Teaching evolution in a climate of science denial, Part 2

[zecle]

incredible !!!

science is just the study of the real world as it is. and when you deny the real world, aren't you just... insane ?

[Naytardo]

And you can't test evolution... lol nice admittance. According to him evolution is not science.

[BloodSweatTiers]

I don't get why Theistic evolution and Materialism are on different points. Scientifically they're the same, the only difference is philosophy. So why are the different of a scientific scale?

[JungleJargon]

Evolution denies science. Mutations are not able to order anything.

Mutations can only alter the genome of viable life form.

watch?v=qZev7hb40uk

[wvmtbklover]

My father, who is religious but also a chemist, was "encouraged" by my stepmom and his pastor to go to the creation museum in Ky.  They live in Cincinnati. He couldn't stomach it. For example, the Noah's Ark display shows hundreds of people working on the Ark. When my father pointed out that the bible only says that Noah and his sons built it and nothing was mentioned of other people, the reply was "we're pretty sure they hired contractors". He's since left that church.

[daeamarth]

Religion's purpose as a tool is control, period. Otherwise its effectively useless. Every attribute of religion that people reference that is supposed to in some fashion be a saving grace can be supplied in a far more effective way without all the baggage and its highly unlikely religion provides the majority of these attributes at all and they actually come from the individual realizing something about the real world. BTW, I dont think RD was demonized. If was focusing perspective.

[MomoTheBellyDancer]

That "ask questions during the lecture" format does not work. The lecturer is constantly losing his train of thought.

[bensambell]

I know it's already been said, but the speaker really misrepresented Richard Dawkins by using only that single quote. Dawkins has quite a positive outlook on life from what I've seen and read.

And everyone in this audience seemed to be throwing around the word "respect" as if it is something that the dominant religions deserve without question. People deserve respect, whereas irrational, non evidence-based beliefs do not. Ridiculous beliefs deserve ridicule.

[berner]

"Have you ever seen a dog cat?! No? Well then evolution isn't true"

"Have you ever seen Jesus? No? Well then christianity isn't true"

[champjklccmk]

If I eat at KFC, will I get infected by Creationism Syndrome?

[shadesters]

@champjklccmk It's a possibility, but I have eaten it many times and haven't caught CS yet... but I have gotten sick because of the amount of grease before, so eat with caution...

[champjklccmk]

@shadesters LOL LOL LOL! I didn't expect a response for this post... Thanks for humoring me... Much appreciated... And I'll take that advice to heart...

[ndrthrdr1]

The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) is a great organization. They fight for teaching real science instead of creationist mythology in public schools. I am a member, and recently extended my annual membership for another year. If you can afford the $35 annual membership, or even a $5 donation, you are helping them to light a candle rather than cursing the darkness of religious superstition.

[ndrthrdr1]

The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) is a great organization. They fight for teaching real science instead of creationist mythology in public schools. I am a member, and recently extended my annual membership for another year. If you can afford the $35 annual membership, or even a $5 donation, you are helping them to light a candle rather than cursing the darkness of religious superstition.

By the way, Richard Dawkins rocks! We should mock the beliefs, not those holding them.

[DarkBunnyLord]

I'm a bit curious why a student thinks that it's disrespectful to say that a belief system that is full of out right lies (The age of the earth, the shape of the earth, several events in history it claims happened that didn't, the earth's rotation, etc) is wrong.

Some people need to wake up and learn, facts are not up to vote. You're free to believe what you want but if what you believe is wrong it's wrong, it doesn't matter if you want to believe a lie it's still a lie.

[Jusoon]

what is wrong with denigrating "people of faith"? Why should we show any special respect to people who believe in talking snakes? The more we tiptoe around these idiotic belief systems the more the people who hold them feel entitled to restrict what is taught to our kids.

We need to realize that the creationists are at war with science and we had better take off the kid gloves and fight back soon or "President Perry" will have us looking for ways to turn lead into gold to save our economy.

[jerahmia]

When are they going to address the "10 questions"?

[bary1234]

Religion is poison, and creationism is the pinnacle of human stupidity. Thank goodness for NCSE, I hope they soon win this fight against barbaric superstition.

[sambricky]

We all know NOMA has been debunked. If a god is claimed to interact with the world then there should be evidence of that. And there is not.

[kabloozie]

if i remember correctly, the New York Times printed the answers to those 10 questions (I think it was you guys who supplied the answers...)

[alexcentaur]

Dear god these things make Kentucky look bad. It makes me almost embarrassed to be from there

[NatCen4ScienceEd]

@alexcentaur the good news is that in KY, as in many states with anti-science movements, there are strong pro-science advocates working to counter creationism. If you google "Kentucky Paleontological Society" you'll find a group that is well worth joining and supporting.

[MonochromaticEarth]

@alexcentaur dear god?

[b33p3rz]

That park actually exists? I saw something about it and thought it was a joke :(

[NatCen4ScienceEd]

@b33p3rz Paging Dr. Poe! Yes, the Creation Museum exists, and the Ark Park is soon to come. It is a interesting observation, though, that they so far out there it is as if they were part of a parody. :)

[cyphonyx]

One strategy I've seen teachers take is that they say "you don't have to believe evolution is true, you just have to understand the material to pass my class." The thing is, anti-evolutionism is based on misconceptions about evolution. Often, once you clear up all the misinformation, they end up believing in evolution simply because they recognize that it just makes a hell of a lot more sense.

[NatCen4ScienceEd]

Folks: update! The captioning feature is now working in this video. So some of the audience questions and comments are transcribed for your viewing pleasure. (And some, alas, are not--couldn't make out what they were saying!) Anyways, here be!

[Darwinsman]

@TheGeekyTree I went through the school system in Britain 50 yrs ago, as did my my wife, as did my children and as are my grandchildren. None have had any trouble with creationism, because it is not taught in any science class that I know of and my son is a teacher in the state school system. Religion is taught as a separate subject in british schools and in the vast majority of the schools they are taught about all religions.

[Superslemmet]

I feel the presenter really missed an important part to Dawkins 'style' if you will.

He himself is only polarizing when it comes to religion, because religion is incredibly polarizing. It's Us vs Them, we win, they burn in hell and so on.

When it comes to atheism, I think he generally presents a quite inspiring view, talking much on the poetry, freedom and beauty that the scientific method presents.

I think the quote was quite unfair, and presents atheism incorrectly.

[NatCen4ScienceEd]

@Superslemmet I don't agree that the quote is unfair; I think it's a very accurate and eloquent statement of his views. But realize that here I was not talking about atheism in general, but only this continuum with materialism on one end. I think in that context, the quote is, as you say, poetic.

[Superslemmet]

@NatCen4ScienceEd Fair enough. And I do understand the value of presenting a 'middle road' to the audience. Going all out and attacking the creationists, whilst presenting a purely atheistic view in an entirely positive light might have lost you some of the crowd. And as you said, this presentation was not about atheism vs theism, but how teachers can deal with creationism in schools. :)

[MelioraCogito]

@Superslemmet It’s interesting to note that in Dawkins more recently evolved evangelical style of debate, he has failed to utilize what I would call the “missing link” for theists – spirituality. That Dawkins finds uplifting inspiration & spiritual connection to his field of study is evident when he speaks/writes of it. But he doesn’t make the “spiritual” connection with theists.

Spiritualism in this context is the inspired connection via quantifiable knowledge one has with the natural world.

[2129261184]

I can´t fucking believe how retarded American´s are, how is it possible that people still think evolution is fake? Over here in Europe, Evolution is part of the school programs everywere, Creationism is a joke!

[Gordonisgreat]

Ok, there's this continuum from sane all the way down to completely crazy, but only one of the steps on the scale is realistic.

The NCSE may well like to "play nice" with theistic evolution, but this is something the fundies have right. There is no need for god in evolution.

[FamilyGuyRS]

part 3 please!

[Octamed]

One thing to point out to students I believe is that you don't have to BELIEVE evolution, but you must be an expert in order to argue against it. If they truly want to disprove it they must understand it. Just the same as someone who wants to disprove the bible must read it.

Of course this is somewhat of a trick because if they genuinely are 'seeking the truth' they might feel good about learning, whereas normally they'd actively not listen, but now might end up accepting it as a side effect :)

[theUKatheist]

HEY, we dont spell center funny lol you do :D

[NatCen4ScienceEd]

@theUKatheist but the whole football/soccer thing is just daft :)

[theUKatheist]

@NatCen4ScienceEd i know. what i dont understand is why its called football over there when they use their hands :P

[spursdude92]

@NatCen4ScienceEd I think you'll find that we named our sport Football before you named yours, and yours bears more resemblance to that of Rugby than that of association football. So we find your naming of the sport where you run around with a ball in your hands for almost the whole game and where it is thrown the majority of the time, as opposed to kicked as "football" to be highly inappropriate.

Also, colour, centre, mum are how the words are spelt ;)

other than that, keep up the great work

[TheFifthGreatApe]

Part 3?

[GorgeGeorg]

Geez NatCen4ScienceEd, couldn't you get a better presenter. This guy sucks. Tries to be funny and sucks at it, doesn't repeat the questions so others can here it, no real intonation in his voice, I didn't bother watching to end because I fear I might die of boredom.

[Octamed]

@GorgeGeorg I thought he was actually really good. I agree he should reiterate audience points, but maybe in the room it was clear and just the recording was bad

[NatCen4ScienceEd]

@Octamed exactly, that was the problem; i didn't think to repeat the questions because I could hear them so clearly, and thought the audience would also get picked up by camera. so it goes. :)

[wakeangel2001]

One of my first youtube videos was me answering those "10 questions to ask your biology teacher." I wasn't even out of college yet, they're really easy. I wonder if they've come up with a new 10 questions since that time.

[NatCen4ScienceEd]

@wakeangel2001 in some ways, they haven't come up with any genuinely new since the Scopes era! :)

[Octoschizare]

It seems like the presenter attempted to demonize Dawkins. Out of all the beautiful Dawkins quotes out there you pick one that makes him sound like a depressed and bitter nihilist, and then used that quote to mock him when implying that it's bad advice for children. That was so counterproductive to your presentation and the goals of your organization to give people the impression that the 100% natural evolution belief is an "extreme". Evolution isn't like a political belief, it's science!

[limericklad2000]

@Octoschizare Yeah it's a bit disingenuous using the Dawkins quote that they did. That quote was not pertaining to a human being's experience of life it was a description of the biological processes involved in evolution. He was saying that the biological process was blind, cold and indifferent not that human beings are. I agree with you it was a silly quote to use.

[NatCen4ScienceEd]

@Octoschizare I'm sorry if I spoke unclearly here, but I certainly intended no disrespect toward Dawkins, whom I greatly admire. I don't agree that the quote used here fits with nihilism; it's maybe a little grim, as I joked. :) But grim does not mean "bad advice for children." I think Dawkins here very eloquently expressed his thoughts, and I'm sure he would stand by the statement.

[Solensherre]

@Octoschizare It should be noted that Dawkins has been aware of this in the trials. Using him would be a mistake, not because I could not brilliantly show the magnificent and scientific validity of evolution, but because he would be the outsider to the religious crowd.

He cannot be the only face for evolution because that is not the only portrayal and the people would leap on to his atheism like a hawk. So, not counterproductive, convincing the USA of evolution with Dawkins is counterproductive.

[b33p3rz]

@Octoschizare For your second point, at the very beginning of this part of the presentation, although he doesn't say it again, the continuum is created by the creationists. It's an unfair method of them to demonize the idea of evolution by presenting it as the extreme. He's showing the teachers how to identify that and refute it in an educational environment. I hope all of the things he cited, and the organization he belongs to, shows how much he knows it is science.

[MomoTheBellyDancer]

@Octoschizare

"It seems like the presenter attempted to demonize Dawkins."

Indeed. He rubbished his whole lecture with this one attack on Dawkins.

[Sammygirl1231]

@Octoschizare

I think the point the speaker was trying to make was that people can get very defensive over their beliefs no one likes being called stupid or to be corrected it's just the way we are. I believe one of the best people to talk to young earth creationists would be the theistic evolutionists because they can show them that you can believe in science and still have your faith without the two conflicting. With creationists you need to ease them in to evolution

[A0Refrigerator]

If you remember the questions perhaps you should add them as annotations.

[sushanalone]

@A0Refrigerator and the video time links of when were they asked ; considering its a long video

[Flerndip22]

Iron Chariots Dot Org for complete counter-apologetics wiki

[vision4DaY]

cont 5

there was a benefit that the sharks who could be in land had that the ones that could not didn't, and this advantage was so great that it helped the land walking sharks to successfully reproduce more than the not walking sharks, then there was no way natural selection could favor this.

if she would have answered better then maybe i would have not been a creationist for so long in my life.

love the series.

[shandcunt]

@vision4DaY I think what you have highlighted is that different people respond differently to different triggers. I know a general chastising from friends helped me open my mind but for others it would shut them down. Some people need a paiteint understanding, others will find this patronising.

Greta Christina has a great talk about the lessons learned from the LGBT movement which i found very informative and touches on this issue

[M00nGlitz]

I can't hear the questions and comments from the audience. :(

[NatCen4ScienceEd]

@M00nGlitz yeah, we tried to boost the audio, but it had too much static. part of delay was fiddling with this audio

[tweaker1bms]

@NatCen4ScienceEd Maybe add in subtitles on screen like they do sometimes when people are intelligible?

[tweaker1bms]

@tweaker1bms Ah I see it done at least once, but I think it should be done for everytime an audience member speaks. Of course enabling captions for the whole thing would be good as well, for those deaf or hard of hearing.

[JTD7000]

@NatCen4ScienceEd - Maybe the question, or a short paraphrase of it, could be put across the bottom of videos in text?

[NatCen4ScienceEd]

@M00nGlitz Folks: we do indeed know that the audience questions and comments are hard to hear in this segment. So we used YouTube's annotation feature to add captions. And guess what? It worked yesterday and today....the captions are gone! This, alas, is the way of YouTube: flaky, x10. I'll give captioning another try in a bit. --Robert Luhn, NCSE

[vision4DaY]

cont 4

she answer then we would be in trouble.

to me the whole idea of evolution was plain stupid at the time. because if sharks could start walking on land then we should take precations to it. since no one was doing so then no one really beleived this idea.

if she had explained to me that species don't chose to evolve but natural selection was what cause evolution. if she had explained to me how natural selection works and that sharks are so well adapted to their environment that unless

[vision4DaY]

cont 3

he answer by saying that this was because during a period of time two genes combined and he was able to show exactly where they combine, why they combine, and how long ago they combine.

Information was what help me.

i also remember asking my 10th grade teacher when she was teaching evolution to us, what if sharks start coming out of the water? i asked this question because she had said that fish like animals started to come out of the water and eventually started to walk on land.

[vision4DaY]

cont.2

what helped me a lot was a series by thunderf00t called why people laugh at creationist and the channel Donexodus2 who was somewhat of a theist evolutionist at the time and show me how it was possible to accept both view. also a lecture from ken miller, who talked how accurate evolution was. from that lecture what i remember the most is him saying how an argument was that we and a "supposedly" common ancestor had different chromosomes and that creationist said it was impossible.

[vision4DaY]

i went from old earth creationist to naturalist. The hardest leap was from old earth creationist to theistic evolutionist. going from theistic evolutionist to naturalist had nothing to do with evolution. I remember using the arguments of the flagellum and the eye as prove of creation. I used this because it made sense the way the argument was presented and it appeal to my believe. In an effort to get more informed i started to look at youtube for the counter arguments.

[hollowloki]

worth the wait imho

[bushonomics]

Fav'd halfway through :) So nice to see this info presented in a sort of one-stop-shop kind of way!

[shandcunt]

Sweet

[Halflifefan54]

yay this is finally up!