Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: VadeRetro; Junior; longshadow; RadioAstronomer; Doctor Stochastic; js1138; Shryke; RightWhale; ...
Evolution Ping

The List-O-Links
A conservative, pro-evolution science list, now with over 350 names.
See the list's explanation, then FReepmail to be added or dropped.
To assist beginners: But it's "just a theory", Evo-Troll's Toolkit,
and How to argue against a scientific theory.

2 posted on 02/28/2006 7:07:08 PM PST by PatrickHenry (Virtual Ignore for trolls, lunatics, dotards, scolds, & incurable ignoramuses.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]


To: All
The plan says several "areas of disagreement" would have to be covered by teachers, including the view by some scientists that "it is mathematically impossible for the first cell to have evolved by itself."

Students also would have to be told some scientists argue "that nowhere in the fossil record is there an indisputable skeleton of a transitional species, or a 'missing link,'" the proposal says.

Also, the proposal says students "must be informed that the origin of sex, or sex drive, is one of biology's mysteries".

To be fair, it is true that there have been some scientists (only very rarely those with any expertise in the specific field) who sadly have demonstrated misunderstandings of this sort about evolution. This is the entire reason a peer review system exists: to prevent discredited concepts like these from surfacing in journals (and subsequently, educational material).

If I was a science teacher in Nevada, and this ridiculous amendment passed, I would be glad to tell my students the honest truth within the bounds of the law (that a few scientists like these exist, but are wrong and that bad ideas like these are weeded out in the first steps of peer review), and then explain why the consensus of experts points to overwhelmingly evolutionary theory, and why people who say these things are wrong.

38 posted on 03/01/2006 6:20:47 AM PST by Quark2005 (Confidence follows from consilience.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson