Should Evolution and Creation be Taught in School?

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For example, the "sage", Vet, of our biology group had a student who constantly bemoaned evolution and natural selection throughout every lesson Vet had taught. One day, Vet told him to type up a list of his arguments against evolution. The student did and Vet wrote them on the board under an "Against" title. Vet then wrote down next to each argument the evidence against the students arguments. When looked at on the board, all I saw were great scientific points against what were actually pretty staid creationist arguments. The student's constant sniping stopped and the rest of the class said that they learned a lot from the exercise in debate.

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Great story. And, in my opinion, this is exactly why I feel that creationism does have a place in a biology class. In some science class somewhere, the difference between proper science and pseudoscience should be taught, and evolution vs. creationism is an excellent pair of contrasting examples to demonstrate the proper scientific method. The fact that it is an important current political topic would add some relevance to the topic.

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"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the same sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."
-- H. L. Mencken (quoted on Panda's Thumb)

Ned is correct. The post to which he is referring is gibberish. This last post of yours is at least comprehensible in itself but sheds no light on the other post.-

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Perhaps you're what Bush really refers to as non-english speaking.

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Heh. Neither you nor Bush should be criticizing others' problems with the language.

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"These monkeys are at once the ugliest and the most beautiful creatures on the planet./ And the monkeys don't want to be monkeys; they want to be something else./ But they're not."
-- Ernie Cline

(Sigh) Let's see:

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I'm sorry if my slightings are effective

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What does this mean? By "slightings", do you mean insults? If so, what do you mean by "effective slightings"? Did you have a purpose for them, and do you think that they served their purpose? This isn't clear.-

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but I do think my first post was an understanding of the topical question and very understandable,

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And "understanding" is an agreement between two or more people, and you clearly don't mean that here (unless you really are trying to be incomprehensible). Do you mean relevant to the OP? Again, it is not clear.-

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given the excuses that are made for human interaction, for which we choose to avoid factual explanation.

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Who is making excuses for human interaction? What does that even mean? What is a "factual explanation"? What is an "unfactual explanation"? Your sentence, when read literally, is saying that we are choosing to avoid "factual explanation" for the sake of making excuses for "human interaction", when I suspect that you mean the opposite. But maybe not; again, you are simply not clear.-

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I do not believe that redundancy should be in this format,

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What redundancy? In what format? This is totally incomprehensible.-

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reveiw is unyeilding.

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Review of what? What do you mean by unyielding? Again, incomprehensible.-

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The question or topic at the top of the page, and the replies.

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This is a sentence fragment, the intended meaning of which is lost.-

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Perhaps some still have not evolved into this type of intelligence so that redundancy is needed.

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No, we just need grammatically correct and logically constructed sentences.-

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You just have to excuse me if I seemed to be ahead of that observance.

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What do you mean by "observance"? "Observance" means the following of a ritual or tradition. Do you mean "observation"? In either case, what do you mean by being ahead of it?We can excuse you if English is not your first language, but you will have to quit pretending that your writing is comprehensible. If English is your first language, then, oh my!, you desperately need to taking a basic writing course. This is another post that shows the low level of your writing skills.

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"These monkeys are at once the ugliest and the most beautiful creatures on the planet./ And the monkeys don't want to be monkeys; they want to be something else./ But they're not."
-- Ernie Cline

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This would allow the students to actually think for themselves on a controversial topic instead of being made to learn that evolution is a "fact".

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Well, evolution is a fact. The only controversy is political, maintained by people insisting that their discredited Bronze Age mythology be accepted as fact.-

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Evolution, creationism, and everything that pertains to the same basic idea should be explored together in a science class each getting equal attention.

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To a point, I agree with this. Seeing how certain religious fanatics insist that their mythologies be accepted as fact, and seeing how these religious fanatics are trying to use the political process to impose their wacky beliefs on the general population, and seeing how a certain discredited Bronze Age mythology is part of these wacky beliefs, I fully support giving a lot of attention to Biblical creationism, showing in gory detail all the evidence that serves to show it is simply not correct, how the major creationist players are nuts, and how the theory of evolution (and the rest of geology) really do provide a detailed history of the world that is consistent with easily observable data.

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Actually, if their god makes better pancakes, I'm totally switching sides. -- Charley the Australopithecine

Hey, L-man.As a college instructor, I fully sympathize with you and hope it all comes out well. Fortunately, I teach math, and there really isn't much controversial in math. But I am in a region that is far more conservative than I am used to, and outside of class there are topics that I don't discuss.Good luck.

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Actually, if their god makes better pancakes, I'm totally switching sides. -- Charley the Australopithecine

Heh. The minutia of accrediting can be astounding, especially since the reviewers themselves may not have any real competency in the field. (We have just gone through our own accreditation process. Ugh.)That said, I can't see why the accreditation should be a problem. L-man's college doesn't have a Geology program. They only offer a general geology course as part of a degree in Environmental Science. L-man's college is quite small -- they simply cannot hire an expert to teach only one course every term or every other term. Accreditation agencies know this.This is a nuisance suit, just to put pressure on the administration. As you point out, it is really a matter of whether the aministration is going to stand up for their faculty. Also, L-man's college is associated with the Presbyterian Church (USA), who don't have any doctrinal problems with the theory of evolution.

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Actually, if their god makes better pancakes, I'm totally switching sides. -- Charley the Australopithecine

Hi, fooj. Welcome to EvC.A fact is something that is true. We can know that something is true if there is a lot of evidence that supports it.There is a lot of evidence to show that evolution is true. So evolution is probably a fact.We should teach children facts that are true, especially when those facts are important in understanding why the world is the way it is. Evolution is important because it explains just about everything in biology. Children should be taught about evolution.

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Actually, if their god makes better pancakes, I'm totally switching sides. -- Charley the Australopithecine

Hi, fooj.

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I subscribe to the nuclear plasmologist's theory of astronomy.

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Huh? You just get to decide what "theories" will support your preferred conclusions? Cool. How does that work?

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Actually, if their god makes better pancakes, I'm totally switching sides. -- Charley the Australopithecine

Sounds like a nut to me, fooj. Too bad you don't remember his name.You shouldn't accept a scientific "theory" just because it leads to the conclusions you want. You should examine it to see whether the data actually supports it. This plasma junk -- what do mainstream scientists say about it? Why don't you like the evaluations of the mainstream scientists? Are they factually incorrect? Illogical? Or are the conclusions just the sort of conclusions you don't want to accept?

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Actually, if their god makes better pancakes, I'm totally switching sides. -- Charley the Australopithecine

Oh, dear God Almighty. Will someone please close this thread?

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Actually, if their god makes better pancakes, I'm totally switching sides. -- Charley the Australopithecine