Should evolution be taught in schools?

what do they need monkeys for again? just to spread seeds? there's no other way of spreading seeds about than via monkey poo?


you get me so mad. argumentative toad

you're as bad as melt. i'm off.

bird poo as well.

but how does the tree know all this when he doesnt have a brain... G-d told him.

Sorry to harp on about this, but, it seems as though Joe has agreed that darwins evolution of natural selection is taught as theory ...(which seems to be what everyone is saying) ...

...And, Joe also seems to be saying that microevolution is ok to be taught as fact ... (which again everyone seems to agree with)

Please someone help me here, because it looks to me as though even though everyone agrees they are still arguing.



I just don't get message boards do I ???

have you never argued for the fun of it?

I think I could construct a reasonable argument for almost any position if I worked at it.

Only when i feel strongly about something.

Obviously I've just not lived have I ??

at the heart of this debate is yosefs desire to show that religiosity is a world view which is equally valid to rationality. he has tried to show that both views are ,at base, faiths.
However I think you either believe in rationality and observation as a base for your life or you believe in an outside agency, a god.
the two are incompatible IMO
what we teach our children is based on one or other of these world views and can't really straddle the two convincingly. that's what the argument is about

The eye's a wicked example of evolution.

How could such a huge array of muscles, lenses, films and nerves come into play all at once?

But it makes sense when you think about it - there's plenty of creatures out there missing various components of eyes like lenses. 50% vision is better than nothing, 1% vision is better than nothing.

In the earliest creatures, I think it was probably to do with detecting light for warmth or whatever. Add a slight improvement and you get a very fuzzy outline, maybe in black and white - helps you to see a predator coming, helps you avoid walking into trees/cliffs, great stuff. Add a bit more - helps you to start hunting prey, and so and so forth. You get a kind of arms race between predator and prey. One gets a mutation to get focussing muscles, the others disadvantaged until they get a lens or something, those with shit vision dying out all the time.

Better still, it helps to deal a crushing blow to the creationist - because when you look at the light receptors in the eye, the nerves rather than going backwards actually go forwards, so light has to pass through them toget to the recptors! they then have to come backwards again through a blind spot! Any sane designer would have had the nerves coming backwards, and there is some squid somewhere that evolved eyes separately to us and has it like this.

Wings are another good one - each slight extra bit of wing lets you survive if you fall out of a tree from a slightly higher height etc, even if the early version couldn't make you fly per se.

Re snake venom and teeth - can't tell you for sure, but I think teeth came first as they have a use on their own. Then a mutation for venom came later maybe.

Partly we enjoy the arguing, and partly I am wondering why Joe, famous for believing in gods and souls and miracles, and an ardent advocator of them being taught to kids as facts in faith schools...

...has now decided that despite the multitude of evidence for evolution it isn't quite enough and must be taught as a theory instead. Which it probably should, but whilst children are being taught adam and eve as fact and that the world is 5000 years old then there are bigger concerns imo.

These type of threads are always an interesting read, i just normally prefer to read rather than post in them.

For the purpose of this one though, as I spent three years of my life studying genetics I have to say that it would be a hell of a waste of a lot of researchers time and money if schools decided to stop teaching evolution

that makes my point that there's a limit to our knowledge and understanding of these things... we just don't know how or why apples behave the way they do.... but to claim that anything beyond our understanding must therefore be the work of a divine creator is just arrogant... instead we should just accept that our knowledge is limited.

Who and when I can't remember... but a leading scientist bout 200 yrs ago claimed that the work of science was finished as we'd worked it all out... then imagine what we'll know in 2200!

Exactly - it's like William the conquerer seeing/know what we know now - and then US seeing what our evolved relatives (with no eyes) will have in 3007. we can't comprehend it YET

I'm jewish... I can't help arguing

no it isnt?

this debate has nothing to do with religion?

its not evolution or creationism, just as its not black or white....

this is all good and well but can you explain why some of the earliest forms of life like trilobites of the cambrian explosion have perfectly formed eyes?

at least its only 3 years... darwin wasted a life time

Explain how you 'know' this?

fossil record my dear boy... first google result: http://www.trilobites.info/eyes.htm

That is submitable evidence.... primodial soup from rocks and elements from light beams are not.

I thank you.