The New York Times has a report this week on the hoops teachers are jumping through to teach evolution in public schools. Specifically, it follows the efforts of David Campbell, a Florida biology teacher who does an astonishing job of compromising, tip-toeing, and cajoling, all to get his students to accept—and maybe even learn—the process of evolution.
Overall, the piece paints a bleak picture for teachers, made all the worse by the lack of a clear nationwide mandate for teaching the subject. Despite all the scientific evidence we have, some states are still stacking obstacles in the path of instructors who want to devote class time to human evolution. This summer, Louisiana passed a law protecting the right of local schools to teach “alternative” (i.e., non-scientific) theories for the origin of species, while the Florida Department of Education didn’t explicitly require its public schools to teach evolution—or, as the legislature calls it, “the organizing principle of life science”—until February of 2008.
Even if teachers manage to dodge sketchy state restrictions, there’s still the matter of parents. Campbell, who helped write Florida’s standards on teaching evolution, found himself barraged with complaints from angry parents when he taught the subject, and was even undermined by his colleague and fellow bio teacher, who offered a competing lesson plan she called “Evolution or NOT.” (Her backup plan for what to tell particularly curious students? “I think God did it.”)
The U.S. is teetering on the edge of losing its place as the world’s premiere harbor for science research. With experts already foretelling our demise as a science superpower—and, with China already set to surpass the U.S. in published physics papers by 2012, there’s been nothing to suggest the predictions are wrong—we’re not doing ourselves any favors by undermining basic science education with religious dogma. It’s tragic to think that tomorrow’s preeminent biochemists or geneticists could be sidelined by high school lessons questioning whether there’s Biblical evidence for the origin of human life.
August 27th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Before American students take their first science class, their minds have already been permanently destroyed by religious brainwashing. This brainwashing is legal but that doesn’t make it any less disgusting and immoral. It’s about time people stopped respecting religious stupidity. Christians should be treated with contempt. They are dragging our country back into the Dark Ages with their childish Sky Fairy Magic.
August 27th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
I am just so glad that I grew up in a very scientific family- when I was around six, I remember my mother telling me that the Bible was crap. It’s so sad to think of all these great minds that are being brainwashed- haven’t we grown enough as a society that we can do the right thing for its own sake, without having to say “if you don’t do the right thing, God will get you?”
I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m ready to give up on the United States entirely. No matter what anyone says, there cannot be a separation between church and state in a democracy. Not all Christians are stupid- and the ones that are intelligent will find a way to corrupt our children’s minds legally. It makes me sick just to think of going into a public school that is paid for by my taxes and having the science teacher tell a bunch of innocent children- with a straight face- that “god did it”. The USA is doomed.
August 28th, 2008 at 11:54 am
It is pretty sad that the US is in this predicament. As a future Science teacher I have been following this debate very closely so I can find the “work around” which will allow me to teach Evolutionary Theory to my future students… Wish me luck!
August 28th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
It is one of the paradoxes of history that one fundamentalist nation ( the US ) tries to destroy other fundamentalist nations ( Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan ); just as it was during WW II, when one Herrenvolk/chosen people ( the Nazis ) tried to extinguish another ( the Jews ). Want another paradox ? Citizens of “Big” nations only speak their own language to the exclusion of every other. Me ? I’m from a “small” country, so I’m quadrilingual. Also paradoxically, I’m richer than most inhabitants of this richest of Nations, the US. I’m just a retired banking employee, but still I can buy books from Amazon US/UK/France and Germany. In tired old Europe we only have a smattering of idiots who believe in intelligent design ( “intelligent” ? What a misnomer ! ). Being an atheist myself, I nevertheless read the Bible, but also the Qu’ran, Lao Tzu, the Communist Manifesto and even Chairman Mao’s red book ( also a kind of Bible…). And still another paradox, people ! All these writings are well-meaning and do NOT invite violence. It is only some small percentage of people who become fanatic about their belief, be they called Osama, Benedictus or Dubya. Let’s hope you people make the right choice in a few weeks time and choose a black president ( well, coffee-and-milk, anyway ), or our white civilization will take another small step on the downward slope. Remember Rome…
August 28th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
Hi,
Just a word of comfort to all who despair of our science classes. I was raised a Christian fundmentalist. At about the age of 22 I, on my own, outgrew it. In the age of TV and the Internet It’s impossible to avoid the subject of evolution and when students are finally old enough to make their own decisions they’ll step into the 21 st century. The old guard will eventually fade away. In the meantime do all you can to stop the naysayers.
August 28th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
As a quondam boy-evangel, now a 90 year-old atheist, I find your communicants refreshing, their arguments unassailable, etc. Trouble is, we’re not reaching the Great Unwashed. Best strategy: crank science & logic into schools, decade by decade, gradatim ferocitur…As for media weathervanes & ‘progressives’ [PBS, NPR, Discover, History Channel] they can’t be reformed during an epos of reaction, so stick w/BBC. An idle thot: if Vinge, Kurzweil, Moravic et alia are on track, the final threat to putative autonomous intellect may manifest as Syntelligence & Singularity.
August 28th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
The New York Times report on David Campbell’s teaching neglected to expose the flaws and fallacies Campbell in his lessons.
Mickey Mouse was designed, by a highly talented artist. And the changes to Mickey’s appearance over the years were due to deliberate design decisions on the part of Walt Disney Studios. That is consistent with a creation / designer scenario and inconsistent with an evolutionary scenario.
The pecking-moths-off bark activity perpetuates the long-discredited peppered moths fraud, in which dead moths were glued to trees, and birds filmed pecking them off. If this wasn’t enough, moth experts long ago point pointed out that peppered moths do not rest on tree branches or trunks. And anyway, varying proportions of light and dark moths only involves varying proportions of existing genetic information, whereas evolution would require the coming into existence of encyclopedic quantitites of new genetic information, coding for new kinds of organs, new types of animals, etc. Change of this sort has never been observed.
Campbell’s comments on fossils were misleading. At any one time, there are only a handful of candidate transitional fossils. They are inevitably discarded (like the coelacanth) as more information about the creature comes to light, and it is found to be fully fish, fully bird, etc. And virtually every organism alive today can be considered a ‘living fossil’ because fossils have been found of over 97% of living orders of land vertebrates. See “Karl Kruszelnicki: still missing the missing links” http://creationontheweb.com/content/view/5872 .
August 30th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
What is all this talk of Evolutionary “Theory”?? I have thought for many years that it had been accepted as FACT!! If this is so, we should discourage any reference to “Evolution as theory.”
September 1st, 2008 at 1:04 pm
I think it’s pretty sad that many evolutionists are so arrogant as to assume that because most of us believe in a higher power that created all life that we are ‘brainwashed’ or unintelligent. The theory of evolution has never been proven, and has little more than an idea to go on. The fossil record does not even support the theory which is why it is still just a theory. Many people walk into a museum and see a skull of a primate, a neanderthal and they actually think it is a skull. It’s made of plaster. It’s not real. It is the idea of an artist taken from a piece of incomplete bone fragments. What is so difficult about believing in creation? It’s quite simple and as far as the bible being crap, well try giving it a read with some understanding and you’ll see that Moses who lived over 3,500 hundred years ago wrote about things with an accuracy that science is only just beginning to prove. Think about it…how could he possibly have known the order of creation and yet he did. The fossil record has proven his words. So, before you begin insulting my intelligence because I don’t believe in something you do, consider that we are all entitled to our beliefs and there is no need to be rude.
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:15 am
Shan:
The first thing to point out is this whole “it’s still a theory” business. That’s what scientist work toward: theories. You start with observations, then you come up with a hypothesis based on those observations, then you test the hypothesis relentlessly to see if it is falsified by anything. If the hypothesis stands up to scrutiny (the entire scientific community tries to falsify the hypothesis) and makes accurate, specific predictions that are found to be true, it becomes a theory. Theories are the most powerful thing there is in science. Ever heard of the Germ Theory of Disease, or Atomic Theory? Surely you would agree that germs cause disease and all matter is made of atoms. This is just a matter of scientific literacy. A scientific theory, and the word “theory” as used colloquially in everyday language are not the same thing. Theories explain phenomen while laws describe them. I bet you think a theory becomes a law right? Please learn about the scientific method and how terms are used in science before you start with this whole “just a theory” business.
As for Moses, even theologians concede there was probably no such person. Look at the books he “worte”…they describe his death and then continue to describe events afterward. Plus, whoever wrote the Genesis story seems to think the earth was created before the sun and other stars while every indication is that the earth was formed from left over debris after the sun formed, so the order of creation is inaccurate. It’s okay to believe fairy tales are true (if you’re that type of person), but do realize that they conflict with what we have learned to date. Lastly, Lucrecious thought the world was made of atoms over 2000 years ago…does that mean he was inspired by god (he was not a believer in a personal god by the way)?
September 3rd, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Bravo Mike! You hit the nail on the head. I am a senior biology teacher in Canada and luckily the forces of willful ignorance (although present) do not restrict us from teaching actual science up here. One of the things we try to impress upon our students throughout their high school career is the difference between the colloquial use of “theory” and the true scientific use of the same word. Creationists seem unable (or unwilling) to distinguish this difference. I start my first class each semester by telling students that the course includes the theory of evolution and that it is the single most important concept in all of biology. If this is in conflict with your religious views you have two options - One, run (don’t walk) down to the Guidance Department and drop this course. Two, park your religious beliefs at my door when you enter. I will not demand to teach evolution in your church next Sunday and I expect you to keep your religious views out of my classroom.
Usually I have a couple fewer students the next day but no problems when we get to the evolution part of the course. As a personal observation, in over 20 years of teaching evolution, I have never had a student that had no religious convictions say that there was any lack of evidence or the theory just didn’t seem to make logical sense to them. Creationists get their “information” about evolution from creationist’ websites. When they spout off on forums like this, all who have studied from legitimate sources cringe at their ignorance of the facts and their willingness to accept the alternate hypothesis (creationism) in the total absence of any supporting evidence. I fear the U.S. is in decline if they continue down this road.
September 15th, 2008 at 10:11 am
The problem I have with the evolutionary theory is too many people take it for fact. If you want to talk “brainwashing” start looking at the school system which brainwash kids into believing that evolution is the only explanation - which it isn’t. As a Christian, I have a strong belief in GOD and that HE created all life on Earth. I reject evolution because I know it is only a THEORY. As a THEORY it is able to be challenged and/or accepted/rejected. Too many evolutionists take the evolutionary theory as fact which is, in my belief, wrong. No evolutionist has not given adequate proof that all life began with evolution. The most crutial evidence would be a mutation in the genetic code that is transferred to the offspring. We can do this in science but that is because we cut the DNA with enzymes and manually insert the piece of DNA. In real life this rarely happens and if it does get through the cell has a great many mechanisms to repair the anomaly, one of which is by cutting out the wrong piece of DNA and inserting the correct piece. There is another thing: no one has given a reasonable answer on how life began in the first place! No one can tell me how things got started. Without something to start a reaction, then nothing will happen. Therefore, logically I REJECT the evolutionary theory as to how life evolved. I know that these creatures did exist but I do NOT believe that we evolved from them. On another note, do NOT call Christians brainwashed it is an insulting and demeaning term. If you are as “educated” as you say you are you would know not to call anyone this.
September 16th, 2008 at 6:55 am
Denise: who do you suppose created God? Or is that a question you conveniently sweep under the carpet? Proposing a God doesn’t explain anything, it merely replaces one thing that requires an explanation with another.
Believing in God is exactly like believing in fairies or that the Earth is flat. It is an insult to human dignity and intelligence.
There is no evidence whatsoever that God exists, so why believe he does? The whole notion of religion is nothing more than wishful thinking by people who can’t bear to accept reality and need some sort of crutch. A “big daddy in the sky who will look after me”.
Pathetic! Grow up all of you!
September 16th, 2008 at 10:13 am
Stuart: God is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. HE has always existed and HE is a loving God who is described as being a Father in the Bible. I can’t force you to believe in God like you can’t force me to believe in evolution. To be honest, I think it takes a lot more faith to believe that all life evolved out of nothing than to believe a God who created the whole Earth and every living thing in it. I do believe that God created the Earth billions of years ago. I believe that God created all of the life in the Earth. There are a few things that evolution can not explain: the giraffe and the platypus are two prime examples. No one has given a decent explanation as to why the giraffe’s neck is as long as it is. The idea that was originally proposed as the giraffe stretching its nect up to get to the trees is ridiculous, in my opinion. If that did happen, there should be bones and evidence to show the giraffe’s neck elongation over time. Also, the fossil evidence that is dug up is dated using the carbon dating system which is not entirely accurate. So the exact age of an item can not be determined, it can only be estimated and that age can change when a more accurate system of dating comes along.
Also, being a grown up means that you accept other peoples point of view even when you don’t agree with them. I think that is the biggest reason why a lot of people don’t like evolutionists, they always attack other people they don’t agree with and call them names - which is childish behaviour at its max. Please take your own advice and grow up. The entire world does not revolve around you, as evidence shows it revolves around the sun.
September 16th, 2008 at 11:07 am
You clearly have no understanding of evolution at all if you think the explanation for a giraffe’s neck is due to stretching! That is not evolution, that is Lamarckism and no one takes it seriously. If you are going to attack a scientific theory, you could at least bother to get it right first!
The fact is that you merely assert God exists. You don’t provide any evidence. Evolution, by contrast, is backed up by enormous amounts of evidence. It is completely unreasonable to do anything other than base things on evidence.
You can believe any nonsense you like, but unless you provide a sound basis for it, you cannot expect others to take it seriously.
September 16th, 2008 at 11:08 am
You believe the world revolves around the sun because there is evidence. What a pity you don’t take the same view in relation to God.
September 16th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Hm -I am not a evolutionary scientist, but I can take a shot at the giraffe. One day, a giraffe was born with a weirdly long neck (like every once in a while a human is born very tall, very short, with 3 arms, etc). Since there was so much competition on the plains of Africa for food, this long-necked freak could reach the upper branches of trees where there were more leaves.
When mating season came around, this giraffe was healthier and stronger, as he had an unlimited supply of food, while his competition had to fight over what was left near the ground. He was able to win the mating battles, and he was able to pass along his genes, impregnating many female giraffes. He sired six baby giraffes, 3 with regular necks and 3 with his weird long-necked gene. Again, the process repeated itself, with the long-necked giraffes having an advantage over the shorter necked ones. Rinse/repeat over several million years.
Now of course, during this process, there were many giraffes born with other mutations - six legs, tiny heads, super short necks, 3 tails, etc. But only the long neck helped with survival. So that trait was passed on to subsequent generations.
The theory of evolution states that traits acquired during life are NOT passed on to the next generation. So all those giraffes, stretching to get the leaves that our mutant long-necked giraffe was enjoying, would still have short necked babies. Just as if you spend all your time going to the gym and building huge muscles, that does not mean that your child will be huge also.
One of the biggest differences between the theory of evolution and creationism is the concept of time. If I am not mistaken, creationism posits that the world is around 6000 years old. Fossil records and data state the world and life have been around for hundreds of millions of years. This is like comparing what happened in one hour to what happened in the last two thousand years. If you are cramming two thousand years into one hour, some stuff is going to get left out.
“Because God said so” could be the answer for everything. While go to school anyway? Just teach our kids that phrase. No need to go to medical school, no need to study economics. Everything is because “God wants it that way,” so don’t bother thinking, questioning, challenging. Except maybe learn Chinese - because while we are debating whether dinosaurs were real or a hoax, the rest of the world are using their long necks to pass us by.
September 17th, 2008 at 4:28 am
You may not be an evolutionary scientist, Doug, but you have grasped the theory of evolution spot on!
I do wish all these ignorant religious types who prefer fairy tales to rational explanations would bother to at least find out how evolution really works. Then they might see just what a satisfactory and elegant theory it is and give up bashing it.
October 6th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
As I said in my previous post, creationists learn all they know about evolution from creationist literature and websites then make complete fools of themselves when they get on websites like this and display the extent of their ignorance.
Denise makes several classic errors in her post. Doug did an excellent job of pointing out her first gaff (the giraffe’s neck). I would only add that there are MANY intermediate fossils that show the development of the giraffe’s neck (as well as the development of all other major groups). This is a classic creationists’ tactic. They like to pretend the year is 1908 and there are great gaps in our knowledge of fossils. Well it’s 2008 and the fossil record is excellent and improving constantly. The authors of creationist literature conveniently “forget” to mention this and their gullible readers fall for it completely.
Denise actually made two errors at once on the carbon dating. First, carbon dating was found to be SLIGHTLY inaccurate in the 1960s and was subsequently re-calibrated very quickly - C14 dates are now both accurate and reliable (and have been for decades). Secondly, fossils have never been dated using C14!! Because of C14’s short half life, it is only useful in dating things that are less than 60 000 years old. Because fossils are millions of years old they are dated using one of the fifty-odd OTHER radiometric dating techniques. These other techniques have been exhaustively tested over the last 50 years and NONE has ever been shown to be in error. Of course creationist websites pretend these techniques don’t exist because it blows their argument out of the water. Their readers are usually shocked to find these other techniques even exist.
My advice to Denise would be this - learn the theory of evolution! You clearly don’t know it. Read something written by someone with some actual qualifications in evolutionary theory.
There are good books that explain it well. Michael Shermer’s book “Why Darwin Matters” and Don Prothero’s book “Evolution - What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters” would be an excellent starting point.
Do I think Denise will read up on evolution? Not likely. My experience with creationists is that they are not interested in learning the truth. They are only seeking to confirm their irrational “beliefs” at any cost.
October 8th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
Lots of interesting posts here, and at least some intelligent conversation. I would like to comment on a couple of things I read here, though.
First of all, the whole giraffe theory. I agree with Doug that the passing along of genes is most likely the reason giraffe’s have long necks. And, yes, I agree that this occurred over a long period of time (how long is debatable). Is this evidence of evolution? No. This is an excellent example of adaption. The giraffe is still basically a giraffe, with different features, much as mankind has been able to breed certain characteristics into different breeds of, say, dogs for example. A cocker spaniel and a bull mastiff are quite different in appearance, but they are still both dogs. Evolution requires proof that one type of creature, say a lizard, changed into a totally different creature, such as a mammal. I am afraid I have yet to see any convincing evidence in this area.
As for Mark’s comment about scientific dating procedures, in order to say that NONE has ever shown to be in error you would have to have something to compare them with that is a known. For example, if I had a rock that I knew for a fact to be 50,000,000 years old and I compared the testing of this rock with other rocks, I could prove that my testing technique was without error. But, since no one was around 50,000,000 years ago to verify the age of my rock, there is always the possibility that there is an error. These things are only theories and will always be only theories as there is no way to accurately know what life was like that far in the past. We can make educated, intelligent guesses. We can use what we know about life today to try to draw conclusions about what life was like in the past. But, there will always be unknown variables such as climate, atmospheric conditions, etc. that will not be able to be proven.
October 14th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Rose
You raise a couple of good points that my students often ask.
First the giraffe. As you said, it is an example of adaptation. That’s what evolution is - adaptation to changing conditions over long periods of time. You wanted proof that lizards changed into mammals? Well, if you mean modern lizards (reptiles), they are NOT ancestral to mammals. They do, however, share a common ancestor with mammals and there is ample evidence of that in the fossil record (read Prothero’s book!!).
How do we know that radiometric dating is accurate? We have events that are recorded in history (such as the eruption of volcanoes) that we can cross-check radiometric dates with when we date rocks that contain the dust from these eruptions. We can also check against glacial ice cores, glacial varves and tree ring chronologies. Ice core data goes back over 300 000yrs. All these cross checks have been done (over and over again) and there is absolutely no error. Unlike carbon14, which depends upon the equilibrium of C14 in the atmosphere, the other radiometric methods are unaffected by climate and atmospheric conditions.
I encourage you to investigate these topics. The more you learn, the more you will see that the creationist view is completely at odds with the observable facts.
November 8th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
[…] Doug wrote this on the Discover Magazine blog, the magazine thought it was good enough to warrant printing it in […]