Re: Talk.Origin banned Subject: Do not textbooks present evolution as fact?

In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (JaBrIoL) wrote:

> "Many scientists succumb to the temptation to be dogmatic, over and
> over again the question of the origin of the species has been
> presented as if it were finally settled. Nothing could be further from
> the truth. . . . But the tendency to be dogmatic persists, and it does
> no service to the cause of science."-The Guardian, London, England,
> December 4, 1980, p. 15.

As a teacher, I would hope evolution would be taught just as all other 
scientific theories, which is as a conclusion come to through research, 
intellectual inquiry, and HARD, COLD, EVIDENCE.

Any good science teacher teaches his/her students that the information 
acquired by scientists is used to form theories about the world around 
us and that those theories are only valid if they can be tested and 
verified.  At best, evolution is a theory.  At worst, it's one of the 
biggest intellectual blunder ever made.  But in the absence of all other 
evidence to the contrary, it's the best theory going.

The original poster of this message never mentioned "creationism", a 
laughable topic if proposed as a scientific theory because it amounts to 
negating the very purpose of science by saying "God did it and that's 
all I need to know."  Creationism is the moral equivalent of telling 
students to bury their heads in the sand.  A book of cautionary tales 
with a list of laws for living in a nomadic tribe, roaming the dessert, 
is not a good place to go regarding scientific theories about the nature 
of the universe.  You may as well use a Magic 8-ball.

But if we're going to make an effort to explain the origins of the 
universe and of species, we are bound to make a few errors along the 
way.  We used to think, for instance, that the sun was the center of the 
universe, then that the Milky Way galaxy was the ENTIRE universe, and 
now that the universe is going to expand forever and cold down into 
cosmic ashes.

Early postulations of evolutionists included therories similar to common 
science fiction themse such as: genetic gemory where the collective 
memories of an animal's ancestors are somehow passed on through 
heredity, an evolutionary "ideal" in which we are necessarily evolving 
toward a state of "perfection", and evolution with divine guidance, 
which may as well just be creationism.  So, it's clear that evolution is 
still too young a theory to be imposed dogmatically as some form of 
indoctrination of secular beliefs.  But if it is taught as a scientific 
theory in need of further definistion, refinement, and testing, it may 
some day become much the same as the theory of gravity.  Gravity, of 
course, being an aspect of the Unified Theory, which hasn't yet been 
fully formulated either.