Education

Jesus did things to help the poor and suffering of his time. None of them will matter someday, don't you agree?So should we reject Jesus and his teachings? Is that really what you believe, Charlie?

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What shall it profit a nation if it gain the whole world, yet lose its own soul.
(paraphrasing Mark 8:36)

The randman account of Haeckel's drawings are what strike me as myth making.I took one year of biology as an undergraduate. The text included Haeckel's drawings. They had no influence on my views of evolution. I started the course uncertain about evolution, and I finished the course uncertain about evolution.The trouble with Haeckel's drawings, is that I would have needed to spend considerable time studying embryology before I could have a reasonable idea how to interpret them. While the diagrams suggested something interesting, there was no way that I could take them as substantial evidence for evolution.Sure, there is a myth. That myth is the absurd conspiracy theory that randman is peddling.

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What shall it profit a nation if it gain the whole world, yet lose its own soul.
(paraphrasing Mark 8:36)

I shall consider that an unwarranted and scurrilous attack.

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What shall it profit a nation if it gain the whole world, yet lose its own soul.
(paraphrasing Mark 8:36)

That is not actually relevant to what I posted. You were certainly wrong to bring it up in the form of an unwarranted accusation against me.For the record, I don't know whether Haeckel doctored his drawings and faked the data. I'm not an historian, so I have no way of determining his intent.

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What shall it profit a nation if it gain the whole world, yet lose its own soul.
(paraphrasing Mark 8:36)

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nwr, I was responding to this by you:

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The randman account of Haeckel's drawings are what strike me as myth making. I took one year of biology as an undergraduate. The text included Haeckel's drawings.

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In light of this comment, I thought my response was appropiate.

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I didn't.I wasn't on the textbook committee that approved the book. I was just a student.My main point is that the whole issue is not nearly as important as you make it out to be. Even if they were correct, Haeckel's drawings would not be particularly significant on the question of whether ToE is a sound theory.

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What shall it profit a nation if it gain the whole world, yet lose its own soul.
(paraphrasing Mark 8:36)

Nonsense. It just shows that textbooks for beginning courses are not always up to date.I should have mentioned that biology course I took was somewhere around 1957. There you go putting words in my mouth again.I haven't claimed anything about embryology to be true. I don't know much about the subject at all.

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What shall it profit a nation if it gain the whole world, yet lose its own soul.
(paraphrasing Mark 8:36)

No.It is unrealistic to expect the entire population to fully understand the theory of evolution. For most people it should suffice that they have a broad overview, and that they have some respect for the scientific community.The problem is a willful dogmatic rejection of science. This rejection is done with enormous hypocrisy, with those who reject science still feasting on the benefits it has brought to them. I don't know of any, but they probably exist. But such studies can only show correlation. They cannot demonstrate cause. I'm all for improving science education. But that would be no panacea. It is possible for people reasonably well educated in science, to nevertheless reject that science. See Message 1 as one example.

Education is always good. I can think of nothing better than enabling people to examine the evidence, and decide for themselves. It is unfortunate that the home schooling movement is denying some children an adequate education. I don't know for sure. But I suspect it is because fundamentalist Christianity is failing, and we are seeing the struggles of its death throes.Protestantism started as a rebellion against authority (the authority of the pope). It was a grass roots movement, and a quite effective one. Now it has changed into an authority based system, appealing to government legislation, constitutional amendment, and a rigidly conservative judiciary, in an apparent attempt to impose its belief system on people. In the meantime the gay rights movement and the new age religions are using grass roots methods that are making deep inroads into the culture. In spite of its appeal to authority, fundamentalist Christianity seems incapable of resisting these grass roots movements.At the same time, we see the fundamentalists denominations splintering into multiple sects. It is a little like the high rate of mutation that is sometimes seen in a biological species that is under heavy pressure. Some of the splinter groups become successful and form mega-churches. But often this success is temporary and based on the personality of a single leader. It is like a spurt of growth on a new shoot, which runs out of steam after a while. Some of the new splinter denominations are successful because of social programs rather than as a result of their theology. Some of them are experimenting with alternative theologies (considered heretical by the more orthodox denominations).Oops! I'm wandering off-topic here. If anyone wants to argue the OT issue I just raised, please start a new thread.

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What shall it profit a nation if it gain the whole world, yet lose its own soul.
(paraphrasing Mark 8:36)

I think the number of people affected by an absolute dogmatism is actually rather small. The bigger problem is the number of highly gullible people who are swayed by these dogmatists.Some people make their decisions based on evidence. Others seem to make their decisions by picking someone to trust, and then playing "follow the leader." And often their decision on whom to trust is based on emotion rather than reason. Over the last few decades, we have seen a transformation from a knowledge based society into an entertainment based society. We are seeing the consequences of that change.

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What shall it profit a nation if it gain the whole world, yet lose its own soul.
(paraphrasing Mark 8:36)

I distinguish between education and mere book learning. I did not intend to suggest that all home schooling is bad. I'm sure some is quite good. And even where students do attend an academy (whether a public school or a private one), what they learn at home is still quite important. When parents abandon their educational responsibilities and rely exclusively on the schools, that can be just as much of a problem as is some of the home schooling. I avoid sweeping generalizations. Dopish learning is a bad idea at any time.One of the problems in todays education scene is that there is often too much emphasis on mastery of facts and too little attention paid to developing an understanding of processes and relations.

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What shall it profit a nation if it gain the whole world, yet lose its own soul.
(paraphrasing Mark 8:36)

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This might help you see I am not making fabrications, taken from a 1997 peer-review study by an evo.

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Another point to emerge from this study is the considerable
inaccuracy of Haeckel’s famous figures. These
drawings are still widely reproduced in textbooks and review
articles, and continue to exert a significant influence
on the development of ideas in this field (Wolpert 1991;
Alberts et al. 1994; Duboule 1994).

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MK Rich Ardson - MK Blog Rich

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That's evidence that the diagrams were inaccurate. It doesn't appear to say anything about them being faked.

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I think it's important to see that Richardson claims Haeckel's drawings up to 1997 exerted a significant influence "in this field" of scientific research, not just for textbooks but for peer-reviewed articles, but that evos took the diagrams as accurate.

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Is "this field" evolution, or is "this field" embryology. My impression was that Richardson was talking about embryology, and that the "significant influence" was there.

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It's not just that the textbooks were out of date, but evos themselves were wrong.

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Aristotlean scientists were wrong for well over a thousand years. Newtonian scientists were wrong for 300 years. It's the way science works. Science is not guaranteed to give exact indisputable truth. It can only give a useful approximation. So get over it. Stop making a mountain out of a molehill.As best I can tell, there is one reason and one reason only, that you repeatedly bring up Haeckel, pakicetus, transitional fossils. And that is because you have no credible evidence, none whatsoever, against the theory of evolution. So you repeatedly bring up minor quibbles, blow them out of proportion, and attempt to weave them into a grand conspiracy theory.There is no conspiracy. Like it or not, the theory of evolution is well suppported, although there is still room for some fine tuning.Can we now stop debating Haeckel and return to the topic of the OP?

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What shall it profit a nation if it gain the whole world, yet lose its own soul.
(paraphrasing Mark 8:36)

To be fair to Ringo, most of the disagreement is about the conclusions drawn from evidence, rather than about the evidence itself.By the way, you can use the "Peek" button to see how I am achieving those shaded quotes.

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What shall it profit a nation if it gain the whole world, yet lose its own soul.
(paraphrasing Mark 8:36)

None of those is a scientific thesis. None of those belongs in a science class. None of those is appropriate as a statement of the National Academy of Science.

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Impeach Bush.

Neither.I'm interested in teaching method, process, understanding. That gives students what they need to be able to make their own assessments of truth.