Petition: Teach Science, Not "Intelligent Design"

Not as our school systems are today, but that only says something about the quality of the education we are providing. In reality, by high school, students should be able to understand these larger issues. Evolution is the cornerstone of biology, without it, nothing fits together. To not teach this most valuable theory would be to not teach real biology. The fact is, biologists are evolutionists. To teach biology, one must teach evolution.

 

Most Americans would not understand what you mean with 'RE'.
They don't have Religion classes in the US (unless private schools have them).

This also explains why you don't have that stuff in science and English class.

 

Though it is a bit off the point, I completely agree. I am questioning not whether it should be taught, but rather in which class it should be taught.

So all that biological research before Darwin came along was not real biology? In fact, Darwin himself didn't do "real biology" until he developed the theory? If your statement is true, then you must answer in the affirmative to both those questions.

Could you please demonstrate how evolution is the cornerstone? How, without evolutionary theory, genetics, immunology, anatomy, physiology, botany, oceanography, etc. would fall apart as unrelated sciences?

Cellular and Micro-evolution, maybe. But I do not think that common ancestry is necessary to the teaching of biology. In fact, to assert such is to assert that the theory is both true and actually a fact as well. If the theory is necessary to biology, then, (according to your statements above) in order for the biological sciences to remain coherent, the theory must be generally accurate. If the theory is false, then (again, from your statements) biology falls apart at the seams because a necessary (and fundamental) component is false. Biological sciences have been around for hundreds (if not thousands) of years, it seems hubris to say that one must teach evolution to teach biology. If that were so, what were they teaching for all those years? Were they teaching evolution but not recognizing it? If so, please validate your view.

 

Sorry, I meant to say that evolution is what really ties it all together in MODERN biology. Pervious to that, you either had God, or nothing. And even back then many scientists didn't like falling back on the "God did it" defense, though they really had nothing else.

You're right, biology doesn't fall apart without evolution, but it severly cripples our understanding about how living systems work.

Evolution is a fact. Darwinian Evolution is a theory. Gravity is a fact. Both Newtonian gravity and Einsteinian gravity are theories. Theories describe known processes; if the theory is found false, that doesn't mean the process doesn't occur.

Evolution as a process is very very well supported, by a wide range of disciplines (genetics, paleontology, etc). Darwin's theory is also pretty well supported, because it explains the facts we have quite consistently and is useful in making predictions. Basically, it's accepted because it works most of the time. There are of course other theories of evolution, which aren't as far reaching, or internally consistent, or externally consistent. This is why Darwinism (actually neo-Darwinism mainly, thanks to genetics and other recent advancements) is taught in schools. It's what's accepted by the majority, and it works very well. But as I recall, other theories are mentioned too, like punctuated equilibrium and Lamarkian (the latter more as a percursor to Darwin, but it does show other ideas are out there).

By the way, microevolution is the same thing as macro evolution, the same way walking to the end of the block is the same as walking across the city. Same process, different time spans. The only difference is that macro results in new species. Which only means that micro evolution has been occuring in two populations of a species for long enough that they can't breed together, and are thus seperated permanantly...as two new species.

 

Right Trippin.

That brings to mind another example: Newton wrote many laws and many equations that seem to work well with predicting physics. However, scientists eventually found glitches, discovering that Newtonian physics only work relatively.

Some things, such as the magical 'ether' that filled the void of space, were disproven.

Newton had theories of gravity, but we've come a long way since Newton.

Einstein introduced the theory of relativity and general relativity. He found a universal way to approach space and time as spacetime. The glitches in Newton's theory were solved by moving onto something new.

So, Darwin's theory may not be 100% accurate, but it doesn't mean it doesn't hold some truth, that evolution isn't happening. (As Trippin said). It simply means we probably don't understand everything about evolution yet, just like Newton didn't understand everything about space-time.

 

I don't know. I don't know that much about the history of science. I do know that they expected rational order because God is rational and ordered.

I would say "how living systems change", but that might just be me nitpicking.

Fair enough. Just so we can be on the same page, could you define what you mean by "evolution" in the phrase above? We might be disagreeing about two different meanings poured into the same word.

Do we have specific examples of speciation occuring outside of human intervention/experiment? We can make chemical elements in a lab, but that doesn't mean that they exist in nature.

And we haven't even touched abiogenesis yet!

 

Evolution... well the official definition is the change in allele frequencies in a population over time. Alleles being various versions of a gene. I basically see it that way. It's essentially the changes various life forms experience over time, leading in populations (not individuals) to speciation.

Since actually defining what a species is can be a difficult if not impossible task (there's no one moment you can point to and say "there, a new species is born"), I tend to have a more fluid view of it than a strict scientist might. Evolution is change. Nothing remains the same forever, and with genetic heredity, these changes are passed on, and honed to fit the (ever changing)environment in which the species finds itself.

Kind of like a tree. The twigs all grew out of the same places, and are all connected through time, through their history. But they are all also seperate twigs (obviously). And they grow incrementally, built on the cells below them, emerging from them. The same, but different, with continual forking (forking occurs with the seperation of populations, say by a river, mountain, or some behavioral difference).

I know that's more than a definition, but hopefully it will give you a window into what I'm thinking. It's a hard thing for me to describe, though I can "see" it so vividly in my mind.

I know very little about abiogenesis (same as the scientists, though I know far less even than they), so I'll have to skip that debate. See, I generally avoid these arguments on evolution because I've learned from past debates that they go nowhere. The fun has gone out of it. So I'm not as up on my stuff as I used to be.

Specific examples of speciation? I'm not sure, I doubt it. We have your microevolution but not your macro (maybe we do, though. I really don't know). One might argue that such things are outside the human time scale, except perhaps for bacteria. But I also don't know enough in this area, sorry.

Also, just because we can make elements in a lab doesn't mean they DON'T exist in nature. Those "man made elements" that last fractions of a second...who can say if they exist in nature or not? We'd never see them anyways, and could probably never set up a method to do so; they're too brief-lived. Besides, if one can't presume constancy in physical laws (which biology follows), both inside and outside the lab, then science crumbles...not just biology, but all of it.

 

Micro evolution can be proven.
Macro evolution cannot.

 

So-called "Intelligent design" is nothing more than an interpretive observation. Were a people to believe that the earth was carried on the back of a turtle, so it would be taught. The same applies to religio-maniacs who try to sneak their limited world-view into mainstream thought-forming institutions in a subversivally cynical grab for orthodoxy and acceptance. Religion and intelligence were never meant to be in the same room together ~ simply review chirstian history for proof!

 

I see now where we have a bit of confusion. We were indeed pouring two varying meanings into the word. I was using the more common definition of genetic development occurring through random heritable variations in the organisms followed by natural selection over time through random mutation and random selection.

Understanding your definition helps a lot. I can agree with most of the above statement. The idea that "evolution is change" doesn't really take into the account the broad inferences of common ancestry that is included in the common understanding of the term "evolution."

That's exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!

I completely agree on this one.

Fair enough.

There is nothing wrong with your statement. There is a huge difference, though, between saying "we can produce it in a lab, so it is possible in nature" and "it happens in nature so we should be able to produce similar results in a lab." Both assume that the laws of nature are fixed. The second assumes that if we duplicate a set of circumstances in a lab that we have observed in nature, then we should see similar results. The first, on the other hand, creates a set of circumstances and then hopes that the same set of circumstances occurs in nature and that the results come close to what was seen in the lab. Do you see the difference?

The first thought process hopes that the process occurs in nature in order to validate the finding. The second attempts to understand the processes in an event that has already been observed in nature.

 

Now if evolution vs. intelligent design were discussed on the above level. It might well have a place in a science class. And, indeed, it is found within the curriculum of a collage History of Science course. However, the issue at hand is the use of the power of the state to include a "pet theory" into a high school curriculum. This I disagree with. You might as well answer, "Because god wills it" to any science question. An excellent interchange folks who says the art of discourse is dead.

 

DOVER, Pennsylvania (AP) -- Voters came down hard Tuesday on school board members who backed a statement on intelligent design being read in biology class, ousting eight Republicans and replacing them with Democrats who want the concept stripped from the science curriculum.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/11/09/evolution.showdown.ap/index.html

 

The point is that everything that does happen happens because God will's it. This doesn't make the natural world less interesting to those God has called to understand it. Many interesting patterns exist for us to look at and comprehend.