Do you teach your kids about Evolution and the value of objective observation?

Question

Please do to save Mankind!

Answer 1

I talk to them about a loving god that hates sin! I won't teach evolutes until I figure how to factor for the involute.

Answer 2

So far the two have very little to do with each other. And in many cases, objective observation leads to the conclusion that Evolution didn't occur. Not to say it proves God, I can see argument saying that objective observation would say God doesn't exist; but it has so far proven evolution wrong.

There have been quite a few (7 separate attempts that I know of, there may be more) experiments lasting hundreds of years attempting to prove evolution. Observations of closed in breeding among fruit flies, finches, frogs, and various rodents have all failed in showing any change to another animal. Fruit flies, finches and the rodents were chosen based on their quick-breeding habits (especially fruit flies, which must procreate in under 24 hours), which should result in quick evolution in those species. Frogs and other amphibians were chosen as the only species known to be able to travel between land and water (and so were probably a good choice as a possible "missing link" species). Remember these experiments were done over hundreds of years (Darwin coalesced all the theories together, but he wasn't the first one to come up with the idea of change in animals).

What the experiments showed is that natural selection occurs (the strongest and/or most adaptable survived and procreated) and that the various species became better adapted to their environment. The fruit flies were better balanced, the finch beaks became better adapted to the nuts they were fed, etc. But the animals never became other animals. They were better than before, but always remained the same species. The experiments that are still being continued (at least 2 of them have stopped since my last check on these experiments, but some are still going), continue to show this result. Observation would contend that while species adapt this way, they don't adapt into entirely different species.

This of course does not prove God. But remember, if God exists then He is certainly smart enough (since He created that which we are incapable of understanding; if our brain were simple enough to understand, it would be too simple for us to use to understand it) to understand that in an everchanging world His creatures would need to be able to adapt. He is quite capable of coming up with both ideas of adaptation and "Form following function."

And if you are arguing that it is religion that is beginning these wars, then you haven't been paying attention. If humans didn't have wars over religion, they'd have them over land, or money, or any number of other foolish things. And in fact, there hasn't been a war begun over religion since the 1400's. Religion has been used to justify wars (God is on our side because we are right and they are wrong), but never to start one. Modern wars are always begun over power, not religion. Religion is just a cover, and is misused when it is. If you don't agree with it, you don't have to believe in it. That is your choice, and you might be right (you are the one who has to live with all consequences both good and bad). But don't attack others who do choose to believe in it. Attack the ones who misuse it.

Answer 3

Evolution is not based on observation, it's based on guesses.

Never in nature in written history has one species changed into a totally different one of a different family or genus.

So what observations, exactly, is evolution based on?

(To answer your question, I'll allow my son to learn evolution in schools as much as they're willing to teach, because despite it's implicit flaws, evolution is a good tool for learning the sciences. Religion will be taught at home, where it should be, and he'll have the best of both worlds and can form his own beliefs between the two.)

Answer 4

to save mankind???

Get a grip, nothing of positive consequence to mankind in medicine, agriculture or technology even rests on macro evolution.. unless you consider racism a good thing

of course I teach my kids the value of observation and how we see God's work all around us. But macro evolution is not based on impartial observation, but rests on starting with the assumption God never worked in nature and considers the data given that predgudism

macro evolutionary humanism, does not rest solely on observation, it drags allot of philosophical assumptions into the mix and considers the observations in hardly an objective manner

Answer 5

I don't have any children and it is impossible for me to have one. I am 26 and I had to have a hysterectomy. I would love to have one. SO folks if you have them, love them. But if I did have kids I would teach them both creation and evolution and let them choose. But most importantly, I would show them love.

Answer 6

I'm not sure exactly sure what you are asking. Are you saying that you believe that evolution is the only objective observation?

Antony Flew has been known for about fifty years as one of the world's leading ahteists and evolutionists. Here is what he has to say about objective observation.

Academics viewing the universe through a narrow scope should rethink assumptions
Dallas Morning News
By Roy Abraham Varghese
December 15, 2004

Last week, The Associated Press broke the news that the most famous atheist in the academic world over the last half-century, Professor Antony Flew of England's University of Reading, now accepts the existence of God.
Mr. Flew's best-known plaint for atheism, "Theology and Falsification," was delivered in 1950 to the Socratic Club, chaired by none other than C.S. Lewis. This paper went on to become the most widely reprinted philosophical publication of the last five decades and set the agenda for modern atheism.
Now, in a remarkable reversal, Mr. Flew holds that the universe was brought into being by an infinite intelligence.
"What I think the DNA material has done is show that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinarily diverse elements together," he said. "The enormous complexity by which the results were achieved look to me like the work of intelligence."
Given the conventional wisdom of some psychologists that people rarely, if ever, change their worldview after the age of 30, this radical new position adopted by an 81-year-old thinker may seem startling.
But Mr. Flew's change was consistent with his career-long principle of following the evidence where it led him. And his newfound theism is the product neither of a Damascus road experience nor of fresh philosophical arguments, but by his sustained analysis of scientific data.
Mr. Flew's conclusion is consistent with the actual beliefs of most modern scientific pioneers, from Albert Einstein to quantum physicists like Max Planck and Werner Heisenberg. In their view, the intelligence of the universe - its laws - points to an intelligence that has no limitation - "a superior mind," as Einstein put it.
Not a few of our men and women of letters, it would seem, have been looking for God in all the wrong places. Those who dismiss God as a product of psychological conditioning or pre-scientific myth-making have not come to terms with the essential assumptions underlying the scientific enterprise.
Science assumes that the universe follows laws, which leads to the question of how the laws of nature came into being. How does the electron know what to do? In A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking asks what breathes fire into the equations of science and gives a universe for them to describe. The answer to the question of why the universe exists, he concluded, would reveal to us "the mind of God."
Last May, I helped organize a New York University symposium on religion and science, with the participation of Mr. Flew and others. Our starting point was science's new knowledge that the universe's history is a story of quantum leaps of intelligence, the sudden yet systematic appearance of intrinsically intelligent systems arranged in an ascending order.
Many people assume that the intelligence in the universe somehow evolved out of nonintelligence, given chance and enough time, and in the case of living beings, through natural selection and random mutation. But even in the most hardheadedly materialistic scenario, intelligence and intelligent systems come fully formed from day one.
Matter came with all its ingenious, mathematically precise laws from the time it first appeared. Life came fully formed with the incredibly intelligent symbol processing of DNA, the astonishing phenomenon of protein-folding and the marvel of replication from its very first appearance. Language, the incarnation of conceptual thought with its inexplicable structure of syntax, symbols and semantics, appeared out of the blue, again with its essential infrastructure as is from day one.
The evidence we have shows unmistakably that there was no progressive, gradual evolution of nonintelligence into intelligence in any of the fundamental categories of energy, life or mind. Each one of the three had intrinsically intelligent structures from the time each first appeared. Each, it would seem, proceeds from an infinitely intelligent mind in a precise sequence.
We can, if we want, declare that there is no reason why there are reasonable laws, no explanation for the fact there are explanations, no logic underlying logical processes. But this is manifestly not the conclusion adopted by Einstein, Heisenberg and, most recently, Antony Flew.
Roy Abraham Varghese of Garland is the author of The Wonder of the World: A Journey from Modern Science to the Mind of God (Tyr Publishing). He helped organize presentations by Antony Flew in Dallas on two occasions. Readers may contact Mr. Varghese through tyrpublishing.com.

Answer 7

Evolution is not 'objective,' it is speculation; speculation is subjective; subjectivity is reduces to skepticism. Based on this view, how can knowledge be possible?

Answer 8

whynotaskdon - what is wrong with hugging tree's?? It releases negative energies!!

BUT anyways, if i had kids i would teach them about evolution.

Answer 9

It's as good as done... welll yeah... their in their twenties now... and both doing quite well. So, I agree... teach your children well. That means teach them how to think.

Answer 10

WHY TEACH KIDS ABOUT 'EVIL-UTION'? MORE AND MORE SCIENTISTS ARE REALIZING WE ALL WERE NOT A BY-PRODUCT OF GREEN PRIMORDIAL SLIME....