Hello everyone, and my senior paper

Welcome to EvC. Your paper sounds interesting.You asked: By studying it and figuring out what it is. I don't see how the origins of the idea matters at all.How would these guys showing "that two randomly acquired mutations within the prokaryotic FumC sequence are sufficient to cause substantial dual targeting by reverse translocation" be hindered by not having an understanding or the origin of the Theory of Evolution?I don't see how not knowing the origin of, say Newtons classical mechanics, would be prevent me from studying the velocity of a ball based on the derivative of its position with respect to time. All I need is the equation and the data. The history of the mechanics is totally irrelevant.

How would them simply understanding the theory cause those biologists to realize that they don't need to study those things? Because the ramifications interfere with their religion, period. I don't know of any scientists who deny Darwin's theory because of scientific issues. The one's that I've seen that say that they do, say that to hide the fact that its really a religious issue. No, but they don't have to study the history of Darwin to learn that it isn't. If creationists could be taught, then they wouldn't be creationists any more. They don't want to accept the science because of thier religion. I don't think the history of scientific thought is going to help. Here's my point: Without knowing anything about any of that stuff, I can still realize that the random mutation + natural selection explains the diversity of life on Earth. That's it. The theory works and it works regardless of how much history I know. OMG, sooo suprised! Guess what: I can still calculate the velocity of a ball from the derivative of its position with respect to time both before and after knowing that. So why did it matter at all? What gap? (see my signature)The only gap is between science and fundamentalists. But that's because fundamentalists cannot learn and leaning is what science is all about. Even if its something that you think is completely stupid, like why a blind mole would have red hair, scientists investigate it because they want to learn (or get a grant). I'm not talking about random facts. I'm talking about a scientific understanding of a phenomenon and how its independent of the history of how that understanding came about. I don't need to know about Madam Curie's personal life to understand how radioactive isotopes behave.I think you're really missing this big part of science. Scientific explanations are made specifically so that you don't have to understand the history of how the theory came about to get the concept across. You can go in the lab and perform the experiments yourself and learn the theories without even knowing anything about the person that originally came up with it.

Oh, I see. "Agree with me or I'll insult you".Don't be so thin-skinned. You've presented your ideas on a debate board and they're going to be challenged.I don't feel any hostility but the tone that you're perceiving it from comes from the fact that you've said that you think that the history of science is more important that the science itself, that scientists cannot understand what they're studying if they don't understand the history, and that if scientists did study their history more then they wouldn't waste time investigating so much stupid stuff.I have not utterly disregarded these inane position of yours, I've explained why they are incorrect. I've asked pertinent questions that you've now avoided. And you've also now replied with hostility and insult.Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.

With which words?

Its just a little snark, man. Geez, its nothing personal. Well, you're paper's not done, so... all we really have to discuss here is your point on the relevance of history. Well, that does make your point more clear. But it still depends on what it is important for.I happen to think that, generally speaking, a good science education is more important that a good history one. But in regards to understanding the evolution vs creation debate, I can see how knowing the history behind it would be very helpful. Especially with regards to the fact that scientists weren't on some anti-religion crusade like creationists seem to think. I think you might have been mislead on how big of a controversy there really is.But I do see a good point in there. Creationists are not going to be convinced of evolution by throwing a bunch of science at them and I think you might be onto something with explaining the history of the emergence of the theory as a way to show that its not really about destroying religion.

If you type:[qs]quotes are easy[/qs]then it becomes "qs" means quote shaded. There also just regular "quote" that looks like this:

quote:

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quotes are easy

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Which I reserve for quotes that are not from the person I'm replying to. You can also use the "Peek" button at the bottom right of each post to see the exact text that was entered in the box. That'll show you how to do some of the other formatting. Overestimating. I don't think there's that much of a controversy. The creationists aren't that numerous, they're just really loud.

You gotta look at the way the survey questions are phrased. I doubt that many people have a problem with RM+NS as an explanation for how species diversify.People start getting hesitant when they think about humans evolving from "monkeys", though. But we wanna feel special.Too, there's people who think that god used evolution to create organisms so they might still count as a part of the creationist group in a survey even though they don't doubt evolution. It only takes one person to propose a law. And those are copied from templates that are provided by groups like the DI.What looks like a strong movement turns out to be a small group of people making a lot of noise. People who have been creationists their whole lives aren't going to change their minds, but they will die some day. I don't think its spreading very much so I see it going away on its own eventually.Go ahead and try to help, though. No reason not to.

Show me the question and the results, then we can talk about it.