T.Nguyen #fundie

T.Nguyen #fundie amazon.com

There're so many deterministic sciences (and arts and trades) out there for students to learn, why would TE be taught or a student choses TE?

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Why TE shouldn't be taught in high school:

1) TE doesn't lend to lab experiment
2) TE is tautology
3) TE is not causal
4) TE is not useful in real life
5) TE is amoral, or can lead to amorality (anything goes kind of mentality)
6) TE may reduce creativity
7) TE language is full of "could" "may"
8) Prerequisites: statistics and probabilities.
9) TE is contrary to every day observations (cat begets cats, cars are made, houses are built)

35 comments

old comment by agentCDE

1: True, there aren't really any lab experiments you can do. Incidentally, there's plenty of other things you can't do in a high school science lab that are taught, including radiation and relativity, for example.

2: So you admit it's true, because tautologies are always true?

3: Natural selection seems causal enough to me.

4: The Iliad isn't useful in real life! Stop teaching classical literature!

5: No, it doesn't give any sort of morals at all, nor a lack thereof. It does explain why we come with them built in. Well, most of us, except for those of you who need an almighty skydaddy to tell you what to do on pain of eternal fire.

6: o rly?

7: o rly? Also, irony alert! Your two last points were a "could" and a "may" respectively.

8: Oh nos, people need to learn basic statistics and probability first! Math and Science going together? Preposterous!

9: Cats beget slightly different cats, cars and houses DON'T REPRODUCE and therefore are not covered at all by Evolution, I look somewhat like my mother and somewhat like my father... sounds like evolution fits just fine.

old comment by Eric

1) Not all science need lab experimentation, direct observations are also a valid source of information.

2) So, it's true? Think before you type please.

3) Actually, it is. When the environment changes certain traits are favored and those without these traits die. Does the Ice Age ring a bell?

4) But scientific thinking is, and for those who are heading into a career based on biology it is useful.

5) Strawman. Evolution is just that the genetic code of a population can and will change over time.

6) How? By restricting students to reality?

7) So are you. And so what? It just means that scientists admit when they don't fully know something (instead of pulling it out of their ass like fundies)

8) Algebra is a prerequisite for chemistry, but that doesn't make it any less true. Oh, you mean it violates statistics? Not really.

9) But, I'm not a clone of my parents. I have different traits than either of them. That is consistent with evolution. And evolution explains why a new flu vaccine is needed every year and why penicillin doesn't work as well as it used to.

old comment by Brain_In_A_Jar

Hey, they let me do radiation experiments in my school at A-level! We got to measure inverse-square with distance using a source and geiger counter, alpha, beta and gamma penetration using different sources and shields, and particle motion with small cloud chambers.

Don't mistake me for supporting the original poster; lack of experimentability in a classroom setting doesn't disqualify topics. I mean, they still teach sexual reproduction, right?

old comment by ScienceDT

I am deeply disappointed by this post because it's typical of the ignorance sounding this theory.

On 1) TE doesn't lend to lab experiment:

Please read about Theodosius Dobzhansky's experiments on fruit flies and how they changed eye color, wing shape, and a variety of other characteristics over successive generations. Such a process was indeed done as an expirement to show that mutations occur, and that new species could result from these mutations.

4) TE is not useful in real life

Researchers pursuing vaccines would disagree with you. At this moment, there are cases of drug-resistant tuberculosis because the bacteria has changed. (There are other factors as well, but in short, the bacteria has developed resistance.) When a bacteria synthesizes a new protein or exhibits a charactersitic that renders an anti-biotic useless, then knowing how that came to occur is very useful knowledge indeed.

old comment by PhantasyElementz

1) Fruit flies, mice, bacteria, you name it. Now tell me how Creationism lends itself to experiments?
2) Wait, what?
3) Yes, yes it is.
4) Neither is the theory of relativity. No complex scientific theory is useful to the average person in everyday life.
5) No. TE helps demonstrate why humans should behave morally (we are social animals).
6) Ah, but I suppose "POOF, GODDDIDIT" improves creativity?
7) That's because it's science, and it may someday change a bit, because you know what? The longer we humans are around the more we learn. Knowledge should not be static - then it's just dogma.
8) Heh? No, not at all.
9) *yawn* You have absolutely no idea what TE is, do you?

old comment by Tempus

1)You can test it with organisms that breed fast. And this has been done.

2)Wrong.

3)Wrong.

4)Ask the doctors who contend with antibiotic resistance, scientists who research genetic disorders, or the farmers who have to deal with it when their -cides don't work on their chosen pest organism this year.

5)So is engineering and physics. Your point?

6)Non-sequitur

7)So is every branch of science.

8)OH NOES ZOMG! MATHS! IT BURNZZZ US!!11ONEONe

9)Cats beget other cats who aren't physically identical to their forebears, who in turn beget other cats who are slightly more different still. Isolate a population, give it a few thousand generations, and apply slight selective pressure, and you get cats that can't breed with their most distant ancestors and look and act differently. And it works for everything that lives. Meanwhile, cars and houses don't breed, but if they could, the same processes would work on them as well--see also von Neumann Machine and artificial life.

old comment by JW

1) Yes it does.
2) It sure took a long time to realize this tautology.
3) I don't know what you mean. You probably tried to say that it is not completely deterministic, but neither is QM and that is still a good theory.
4) Yes it is.
5) All scientific theories are amoral. Gravity does not imply that falling down is good.
6) This is an interesting claim. Do you mean that with ToE people can no longer make shit up about magic man in the sky creating all animals without being called on it?
7) ToE is intellectually honest and does not claim certainties where they are not yet obtained or are possibly unobtainable.
8) Statistics and probabilities should be taught anyway.
9) Only straw man versions build by dishonest creationists are contrary to observations.

T.Nguyen #fundie amazon.com

35 comments

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