What do you believe? Do you think teaching evolution in Biology classes in high school is acceptible? Discuss the topic and your opinion, but please keep it clean.
At my high school we're taught evolution alongside the belief that the Earth was created by a diety. So I'm ok with evolution being taught in high schools.
Please don't turn this into a big argument about whether evolution is real or not. Thanks!
I think that Evolution should be the one taught in schools. It's been proven, and it's logical. The only reason there is any debate over whether it should be taught in schools or not is because certain religious people don't want their kids to be taught something that throws a good potion of their beliefs out the window. I find it okay to say that God engineered evolution, but to teach it in a classroom, when there is zero evidence of this, is a bit ridiculous and stubborn.
As far as I know evolution is taught in most public schools. This in my opinion is the way it should be. It's true that people who don't want their children to learn about evolution can send them to private religious schools that don't teach it but I really don't see the point. Evolution is proven and people are going to hear about it at some point in their lives wheather they want to believe it or not. If you shelter a child all the way into their adult lives, making sure they never hear about evolution there will eventually come a point at which you can no longer shelter them and they will hear and learn all the things you didn't want them to. That seems like it would be more psychologically damaging than anything else.
Yeah, I mean every day during the Pledge of Allegiance we say "One nation, under God-". I mean, schools aren't religion oriented but I think that Christianity gets some attention too, just a little harder to notice. So yeah, it's ok. Just as long as the teacher is respectful, like just teaching them about the theory of evolution instead of saying "People evolved therefore Christianity is wrong." I mean, respect to all religions. But Christianity gets some attention. I think we should let atheism have a bite of the apple too. Although it strikes me as strange that there's no Jewish/Muslim/etc. religious beliefs taught about in school while Christianity/Atheism gets so much. And so does Greek. So it's ok to teach about it in school.
I had a question for somebody who knows a lot about evolution, simply out of curiosity. Under what circumstances do you think primates evolved into humans? I'm wondering why it would've happened that we would've needed the abilities that humans have over apes (no offensive to any primates). I'm not being sacrastic or discrediting evolution, but I was wondering if there was a definite answer to this question, or even some theories are good.
Ok this is just my personal thoery but I would have to say that evolution of primates into humans probably occured when it was nessecary to the ultimate survival of that particularly evolutionary chain. Or perhaps (and I hope not to offend with this) it resulted from a tendency of animals to ignore minor physical differances when it comes to mating. Prime example: Grolor bear and combination of grizzly and and polar bears.
Under what circumstances do you think primates evolved into humans? I'm wondering why it would've happened that we would've needed the abilities that humans have over apes
This is a great question. The important thing to keep in mind when thinking about evolution is that it is random. There is no "driving force" or "ultimate goal" of evolution - creatures simply mutate and either the mutations help the survivability of a species or it doesn't. This concept of randomness isn't very well taught in standard school curriculum, so a lot of these types of questions pop up. But the question itself ignores this randomness. There is no "why" to evolution. If there was a "why", then there would have to be an ultimate purpose that these changes were striving toward. It's easy to look back and see the process as something beneficial or somehow making animals "better" but this is not the case. Evolution does not make a species inherently better, only different. It is the process of natural selection that ends up weeding out poor or useless mutations. We see now the result of millions of years of evolution and the only creatures that are still living are ones that were able to adapt to their environment and survive. So it's easy to forget about the countless numbers of weird and pointless mutations that occurred along the way. But humans are not a "innacle" of evolution because, as I mentioned, there is no end result that is planned or anything like that. We can look at environmental factors during the early years of things that started walking upright and looking humanoid, and these can help explain why certain mutations might have helped the species to survive. But ultimately, the answer to that great mystery of why we're here is simply due to randomness.
This concept of randomness isn't very well taught in standard school curriculum, so a lot of these types of questions pop up.
I agree; when arguing evolution sometimes, I see a lot of questions pop up that are along the lines of "So if we've been evolving to a more perfect form for billions of years, why aren't we there yet?"
This isn't Pokemon, it's a random process affected by random mutations and environmental factors.
We can look at environmental factors during the early years of things that started walking upright and looking humanoid, and these can help explain why certain mutations might have helped the species to survive. But ultimately, the answer to that great mystery of why we're here is simply due to randomness.
General evolution is indeed random, but the sort of "osition" that the pre-human age was in was the catalyst. Dinosaurs were eliminated by some force, and then the continents split into seven seconds, what we can call a "super geographical isolation". I suppose this was the first condition that they had to overcome, but then there was the fact that there were still hostile animals that could break them easily. It required cunning and independence in order to overcome the harsh environment. Those that could live on their own or form groups to hunt for prey would survive, while those that were unfit to do such a thing never made it. Future families wanted companions who were smart and could get food and shelter on their own, so they reproduced more.
How long would this process continue until a species closest to a human came along? Millions and millions of years. We had 40 of them to prepare for the Ice Age. Even then, those "humans" didn't even look like ones from the biblical ages, but they were a bigger step than the species from pre-historical times. The current events that turned Pangaea into what it is today and the destruction of the dinosaurs only jumpstarted this process through what the primates needed most to survive and reproduce.
