Why We Must Teach Evolution in the Science Classroom

Red Orbit ^ | Saturday, 2 August 2008 | Laura Lorentzen

[Soliton]

don't remember when I first learned about the theory of evolution, but nowadays I find myself reading of it a great deal in the popular press and hearing it discussed in the media. As my daughter enters elementary school, I find myself anxious to discuss with her teachers what they will cover in science class and where in their curriculum they plan to teach evolution. OUR COUNTRY HAS LAWS THAT SEPARATE church and state. Public institutions like schools must be neutral on the subject of religion, as required by the Constitution's First Amendment. Our courts have mandated that creationism is not an appropriate addition to the science curriculum in public schools; yet supporters of intelligent design press to have antievolutionary discussions enter the science classroom. Creationists even advocate that, when leaching evolution, educators should add the disclaimer that it is "just a theory."

Let's consider why all of us as educated persons, scientists and nonseientists alike, should take note of what science is taught - and not taught - in our public schools. In common language, a theory is a guess of sorts. However, in scientific language, a theory is "a set of universal statements that explain some aspect of the natural world... formulated and tested on the basis of evidence, internal consistency, and their explanatory power."1 The theory of evolution meets all of these criteria.

[Dog Gone]

It time to look past whether or not evolution is good science or not.

Perhaps in some limited context that is true, but science will never stop looking to see if it is so.

[muawiyah]

You are suggesting that someone change his religious beliefs and practices.

I thought you weren't into preaching.

[AndrewC]

I’m pretty clear about what I believe. I think that the federal government has no business in elementary and high school education. As to public school versus private school rules, that should be left up to the states.

[mrjesse]

Well, after all our discussion it seems to boil down to whether someone who doesn’t believe in God can believe in right or wrong.

I'm not certain whether by "Believing in right or wrong" you mean believing in the existence of or the compliance with right and wrong. But never mind that. By the way, I well know that relative right and wrong exists -- all we need to see that is for one or more persons to say "Thus and such is wrong, because ..." But as I keep mentioning, I'm talking about universal right and wrong.

We fundamentally disagree on this and I don’t think we can reach common ground with more discussion. I appreciate your perspective and it might be correct. I think mine might be also.

So you think that there can be a universal wrong (something that is wrong for everybody in the world, regardless of culture, public opinion, manmade laws, etc) without a supreme moral lawgiver? Is not all that is left "Might makes right" or varients thereof? (By "might" I mean either collective might (lots of people in agreement) or individual might (As in clever, strong, or otherwise able to do harm to others without succumbing to retaliation.)

In the long run, I’m not sure it matters. We both agree that we should live our lives doing what is right.

Well, it could matter, depending on what is right. A terrorist is living his life, doing what he thinks is right. So was Hitler. The fact is that a terrorist, for example, is doing what he thinks is right, and what all his like-minded fellow citizens think is right. And in the absence of universal right and wrong, if the majority of people were terrorists, one might well say that what he was doing was indeed right.

So it does matter where one draws their moral rules from. And universal wrong cannot logically exist without a universal moral lawgiver also existing. And if He does exist, and it is indeed true that God will judge in the end, then again it will matter then whether we obeyed Him or not.

Thanks for your comments,

-Jesse

[AndrewC]

Did Bill Clinton teach you the fine art of evasive parsing, or did you teach him?

What? Were you born an idiot or did you work hard to become the one you are?

[metmom]

Because if it isn’t forced on a captive audience with no competing opinion allowed, then it would fade away along with all the other theories science used to present as true and allow no dissent from either.

[metmom]

XeniaSt: I believe it has never advanced past a hypothetical construct.

Soliton: Your belief is wrong

Demonstrate how her belief is wrong.

IOW, PROVE it.

[Dog Gone]

Let me boil it down to something you can either agree with or disagree with, and I already know you’ll disagree with it.

You live in a prehistoric society, or even on your own with no concept of God. Do you have a concept of right and wrong or not? There are no laws. There is no law-giver.

Do you have a conscience or is that merely an artifact of fear of a law-giver?

I think you do. I’m quite sure you don’t.

[metmom]

And as is usual in liberal debating tactics concerning the First Amendment, they ignore the *or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; * part.

[mrjesse]

Let me boil it down to something you can either agree with or disagree with, and I already know you’ll disagree with it.

You live in a prehistoric society, or even on your own with no concept of God. Do you have a concept of right and wrong or not? There are no laws. There is no law-giver.

Do you have a conscience or is that merely an artifact of fear of a law-giver?

I think you do. I’m quite sure you don’t.

Something about your grammar or sentence structure confused me a bit. a lot. I'm not too sure what you're trying to ask. Could you please ask again, a bit more clearly? I want to answer, and I'm not trying to run from anything here - I just can't deambiguify the question!

Thanks!

-Jesse

[Redcoat1982]

I am amazed people see this as a left/right thing.

ID is religious dogma, and as such, has no place in any classroom. Sunday school? Sure.

Leave testable science to the scientists. Leave dogma to the preachers.

[Dog Gone]

I did ask my question badly.

I was asking whether someone with no concept of God could have a conscience. A sense of right and wrong.

I think they can. I don’t think you believe they can unless it is because of some random illogical thinking on their part.

I’m not sure how we can test the answer to this question. It may just have to be something we debate.

[MHGinTN]

I hear your name on this one ...

[AndrewC]

I think he means to define you out of the “equation”. First of all he sets up a complete hypothetical. Someone(You) who does not believe in God(no concept means no belief the converse is not true) is asserted to exist. He then asks whether you will have a concept of right and wrong, adjusting the scenario to explicity exclude laws whatever they may be to someone that has no concept of God and may or may not have a concept of something called “right” and “wrong”. He then asserts that you will have a concept of right and wrong even though he states(at least that is what I infer from that last “sure you don’t”) that you will deny such concepts. Problem is, “right” and “wrong” remain undefined in his scenario. I would suggest that under his scenario, that the set of wrong things is the set of things that kill you.

[Kevmo]

Well, no one else has replied to your post, but I thought it was quite good. It kinda exposes the evolutionist agenda.

[Kevmo]

I was asking whether someone with no concept of God could have a conscience. A sense of right and wrong.... I’m not sure how we can test the answer to this question. It may just have to be something we debate.
***I think some interesting data points could be generated by having the discussions with Apes and other mammals who have been trained in Sign Language.

[wintertime]

Please copy and paste it and send it to whomever might be able to use it.

[MHGinTN]

Has anything ever been found that was generated by a species not human which indicate a sense of creator, a higher power than species threat/resolution? IOW, has there ever been a behavior or artifact found in a non-human species that can be interpreted as a sense of godness beyond the physical realm of their existence? As I recall, Koko when asked about her new kitten to replace the one who was killed signed allball for name and when asked if this new kitten is the same as previous allball, she replied not allball. There seemed to be no sense of goneness on any other level than ‘not there physically’.

[mrjesse]

Thanks!

I was asking whether someone with no concept of God could have a conscience. A sense of right and wrong.

If someone had grown up in an environment that was completely and utterly devoid of any concept of God or the resulting idea that some things ought not be done even if they can be gotten away with, would some people still have a view that some things were wrong even though they could get away with them?

I don't know. I've never been in that situation. Maybe some would. But I know that a lot of people wouldn't - the news is full of people breaking all the laws, robbing people scamming people, killing people, thinking they won't get caught. Whether they think it's not wrong or think God doesn't exist and won't punish them for it I do not know.

But maybe some people would still have in their mind a set of things which were wrong even though well practical to do. But they may not be very nice! Hitler for example (I realize he talked about God but it wasn't the God as described in the Bible and I'm referring to Hitler's words which agree with his actions) quite clearly demonstrated that he too thought that some things were wrong - but to him, the worst wrong was when favored Aryan races mated with inferior races. In his book Mein Kampf on page 332 he said "But there is only one right that is sacrosanct and this right is at the same time a most sacred duty. This right and obligation are: that the purity of the racial blood should be guarded, so that the best types of human beings may be preserved and that thus we should render possible a more noble development of humanity itself." He also described the mating of Aryan and non Aryan to produce "monsters that are a mixture of man and ape."

So yes, people can also develop ideas of right and wrong independently of what the Bible says - but the problem is that they are not universal! Sometimes they are completely wrong!

And this is why I keep using the term "Universal right and wrong" -- because no matter how strongly Hitler felt about things one way, someone else is bound to feel just the opposite about it (for example his victims) and they obviously can't both be right!

To clarify, I'm not in this post arguing for the existence universal right and wrong, but rather am arguing that in order for universal right and wrong to exist that there must be a supreme moral lawgiver. Furthermore I am arguing that without universal right and wrong, there really is no such thing as right or wrong except to the degree that might makes right (again whether the might is in numbers of agreeing people or in an individual).

I certainly believe that both God and universal right and wrong exist - but that is my faith I can't demonstrate that to you this side of judgement day. And it won't be me demonstrating it to you either :-) But I can hopefully here and now demonstrate to you at least that in order for right and wrong to exist beyond might makes right, that universal right must exist, and that in order for universal right and wrong to exist, there must be a single universal moral lawgiver who has authority over all the people put together.

Does that make sense, or did I word that badly?

Thanks,

-Jesse

[mrjesse]

Genome comparisons prove evolution is true

Do you mean ASBE (All Species By Evolution) or just "microevolution" or variation within a kind?

If you mean evolution within a kind, then we don't even need genome comparisons to prove that - I grew up on a farm and I clearly saw that each successive generation of livestock was not a perfect exact bit for bit copy of either of its parents.

If you're talking about ASBE, then Genome comparisons do not prove to millions of people that evolution is true, because they haven't seen the data themselves - they still have to have faith in people about things they've never seen - and that's faith not science.

Furthermore, common DNA sequences could just as well be from a common designer!

So could you please get more specific about just what which genome comparisons prove what kind (and which) evolution?

Cultures reward compliant behavior and punish noncompliant behavior. Lying is mostly injurious to the social contract, so cultures have evolved to view most lying as evil.

I don't think all of that statement is true. First of all, look around and see the courts and government offices are full of people lying and cheating. Second, let me change "lying" to "killing" in your statement, and see how that runs:

Cultures reward compliant behavior and punish noncompliant behavior. Killing is mostly injurious to the social contract, so cultures have evolved to view most killing as evil.

That definitely isn't true! Some cultures reward killing of non-muslims!

-Jesse