What are your views on teaching evolution in school versus intelligent design?

If you support teaching evolutionary theory in schools what premises are you basing your support? Also, if you support teaching intelligent design or creationism why and on what basis? One more question, what empirical evidence or support is their for the theories of either intelligent design or creationism?

What are your views on teaching evolution in school versus intelligent design?
evolution is a completely reasonable explanation for the world.


my biology teacher was great when we came to this. he gave us a short speech that evolution is a theory being taught in schools due to some scientific evidence, that it's a pretty good idea, and yes you can believe in god and evolution at the same time, and he wasn't gonna tell people that there was no god. he was really reasonable and out of a class with mormons and atheists alike, only one person raised problems, but he's the type that debates with everything the teacher says, even that 2+2=4. (no, seriously. boy that was an ugly trig lesson.)


i am a rabid evolutionist who does believe in a higher power.


there's nothing wrong with that.
Reply:First off. i LOVE this question.


I am a huge, super grande fan off evolution. I've even had an evolution party(well it was just a party but it was fun to call it an evolution party cause it ticked some1 there off). The theory of evolution is the most unifying theory in the firld of biology, w/o it biology has no backbone. Evolution helps us explain genetics, classification(taxonomy), The structure of plants and animals. Evolution shows us how we share a comman genetic code, that even the most simple of bacteria have. Evolution shows us how we developed (while fetuses we had gillesque pharngyl slits, we had webed feet.) Evolution can be proved using embryology, anatomy, genetics and experiments. We know how animals evolve (allopartic or sympatric speciation). Evolution needs to be taught in school, its just like any physics theory but you rarely see people argue about those being taught. Evolution is biology and without it everything you learn in biology can not be tied together.





Physics is still looking for its Holy Grail (Unifying theory on all the forces of nature) we, the bioogist already have ours and have had it for years, evolution.





Intelligetn design is actually the worst thing to teach in schools. The idea behind it is that a "creator" jumps in and makes changes that would have been unable to occur on their own. exs Eye(evolution has disproven this) and the flagella (recent studies show the protien in the flagella has already been in the cell, serving a defferent perpose). ID tells students "hey its ok if something is subpar just wait and someone will jump in and change it for you" But most importantly it has so scientific facts behind it, ever notice its never refered to as "The theory of Intelligent Design."





Creationism is even worse than ID. Creationism (not the one where yes i believe a "creator" made everything and let evolution take place, but Evolution is Satans working) has NO scientific evidence. Now in Biology students are science class, not Bible studies. Creationism that evangelicals want taught has two major problems, no scientific proof amd it forces people to believe in their God. Creationism is being pushed because evangelicals see evolution as the "end of the world" for it destroys their values. They are narrow minded and use as their ONLY source the Holy Bible, which they know is true because it says its true (everything i say here is a fact because im making it a fact, %26lt;%26lt;that makes no sense.) So the reason for teaching it has no proof. Also if taught one must teach the Muslim, hindu Buddist, every indian tribe in America's creation beliefs or one would be promoting a religion. And seeing how this is done in History class that would be a week for covering every religin that would be lost when students could learn facts.





Evolution is just a theory, but a theory is not a silly idea that someone thinks might be correct (hypothosis) but rather a universally excepted theory that explains the entire field of biology and for that you Darwin and Wallace(needs some credit) are the Einstiens and Newtons of Biology.
Reply:Quite simply, ask yourself what is the purpose of science education in schools.





It is to give *all* grade-school and high-school the very *BASICS* of what science is, and the very *BASICS* of what the current major theories are in science community.





It is NOT a testing ground for experimental new theories.





In other words, even if Intelligent Design was an *excellent* theory (which it most certainly is not) ... until it gains traction with a significant percentage of scientists, it has no business whatsoever in elementary and high schools.





What has happened is that those few scientists who advocate Intelligent Design have been completely unable to get the scientific community to take it seriously. Almost NO scientist of any reputation takes it seriously.





So they have changed their strategy of to the "teach the controversy" strategy ... unable to convince university professors, they instead turn to our high school and elementary school children, and try to persuade them that there is a "controversy" in the scientific community.





There they throw around questions about "irreducible complexity", "information theory", "the 2nd law of thermodynamics", all of which can be answered quite simply by anybody with a little grounding in complexity theory, information theory, informatics, thermodynamics, chaos theory, etc., etc. .... but grade school and high school kids have NONE of this background.





So the only possible result is confusion. And that, is *precisely* the goal! To leave students so confused by the end of biology class that they don't know what to think.





Evolution is the backbone of all of biology, in exactly the same sense that the atomic theory of matter is the backbone of all of chemistry. Evolution is supported by 95% to 99% of the scientific community (depending on what polls you read), especially within the biological sciences. *That* is why it is, and needs to be taught in schools.





As far as empirical evidence, please see my answer to the following question:


http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...
Reply:The premise of teaching evolution is that it is well-established biological science. The controversy with intelligent design can be resolved if both sides acknowledge that the essence of mind is a property of matter and that the propensity of matter to aggregate itself into structures of progressively greater complexity, culminating in life, appears to be an inherent property of matter, which existed from the time of its creation. If both sides can agree to that, then there is no controversy.
Reply:There is no place for intelligent design, an everyday theory, whatsoever.





Intelligent design is not science, it has not undergone the stringent requirements for it to be even considered a valid scientific theory - to date there has been no proper peer review, no inferences and in particular, NO PHYSICAL EVIDENCE.





This 'theory' also implies the existence of a creator - a major flaw, the assumption that there are some things that are so complex, that it must have been designed. No other scientifically accepted theory has ever implied this, the simple fact being the presence of a creator cannot be proved beyond doubt, hence it should not be considered as valid.





Intelligent design implies yet another garbage idea - irreducible complexity - the idea that one part of an organism is so complex, that each of its separate parts cannot function on their own, and hence must be designed as it goes against evolutionary theory. This has been proven to be false. Take the prime example of bacterial flagellum, apparently it is too complex to be formed from simpler parts - hence it demonstrates this theory perfectly - wrong. The flagellum is made up of a chain of proteins, removing any number of these proteins should render it useless, however it does not, in fact it leaves behind a pore like structure of which the bacteria can use to inject a cell with toxins.





Hence the theory (not even scientific) is nothing more than pseudoscience, in fact using this term gives it too much credit. It is simply garbage - not real science at all.





The very fact that this supposed theory violates every code of practice a scientific theory needs to go through before acceptance justifies it not being taught at any school.





And there is a difference between an everyday theory (a hunch or guess) and scientific theory (supported, observation, inferences, evidence, peer review, evaluation, critical examination).





Simply:


Evolution - underwent the scientific method, plenty of creditable evidence, inference, peer reviews, adaptations to the theory, justifies its place in schools.





Creationism (and the related) - no peer review, no physical evidence, every piece of supposed evidence disproven, static theory - nothing has changed since it was proposed, unscientific, unjustifiable - no evidence, no dice.
Reply:Short answer: CA State Standards. They say what to teach and when. I guess you can choose to ignore them but you can't let anyone know.





Long answer:


When I was teaching, I taught junior high biology. Yes, I taught evolution. I teach it this way. I teach all of the evidence first and do not tell them it is evidence for evolution. So, I teach about geology and geologic time, fossils, etc. Then, I move on to carbon dating and we do math stuff and so on. I teach about heredity and DNA. We look at Mendel's work and learn about the double helix and mutations. Embryos, vestigial structures all of it (all of this is my support).....When I feel they understand this, I then LEAD them to theory. When this is done, I tell them they have been learning about evolution. We cover Darwin briefly and then it is gone.


Creationism has its place with all of the other religious ideas. (I don't understand why other religions don't feel the need to insert beliefs into science. Is this purely an American idea?) Since it focuses on the beginning of life, it really has no place in what I teach. That is for the biochemists to worry about. Since evolution only deals with populations (there has to be living things already in order for it to occur) I stay away from that subject however, when they ask I do tell them only scientific answers. I did have one student ask me about what the bible says to be true. I had to tell her that is a religious idea and then review again what science is. I sent the question on to the social studies teacher (CA state standards require an overview of religions in 7th grade) Great opportunity to reteach.
Reply:I teach Biology at the college level and everything I teach is science based (even more specifically, based from peer reviewed scientific literature). Therefore, I teach about natural selection because their is substantial peer reviewed literature on natural selection.


I do not teach intelligent design nor creationism because I have yet to see a peer reviewed scientific journal article on either topic.