http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/01/13/national/main666741.shtml

Oh hell yeah.

Victory for logic.

Thank God.... err, I mean Darwin.

Let's hear it for five month old news.

Well, there aren't any real debates going on here. Mort must be suffering from withdrawal to bring up news from Jan.

Heh, well, there was a huge thread about when Cobb County originally decided to put the stickers in. No-one posted this when it came up, so I figured this needed some closure.

On a side note, I live in Cobb County.

Fascinating

I live 5 yards from Cobb County.

Last time I checked, Evolution was actually still just a theory... I'm not saying that I dont believe in Evolution, because I do believe in it, but sometimes I think that scientists and those who believe in Evolution are just as (or even more) intolerant of Creationism and Religion as those who believe in Creationism are intolerant of Evolution. You guys say that you dont want the beliefs of the Religious forced upon you, yet it seems like you are attempting to force your beliefs about science upon them.

Whats wrong with teaching both theories and then letting children decide on their own whether to believe in one, the other, or both? Yes, perhaps creationism does not belong in schools, and should be taught only in Sunday Schools and Churches, but my point is that the decision of what to believe should be left up to each individual person to decide for themselves, and not for the decision to be made for them.

DSet, the thing is, though, that you're using a definition of the word "theory" that's only vaguely related to the one that the scientific community uses. A theory is a detailed explanation of natural phenomena that makes predictions about unobserved facts and thus can be tested- both by whether it accurately describes already observed events and by whether future observations also are in line with its predictions. A theory can never become fact or be "proven", so accusing evolution of being "just a theory" is expecting it to be something it cannot. In fact, "theory" is high praise, since it means that the given explanation has already been extensively tested and shown to work (and is thus a step up from "hypothesis" or "conjecture").

And, in this context, evolution is the only relevant theory. Say what you will about "Intelligent Design", but it's no theory. For one, how could you test it?

Here we go again. People mold the definition of the word "theory" to "prove" their argument.

Because religion slows down scientific process.

I predict 4 pages.

This is a very radicule move by the six parents that support Darwinism, but remeber that both sides are going to be in some intence fighting.

I'm mixed personally.

I personally wouldn't care if those stickers were there, it's like saying "Remeber kids, one plus one equals two!". Because Darwin's Theory of Evolution is a Theory, and not proven (although I think it's pretty obvious, I am not sure what proof you need...).

But also, call me Emporer Palpatine, but I would like to see kids learn scientific views without religious influences. It just totally stumps people's minds in my opinion, and we are progressing slowly, despite the new underwater breathing stuff.

Lets get this out of the way right now:

Scientific American's "15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense"

If any creationists have arguments that are not covered by that, I'm sure there's some people here who could answer (and who know far more than I about this subject).

When I was taught about scientific process in school, we learned that Theory was a step below Law. If a theory was proven beyond all reasonable doubt, or something like that, then it could become a Law. Maybe its different in biology than in the physical sciences though so I might be wrong.

Nah, you're right.

I'm not arguing for Creationism. I believe that Evolution is what really happens. What I'm saying is that I think the decision to believe in either Creationism or Evolution should be an individual one. Sure, go ahead and show kids that article, but realize that the choice is theirs, not yours.

And whats wrong if someone believes in Creationism when you believe in Evolution? Is it that big a deal? Sure, Religion may slow scientific progress, but I think that there are enough athiestic scientists in the world that this really isnt a problem.

Vornskr is totally right.

'Theory' is not just another word for 'idea'. There isn't some hierarchy of uncertainty with 'guess' at the bottom and 'fact' at the top and 'theory' somewhere inbetween. It doesn't work like that.
A theory is a set of falsifiable predictions.
Newton's theory of gravity predicts that all masses will attract; more locally, all objects will fall towards the centre of the earth.
Pythagoras' theroem predicts that the square of the hypotenuse of any right-angled triangle will be equal to the sum of the square of the other two sides.

These are both theories. Should we put stickers in all geometry textbooks saying that Pythagoras' theorem is 'just a theory' and that some day God might invent a right-angled triangle where the hypotenuse is especially long? You know, just to be safe?

Now, evolution offers lots of predictions:
- 1. Darwin predicted, based on homologies with African apes, that human ancestors arose in Africa.
- 2. Theory predicted that organisms in heterogeneous and rapidly changing environments should have higher mutation rates.
- 3. Predator-prey dynamics are altered in predictable ways by evolution of the prey.
- 4. Ernst Mayr predicted in 1954 that speciation should be accompanied with faster genetic evolution.
- 5. Several authors predicted characteristics of the ancestor of craniates.
- 6. Evolution predicts that different sets of character data should still give the same phylogenetic trees.

That's a lot of predictions, and they're all very specific so they're easy to falsify. We'll come back to them later.

Now what falsifiable predictions does Creationism offer?

Ignoring the hundreds of biblical interpretations of the 'END OF THE WORLD!!' that have fairly obviously been proven wrong, ignoring the biblical claim of a geocentric solar system, ignoring the biblical claim of a flat Earth, there is NOTHING that Creationists, that the Bible, that 'God' offers as anything that can be even remotely interpreted as a falsifiable prediction.

None. Creationism isn't even a theory. It isn't even an opinion, because it cannot be logically entitled. It is faith. Nothing else. And faith is not science.

So, even if evolution is 'just a theory', it's still superior to creationism. But now let's look at what a 'fact' is.

A fact is a theory that's been proven beyond reasonable doubt. Scroll up back to those predictions.

1 has been supported by fossil and genetic evidence (Ingman et al. 2000).
2 has been found in the case of bacteria infecting the lungs of chronic cystic fibrosis patients (Oliver et al. 2000).
3 See Yoshida et al. 2003.
4 A phylogenetic analysis has supported the Mayr prediction (Webster et al. 2003).
5 On the basis of a detailed study, they found the fossil Haikouella "fit these predictions closely" (Mallatt and Chen 2003).
6 This has been confirmed informally myriad times and quantitatively, with different protein sequences, by Penny et al. (1982).

Not only have the predictions ALL been proven to be true, they have pretty much all been put to practical use. If you've ever taken antibiotics, aspirin, pencillin, you owe that to these predictions. You owe that to Darwin. Without him, you wouldn't have any of that. Without Darwin, we'd still be curing diseases by blood-letting.

This more than qualifies evolution as a fact.


If evolution were some radical fringe idea that was dubious and uncertain and highly controversial, then I might understand caution directed towards it.
If evolution were some horribly complicated mathematical model that was terribly hard to understand and generally didn't make much sense, then I might understand people having difficultly grasping it.

But evolution is neither.

Evolution is the single unifying concept of biology, every field of biology has in some way been affected or in many cases created by the study of evolution. Charles Darwin is the most important biologist ever. Our understandings of bacteria and diseases, predator-prey survival, natural ecosystems, paleontology, it simply wouldn't exist without evolution.

And it is such a beauitfully elegant idea to begin with, formed from very basic principles. A population of creatures all with slightly different properties, introduce a predator and some creatures will have properties that allow them to survive and perpetuate those properties. Some won't, and those propeties will cease.
It isn't hard to grasp.
All of the common Creationist misunderstandings can be answered with high-school level understanding of evolution. Yes, there are models that are more complicated, different types of speciation, and there is certainly discussion within evolutionary biologists about the relative significance of these types.
The discussion is not about whether evolution occurs; we know it does. The discussion is about how evolution occurs, and that is the discussion that should be going on in science classrooms.

Oooookayyy, it's like telling a kid that you have Harriet Tubman's underground railroad in your trainroom. They'll believe you at first, but when they grow older they will learn that it is...indeed not a train.

Nothing's wrong with it. I personally don't care over this Creationism vs. Darwinism battle. We all know Evolution will win sometime in the future haha

Pardon me if I didn't get this, and I may delete this replay later...but isn't saying "My theory is that they will attack here."

They attack at the predicted spot.

"My theory was right."

Dosn't that become fact that *they* attacked at the predicted location?

As for the schools, a lot of people argue that religion has no place in them. Isnt telling kids to reject creationism and accept evolution still involving religion in that the children are being told by the school to reject it? It's the schools responsibility to teach the material, not to force the kids to believe it and take it to be truth. That's for the children to do on their own.

A true scientist I think would support the idea of teaching both ideas to children, and having them take a critical look at both sides before deciding themselves. An important part of science is not believing everything you hear. Scientists often repeat each others experiments to verify results before accepting them, and spend the majority of their time trying to disprove the ideas which they want the most to be the right ones.

Maybe the reason that so many people still blindy adhere to their religion is because so many other people would have them blindly adhere to science and evolution instead.

You mis-understand... I'm not trying to argue creationism over evolution. I do believe in Evolution, and agree it would be nice if everyone else did too. I'm just saying that it's just as irresponsable to blindly believe in evolution as it is to blindly believe in creationism. And it seems like a lot of people on the evolution side of the debate would have the youth in america blindly believing in evolution.

There is a famous analogy in philosophy by WK Clifford of the derelict boat. The boat badly needs repairs, but the captain believes the boat to be sea worthy because it has made it through so many heavy seas and storms in the past. There are two cases, in the first, the boat sinks in heavy seas killing all aboard. In the second, the seas a just a little more calmer, and the boat makes it through the voyage successfully. In the second case, is the Captain any less guilty of risking the lives of the crew? In both cases, the Captain blindly believed in the sea worthyness of his boat, without taking the time to have the boat inspected and examined, and verify this belief.

I agree, they should just teach it, not press it. And for the most part, that's what teachers do...at least how I learned. A lot of science teachers are scared half to death when they have to teach this stuff, because of fear of legal troubles.

But isn't putting stickers in a text book that tells students that this theory isn't fact, (and implying it never will be), a press on the Creatisnist side?

People that believe in God because of faith and faith alone, I can't touch them. There is no logical way to argue against that, or for that, and that is the whole purpose of it. Faith is an alternative to logic. You cannot even begin to construct a "faith vs logic" argument, because you would instantly be using logic to form that argument (and faith doesn't do arguments to begin with).

But if you need physical or logical proof for 'God', that's what I have a problem with.

Creationists, and 'Intelligent Design theorists' in particular, construe religious beliefs to try and make them look like science. It isn't science. That's really all we're trying to say. Not going beyond that, not saying that all religious people are crazies that need to be beaten with a stick; just saying that Creationism isn't science.

And stuff that isn't science... shouldn't be taught in science lessons. History lessons, sure. Teach it alongside the Hindu creation stories, the Buddhist creation stories, the Shinto creation stories; but don't teach it alongside science.



They don't have to believe it 'blindly' because there's actual evidence supporting it. There isn't any other theory that explains everything that evolution does. Teachers should teach evolution as if it is fact because it is fact. In the same way that maths teachers teach Calculus as if it is fact (when in fact Calculus requires time to be finitely divisible, and that might not possibly be the case).

This is why the "teach the controversy!" line is bull. There isn't any controversy, and the whole campaign is just to get pseudoscience taught in the classrooms.

If the object is to keep bad science from the classroom, the same standards should be applied to the counterarguments from creationists, which are all bad science.

Except, you know, it isn't.

Neither is your God, taleboy.

(Ooh, will you touch the flamebait?)

And where in this thread did I mention God?

If someone can turn creationism into a science[edit: see mort-hog's post above], then let it be taught in science class. Unless of course there are more important things to teach, like...stuff with a decent amount of evidence.

Except, you know, it is.



We have two reasons to say evolution is fact:

First, all the patterns we observe in nature point towards a nearly four billion year long history of evolution of life on earth. Putting a fancy word on it, this is Consilience. Multiple independent lines of evidence (from classification, development, fossil record, molecular biology etc.) all point to a branched evolutionary tree of life.

Second, the anatomy and biochemistry of organisms is filled with quirky features, things that only make sense as artifacts of history. Tutting a fancy term on it this is Dissonance. See the evolution of the Panda's thumb or snail anatomy.

Evolution is three statements:
# Organisms vary
# All organisms overproduce
# Some variability is inherited

And all three are facts, proven well beyond reasonable doubt.

Go Mort, go.

And no one else teaches or claims that, wonder why?

Because they're scared.

IRG: Actually, many do, as any search engine will show. Generally they're the people with lots of letters after their names. This means they have degrees from real universities. These qualifications make them credible .