MrDarwin

I haven't been very active lately, but I come here for several different reasons:

• I like to educate;
• I like to argue;
• (let's be honest here) I enjoy proving other people wrong;
• I consider it an intellectual challenge, a bit like playing chess;
• it helps me to examine and clarify my own beliefs;
• it helps keep me current on interesting events and discoveries in evolutionary biology;
• as a biological professional, I consider creationism in its various guises to pose a very real threat to science, and especially to science education in the U.S.A.;
• it helps me to understand the creationist mindset, to better counter it;
• and, of course, I do it for the lurkers, many of whom are truly confused and undecided.

[ September 30, 2002: Message edited by: MrDarwin ]</p>

Happy Wonderer

I come here to see the scientific discussions. Rarely is there a forum where current scientific thinking is explained and defended in language that a layman can understand. I really appreciate it, even though I can't pretend to understand it all!

HW

cricket

Surprisingly, a lot of people have heard little about evolution but have heard the Creationist explanation every Sunday.

A fortyish co-worker was asking me for information; she knew nothing of evolution. When I finished telling her the basics, she asked "Was this before or after Adam and Eve?"

Xixax

Well, my experience shows:

1) The public school system in the U.S. is HORRID at teaching sciences. They make no attempt at all to engage or involve students in scientific processes, and instead rely on fact regurgitation in an attempt to get them past the classes.

2) The indoctrination of children by religion into believing that evolution is evil is extremely effective

I was a junior in high school, and can remember saying, "Heh... I guess the monkey's we have around now just forgot to evolve." And, "Well, they used to say we evolved from monkeys, now they're saying we evolved from squirrels!!"

The teaching of the charicature of evolution was much more effective than the teaching of biology by my High School, and that's just plain sad. I of course accept some responsibility ( I was zealous and really 'seeking God first' etc. ), but my early ideas and foundations on the subject were formed before I was reasonably able to decide for myself.

This forum in particular helped serve a vital role after I lost my faith. I first became disenchanted with Christianity after failure upon failure for it to produce anything but greater dependency and frustration. Then, once I lost a grip on the faith part, I began to question the rest as well. Suddenly a well spring of information was opened up, and lurking here I learned more in a matter of months than I did from years of going to school.

Actually, I'm starting biology courses this year. I'm tenacious when it comes to digging up information on biology, and I would like to meld my current career of programming with a career in biology. *shrug*

This forum does have it's uses even when it seems you're arguing against a brick wall. Someone watching is almost definitely forming their opinion, and the facts are in favor of the facts.

FreeToThink

I was raised a fundie YEC and lurking on this board and on others is what led me to reconsider my position. I am glad that there were posters around to rehash the same old arguments for my sake.

F2T

Sheep in the big city

Ok guys, you convinced me. It seems worth the time after all. I was a little frustrated when I submitted my initial post.

The argument about the 'lurkers' as you call them who can find both positions presented and defended on this board is a really good one I hadn't considered.

Also, I grew up in east germany so I was not aware that there was such a lack of education here in the US.
In fact, until we were reunited with west germany I was not aware that there were significant numbers of people in developed countries who believed in God (let alone creationism). (I knew there were churches, but thought that people went there to socialize - which is actually true for most 'christians' I met in germany)

Sorry, if I sounded a bit extreme in the initial post. It's just frustrating at times.
So I guess another good thing about the forum is that you are able to vent a bit without pissing off people in your immediate environment.

scigirl

Yes we all get frustrated at times with creationists, that's for sure!

Welcome to Infidels, by the way. Feel free to introduce yourself
<a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=forum&f=43&SUBMIT=Go" target="_blank">here</a> if you so desire.

scigirl

The Lone Ranger

It is frustrating to have to refute the Creationists' lies over and over and over again, but it must be done.

The Creationists are well-organized, well-funded, and very highly motivated. We simply cannot afford to ignore them.


Exactly. For all the Creationists' blather about the "secular media," there's very little good science on television or the radio, or even in newspapers or popular magazines. Since many (most?) public schools won't touch the subject of evolution with a ten-foot pole, the Creationists' view is the only view many people get.

I'm constantly amazed at the lack of knowledge displayed by the students I deal with. We're talking about college and university students here -- surely, some of the brightest and best-educated of young Americans, right? -- yet the near-total lack of understanding of evolution that is shown by the typical student in a Freshman-level class is downright appalling.

I frequently hear even upper-level students who are intelligent and well-educated in the sciences mindlessly repeat the "it's only a theory" mantra whenever the subject of evolution comes up.


It's not just that American students are badly educated about the subject, they're often deliberately mis-educated about it. When I was young, I can remember being taught all sorts of things about evolution which I later discovered were outright lies.

Similarly, polls consistently show that a large percentage (in some places, a majority) of public high school biology teachers favor the teaching of Creationism either "as an alternate theory to" or in place of evolution.

I had teachers in school who were outspoken Creationists, and who unapologetically taught Creationism as the "explanation" for life's diversity and complexity.

Make no mistake about it, Creationists don't want "equal time"; they want all the time there is.

Cheers,

Michael

Pop_Quiz

Yes! My own mother!
Having grown up going to school at a Christian academy, my mother was a firm believer in a young Earth and would pester me about the earth being millions of years old as I was reading science books on the subject.
One time she saw me reading a book that showed "cavemen" hunting a mammoth and she asked me, "Do you really believe humans were around during the dinosaurs?" Misdescribing mammoths aside and being a 10-year old at the time, I could only answer cavemen were around after Adam and Eve and corrected her mammoths came after dinosaurs. Talk about confusion....how can you have a 6000-year old earth and NOT have humans run around with dinosaurs? I have since convinced her the earth really is millions of years old but I think she still holds on to the idea of Noah floating around 4000 years ago. I'll give her that; even adults need fairy tales to believe in.

I guess my education towards evolution was as bad as everyone else's on this post...it was terrible! Talk about an almost ridiculing slant towards the subject. How can one honestly believe we came from hunchbacked monkey-men and horses "grew" to their present size and foot-configuration. Way too simplistic. If anything, that only bolstered any residual inkling of creationism in me, as a result of religion crammed down my throat as a child. I had the same naive notion that because chimps and gorillas weren't turning into something more like us, evolution must be wrong.

I was never taught that to become a new species, a 'population' of one kind has to evolve beyond interbreeding and not an 'individual'...new species can take thousands of eons to come into being, not a literal birth. But since this was 20 years ago, just what is being taught in school these days? Aren't hard facts and sound theories being taught or is the Ascent of Man still the poster of choice?

Pop_Quiz

Oh man! I dug up that science book I looked at as a kid that raised my mother's hackles concerning the Earth's age....it was published in 1942. They list the Silurian Age as having begun 30 million years ago! Good grief! Insects appeared 13 million years ago and the Triassic followed quite rapidly at 7 million years ago. At least they show (hu)Man as appearing 250,000 years ago, so it lacks a creationist slant.

Gees, we have come a long way. (Kind of amusing to see the "great marvel of television: how we see things happening miles away" being described as a modern marvel right up there with the talking picture).