Was anyone taught about Evolution/Dinosaurs at school
I was on xbox live chatting to some yank who told me about some christian group making the schools put a disclaimer sticker on books about evolution which stated something along the lines of "the writings herein are a theory and not true".
I found this hilarious but i then realised that in the whole 11 years of primary and secondary school life i wasnt once taught about evolution or even dinosaurs for that matter even during the whole Jurassic Park craze of 1993.
I know most of the people on here are older than me and was wondering if it was just my school that didn't teach any of this or if its been going on for ages
I was at school in the uk from i think 1986-1997
I found this hilarious but i then realised that in the whole 11 years of primary and secondary school life i wasnt once taught about evolution or even dinosaurs for that matter even during the whole Jurassic Park craze of 1993.
I know most of the people on here are older than me and was wondering if it was just my school that didn't teach any of this or if its been going on for ages
I was at school in the uk from i think 1986-1997
Post edited by festershinetop on
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The theory of evolution is just that, a theory, widely accepted to be correct of course, but there are gaps, hence "the missing link" which we now know to be C64 owners :lol:
Some people of faith have to believe a different sequence of events and if that works for you....
Another friend of mine is a Vicar and a Science teacher, he gets round this issue by saying "as a Christian, I must believe....." but think he knows about the ape stuff!
i was aware of evolution though as primary school, it must have been on tv or something i remember a discussion in the playground about us coming from monkeys.
:lol:
strangly i remeber the pope saying pokemon was a good for kids.
I remember doing dino's and very basic evolution at primary school because there was some big exhibition or something which brought the subject up.
do they still do the lords prayer in state schools?
we used to say that everyday, i guess its a problem by shoving it down people throats if they aren't that way inclined, but im glad i learned it, if i ever get cornered by a vampire or some hell deamon, i will have something to say. :p
In secondary school, we got taught that in Biology. RE was more about learning about various different faiths and what the celebrate and how etc, along with tollerence for each other (as life should be ;-) )
But, it does bring up the subject of "should teachers push their beliefs onto students"? What I mean is that my form teacher was adament that the "Poll Tax" was a worthy cause and told us all how much the protesters were wrong and how much we needed it etc and my Geography teacher told us all about the "Euro" and how "we were all going to be using it" as it was "a good thing for Europe and us" m(we even had to make notes to that effect.
I remember a geography teacher taught us about the missing link and left it open for us to make up our own minds whether we were descended or existed alongside apes. He was a bloody good teacher as well. Sadly he got killed in a car accident in my 3rd year of high school.
This was the late 80's for me.
A theory in a scientific context is not the same as a philosophical theory or connected to the vernacular meaning of the terms "theory" as in "I just had this crazy idea!" A theory is not a hypothesis. What it is, is the best thing we have that fits the empirical observations.
The "theory of evolution" is a collection of theories, models hypothesis' and even laws which fits the process we observe and call evolution. We might not know everything about it, but it's there just as sure as the "theory of gravity" is there.
And due to a lack of choice, all of my kids go to faith based schools. :x
As for missing links, there will always be missing links, and unfortunately some people will fill these gaps with made up stuff.
Have you seen this documentary with Charlton Heston, The Mysterious Origins of Man. It shows man made metallic spheres found in rock dating 2.8 billion years.
I saw a doc on the History channel last week about Gobekli Tepe. All mainstream archeologists and scientists are now accepting our origins are much older now because of this discovery.
like the school and my college , both don't exists now.. well the playground does, but it's a car park now.. but the markings for the games are still on the wall hehe
in secondary we had an RE teacher who believed in both things. although he did say not to mention it about the dinos to others.
what you mean "yoshi" isn't a type of dinosaur!!!
Im guessing my school at the time thought if they didnt say anything about dinosaurs and evolution no one would believe it when they heard it later on in life.
Thinking back, I don't think any of my teachers were ever politically pushy, so to speak. I remember one who complained about "new teaching methods" which meant that he couldn't just stand in front of the class and "dictate" the lessons to us; another I remember telling us that the way to solve the world's poverty problems was just for everyone in the first world to "half their living standards"; there was another who was supposed to be very Daily Mail right-wing and who was supposed to have complained to the class about all the money we gave to the third world through charity and the like and who we were giving "far too much" to. Apart from that, I can't recall any political stuff at all. I think it's generally frowned on and tends to be a waste of time anyway; pupils rarely respect their teachers or their opinions enough to be influenced by them.
Don't recall anything on evolution in primary school but was deffo covered in Secondary and I don't remember it coming as a shock so there must have been something when I was younger
"And son, that furry creature you're pointing to is a Wookiee..."
:-)
In fact I remember the lesson that detailed the find of the largest dino skeleton, they called it Megasaurus at the time - it caused a few sniggers in class I can tell you!
Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory
This is a good one too:
That said, the American-style evangelical Christians that start with the result that they want, then bend logic to accommodate their foregone conclusion get on my tits. You don't start with a conclusion, you start with a question, formulate a hypothesis, make predictions, perform tests and analyse the results.
Evolution is the only theory that holds up. Young Earthers or creationists have to deny the evidence and therefore I have no respect for them.
America is becoming more and more polarized with the rise of extreme Christianism. I'm glad that most religion in the UK is the fluffy nice kind that adapts itself to new science rather than bends science to suit dogma.
All absolute statements are flawed - fact.
But it doesn't hold up, darwinian evolution theory that is. In particular, there is no evidence of evolution from one species to another. There is still no evidence we decended from apes. But there is evidence today (i mean right now), that shows we exist alongside apes. There is no evidence found yet that links us to anything pre-human. Expecially as the human fossil record keeps getting older with every year as archeoligists discover older human remains dating back millions of years.
And why has there been no dna tests done on the weird Peruvian skulls displayed in museums? Also the Egyptian Pharoah skulls are the same species as the Peruvian skulls. They're clearly not human, but existed in our civilised history. They do not have the same type of skull as us or prehuman, they don't have the same amount of plate joins on the top of the head, and their brain size was at least a 1/3rd larger than ours. Clearly the result of a different species, rather than the common theory that they bound their heads to shape them when they were infants. I'm sure binding a human baby skull to change its shape, wouldn't cause there to be only 2 plates on the skull cap. Type of growth is obviously dictated by dna. I wish someone would pay for them to be dna tested, find out what they are.
Nevermind human evolution. Show me one piece of evidence of any animal evolving into a new species.
I think darwinianism is total nonsense. Its not a bit scientific at all as it provides no proof at all. I prefer a spontaneous creation theory, wherever there is the conditions (environment), life will be created according to the 'soup' it originates from. Out of the consequence of forces acting upon it.
After all, there are at least 5 new species on this planet every year. Without any evidence of what they might have evolved from. They just appear out of environmental consequence.
It's not really a "rise". Belief in Creationism in the United States, for example, has been largely the same as a percentage of the population since the early '80s.
And the UK is a very, very different country to the United States. Christianity in England, for example, is mostly Anglican which is a soft form of Protestantism with links to Catholicism (some theologists argue that it's not even Protestantism at all). In the United States many Protestants are from independent, evangelical churches (what we used to call Puritanism) and there's also a much larger Catholic contingent than over here. There's also been no attempt to politicise and radicalise Christianity in the UK the way there has been in the United States over the last 40 years or so. The "Creationist debate" in the US strikes me as really being about politics, a way for people to demonstrate where their wider political allegiances lie.