Personally, I think that schools should neither teach evolution nor creationism – they should do what public schools were originally designed to do: teach kids to read, write and do sums competently

Everything else (including biology) is of secondary importance

Questions to teachers about religion, human origins, sex, and other similar issues should be referred to parents

?Religious apologists (aided and abetted by man’s natural brain structure – viz. neurotheology) have managed to keep the comforting lie of religion afloat despites insults as serious as heliocentrism, rain-making crop dusters, and birth control.?

I?m with Spinoza on this one ? religion and philosophy (science) are different approaches to the same problem. The former seeks to promote truth by appealing to emotion, while the latter promotes it by appealing to reason

Philosophy is clearly superior, but this is something not everyone can appreciate

The intelligent should practice philosophy, while respecting the simpler beliefs of those unable to follow their arguments. To attack religion *per se*, without providing an equally simple alternative explanation (which evolution is not), is to risk social upheaval and revolution

I would have no problem with evolution, except that provoking social upheaval and revolution is *exactly* what many evolution-promoters seem to be interested in

About teaching ID or evolution in schools, I think there is no real logic behind teaching anything but evolution in science/biology class. Sure, teach them ID or whatever other creation myth in religion or history of religion class.

seriously-if you characterize it like so, you are part of the problem and a reason we should teach evolution! it isn’t too hard to introduce topics like symbiogenesis, mutualism, symbiosis, etc. etc. so that you chalk it up to more than just “struggle of person against person.” your conception owes a lot more to spencerian social darwinism than it does to darwin’s original ideas-which actually pointed out the importance of cooperation.

so if you believe what you believe, you are a) stupid or ignorant and don’t know what you’re talking about, or b) too unimaginative to conceive of a fashion to present nuance to elementary school children, in which case c) let’s let them grub around in the mud and not bother them with history, science and mathematics.

btw, leftists propogandize in favor of the cooperation angle constantly to folks out there, so i think it’s doable to balance out the two factors. if you really understand that evolution is more than the inaccurate stick figure you sketched out earlier, you should preface your doom mongering in a way so that we understand that and aren’t too patronizing in our responses.

“You should read a bit about kin selection. Even multicellularity is testament to the fact that evolution requires cooperation as well as competition.”

We’re dealing with kids here. You can’t get too sophisticated, else you’ll lose them and confuse them

Evolution is a complex subject. A teacher must either slip into (potentially dangerous) over-simplifications, or else risk leaving the class behind

Either way, a lot of kids are going to come away with the idea that moral values are relative, a matter of luck or superior force

An adult – living in the real world, responsible for himself and conscious of the effects of his actions – can handle this idea

For kids it is dangerous

18 is a good age to start learning about evolution

Do you really want your children to be taught that life is a constant struggle of person against person, family against family, class against class, sex against sex …

… and of children against parents?

(yes I know this is simplistic, but that’s how most kids in their early teens will see the situation)

Sounds like a recipe for social chaos to me

Kids who want to pursue careers in biology can learn about evolution in college. i.e. when they’re old enough to understand and take responsibility for the consequences of their opinions and actions

Folks who push evolution in schools are being either (a) stupid or (b) deliberately malicious and socially destructive

If evolution were to be taught in HS, even people who ended up not believing in evolution would end up knowing that many educated people, especially in biology, do believe in it. The complacent ignorance of devout Christians is hard to imagine if you haven’t been involuntarily confronted with it.

My agenda is different than 90%-95% of the people here, but I think that secular, libertarian conservatives are playing with fire if they think they can join the religious right under the big tent.

To me things seem pretty messy, but then I’ve been living away from Mommy and Daddy for several decades.

But you really don’t need to understand evolution to have a functional grasp of these phenomena. ‘Bacteria eventually become more resistant to the drugs used against them’ is a fact that can be accepted on its own without a knowledge of the underlying mechanisms.

Plus, viral evolution can help us fight AIDS and other diseases.

OK, so someone working in a lab needs to understand evolution in this context. Doesn’t change what I said above.

One of the interesting points made in the article is that even amoung people who believe in evolution ignorence is widespread, for example someone in the article explains evolution thus:

“If you use your thumbs a lot, you will have children with big thumbs. If they use their thumbs a lot, and so do their children, then eventually there will be a new sort of person with big thumbs.”

So the struggle is not merely to get people to believe in evolution but to then get believers to understand natural selection.