it throws the conventional biblical data out the door.

It isn't really accurate to claim that "math is a fact" although you've got the gist of the difference between math and something like evolution.

Terms like 'fact' or 'factual' don't really apply to math. Math is a logical and linguistic system intended to model the numerical nature of our three dimensional physical universe, time, electrical phenomena, business models, and the like. It is internally consistent and logically consistent and, unlike the case with evolution and evolutionites, mathematicians freely admit to the world that mathematical results depend entirely on starting assumptions, that is, ideas which cannot be proven or disproved, and that choices for such assumptions are usually made to allow the system to model some aspect of perceived reality to an optimal extent.

Most definitions of "pseudoscience" involve the terms "falsifiable" and "unfalsifiable". In the case of evolution you have a theory which has been coercively falsified a number of times and yet academic dead wood goes on with it regardless for ideological and quasi-religious reasons so that the definitely of unfalsifiability is basically met. In other words, the term "pseudoscience" basically indicates something which no test would suffice to disprove in the eyes of believers or which no test result would suffice to falsify. Evolution is basically a pseudoscience.

How do we know?

How does this knowledge differ from our knowledge of evolution?

What about it should be left up to the parents?

Are you saying that parents should be able to selectively restrict particular scientific knowledge from their kids?

One of the more major disproofs of evolution involved fruit flies.

When you talk about evolution, you have to discern two kinds of it and keep the two kinds separated.

MICROEVOLUTION is a proven fact of life and nobody argues over it. Microevolution means brown moths changing to white ones, finches with short beaks changing to finches with longer beaks, and that sort of thing.

MACROEVOLUTION is the notion that new KINDS of animals can somehow arise via an accumulation of the changes involved in microevolution and/or via mutations and this is the thing which is normally referred to as the theory of evolution.

There is no evidence supporting macroevolution at all. In fact when scientists tried to prove the concept in the early 1900s, they utterly failed and the failure was so stark and garish that a number of the scientists involved publically renounced evolution at the time, most notably Goldschmidt who devised his "hopeful monster" theory as a possible replacement.

What they did, over a period of about twenty years, involved fruit flies which breed new generations every few days. Twenty years worth of that is equal to tens of thousands of generations of any normal animal, i.e. enough for any possibility of macroevolution to be observed without requiring millions of years.

What they did was to subject those flies to everything in the world known to cause mutations, including electricity, chemicals, heat, cold, noise, silence, vibration, shock, blast, and basically just everything, and then recombine like mutants in every possible way.

And all they ever got was what the breeders told Charles Darwin was all he would ever get via mutation when they told him he was full of **** in the 1850s, i.e. fruit flies, sterile mutants, and next generations of mutants which returned, boomarang-like, to the norm for a fruit fly. Basically, all they had to show for their work after 20 years was fruit flies. No wasps, ants, spiders, mantises, beetles, hornets, mosquitos, or any other kind of animal whatsoever; just fruit flies.


When DNA and RNA were discovered in the 1960s, the reason for the failure of those experiments became known.

In other words, our entire living world is based on information and the only information there ever was in the picture for those experiments 100 years ago was the information for fruit flies.

Evolution should have been abandoned at that point as Cohen noted:

I know it is not a popular stance to take but yes, when it comes to evolution and sex education, I think that needs to be the parents' choice as to whether the school can teach that to their child or not.

Math has been used to model evolutionary processes, just as math is use to model other scientific theories (thermodynamic, atomic, germ, relativity, gravity, magnetic, electrostatic, information, economic, etal.)

What is interesting is that sometimes the math model is knowingly wrong--for instance models of electrical current flow is modeled from positive to negative where in actuality the reverse is the case. Fortunately, this error has moot consequence.

I view math as a 'hammer.' A tool that is used to implement science.

Rap

I'm not going to teach Mo the theory of gravity because I think it would be cool if he could fly.

There ya go.

And schools should respect your choice and not try to put those silly "gravity" ideas in his head without your permission. Who are they to keep him from flying? Geesh.

Definitely. And I would add history as well: a) it is taught about periods which didn't exist, b) it's a lot about bad and mad people.