Teaching evolution in the context of science

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
[b]Yes Jaako, even most scientists know very, very little about evolution. And they all equate the moths and finches as evidence that life on earth really could have evolved fom simpler forms.[/QUOTE]

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Wow, what a sweeping statement, TB. Perhaps you would like to back this assertion about what "most scientists" know with some evidence.

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The most amazing thing is that most PhDed biologists also know almost nothing about macroevolution. In fact, the scientific literature has very little in it on genuinely macroevoltionary topics. I'm serious.

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You are also making assertions that you have not provided evidence for.

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Please define "genuine macroevolutionary topics", please.

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The other point is that you of course are well read on the topic so your 10th grade class was too simplistic for you. It may not have been for the much of the rest of the class. But I agree that mainstream science rarely if ever gets to the crux of the matter

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There is a very large difference between what is taught in many high school science classrooms and what is going on in the professional scientific research community. Science education below the college level is mediocre, overall, in the US, because of the watering down of textbooks and curricula due to the influence of religious groups.

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There are several large companies that control what is put into most textbooks, and they are based in states like Texas, which is smack in the middle of the Bible Belt.

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[QUOTE]and they never, ever point out that modern creationism is completely compatible with natural selection. Don't worry, just learn to live with it and take your opportunities when you can to correct these mistaken views.[/b]

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Why should Creationism, a religious belief, be mentioned as compatible with natural selection in a science class?Many religions, worldviews, and philosophies are compatible with natural selection. Should all of them be mentioned in science class?------------------
"We will still have perfect freedom to hold contrary views of our own, but to simply
close our minds to the knowledge painstakingly accumulated by hundreds of thousands
of scientists over long centuries is to deliberately decide to be ignorant and narrow-
minded."-Steve Allen, from "Dumbth"

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
[B]Schraf, I work in a life sciences department (sorry Percy, but it's relevant to my pioint ) at a large mainstream Australian university. I know what I said is true. I lecture to 2nd and 3rd year students. I actaully teach evolution! (I qualify my statements with the phrase 'evoltuionary/taxonomic' relationships, I'm actaully very fair about it.) I know what our undergraduates are taught, I know what textbooks they read and I know what happens when they become graduate students (they specialise). The amount of macroevoltuion taught in uni courses/textbooks is near zero. It really is pepperred moths and finches. I am truly not kidding. I recently dropped in our uni bookshop and carefully went through a half dozen biology textbooks. Almost zero macroevoltuion evn in the non-Bible belt Australian texts.[/QUOTE]

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Well, no offense to Australia, but there is a reason people from all over the world send their children to American universities.

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I'm not saying that I don't believe that you work at an Austrailian University, but I'd still like specific evidence of your assertion that most scientists don't know anything about Evolution.

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I would define genuinely macroevoltuionary topics as those that discuss the origin of genuinely novel features.

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Such as...?

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This is best done at the molecular level where things are more unambiguous but there are very few well documented examples of the origin of novel anatomical features. The literature is almost empty of these discussions.

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I have searched in vain for a good discussion of the origin of protein families for example. I can not find it in Medline. I'm sure there are one or two but even if there are there are very, very few papers on this stuff. Behe points out that the 1000 papers published in the Journal of Molecualr Evoltuion over the last decade can be split into 3 catgories: (i) 5% mathematical, (ii) 15% chemical evoltuion and (iii) 80% sequence comparisons. In those 1000 papers he couldn't find a single paper which showed evidence or even simply proposed a step by step series of events whiich could have led to any molecualr system.

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What about Doolittle's work on Blood clotting?

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Are you actually faulting Biologists for not having all knowledge right away?

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Since you brought up Behe, I'll ask the question that I have asked many times and never got an answer to regarding ID:

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How do we tell the difference between an Intelligently Designed system and a natural system that we don't understand yet?

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The alternative of creation is dismissed with a single line in many biology texts without mentioning that it could be compatible with natural selection.[/QUOTE]As well it should be, because it is a religious belief. I'm not sure why it's even given that one line.You didn't answer my question, so I will repeat it:Many religions, worlviews, and philosophies are compatible with natural selection. Should each and every one be mentioned in the science classroom? Why or why not?You are making an error in thinking that Christian Fundamentalist Creationism is a competing scientific theory to the ToE. The problem is, Creationism is religious dogma, not science.

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[This message has been edited by schrafinator, 06-27-2002]

[QUOTE] I stand by what I said in that post you cited - most of what we do is indistinguishable from what you would call science.[/B][/QUOTE]It's very distinguishable, actually.Creation "science" isn't falsifiable, because, as it is based upon a certain interpretation of the Bible being infallibly true, nothing can falsify it. Falsifiability is a required component of all science, and Creation "science" thoroughly violates this tenet.Science is evidence-driven, not pre-held conclusion-driven. Science looks to see what the evidence in nature suggests is the case, while Creation "science" has jumped far ahead to the conclusion about what is supposed to be found. Real science does not ignore evidence, while Creation "science" must ignore evidence to shoehorn it into what they have already decided the "truth" must be.------------------
"We will still have perfect freedom to hold contrary views of our own, but to simply
close our minds to the knowledge painstakingly accumulated by hundreds of thousands
of scientists over long centuries is to deliberately decide to be ignorant and narrow-
minded."-Steve Allen, from "Dumbth"