Education

This is a special issue with a lot on
"Evolution and the ID Wars" -- I might get around to putting more in here from there.There is the results of a Harris Poll:one question was on
Human Development from Earlier Species
All Adults (n=1000) Yes = 38% No= 54%
H.S or less (n=407) Yes = 32% No= 59%
Some College(n=339) Yes = 35% No= 56%
College grad(n=157) Yes = 46% No= 46%
Post Grad (n=75 ) Yes = 60% No= 33%This is U.S adults in June 05.I think I'd be pleased to put Canadians up against this and I'm appalled at all the numbers. There is an obvious trend though.

As noted above it doesn't make it more or less credible. "Credible" from an evidence point-of-view doesn't change.In the science classroom what we have are things which are very well established, things which are much more tentative and things which are unknown (and lots of shades in between).If someone wants to put forward an evidenceless idea against one of the first two categories then they they have very low credibility. If they want to put forward a creation idea into the unknown category they are proposing another God of the Gaps arguement.It seems that the best way to approach it is with an understanding that some believe that there is a sentience responsible for how things are and some aren't so sure. These two groups both consist of scientists and non-scientists.For those that believe there is some "one" (whatever that is) responsible for everything the best approach is to (as, at one time or another ALL agree) take how this someone accomplished this as a mystery and NOT to allow beliefs to color how we THINK it should have been done.If you inject something as simple as God being responsible for the big bang you get into a mess if we find the cause of that and that here have been many of them. Jar's view that God set the "rules" of the game up (whatever they turn out to be) stays out of trouble and speaks of something that is much more powerful than a hands-on, dirty-fingered sculpture of clay.

Yea, I'd say less flawed. If it moves into areas of more tentativity and less rock solid science. However, it might only be moving into a gap so you have to be careful how you express it.If you are talking about inserting something into the science classroom and want to avoid "establishment" clause issues I think something like what was in one of my daugher's early science texts is fine (but I'm not a constitutional judge). This had a couple of paragraphs saying that many religions have ideas about how life etc. was created.I have emphasized the 'how' as that is what is then discussed from then on.

The nature of "why" can get off into a lot of philosophical discussion. I think in this context it should be considered to be associated with a "reason" for something.I think, myself, that in a science classroom the "how" should be stuck to though "how" might be used but mean the same as "why" when someone is being careful. This wouldn't make any sense. Evolutionary science couldn't possibly be talking about life's origins since it is, by definition, about living things.Chemistry is, however, starting to open up the black box of life's origins and we can start to make some tentative suggestions about it.However, if when you say "evo-science" you do mean biology then we do indeed know a great deal about how life changes over time. If you think otherwise it is a simple matter of deep ignorance.