RufusAtticus

Evolution

This is the best college paper that I have ever read which dealt with the subject of evolution. This student clearly deserved the high school diploma which allowed him to take college biology.

My university cannot take credit for such extraordinary work. A fellow PhD student passed it on to me from his master's institution. I've scanned it and converted it to text, which worked fairly well.

Enjoy the education.

Fisheye

Pages 3 and 5 are my favorite.... :banghead:

This sounds familiar
:banghead:

:banghead:

cfgauss

Oh my God! My favorite part was: "In the words of most scientist if is not evolution, there would not be any species still alive"! Followed closely by "mountains can just rise up from earthquakes" and "why aren't any mountains forming right now."

My four year old niece knows more than this guy (thanks to me, the cool uncle who tells her stuff that no one else thinks she can understand ). She's probably a better writer, too!

Origian

What on earth are you teaching your students over there in the US? Is this a common ocurrence??? Over here in New Zealand I don't think I've EVER met a single person who could write something like this (with the theistic slant I mean) - probably due to the fact that the vast majority of us are Godless though

RufusAtticus

The problem is not what we're teaching students. It's what we're not teaching them is the problem. Then again a fifth grader should be able to tell the difference between "there" and "their." That kid is just hopeless.

Alan G

So why didn't he cite the Bible as a source for his report? He did do his "7 days" babble about Adam & Eve.

Nic Tamzek

Man, there's more proverbial red ink in that paper than normal text!

*My* favorite is the bit about California not having high mountains. Having hiked to 14,200 feet myself in the white mountains I found this surprising.

The student:

The doughty TAs's comments:

...and there are lots of earthquakes there too, I should add...

Oolon Colluphid

I'm intrigued as to why so many of the books in the bibliography are so old. Clark, published two years before Lucy even, for hominid fossils?! Stebbins? Simpson is okay considering the date (I can't believe this bozo actually read it though!), but why not Carroll's Patterns and Processes?

Could it be that he's never been near these books, and got the 'references' from the back of some cretinist screed?

DT

Principia

See. Now who's complaining about parents not having a significant enough role in their children's education?

pz

I'd estimate that between 1 and 5% of the freshman papers on evolution that I see in introductory biology are roughly equivalent to what you see in that paper. These students do not succeed in getting biology degrees.

The scary ones are the papers that espouse the same erroneous ideas, but are actually quite well written and literate. I see a few of those now and then, too. It's a sure sign that a good brain has been wrecked with fundamentalist indoctrination.