Not at all. But students should be presented with ALL of the evidence for and AGAINST the theory of evolution, not just one side. The theory has many weaknesses - there are many scientists who don't buy it. Present them with all of the evidence in an unbiased manner and then let them decide for themselves which evidence is more convincing. Quit pushing it like a religion. Censorship of evidence against evolution is un-American and un-scientific, and makes the evos who seek to censor look dishonest.
Not at all. But students should be presented with ALL of the evidence for and AGAINST the theory of evolution, not just one side.
Uh huh... And after they've spent the FORTY YEARS, at least (eight hours a day, five days a week) it would require to work through "ALL of the evidence for" the theory of evolution -- and a day or two covering "ALL the evidence against it" (and I'm being generous), how much time is that going to leave them for anything else?
I've got a better idea, why don't we stop wasting students' time on this sort of "have them completely review an entire field of science from top to bottom just because some fringe folks don't understand it"?
Ooh, here's an even BETTER idea -- why don't you anti-evolution folks go spend *YOUR* time actually having a look at "ALL of the evidence for the theory of evolution" before you spout off any more nonsense about it? That should keep you busy for about half a lifetime, at least, which will produce two great results: 1) It'll keep you from bothering us for a very, very long time, and 2) by the time you get done actually LEARNING the field for a change, you'll understand why 99+% of biologists consider evolutionary biology to be a settled issue, and you'll almost certainly come to the same conclusion yourself once you've actually worked through the ENORMOUS volumes of evidence supporting it.
Deal? I'll even point you to the libraries.
Here's part of a post I wrote a while back trying to get across the magnitude of the evidence:
And speaking of PubMed, a search for journal articles containing the word "evolution" returns 165,096 hits -- remember, you're advocating having schoolkids read all of *those* as well. Let's see, at a brisk thirty minutes per paper, that'd eat up only 39 years (spending 40 hours a week, no vacations), no problem!I am not claiming that all of TOE is crap, just that parts of it, i.e. ape to man is simply speculation based on a few bones and common genes found over a million years. I just don't buy it.
It is far, far more than "simply speculation". First, see the "mega-post" linked above. Then note that even though it's *HUGE*, it's only a vanishingly small fraction of one percent of the amount of evidence that has been accumulated supporting and validating evolution.
I recently went to a large university library in order to find a copy of a paper I couldn't get online (and PubMed, an online database of biology-related research papers, has over TWELVE MILLION papers cataloged). The archived biology journals filled the second, and half of the third floors of the library. Each volume of bound journals held around a thousand pages, and was the size of a big-city phone book. Each shelf held about twenty volumes in a row. Each 8-foot-tall rack held eight shelves. There were about twenty five racks to a row (fifty when you count both sides of the "aisle"), they were *really* long. It was a chore hiking up and down them. There were about seventy rows. I got lost in them several times. And that was just the one floor, there were more upstairs.
And of course, those weren't all the journal articles, just the ones from the biggest journals, and not a lot of the ones published in languages other than English.
*That's* the kind of magnitude of evidence we're talking about. You could hike into those stacks, walk as long as you like, and then pull out a volume at random and flip it open to any page you chose, and I'd make money betting you that if the exact page you chose didn't contain a study providing supporting evidence for evolution, flipping 2-3 pages on either side would. You could literally spend the rest of your life trying to read it all, and not make it through a fraction of it.
Even just the dozens of different specific ways in which "ape to man" has been validated involves enough evidence to literally bury people under.
"Simply speculation"? Not hardly.
The theory has many weaknesses
Oh? Name your top two.
- there are many scientists who don't buy it.
...a tiny fraction of all scientists, actually, most of whom aren't actually in the biological sciences (*and* most of the "lists of scientists" who doubt evolution which the creationists like to wave around tend to *really* stretch the definition of who counts as a "scientist"). You can also find "many" scientists who aren't convinced that the Apollo Moon landings weren't faked. So?
Present them with all of the evidence in an unbiased manner and then let them decide for themselves which evidence is more convincing.
See above. Showing them "all the evidence" would take most of a lifetime. That's how much evidence has been accumulated supporting evolution. Deal with it.
And what other topics would you like to waste time on in a likewise fashion? Shall we show students *ALL* the evidence for the atomic theory of matter, and all the evidence against it, then just let them make up their own minds? That'll take another half a lifetime, at least.
Quit pushing it like a religion.
It isn't. Quite pushing your religion and pretending it's science.
Censorship of evidence against evolution is un-American and un-scientific, and makes the evos who seek to censor look dishonest.
There is no such censorship. Nor is there any such evidence, unless you can come up with something better than the last several hundred clueless anti-evolutionists I've talked to. Feel free to show us what you've got, though. But don't waste our time with this manure, we've seen it a thousand times before. Try something new and original.
I was amazed to see that you didn't take the opportunity Ichneumon gave you to back off this absurd statement.
C'mon even trained, working scientists focusing their career on a restricted field (never mind something as broad as "evolution" in toto) often struggle to keep up merely with incremental additions to the evidence relevant to their research.
Yet you want students in high school, or maybe even earlier, to be presented with "ALL" the evidence? In one (or a few) years, in one class (that has to cover many other things as well)?!
Again, how is this even possible? Oh, and you obviously want them to genuinely consider the evidence, not just be presented with it. This means they have to understand it. Which means they will need to have deep knowledge of multiple scientific fields, knowledge of technical terms and professional shorthand, etc. Which means they wouldn't need an INTRODUCTORY science class in the first place!
Seriously, now. Don't you see how silly this is?