{"id":562,"date":"2011-01-29T17:41:00","date_gmt":"2011-01-29T17:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2011\/01\/the-consequences-of-not-teaching-evolution.html"},"modified":"2011-01-29T17:41:00","modified_gmt":"2011-01-29T17:41:00","slug":"the-consequences-of-not-teaching-evolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2011\/01\/the-consequences-of-not-teaching-evolution.html","title":{"rendered":"The Consequences Of Not Teaching Evolution"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

By way of Pharyngula, many people are learning this week about a new paper published in Science<\/i> with some very bad news about the teaching of evolution in our public schools.\u00a0 The gist is that we\u2019re basically not teaching any evolution in our public schools.<\/p>\n

From a summary at arstechnica.com<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Based on the 926 responses that came from nearly every state\u2026they found that only around 28 percent of teachers consistently taught evolution in a forthright manner. The majority of teachers (60 percent) taught evolution cautiously, allowing room for debate and doubt. The rest of the teachers openly advocated creationism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And I always thought it was just my teachers who never got around to properly explaining it.<\/p>\n

Many of these teachers lack the educational expertise to defend evolution, so they resort to dodging the creationism vs. evolution \u201ccontroversy\u201d altogether. Some of them shift the blame of having to teach evolution to state examinations, while pointing out to students that they do not need to actually believe it. Other teachers focus on molecular evolution, avoiding macroevolution of species, which prevents students from understanding the complete picture. Finally, some teachers like to provide students with both sides of the discussion and allow students to draw their own conclusions. Berkman and Plutzer find this last approach particularly worrisome, as it gives students the impression that a well-established concept, which is supported by thousands of scientific papers, is debatable based on personal opinions.<\/p>\n

This last finding is, indeed, the most alarming.\u00a0 It is little wonder that 40% of American adults<\/a> believe in young earth creationism.<\/p>\n

Many on both sides of the religion\/science divide still claim that modern evolutionary theory can amble along arm in arm with theism.\u00a0 It is my experience, however, that a sound comprehension of the science can trigger a pretty severe non-theistic reaction.\u00a0 I leaned toward non-theism for many years.\u00a0 One of the things that kept returning me to a god idea was that I misunderstood the mechanics of evolution.\u00a0 When I finally buckled down to learn it properly, God was a goner.<\/p>\n

The Reform Judaism of my childhood and rabbinical training generally embraced a fuzzy notion of theistic evolution.\u00a0 We accepted that the Torah wasn\u2019t science but we didn\u2019t talk about the science that the Torah wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

We certainly never considered the implications for such notions as the human soul:\u00a0 Did Australopithecus have one?\u00a0 Homo neanderthalensis?\u00a0 When the hell did God start passing out the souls?!<\/p>\n

Proper teaching of evolutionary science will hardly affect the creationist types.\u00a0 They\u2019re already a lost cause.\u00a0 But for those who are on the fence about their beliefs, a good scientific education might very well tip them right over to the non-theistic side of that fence.\u00a0 Until we genuinely start teaching this essential subject matter, we will never know.<\/p>\n

I suppose this is what the creationists really desire.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By way of Pharyngula, many people are learning this week about a new paper published in Science with some very bad news about the teaching of evolution in our public schools.\u00a0 The gist is that we\u2019re basically not teaching any evolution in our public schools.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[10,11,12,30,38],"class_list":["post-562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogentries","tag-church-and-state","tag-evolution-and-creationism","tag-fundamentalist-christianity","tag-non-theism","tag-science-and-reason"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Consequences Of Not Teaching Evolution<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"By way of Pharyngula, many people are learning this week about a new paper published in Science with some very bad news about the teaching of evolution in\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2011\/01\/the-consequences-of-not-teaching-evolution.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Consequences Of Not Teaching Evolution\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By way of Pharyngula, many people are learning this week about a new paper published in Science with some very bad news about the teaching of evolution in\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2011\/01\/the-consequences-of-not-teaching-evolution.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Atheist Rabbi\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-01-29T17:41:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jeffrey L. 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