Evolution is “just a theory”.
…and the only people who say that are those who don’t understand what a scientific theory is. So, allow me…
A theory is not a guess. It’s not a shot in the dark. No one is pulling wild ideas from nowhere. A theory is “the best possible explanation for a phenomenon, taking into account all relevant data” THAT is a theory. Evolution is a fact. We know it exists, we know it occurs. How, why & by what mechanisms does it occur, is the unanswered question.

Evolution can’t disprove God.
It’s not meant to. EVOLUTION HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH GOD OR THE ORIGINS OF LIFE
It is simply the explanation how how life evolves ONCE it exists.

There is no evidence in the fossil record/no transitional species.
This argument is pure b.s. There are literally millions of pieces of evidence in the form of archeological studies & reports that confirm evolution, plus dozens of transitional species.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transitional_fossils

The debate over evolution is almost purely an American phenomenon. The scientific community the world over has accepted evolution as a scientific fact, while here in good ol’ Uh-mur-i-kuh we continue to drag our knuckles in the dirt & shake sticks at the moon.

Reality doesn’t give a damn what you want to believe. It is what it is, whether you like it or not. It’s pure human arrogance that would suggest otherwise. Therefore, we must alter our beliefs to coincide with the laws of the natural world, instead of insisting that reality bend to accommodate our ignorant, primitive egos.

Yes, that’s right. Nature is a dictatorship & we all must obey it’s laws. We have no other choice. (I challenge you to try to break the law of gravity. can’t do it.) Which, by the way, yes, gravity is both a theory & a law. The difference being that the LAW of gravity is “matter attracts matter”, while the theory is “WHY does matter attract matter?”

Nope, it doesn’t. Neither does it disprove that Grandpa Munster is alive and well and running a taco stand on Venus.

Evolution is far from proven is you look at things like fossils that cross layers that are supposed to be thousands of years each and like I said, Y’all think the first chicken came from a lizard/chicken thing…

There is no evidence of such creatures.

Like I said, evolution answers many questions but to me, not the most important ones. Evolution also doesn’t disprove a God that is bigger than Space/Time and more Powerful than all the energy/matter in the Universe.

How sad that you think you do not have to address these things…

No wonder you can not build confidence amongst your peers…

Every scientist, rather than being neutral and objective, is biased to some degree. Somebody like Louis Leakey does not randomly pick a spot on the globe, start digging a hole and see what turns up. He believed that there was a missing link based off his a priori adoption of the evolutionary model, and went out to prove what he “knew” to be true.

“in July of 1959, paleontologist Louis Leakey found a bit of a skull bone and teeth in Nairobi, Kenya. He said, “We knelt together to examine this treasure… and cried with sheer joy. For years people had been telling us that we’d better stop looking, but I felt deep down that it had to be there. You must be patient about these things.”

Stop giving us the impression that you are white gods in lab coats, you are biased human beings and must be able to be subjected to cross examination. Of course, it’s convenient to predefine anybody who holds a different theory as therefore not a scientist. Opposition stifled.

“I had motive for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics, he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantageous to themselves. … For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.” –Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means (London: Chatto & Windus, 1946), pp. 270, 273.”

The whole ideal that this is a battle of faith vs. science is uneducated. Both sides have philisophical presuppositions before they even begin to look at the facts. These intellectual pre-commitments oftentimes cannot be subjected to scientific scrutiny and hence are religious in nature. The question is, “Who has the right bias?” Of course, most evolutionaists are dedicated to the a priori belief of naturalism, discounting the super-natural, yet, cannot defend foundational elements of their theory (the origin of life, the source of matter, etc.) with purely naturalistic assumptions. The same applies to myself as a creationist, but at least I admit it.

Maybe the reason that evolutionary scientists are so grumpy is because they can’t answer basic questions, such as why we find polystrata fossils running through millions of years worth of geological layers? I love reading on both sides of this issue, and honestly think that the elitist scientists need their “ivory towers” to keep their theory going. Nobody likes having the comfort of the “known” questioned, but such should be the life of the scientist.

@Geoffrey (#21). Perhaps you might want to say that a little differently. Evolution is still considered a scientific theory, not a scientific law. That I use the proper term for it is not a problem at all.

In closing, the point to my post, which seems to have gotten lost, is that the way evolution is taught in schools is a key reason why it is not as accepted as it should be. Were it taught properly, I believe that there would be far fewer people who would argue against it.

I’m not sure why the comments here would surprise you. True scientists are people, too, and tend to get grumpy when people who don’t know what they’re talking about talk as though their opinion is of the same weight as an expert (like #34′s whining about ivory towers). Engineers can get even grumpier than scientists! In any case, there isn’t an expectation of civility like a priest might have, just the level of civility from any other random person. We’ll say hello to the greeter at Walmart without feeling obligated to take his opinions on science education seriously.

Where life began, abiogenesis, isn’t normally dealt with a whole lot in high school biology curricula. We’re talking about evolution here, which is after ‘the spark of life’ occured. But, no, theories and hyptheses do not require faith. That’s the whole point of the empirical method, and to equate it with faith is to do a disservice to both ideas. One tests science with joy, testing one’s faith is supposed to be rather dour and involves a great deal more navel gazing. The results tend to be less practical as well.

@number 7 – thank you for posting! i couldnt believe my eyes when someone said gravity was a theory! I dropped my coffee cup in suprise. I guess it only “theoretically” fell to the floor!

Jason, the evidence that Jesus existed is fairly solid, as much as most other historical figures from a few thousand years back (despite claims to the contrary in that really selective evidence based book that makes Chariots of the Gods? look like a scholarly work). Now whether or not he was God, or actually claimed to be God, is a different matter. :)

Daniel, the evidence that some wandering kook named Jesus existing is one thing, but the the life story given to him in the gospels is certainly a fiction. A plagiarisation from older messiah mythology and paganism, shoehorned into fitting the discription of prophetic Hebrew mythology.

I’m so happy I don’t live in the United States.

How’s the secularist utopia you got there, A Swede? I’m so happy for you, in the most hatefully envious way.

I’m heading back to school to pursue my science education degree and I can’t wait to properly teach evolution.

Good luck Lauren, but if you’re talking public schools you have your work cut out for you. Christian parents are devoted to the destruction of enlightened society and school administrators are cowards.

Christianity* has to be** the biggest obstacle to human progress ever invented.

*As popularly practiced
**And has to have been for one, and almost another, millennium.

. To that end, when you ignore evidence that points to glaring inconsistencies concerning evolution, you become no different than the “religious idiots” you so label others who disagree…

But those glaring inconsistencies stem from 1. misunderstanding what evolution is actually about, 2. misrepresenting a science paper and claiming it says something one thing when it does not, 3. completely fabricated facts.

When you chase down an “inconsistency” you will find it will fall into one of those three categories almost every single time, yet YEC will not retract their claim but will cling to it even after it has been debunked a few hundred times. That sounds like your third type of evidence–where you believe things in spite of the evidence.

btw, your chicken or egg question shows that you fall into category 1, and you really don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.

Jason, the evidence that Jesus existed is fairly solid, as much as most other historical figures from a few thousand years back (despite claims to the contrary in that really selective evidence based book that makes Chariots of the Gods? look like a scholarly work). Now whether or not he was God, or actually claimed to be God, is a different matter. :)

Unquote: And when they come to the same conclusion that I have and that is that though evolution answers many questions, it most certainly doesn’t answer them all on the one hand and that evolution doesn’t disprove a Transcendent God on the other, what do you do next?

Certainly the answer to many here is to label those who do not agree idiots and children so as to remain cozy and warm in their unproven beliefs…

There are basically three types of belief. One you believe things because of the evidence, another you believe when there is no evidence and the last where you believe things in spite of the evidence. To that end, when you ignore evidence that points to glaring inconsistencies concerning evolution, you become no different than the “religious idiots” you so label others who disagree…

One of the most glaring can be summed up in this: Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Evolutionist claim that the chicken came first from the egg of something that was not quite a chicken…

I find no science that backs that up…

My faith is with facts and science!

Generally, the controversy is caused by a conflict of memes with the less informed / educated often basing their beliefs on faith and not facts. A real tragedy.

The truth and facts really do set you free.

Though attempts to teach creationism (or its twin sister, intelligent design) in the classroom have been struck down in court,

But ..but ..but .. ID isn’t creationism’s twin sister ..

It is its Siamese twin! ;-)

Same body, slightly different face.

Perhaps the best thing to teach kids is critical thinking – how to analyse and deconstruct arguments, how to recognise logical fallacies and so on so that they can think more clearly for themselves?

Your assertion that there is no God without proof of that statement is no different than the statement that there is a God without proof…

Also, even if evolution was proven, it doesn’t prove that God does not exist.

As a thought experiment, let’s say for a moment that Jesus really did turn water into wine. If you poured the water and then an instant later dipped out wine, you would say that the wine was only a minute or so old. A modern scientific analysis would “prove” you to be a fool…

The point is that science is our attempt to better understand things we do not understand. To proffer that we are advanced enough in science to proclaim that there is no God is inane. To say you have not seen any credible evidence is the best you can do at this point.

All else is a flawed.

If someone suggested that Jesus wielded an advanced technology, you’d line up to believe it. How sad that you cannot conceive of a Being that doesn’t need conventional tools. Y’all want God brought to you in a box. I postulate that He will not fit…

2) Tim, perhaps this thread’s biggest idiot, obviously hasn’t read a biology textbook.

It’s pretty hard to teach skepticism, though, if you don’t have enough of it to figure this situation out for yourself, as appears is the case with the “cautious 60%.” If the teachers were truly skeptical, that number would represent the balance of evidence for and against evolution. Since it does not, it points to those who have apparently not probed the details of what they teach enough to understand what the ample evidence for evolution signifies.

If you are a teacher and aren’t sure you completely understand why evolution is a stalwart scientific theory, please take some time out of your day to research it some more.

Evolution Education only?

The thought that we come from monkeys, fish, or turtles is almost as bad as people saying that George Bush blew up the levies during Katrina, or that Jesus is black. Unfortunately for the bean counting scientists out there who love statistics, there is REAL evidence that Jesus wasn’t black.

Sadly they are wrong as proven recently by scientists re-evolving a snail into the slug with added paladium or similar.

Snails evolved to slugs and we can reproduce it to show people. How hard is that to see and understand. The problem is that no one has shown these tests to people and it would do better to have seminars that show the experiments on a screen to people.

We can show people many types of evolution, culture in animals, intelligence in animals but they all say its creationist stuff. What they cant refute is us turning a snail into a perfectly good slug.

Also its hard to change someone who believes everything was created by someone else all you can do is make it circular so there logic fails.

-> Someone made everything -> humans can make “everything” ->

We created ourselves are we gods?…did we create evolution no. Therefore creationism does not create evolution.

We prove evolution we therefore disprove creationism. Because otherwise youve proved that the creationist created evolution instead and our point is made anyways. And if you prove evolution you can prove creationism isnt needed. So in the end creationism disproves itself..very simple.

Unfortunately we can only create a few basic organisms from scratch and evolve or change evolution of animals. But its enough to show them they are wrong.

You haven’t even come close…

The fact that 73% don’t have enough confidence in evolution to teach it with confidence is more likely due to the acceptance of the teachers of questions about the validity of the evolution theory than succumbing to pressures from mindless religious types.

How sad that arrogance demands that as the first hypothesis rather than admitting that there have arisen valid challenges to a convenient theory.

One of the arguements I often hear is “It’s just a theory”, just like you said that evolution and gravity is still a *theory* (which based on how you wrote your response, implies that you feel a theory doesn’t hold much as much weight). I have a problem with this statement being used as an argument. The general public uses the term “theory” like it is merely an idea or educated guess…much like a scientist would use the term “hypothesis”. Yet evolution and gravity are both more than just an educated guess. So let’s revisit what it means to be a hypothesis and a scientific theory:

HYPOTHESIS: “This is an educated guess based upon observation. It is a rational explanation of a single event or phenomenon based upon what is observed, but which has not been proved. Most hypotheses can be supported or refuted by experimentation or continued observation. ”

THEORY: “A theory is what one or more hypotheses become once they have been verified and accepted to be true. A theory is an explanation of a set of related observations or events based upon proven hypotheses and verified multiple times by detached groups of researchers. ”

Evolution has a rather well established amount of evidence and support. That evidence and support grows every year. So much so that I’ve even heard scientists state that there is more evidence for Evolution than there is for Gravity. Which brings up the next thought. Gravity is not just a theory. Gravity is Scientific Law, or Fact. This is taking a theory and proving it beyond any doubts. The base concept of gravity is sound. Sound enough that it is used to prove other theories and laws. But in some generalized ways, such as how it works or what causes it, gravity is still a theory. This means that it is well established and backed up by evidence, but that there are still some details being worked out. Does this mean that Gravity is any less trustworthy a principle? Absolutely not.

Some scientists even use the word theory incorrectly, which can make things confusing. But it is important to remember the difference between Scientific Theory and Public Theory. Public Theory is an educated guess, not a concept based on rigerously tested data collection that is repeatedly tested. A Scientific Theory can be taken as “This IS what happens. Now we are working on refining our understanding of how it happens.”

The evidence has been collected and is growing yearly. The evidence has been analyzed by experts in their fields. The answer is repeatedly been shown and few doubts remain amongst the scientific community. Evolution is not just an idea. It’s not just a hypothesis or educated guess. Evolution is a Scientific Theory. To say it is “just a theory” is a cheap shot based on a lack of understanding of the scientific process.

Unlike the poster above, I don’t see how understanding is the same as believing. I tell the parents and/or student that they don’t have to believe in it, they just need to understand it. Additionally I will remind them that the state requires this material to be studied. Beyond that I just try to teach it as best I can despite the hostility and hope that some understanding gets through.

I haven’t found arguing about details or facts to be useful at all. Even if you can disprove everything they say, that doesn’t mean they will buy into what you are saying. It’s just too far ingrained. Logic is not the issue here.

Reading this article makes it seem like the main culprit is not radical Young Earth Creationism, but rather a radical relativistic mindset that many teachers have bought into. I would bet that most of these teachers themselves don’t buy into creationism, but rather they buy into the belief that you shouldn’t force ANY belief on anyone. This is quite a disastrous view to take on – especially if your job is to teach people things. Why be a teacher if you don’t feel like you should teach people?

Theories of gravity will continue to refine the explanation of why gravity occurs, but the fact of gravity itself is inviolable. Likewise with evolution.

I have had students and parents who were HOSTILE regarding evolution (and even science in general). They believed that even listening to me talk about evolution was a SIN. No amount of explanation is going to change their beliefs if they believe things like fossils are there to trick people into sinning against god.

If you really think that all we need to do is improve how the facts are being taught, then you should look into the centuries long debates between various religious groups and the scientists who promote scientific ideas. The battle between atheists and theists is less about facts and more about differences in fundamental underlying beliefs about the world.

I wish all of you future teachers the best of luck. I know I have helped many to IMPROVE their understanding of science and evolution, but I think I have made almost no impact on those who were already set against it from the beginning. When they are indoctrinated before they even get to school to believe that this stuff is sinful, there is little we as teachers can honestly due to change that. At BEST we might get some wheels to turn.