Josh talks about the difference between teaching about ID and teaching ID. There is a huge difference that the Discovery Institute does not seem to understand.
I am opposed to teaching Intelligent Design in the classroom. It’s an absurd idea that is unsupported by any evidence — it has not earned a place in the curriculum as a legitimate scientific hypothesis. The propaganda novels that the DI has tried to peddle in the past, Of Pandas and People and their new one, Explore Evolution, do not belong in the classroom. They are badly written, and incompetently push completely false ideas as valid. They should be rejected on their low merit.
On the other hand, I do teach about ID … in fact, this next week is the week I’ve set aside to specifically address creationism in my introductory biology course. I’ve prepared them with some of the history of evolution, and maybe a little bit more of the evidence for the idea than was easily digestible, and now I’m going to cover the fallacies of interpretation of the theory, which will include social Darwinism as well as creationism. Students are bombarded with these bad ideas, and I don’t think we can afford to pretend they don’t exist — we have to confront them head-on.
The strategy I’m using is to ask the students themselves what arguments they’ve heard against evolution. They wrote some lists down this week, and this weekend I’m putting together a lecture where I specifically take these misconceptions and answer them. It was rather fun reading their lists: the arguments are very familiar, everything from “if evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?” to “there are no transitional fossils” to “organisms are too complex to have evolved.”
I also encouraged the students to go to our local creationist tent revival meeting, which was very conveniently timed. We’ll also be discussing how to refute his arguments in class next week.
That’s teaching about creationism. I’m all for it. It’s how we prepare students to criticize lies after they leave the classroom.
Speaking of ID, I just saw the newest Dilbert, and I think “wino’s spittle of unsupported conclusions” is an excellent description of ID.
http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20071006.html
Ahh, but did any of them ask about PYGMIES + DWARVES?!?
Should these lessons begin in high school or be left to college age?
I’ve seen arguments on both sides. Personally- I think that a skepticism course in high school could do wonders.
DWARFS are the key. DWARVES are uninteresting.
Teachers should spend more time teaching bad theories, and what makes them bad. Students are just taught what is Right and never forced to really consider what makes something “Right.” Most of the time, the students already know what the “right” theory is. They know the theory of biogenesis implicitly, they know the earth revolves around the sun, etc. So they never have to really struggle with evaluating different theories.
And they never have to deal with entrenched idiocy. When Redi effectively put spontaneous generation to rest, it (should) have been accepted becuase it was the obvious conclusion from a controlled, repeatable experiment. Science marches on! But what happens when people cling to theories that are wrong? What justification do they use? What if someone said, “Yes, well, spontaneous generation is very rare, and difficult to replicate in a laboratory.” Students really need to learn the nitty-gritty of whatver-that-fancy-word-is-that-means-how-we-know-what-we-know. ”
Fortunately, ID is an absolutely perfect example of sloppy scientific thinking, and it’s something students are going to be interested in (well, relative to, say, slime molds).
So more power to ya, brotha! Teach about that ID. Look forward to your students blog entries.
A skepticism course in high school would offend so many people the teacher would be run out of town on a rail within a week.
And not just Christians, just general woo. There is prime time, major network woo on all the time. I sure wouldn’t want to be that superintendent, fielding calls from parents who’ve been abducted by aliens, who have demons in their gardens, who talk with dead relatives, and who met each other by the will of God…
Nope. Skepticism is too revolutionary a world view for high school curriculum, I’m afraid.
the author is a moron )))))))
Damnit! 2:40 am. Bad case of insomnia. And nothing but trolls, trolls, trolls.
Sigh.
In the US I think there should be (and there supposedly is) a general science course required for all students. It should be broad in scope. That is, it should focus on the idea of the foundations of the scientific method and critical thinking.
The ID example would be a perfect choice for this class, as evolution, in a general way, isn’t especially difficult to explain and the fallacies of ID are also not especially difficult to explain.
If only young people in the US were exposed to this kind of thinking in a rigorous manner, we’d be a lot better off. You really shouldn’t have to do this in a college class. This should be explained earlier. I think it is in other countries.
Of course I did have a “Science” class in 7th grade and I think it was supposed to be something along these lines. The teacher I had was a bit of a crackpot. And boy was he angry.
He had some bizarre theory of electricity that I wish I could remember now. It didn’t make sense then, IIRC.
Anyway, good job PZ. I never had a single biology class growing up, as I was allowed to take a different set of science electives. I was lucky that my parents have always been skeptics and I never really had to worry about any seriously bad ideas being forced upon me by them.
I did not want to take a biology class at the time. I never really wanted to cut open dead animals (I still don’t). Since discovering your blog and it’s links to other resources I’ve been able to grasp more fully biology and all of the cool things involved in studying it. I still find physics more fun, but that might be because we used to be able to shoot playing cards to explain strobe lights.
I’m going to guess that doesn’t happen anymore.
phat
Inkadu – not true. There’s a female high-school teacher in Australia who has won awards for integrating a state-wide Skeptics Award into their classroom and has contributed to the writing of a course on Philosophy and Ethics that draws directly from skeptical ideas to teach critical thinking.
Kylie Sturgess spoke at the last Amaz!ng Meeting in Las Vegas and is currently working on their M.Ed, focusing on criticism about the Tobayck ‘Revised Belief in the Paranormal Scales’ and applying it to teenagers.
http://www.skeptics.com.au/prizes/2006ctprizeb.htm
and
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2006/1801778.htm – Radio National in Australia.
That woman is seriously cool.
Thanks for posting about her vedder.
phat
You know, this thread has led me to an idea. Would it be possible to produce a good, general scientific text book that emphasized just this kind of approach to education? It wouldn’t even have to be specific to science, which is what Ms. Sturgess is doing. But since most American students are required to take a general “science” class in Jr. High I would think it would be a good place to sort of mix the different educational tracks that students are generally forced to choose from.
I know I was told that I was better at “English” than I was at “Math”, which was vaguely true. And I kind of rebelled against that kind of thinking. I took whatever seemed interesting that I could. But if you could make sure that all the students got a good grounding in skeptical thought and put it in a “science” class with some “literary theory” or “film theory” in there, you could really do wonders.
I’m beginning to think that that book I’ve been thinking about writing should be a “text-book”.
phat
Hi, Vedder. Thanks for the link to the Australian teacher. It sounds like a cool class, but when I say “it wouldn’t work,” i’m thining of implementing a nation-wide program in the United States. It seems that schools are terrified of getting involved with anything that might potentially offend parents.
Of course you could run a skeptics class in the right district, with the right students, and the right parents — certainly in a “School of choice” it would work.
Though, this Methodist Ladies College does “foster Christian foundations in life…” I wonder if it’s just in that general “christian foundation” of being nice and not wantonly killing people and stealing their money, the way non-christians are wont to do.
Hi, Vedder. Thanks for the link to the Australian teacher. It sounds like a cool class, but when I say “it wouldn’t work,” i’m thining of implementing a nation-wide program in the United States. It seems that schools are terrified of getting involved with anything that might potentially offend parents.
Of course you could run a skeptics class in the right district, with the right students, and the right parents — certainly in a “School of choice” it would work.
Though, this Methodist Ladies College does “foster Christian foundations in life…” I wonder if it’s just in that general “christian foundation” of being nice and not wantonly killing people and stealing their money, the way non-christians are wont to do.
Phat — I think PZ is using a textbook in his class called “Science as a Way of Knwoing,” which i think is what you’re looking for (but it’s bio-specific).
phat–
There really isn’t a ‘general science course in the US’ because the US system puts much more power over education in the hands of state and local governments than most other countries do. However, universities require science courses for admission. So parents pressure all schools to offer science in the curriculum.
The federal goevernment does forbid the teaching of creationism as science, because it violates the establishment clause of the first amendment of the constitution (the separation of church and state.)
There would be no conflict over teaching modern evolutionary theory, if the fundamentalist movement of the late 19th century hadn’t created a conflict by insisting the bible had to be taken literally, word for word, as the truth. This was compounded in the twentieth century by the ‘creation science’ movement, which has simply spread lies about the supposed scientific basis for biblical literacy. They have done tremendous harm to the US, and apparently they are now trying to damage education in other countries.
Laws restricting the creationists do help, but the creationists are well-funded and absolutely without morals. They spread their toxins at the grassroots level, and that is ultimately where they must be fought.
Yes, I guess I just extrapolated my experience to other students. I didn’t have a great science education. But it wasn’t terrible. As I said, I was lucky that my parents were very good at encouraging certain types of thinking. I know this now more than ever. And I was expected to not be a scientist, even though I almost went that way. Somehow things worked out pretty well.
I learned a little bit about “cells” and “chemistry”. Having experienced two very different school systems in High School I have a feeling that physics is generally taught pretty well. I would guess that biology is not taught well.
I’d hate to keep local school systems from having some control over their curriculum. But it does seem that certain things should be taught everywhere. NCLB has only made this worse, despite its claims.
I live in the heart of William Jennings Bryan territory (Lincoln, NE) and I understand full well the idea of 19th century dogma. It’s sad that that man couldn’t just have moved on. He was a great political figure in a lot of ways. His story is especially tragic.
phat
I just wanted to say how much I admire what you’re doing, PZ. What I’d give to be able to sit in on your class next week.
I agree that this would probably never fly in a high school setting, though. I can’t imagine the numbers of irate phone calls the district would receive; they’d probably claim that the teacher was imposing his/her own personal “religious” ideology on the students. Ugh.
Yeah, that’s why when the new Philosophy and Ethics course (she wrote the material for the 2A unit as a guide for teachers, which comes out in 2008) shows how it’ll be on offer as a state-wide course that is on equal footing as the other post-compulsory subjects, you can see how powerful it is to have these models happening in the real world: http://newwace.curriculum.wa.edu.au/pages/courses/course_philosophy.asp
There’s also the Queensland course called Philosophy and Reason (http://www.criticalthinking.net.au/Syllabus.html) which is coordinated by fellow Australian skeptic Peter Ellerton (site http://www.criticalthinking.net.au). It’s possible to have other states running courses that are somewhat complimentary and overlap – the country is still going through discussions about a ‘national curriculum’ but still, the independent states are making moves regardless to incorporating skeptical ideas in the courses. Could this ever happen in the USA?
inkadu – you must have been at the TAM 2007! Kylie Sturgess raised that question almost immediately about “Yeah, but can this work elsewhere, as opposed to just a ‘school of choice’?” :) And other options like camps and outreach programs, the use of the internet and textbooks. When do we start saying that we’ve got the right textbook, right program, right teacher and is it enough to say ‘X does but we can’t help Y’? That’s why the new course is going to be under scrutiny, because it’s on offer over the whole state.
Lynne Kelly, who wrote ‘The Skeptic’s Guide to the Paranormal’ had worked for and even had her book launch at Methodist Ladies’ College Melbourne, so maybe religious schools are a little different in accepting skeptics in comparison to the USA.
Phat’s idea for a textbook that’s cross-curricular sounds really good and something that can and does happen in Philosophy classes to teach concepts well in both secondary and tertiary levels. I kind of think that English classes, which naturally challenge the status-quo with texts like ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ is the way to side-step the grief you could get from overcrowded science curriculums and the pressure to bring in ID concepts.
Dealing with their specific ideas that they have been exposed to is such a great idea. Especially when your doing it in such a way as to enable them not to recognise similar arguments but also giving them the information they need to begin to refute them. I know it always pains me when i see someone use of those stupid criticisms and i’m not in a position to refute it.
Might not be quite in the biology topic, but have you considered teaching about superstition in evolutionary terms? There probably was some survival advantage to certain superstitions, such as “god told you not to eat pork” and “god says wash your hands several times a day”, and even the “god says obey the old man in the silly hat”.
Being able to get your people frothing at the mouth to attack the neighbors was a major advantage over peaceful, rational neighbors in many cases, I would bet.
-jcr
With regard to the thread that schools cannot teach about creationism as it would be too controversal. Surely the way to do this would be with historical reference to thinking at the time of the publication of the theory of evolution. Paley’s watchmaker is exactly “ID” it has not changed one whit since then. It might even be worth mentioning since then where evolution has gone – the modern synthesis, genes, leaps in medicine and agriculture, and then maybe a throw out that there are still some paleyites around, and their line of thinking has not produced a single new idea.
jcr, did you mean the neighbors [tribes] being attacked were ” peaceful, rational ” or is the implication that aggressive irrational tribes should fight to the death thus minimizing their mutual chances for progress and prosperity?
If the former: that would be stupid and counterproductive as a species. If the latter: guess I stated my opinion above.
I am not being personal here. Just wondering why so many people [not saying you do or don’t jcr] still think “war” is the way when history and the present clearly show peace and rationality is the way to enhanced species viability and quality of life. Huummm… I guess 30% RWAs have a role in a balanced species but not if they rule.
There probably was some survival advantage to certain superstitions, such as “god told you not to eat pork” and “god says wash your hands several times a day”, and even the “god says obey the old man in the silly hat”.
I really, really hate this idea. It encourages students to do their best to legitimize a superstition, instead of think critically about it.
Of course, I may just be jaundiced by the ubiquity of the trichenosis canard.
I’d say that doesn’t legitimize it as much as pull the rug out from under it. “See, kids? If you buy Marvin Harris’ argument, your religion forbids pork just because pigs were ecological disasters in the area your religion started in.” Takes all the mystic hoohah right out of it.
In high school back in the 70’s I took a course on logic which was offered to juniors and seniors. One of the assignments was to find logical fallacies in essays, articles, and ads, and put them in a notebook. Find five examples of Begging the Question, find five examples of Argumentum ad Ignorantium, and so forth. That sort of search-and-identify exercise proved very useful to me; it wasn’t particularly easy, and turned into a general habit. And I doubt that it would trip warning bells even for fundamentalist parents, since of course most of the examples ended up being from advertisements — and they certainly want their kids to be critical thinkers in that area.
Sastra, Maybe a general course of Logic, what is science, and how people lie with statistics. would make a good combo. The logic and statisitcs part could use advertising as their targets to help skeptical thinking.
Sastra – That class sounds great!
Vedder – I don’t like to see skepticism taught outside a science class, because I think science is the single best instant of systematically applied skepticism, and if students are going to learn skepticism, they might as well learn from the best. Where in an English or social studies class, for instance, is there really room to teach the principal of falsifiability? Philosophy does sound like it would make a good fit, though I’ve never heard of a high school in the U.S. that taught philosophy. Ironically, the closest is probably “theology” taught at Catholic high schools. And, I bet that even the jesuits could teach a bitchin’ class about skepticism.
Also, I wasn’t at at TAM, and I don’t know if it’s sleep deprivation, but the idea of a skeptic rabble-rousing revolution started at the Ladies Methodist College is giving me a wicked case of the giggles.
JCR – Religious memes do have an evolutionary survival component — but it’s not always positive. Holy water is a fantastic vector for disease. And some early christian sects had strange rules about where to poop, such that everyone crapped in the same place, which meant that people tracked through other people’s crap… I think that group died out before long. Ditto the religions that forbid sex (duh!). Also, some bible research is pointing to the pork prohibition as being based much more on tribal differences at the time the bible was being compiled — it wsa about not being like the other tribe of ignorant wife beating motherfuckers. And, again about pork, it probably wasn’t a net advantage to stay away from ANYTHING EDIBLE at almost any time in human development. You’re more likely to die of starvation. In fact, some people think a population boom in the Medieval Ages began when people starting keeping pigs. Turns out pigs are a great source of iron, and a lot of women had been dying of iron-defficient anemia, especially after bloody child births. So maybe the class should also talk about how religious codes seem to be based on nothing substantial.
It also occurs to me that we’re talking about this like kids might be exposed to creationist arguments later on, or, you know, while watching 20/20.
I just had the appaling realization that kids go to Sunday school and learn this crap every week. That darn well settles it for me — creationism/ID needs to be systematically taught and dismantled in school, and I don’t care where. Do it in Gym class if you must, but do it.
Next person to use the designer fallacy, drop and give me 20!
I thought that the Discovery Institute people themselves asserted that ID is not ready to be taught as a theory in the classroom, and that this is one of the things that makes the literalist creationists frustrated with them. At least this is what I read somewhere.
ConcernedJoe,
I was referring to survival advantage of one group over another in the warfare that happens among stone-age cultures. If you have your people conditioned to obey, they can fight more effectively than a band of self-actualized individuals can.
It’s not until we banded together in far larger societies that the disadvantages of superstition outweighed the advantages in the ancestral hunter-gatherer environment.
-jcr
I’ve recently “re-started” college, which makes me a thirty year-old freshmen, and it’s been a lot of fun these last two semesters in my biology classes. Each class, on the first day, has brought up creationism and evolution and the “conflicts” and made their remarks.
For my first class my teacher said, in such succinction and beauty I can’t imagine it being improved – he almost said it as an aside – “Evolution is a fact not a a belief.”
And my current teacher’s comment on day one was a slide that said – “Biology in non-theistic not a-theistic.”
Not such powerful words here, but there in class on day one, it put the arguments to rest before they even started.
jcr – thanks for response. I got your point. I had different one as a counterpoint to what MIGHT have been an interpretation of what you said originally.
Bottom-lines for me:
SPECIES are NOT advantaged by intra-species war (but tribes in short-term might be).
No tribe advanced the SPECIES because it wiped out rational and peaceful other tribes.
Natural selection pressures abound against a species — they need not create ones within themselves.
BUT I could be all wet scientifically speaking — and again jcr I get your point, thanks.
Concerned Joe –
Your greatest competitiors are always members of your own species. This where evolution is most ruthless. Your fellow species members eat the same food, inhabit the same territory, and sexually compete for the same prize.
And, yes, maybe no tribe “advanced” the species by killing the peaceful species, but so what? The war-like tribe is still around, and the peaceful one isn’t. Evolution doesn’t give a shit. Sometimes cooperation works, sometimes it doesn’t, sometimes things go by tribes or colonies, sometimes it’s individual competition, sometimes family… it just depends.
To respectfully disagree with a commenter above, the problem with bad ideas, like creationism, is that they are incredibly boring. They explain nothing and often their flaws are patently obvious.
There’s so much that is interesting about evolution to talk about that I’m sure PZ won’t be spending too much time grappling with junk.
To respectfully disagree with tristero: Bad ideas like creationism succeed because they explain everything. Because they are wholly divorced from logic and rationality there is no need to actually justify pronouncements with anything other than “because the Bible says so.” And because people at large are mentally lazy they prefer this easy-way-out method rather than the intellectual honesty (aka “hard work”) of the scientific method.
Sure, it’s boring as watching paint dry to us, but that’s because we know how (and are willing) to independently and critically analyze the flaws. If PZ were to simply take the high road it would be a disservice not only to his students, but also to the advancement of rational thinking.
Nope, and what time is spent grappling with junk is used primarily to get across actual information about evolutionary biology in contrast.
Takes all the mystic hoohah right out of it.
No, it makes mysticism acceptable so long as it can pretend to be rational. Just put some nice science-y sounding stuff on it (eg trichinosis or ecological impact, neither of which pass the smell test) and suddenly magic man is wise in the ways of hygeine. Nuh-uh.
Last Tuesday, we went over “Evolution vs. Creationism” in Paleogeography. It went better than expected, even thought the instructor was a little too soft on the creationist. He recounted working in a Alberta museum, encountering die-hard creationists. Apparently, one them told him he was going to hell. Probably that why he is to soft on creationism: sometimes, you just have stay “people have different opinions”, “you have make up you know minds, kids”, etc. and move on, rather than making a scene.
Later, a classmate told me that in one biology class, students are required to give a talk at a museum. One class is devoted to dealing with creationist helkers and whatnot.
If the colonization of the Americas is true, why are there still Europeans?
SPECIES are NOT advantaged by intra-species war (but tribes in short-term might be).
No tribe advanced the SPECIES because it wiped out rational and peaceful other tribes.
Natural selection pressures abound against a species — they need not create ones within themselves.
CJoe, I would guess that you arrived at these conclusions by reasoning. Please take another look at the data. Almost all large predatory animals engage in intra-species violence. It appears to be a trait that is selectively favored, at least in part because it confers relative reproductive success.
In any case, there’s no selective mechanism to advantage a species, only selective mechanisms that reward or punish individuals and thereby mold the population’s distribution of traits. Living in the tribe that commits genocide on its neighbor could be advantageous if resources are scarce. On the other hand, a more socially adapted tribe gains advantages by greater ability to share and to reward a broader genome than might be found in a warrior culture. The latter may last longer if they can defend themselves.
Both violence and peaceableness are in some sense in the human genome. We are all capable of fighting, even those of us who never really have. We are almost all capable of living in society without killing (otherwise any complex social organization would be impossible).
One way the tension between these two poles is resolved is by threat display. Both the ability to intimidate and the ability to be intimidated are selected for. One-on-one violence is highly risky. Even the alpha male can slip and die in combat with a weaker opponent.
Obviously, this tension didn’t start with humans. You can see it in the social organizations of many other species, from apex predators to large herbivores to rodents and birds.
One key thing to remember is that evolution does not have an end goal in mind. That’s why what we might think a species needs has no bearing on the source of selective pressures, as several other posters have noted.
Evolution is not optimizing the long run. It’s retrospective. It gives the next generation more of what worked in the previous generation. That’s why highly specialized species die out when the environment changes.
(Come visit me at my political blog.)
Wow. I originally read that as, “rather than making a science.” As in, “I know that street preacher is probably insane, but don’t make a science about it.
Ok. Time for bed.
“if evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?”
I hear this question, or perhaps ‘challenge’ all the time.
My answer?
If we are all unique souls, then why don’t african couples in the heart of africa give birth to totally white children?
Why don’t white men and women give birth to asian children, or to black children?
Why do I look like my dad when he was the same age as I am now? Why does he look like his dad, my grandfather?
If there is no relationship between the genes each individual possesses and those of their birth mothers & fathers then why do we resemble or bear traits from the other?
If I possess traits that resemble my father’s and he to his father’s and he to his, then doesn’t that mean they were passed on? Doesn’t that mean that I evolved from him, and he from they, each of us slowly changing over time and over the generations.
Usually the conversation doesn’t get that far along before they either get up and leave or simply brush it off and both they and those around me whisper or suggest that I ‘Let it go!’ or some bullshit like that. Which itself means they don’t like listening to things that they don’t agree with.
To which I sometimes respond “If the Motherf*cker doesn’t want to hear it then why the f*ck did he ask questions about shit he doesn’t know one f*cking thing about?!”
At which point I end up leaving or walking out the room uttering that said person is a f*cking moron.
MYOB’
.
If evolution is true, howcome there are still repuglicans?
When I taught Intro Historical Geology back before Intelligent Design, I used to do a lecture on creationism. I’d announce ahead of time that the students would be able to ask me any argument that they’d heard against evolution or for “Flood geology”, after the appearance of life. (This way the students didn’t have to say whether or not they believed the argument, which let religious students speak up without being intimidated.) On the day, I’d show up with a stack of 50 one-dollar bills, and announce that to make it interesting, I was putting my money where my mouth was, and if anyone asked a question that I couldn’t answer they could win a dollar. (I never lost a dollar, but this wasn’t entirely fair, as I got to be the judge, and I’d ruled out questions relating to before the appearance of life, on the grounds that we just didn’t know very much about that yet, one way or the other.) Anyway, it always worked great. The questions were fairly predictable and creationist lies and quote-mines tended to be simple and obvious. The take-downs nearly always provided nice teaching moments with respect to uniformitarian geology, thrust faults, dating methods, transitional fossils, exponential population growth, basic probability, precipitation of evaporites, scientific argumentation and evidence, and so on and so forth. Lastly, the possibility of demonstrating that the professor is full of crap guarantees high student interest.
However, with the advent of intelligent design, I’ve stopped doing this. It’s not that I can’t do it, but the ID people have retreated into sufficiently obscure details (for example, biochemical details relating to bacterial flagella, definitions of information; and significance of complex specified complexity) that it can take ages to explain enough background for the students to understand a particular challenge, let alone to explain the answer. Also, the arguments are farther from geology than they used to be, and it seem that fewer students were benefitting from the increasingly arcane details. I was finding that many students were ending up not understanding either side of the arguments, which led them to think that there was probably a legitimate high-level controversy that they weren’t smart enough to understand. However, I can imagine that what no longer works so well in geology might nonetheless work quite well in biology.
PZ, when you’ve finished your creationism week, will you please give us the details of how it worked out? Thanks.
I’ve always thought that an intro course should include a segment on other theories. When I was a kid we heard about Lamarck, but Lysenko and the various creationists should be in the mix.
This is in part because it reinforces a general lesson about what science is. I have little faith that kids will remember details of meiosis or of star formation. But if they come away with an understanding of the basic idea of science–of forming hypotheses, testing those hypotheses by evidence, and replicating those tests–then a high school/undergrad program has done its job.
PZ it’s too bad you didn’t have your lecture on ID before the creationist tent revival. Then you could have given out a field assignment for the students to attend the revival and ask questions. I can imagine the hysteria in the tent when student after student got up and posed a question for the preacher–after the preacher thought that all the students had come to be saved by Christ.
Almost all large predatory animals engage in intra-species violence.
Yes, there is often physical agonism along with display agonism. However, very rarely does the loser end up dead among mammals, and we are not purely predators, either. Infact, almost all agonism is between males, competing for female attention. Not between “tribes” of any kind.
So, in fact,you did not arrive at your opinion by data, but also by reasoning.
Ah, but the students did get my lecture on the evidence for evolution first. They’ll attend without the answers spoonfed to them, but they should be able to derive objections from the evidence.
Although I’m suspecting that the creationist show will all be one long argument from consequences: evolution makes you a bad person. We’ll see if the students can handle a more fundamental logical fallacy.
This may sound like a bit of drivel to you, but I personally found it useful (cut off all the ‘na-na I’m not listening to you and your evil evolution’ BS).
While going over the top level systematics stuff (you know, big ‘tree of animal life’ on the whiteboard with the big differences/innovations between the groups labeled)…
“You may, for whatever reason, not think that evolution actually happened, but we aren’t talking about Truth with a capital T here. And I think everyone can agree that it is a lot easier to understand and remember this stuff in the context of evolution, even if you think it is ‘just a model’… it is a very useful model.”
This was for an intro bio for non-bio (and non-premed) majors class, so I’m pretty positive I had at least a few creationists… though no one in my section had any problems with the material.
Lovable liberal … thanks very much for taking the time for an explanation
Graculus … thanks for your opinion
_______
I don’t know, seems to me my statement stands [“SPECIES are NOT advantaged by intra-species war (but tribes in short-term might be).”] and my other statements, while I don’t feel were as objectionable to you Lovable, stand too.
I am not arguing .. I lean more toward Graculus but you’re right but in what you said in a general sense … BUT my point was advancement of the SPECIES. I know natural selection has no long-term goal in mind (meaning may not serve the long run) but if selection pressures that favor those that limit opportunity for diversity and “peace” in a species generally will self limit the species.
Name a species that has survived “eons” “successfully” that has as it hallmark INTRA-species WAR. Individuals vying for mates or “tribes” vying for territory are not at war actually .. but even here that selection pressure for dominent behavior actually self-limits progress as it limits diversity and throws away traits that may be would be useful given other pressures.
Again I am talking INTRA species WAR (something way beyond individuals marking their territory so to speak). Battles happen but WARS?!?!?and to the extent they do occur INTRA species .. how does that advance the SPECIES – “evolution” may be blind to the consequences and live for the moment so to speak.. but in the final analysis could this system been DESIGNED better to advance all more effectively .. OF COURSE yes!! and that is why there is not a notion at all in the real world of a DESIGNER .. and certainly not one worth his salt.
Sorry … I digress .. take care
TravC- I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. Biology only makes sense in respect to evolution. I’m taking a really brief survey course and it’s absolutely killing me, because evolution isn’t really stressed. Critters are in this category or another. Just memorize it. And lets not talk about volvox colonies perhaps offering clues to specialization… we gotta move on to fungi.
Creationism teaching has been rejected by a resolution of European Parliament. But only by 44 to 25…
More information and links here:
http://ciencia-y-religion.blogspot.com/2007/10/creacionismo-en-el-consejo-europeo.html
This is in any case why eating horsemeat is almost taboo in the West: horses were regularly sacrificed to the Germanic gods and eaten — to eat horsemeat came to be interpreted as a statement of faith.
Very well said!
There is no such thing. All that can be advanced are selfish genes. :-)
This is in any case why eating horsemeat is almost taboo in the West: horses were regularly sacrificed to the Germanic gods and eaten — to eat horsemeat came to be interpreted as a statement of faith.
Very well said!
There is no such thing. All that can be advanced are selfish genes. :-)
I would have thought horsemeat was taboo because people had such personal relationship with horses… of course, that didn’t stop people from working their horses to death.
And good for the germanic gods. I’d rather have the spirit of a horse than the spirit of a goat. They both taste terrible, but at least you know your worhsippers are really losing something useful with the horse.
“Infact, almost all agonism is between males, competing for female attention. ”
Nope. Read up on competition among female wolves for attention from the alpha males.
-jcr
No meat better than barbecued goat. Well, I have not tried horse. Maybe it is better. Had some donkey once in Mexico and it was OK.
inkadu – regarding: “I don’t like to see skepticism taught outside a science class, because I think science is the single best instant of systematically applied skepticism, and if students are going to learn skepticism, they might as well learn from the best.”
Since when do we decree that only science teachers can teach skepticism? I point to James Randi for a start….
At any case, the course in question was co-presented by Science teachers throughout as supporting consultants’, and the teacher in question does studies in psychology part-time. The principal of falsifiability would be easier to teach in a non-science class where they’re less rigidly structured to teach to the course and can work cross-curricular activities – as N.Wells spoke of their teaching geology which could probably do really well with a science teacher to help tackle the elements they felt they couldn’t do justice. Maybe more networking as educationalists is needed, and to really test if this has a long-term effect (beyond possibly annoying the community who resist such courses)?
‘Evolution makes you a bad person’?? What, you’re able to convince your girlfriend more easily that pre-marital sex is for the good of the species or something?
Read up on competition among female wolves for attention from the alpha males.
-jcr
I was refereing to the whole animal kingdom at that point, not just mammals, not just socail mammals, and not just predators. Some of the most vicious fighting I’ve ever seen was between mares establishing dominance, but the loser rarely winds up dead.
Oh, and genetic studies do not support the idea that the losing tribe disappears.
My point stands, that you reasoned your way into your position as surely as anyone else here has.
You might discuss the thermodynamics issue — the claim that evolution violates the second law because evolution involves reduction of entropy. If so, I hope you get it right. This is one issue that many defenders of evolution get wrong.
The same thermodynamic issue appears in the process of life — growth and reproduction. High-entropy, low-energy material (such as CO2 and H2O) gets transformed into high-energy, low-entropy material (carbohydrates, protein, in the form of human, animal, and plant bodies). The evolutionary process involves just a speck of the material — and entropy is proportional to the amount of material.
The common response to the thermodynamics objection is that the earth is not a closed system, so the strict requirement of entropy increase doesn’t hold. That answer is incomplete. It is occasionally accompanied by the assertion that the decrease in entropy on the earth is balanced by increase in entropy in the center of the sun. That is simply false.
The correct answer, that allows the sun to drive life on the earth, is this: The earth absorbs sunlight at 6000 Kelvins, but cools down by radiating infrared light at 300 Kelvins. Averaged over cycles, the radiated energy equals the absorbed energy. The entropy change due to heat transfer Q at absolute temperature T is Q/T.
Consider 6000 Joules of energy that enters and is emitted. It was radiated by the sun at 6000 Kelvins. To satisfy the second law, its entropy must be at least 6000 Joules/6000 Kelvins, or one Joule/Kelvin. (It is much closer to 4/3 Joule/Kelvin, from the Stefan-Boltzmann Law.) When the earth finally radiates that energy, the entropy loss is 6000 Joules/300 Kelvin or 20 Joules/Kelvin.
The second law allows for up to 19 Joules/Kelvin of entropy loss for every 6000 Joules passing through. Entropy on the earth can decrease without violating the second law.