"Not that I'm surprised TC, but I'm glad that you separate the validity of a concept of the natural world from the way it has been interpreted by people, or in this case, how its detractors think other people interpreted it as instructing them to do bad things ("Evolution made me do it!") and believed it was the cause of some great atrocities.
To their reasoning, the presence of nuclear proliferation would make most of physics empirically wrong and germ warfare would invalidate the field of microbiology.
Sadly, this is not a misconception that just crops up on its own, it is being systematically and shamelessly propagated by leading Creationist organizations. These are the same groups that believe that "Scientific" Creationism should be taught as a "scientific equal" to evolution in public schools, but then these orgs issue articles about evolution being the cause of most of what has gone wrong morally since the nineteenth century."
--Well lets see what have seen concerning Evolution, its effects on the majority of society, and the creationists organizations say about it.
--The first point I would like to make is that there are two paths of missinterpretation. That is that either the teacher will missrepresent the theory, or the person being shown the theory missinterprets it as if it is an alternative to the existance of God, this one by far is extreamly apparent and wide-spread. Both of these prospects very much should be dealt with well. I have had numerous experiences when God or the Bible is brought up in a conversation and someone pops up and says their an Athiest and they don't believe in all of that non-scence. Then wouldn't you know it, thier response to why they are is 'havent you ever heard of Evolution?'. Its quite sad.
--My view on Evolution's effect on society in some ways branches off of the missrepresentation as shown in my previous point. There is a negative drop-off attitude that can be entertained by this interpretation. Examples such as Hitler or other people of that likeness.
--What the creationist organizations have to say about all this, they basically wan't to thrash it many of them, others are a bit less stressful and would rather see it brought down on a more calm ground. As for myself, I haven't met such a conclusive interpretation on the teaching of Evolution, though, currently I havent a problem with it, though the above must greatly be dealt with. I see the debate as a rather entertaining intrest, whether the earth is old or young is rather irrelevant towards salvation. However, of course, I wouldn't mind seeing the Young Earth shown as equally plausable.
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