“Most high school biology teachers don’t endorse Darwin’s theories in their classes, according to a new survey. Instead 60% of them instruct their students on the principles of evolution only as they pertain to molecular biology (they only go as far as the evidence allows), as one alternative among a variety of theories about biology or as necessary to pass national tests.” (insertion mine)
Time Canada - Feb. 14 / 11
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What's interesting is that you put such quote on your blog with the title "Hugo - This is interesting"...
ReplyDeleteThere could be several things to mention regarding it, but most likely none that you would find interesting. So, for once, I will prevent myself from going into pointless explanations!
I am really puzzled as to what you actually understand regarding the subject, especially because of the comment you inserted in parenthesis and 3 key words used: Darwin, evolution and 'molecular biology'.
Therefore, could you let me know why YOU think it's interesting? Seriously, please explain, in your own words, why you find that "This is interesting".
“I will prevent myself from going into pointless explanations!”
ReplyDeleteOh, thank you. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that.
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It’s interesting in the same way that Darwin has chimpanzees as our closest cousins on the evolutionary tree even though genetically, orangutans are much closer genetically to humans than are chimps.
It’s interesting in the same way that “The most reasonable belief is that we came from nothing, by nothing, and for nothing.” Quentin Smith
It’s interesting in the same way that, scientific ideas have been advanced with a tenacity which so exceeds their intrinsic worth that one can only suspect the operation of psychological forces lying very much deeper than the usual academic desire of a theorist to support his or her theory.”
Astrophysicist C. J. Isham
I’m growing weary of this. Just thank you for avoiding pointless explanations.
You quoted me saying:
ReplyDelete"I will prevent myself from going into pointless explanations"
To which you replied:
"Oh, thank you. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that"
If it were coming from someone else I would think it's obvious sarcasm, but the fact that you quote only the second half of my comment shows that you probably did not get the point: you would most likely not understand the explanations.
Or, if you were dishonest, you would ignore them because they don't fit with your view of evolution, but I don't see why I would accuse you of being dishonest because you clearly have very little knowledge of what you try to mock.
"It’s interesting in the same way that Darwin has chimpanzees as our closest cousins on the evolutionary tree even though genetically, [orang-utans] are much closer genetically to humans than are chimps."
ReplyDeleteExplaining how Darwin was wrong regarding genetics does not explain why YOU find the statistics you quoted above interesting. Your other quotes are even farther from the subject so I will just ignore this insult to humans' reasoning capabilities.
I'll ask you one more time: why did you think it's interesting that 60% of high school teacher prefer not to teach evolution in class?
By the way, it's not "Darwin's theory" that they don't accept, it's evolution as a whole that they reject when it comes to explain humans' origins. Your quote did not accurately reproduce (what a surprise) the actual interpretation of the surveys; the questions asked for the surveys were different (http://live.psu.edu/story/51023). Nobody accepts/refuses "Darwin's Theory" because there is no such thing. The adjective 'Darwinian', like in Darwinian evolution remains in use mainly for historical reasons. What Darwin believed or tried to explain has nothing to do with the validity of the current Theory of Evolution for biological evolution. Oh but sorry, did I just go into a pointless explanation again? My bad...
ReplyDelete"By the way, it's not "Darwin's theory" that they don't accept, it's evolution as a whole that they reject"
ReplyDeleteYou can take that up with the person who wrote the article from which I took the quote. Or perhaps the Time Magazine Editor who missed this huge error.
1) Did you read the actual Time article? If they did mention Darwin, yes, they did a mistake, because I was curious to find out and did not find anything from the Time. The only thing I could find was an article from the Washington Post and the one I linked above, from Penn State Uni...
ReplyDelete2) In any case, it's irrelevant, and I don't care at all about your snarky remarks, since I was trying to explain to YOU why Darwin's beliefs, ideas, or mistakes, are POINTLESS.
I wonder if one day you'll understand this...
In other words, I was trying to show you why saying that "Darwin has chimpanzees as our closest cousins on the evolutionary tree..." is ridiculous, irrelevant to the quote you posted, and only makes you look like an ignorant idiot.
Again, I wonder if one day you'll understand this...
"I was curious to find out and did not find anything from the Time. The only thing I could find . .."
ReplyDeleteYou went out and bought an old Time Magazine?
What's the matter with you?
Of course I read it. The blurb is maybe two paragraphs long and I gave you one of them.
You're just a little obsessive - huh?
You went out and bought an old Time Magazine?
ReplyDeleteWhat's the matter with you?
No, I used this thing called "GOOGLE"... and if we search for your quotes, or even parts of it, it returns nothing but your blog and another blog.
The only way to get results is to not use quotes so that we run into the quote that uses the word 'evolution' instead of Darwin; hence my comment.
Of course I read it. The blurb is maybe two paragraphs long and I gave you one of them.
If you are not lying, then the Time made a mistake. In other words, the journalist decided to write 'Darwin' because he thought it was synonym or something like that.
No surprise here, the Time is not a scientific journal or not even close to be, so we can expect that kind of slip from entertainment sources.
It reminds me of something related to the climate change debates. There is this famous claim that scientists in the 70s believed that the Earth was actually cooling, not warming. It got used over and over again by denialists to claim that the Earth is not warming and that scientists keep changing their mind.
The false "fact" was actually coming from an article in Time in which a journalist interviewed a climate scientist on the subject; the scientist was explaining something related to cycles of ice age and how the Earth will cool down again in like... 10,000 years.
I am not sure of details because I am just writing that down out of memory, but the idea here is the same. Quoting a non-scientific paper and doing a bad interpretation of it does not yield anything valuable.
You're just a little obsessive - huh?
Yes, I am a little obsessive about truth.
Too bad you are not!