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Museums take up evolution challenge (because "biology classes have faltered")
Chicago Tribune ^ | 16 Oct 05 | Lisa Anderson

Posted on 10/16/2005 12:02:32 PM PDT by gobucks

Natural history museums around the country are mounting new exhibits they hope will succeed where high school biology classes have faltered: convincing Americans that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is a rigorously tested cornerstone of modern science.

Snip

"I think everyone is realizing that we need to be doing a great deal more. We just haven't made the effort to communicate evolution to people in terms they can understand. Evolution is exciting," Diamond said.

snip

"One of the big misunderstandings, I think, is that a lot of people have stopped realizing that science is a secular activity," said Lance Grande. Field's $17 million, 20,000-square foot, "Evolving Planet" exhibit is slated to open on March 10, 2006.

snip

"In many ways, I blame science itself in that we have done a terrible job of explaining what science is," said Leonard Krishtalka of ... Kansas in Lawrence.

"I would imagine to non-scientists a lot of science and technology sounds like so much magic," he said. "Is it any surprise that so many people are choosing one kind of magic over another kind of magic?"

In an effort to deepen visitors' understanding of evolution, the Field Museum has designed "Evolving Planet" to showcase dinosaurs without allowing them to overshadow everything else. In past evolution exhibits, McCarter said, people "whipped through the origin of life, and everything before the dinosaurs, to go look at the dinosaurs. And by the time they got done looking at the dinosaurs, they were so tired that they whipped out."

This time, he said, "we're using the dinosaurs as kind of the marquee to draw them in and saying, this is a very complicated story, which you've got to dig into over a long period of time."

(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Front Page News; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: christianbashing; crevolist; darwin; god; intelligentdesign; museum; religion
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To: mc6809e
I fervently hope you have a change of heart before you breathe your last and step off into eternity, my friend. Living with one's ultimate faith and hope resting in the paltry capabilities of mankind is as depressing and frightful an existence as I can imagine.

Whether you believe or not has utterly no bearing on the reality of this situation, which is that God most certainly exists and most certainly came to Earth in the form of Jesus. I've seen real, tangible things in my life as a direct result of prayer, things that were mathematically impossible outside divine intervention. I don't think God exists. I know He does.

You, mc6809e, will kneel before Him someday and acknowledge that He is Lord. It's unavoidable.

Accept Him and what He did for you, and enjoy an unimaginably wonderful eternity. Reject Him, and it's gonna be unimaginably horrific.

Man went to the moon. God made the moon.

MM

81 posted on 10/16/2005 8:55:46 PM PDT by MississippiMan (Behold now behemoth...he moves his tail like a cedar. Job 40:17)
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To: MississippiMan
I've seen real, tangible things in my life as a direct result of prayer, things that were mathematically impossible outside divine intervention.

Maybe you're just bad at math. That's much more likely than devine intervention.

82 posted on 10/17/2005 12:02:45 AM PDT by mc6809e
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To: WildTurkey

Beat for what? Let's examine our common history here for five seconds shall we. In an exchange on another topic, I asserted something without a web based citation. You posted a link to some nutjob hitpiece without having bothered to know first hand whether the hitpiece was accurate much less whether the attack was proper to begin with. As it happens, the material you attacked blindly ended up being a falsifiable source for my position. In attacking me with your hitpiece, you showed you had not clue #1 what you were talking about because you hadn't bothered to see if what was said was true or not. The evidence was the fact that the material referred to in part had more information provided in it than what I offered initially and agreed with me. And you had to ask for sourcing for my statements. Had you bothered to do your homework, you'd have had more information on it than I had before you responded to the negative.

Beat by a mile indeed. You've set your own record not only for being wrong; but for being willingly ignorant and letting someone else do your thinking for you. Then had the audacity to accuse me of doing what you yourself had demonstrated openly and carelessly was your own flawed practice - cut and pasting information from some whacknut site denmonizing people without having bothered to know if the demonization was called for or factually accurate.
This is a kind summation of events past. I could be nasty about it but, hey, I don't hate you or even dislike you. I don't see you as the enemy, you just work for him. And apparently you are guilty of projecting as another thread accused you of. If you want to drag me into other arguments
thinking yourself crafty or intelligent for the doing, I'm not sure on what basis you thought you'd accomplish it. Especially considering the extent to which you had to flood the other thread to hide your embarrasement.. lol.

Thanks for pinging me. Glad to be of service to the others here. And appreciate the opportunity to set the record straight. Bothered to check your references yet?


83 posted on 10/17/2005 1:32:15 AM PDT by Havoc (King George and President George. Coincidence?)
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To: WildTurkey

Pretty sick what can happen to people genetically when they dabble in things they shouldn't, when they are exposed to things they shouldn't be, etc. At the same time, amazing, isn't it, how with all the apparent damage there it's still a human.

Here's a fun thing for you which precludes the idea of evolution from ever allowing to go unnoticed. Lets assume for a second that a mother were to give birth to something inhuman.. Does the mother live or die in terror and disgust?
Does the child live or get killed from terror and disgust.
Anyone watched the modern version of the fly lately. It's an apt notion of how a mother might react. Actually, it's likely more tame than one might expect. And that thing that made the movie a good horror piece is the fact that most could identify with the horror of it.. not the plausibility; but, the horror. LOL. Common sense can be counted on time and again, in opposition to evolution - not support of it. Just like nature.. Dang those zillions of seeds every year that fail to grow anything other than what was planted. It just keeps illustrating that absurd notion that macro-evolution never happens and cannot. Natural selection prevents it. Fun stuff huh. I know, we can never deal properly with facts.. just screws up the works right Bwahahahahahahahahaha


84 posted on 10/17/2005 2:22:11 AM PDT by Havoc (King George and President George. Coincidence?)
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To: gobucks
We just haven't made the effort to communicate evolution to people in terms they can understand.

ROFL. I'm going to tear up laughing. "We aren't getting our message out." BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. They've monopolized the conversation for how long now?!!! Everyone knows the message and has had detail after detail of it crammed down their throats. They've been abused with it, beaten senseless with it; but, just like good old liberal Democrats, when nobody has use for their drivel, they are dumbfounded "We aren't getting our message out." Well, heck. It worked for the Dims of one stripe didn't it.. PUUUUUHHHHHLEASE get your message out. In my best Rush Limbaugh voice I'm begging you to give us more of your message. If the trackrecord of the Dims is anything to go on, You'll destroy yourselves faster than we could hope.

85 posted on 10/17/2005 4:10:40 AM PDT by Havoc (King George and President George. Coincidence?)
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To: CarolinaGuitarman

You can say most evolutionists believe in God, but at the top of the pyramid of those guys, they most emphatically DON'T. Read the thread at Huffington by Sam Harris with a big comment early by Dawkins. Thousands of these guys are in the woodwork, impatiently waiting for the day they can finally put all that God nonsens to rest, once and for all.

And Darwinian evolution is completely incompatible with Christianity.


86 posted on 10/17/2005 4:48:48 AM PDT by guitarist
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To: mc6809e; MississippiMan

"Maybe you're just bad at math. That's much more likely than devine intervention"

Maybe you are just failing to do the math problems you suspect you won't like the answers to. That's much more likely without divine intervention. (and just what does 'devine' mean, anyway?)


87 posted on 10/17/2005 4:49:07 AM PDT by gobucks (http://oncampus.richmond.edu/academics/classics/students/Ribeiro/Laocoon.htm)
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To: guitarist
"You can say most evolutionists believe in God,..."

Because it's true.

"Thousands of these guys are in the woodwork, impatiently waiting for the day they can finally put all that God nonsens to rest, once and for all."

The ToE, like every other scientific theory, has nothing to say one way or the other about the existence of God.

"And Darwinian evolution is completely incompatible with Christianity."

According to you. Most evolutionists in the USA are Christians, and don't give d**m what you think.
88 posted on 10/17/2005 5:06:44 AM PDT by CarolinaGuitarman ("There is a grandeur in this view of life...")
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To: Havoc
"Lets assume for a second that a mother were to give birth to something inhuman.. "

This would immediately falsify the ToE. NO SCIENTIST says that evolution occurs when a mother gives birth to a new species. That's Jack Chick's fantasy.
89 posted on 10/17/2005 5:14:46 AM PDT by CarolinaGuitarman ("There is a grandeur in this view of life...")
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To: Havoc
Everyone knows the message and has had detail after detail of it crammed down their throats

I disagree. Most people are hugely ignorant of evolution, only having this general idea that it says one type of animal evolves into another. Very little education on evolution is actually done in biology class, and kids don't listen anyway. If they had then some of the bigger misconceptions adults had wouldn't be as common.

The vast majority of people undoubtably got the basis of their knowledge of evolution from snippets in popular culture which is a hugely unreliable source. The rest they piece together themselves, but this ends up wrong when the basis of their understanding is wrong.

 

  Some examples of common misconceptions:

--Many people wrongly believe evolution is a ladder rather than a tree and that lower lifeforms evolve into higher lifeforms at a constant rate through time. This is a giant misconception that renders their ability to understand evolution virtually useless.

--Many believe evolution happens via sudden giant mutations that provide amazing abilities (as in X-Men). They have a misconception of what a mutation is. They imagine mutations in the comic-book way, not the genetic way.

--Many people believe evolution says that humans came from monkeys or chimpanzees, and of course it doesn't.

--Many people only know the fossil record from passing mention in popular media. So they will likely know about neandertal man (which many wrongly believe is an ancestor), and possibly lucy. But they will likely not know of the dozen other hominid fossil species or the general timeline.

--Many people actually believe there is something called the "missing link". They believe scientists are out there looking for this.

 

  The problem is that people assume that the details they know are virtually all there is to know. Because they know very little they assume there simply isn't much to evolution. Because they think they know it all they think they can accurately sum up the theory, and think they are in as good as a position to do so as a biologist.

So when these "do you accept evolution" polls come up it is really a pointless question. Most of the people answering likely have false impressions of what evolution is (and that goes for people who answer "yes", as well as "no"). That's only because they aren't interested in learning about it. Fair enough, but obviously no amount of museum projects are going to make people want to learn about something.

90 posted on 10/17/2005 6:06:57 AM PDT by bobdsmith
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To: CarolinaGuitarman

How do you know it's Jack Chick fantasy if you've never observed it happen? Seems you guys have a lot of rules defined for a game you've never once seen played. LOL.


91 posted on 10/17/2005 6:24:18 AM PDT by Havoc (King George and President George. Coincidence?)
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To: bobdsmith
I disagree. Most people are hugely ignorant of evolution, only having this general idea that it says one type of animal evolves into another. Very little education on evolution is actually done in biology class, and kids don't listen anyway. If they had then some of the bigger misconceptions adults had wouldn't be as common.

Keep going, you sound just like Tommy Daschle.

92 posted on 10/17/2005 6:27:17 AM PDT by Havoc (King George and President George. Coincidence?)
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To: Havoc

what I said is as plain as the sky is blue


93 posted on 10/17/2005 6:30:02 AM PDT by bobdsmith
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To: gobucks; All

I don't see why one can't believe in God and Science. Many religions have different theories and interpretations but have one giant meaning, I don't see why Science can't have it's own interpretation without everyone saying they are leaving God out of the equation.


94 posted on 10/17/2005 6:33:54 AM PDT by md2576 (Don't be such a Shehan Hugger!)
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To: Havoc
"How do you know it's Jack Chick fantasy if you've never observed it happen?"

If we observed it happen it would falsify the ToE. Only a creationist would be so dumb as to think that's how speciation worked.
95 posted on 10/17/2005 6:50:55 AM PDT by CarolinaGuitarman ("There is a grandeur in this view of life...")
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To: bobdsmith

"what I said is as plain as the sky is blue."

If Creationists have to they will deny that too.


96 posted on 10/17/2005 6:52:24 AM PDT by CarolinaGuitarman ("There is a grandeur in this view of life...")
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To: CarolinaGuitarman

I've never seen a purple cow
And never hope to see one.
But Dr. Dino has a farm
And if you pay he'll make one.


97 posted on 10/17/2005 6:56:40 AM PDT by js1138 (Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.)
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To: Ma3lst0rm
honest intelligent people can disagree on conclusions based on the facts at hand.

That Science is becoming even more about protecting an ideology than about seeking truth. The same can be said for current big bang cosmology.


Exactly

Wolf

98 posted on 10/17/2005 12:44:40 PM PDT by RunningWolf (tag line limbo)
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To: From many - one.
You explained a possible -result- of variation. My question refers to how the variation happens in the first place.

The variation is in the design spec sheet. :)

99 posted on 10/17/2005 1:00:33 PM PDT by Mark was here (How can they be called "Homeless" if their home is a field?.)
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To: Oztrich Boy
This {guy who was fired by Scientific American} is a Great folktale from the distant past.

Interesting. I did not know the story had reached mythic proportions, time for some research.

100 posted on 10/17/2005 1:06:52 PM PDT by Mark was here (How can they be called "Homeless" if their home is a field?.)
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