Quotes from the article:<p><i>A petition to remove references to evolution from high-school textbooks claimed victory last month after the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST) revealed that many of the publishers would produce revised editions that exclude examples of the evolution of the horse or of avian ancestor Archaeopteryx. ...<p>In a 2009 survey conducted for the South Korean documentary The Era of God and Darwin, almost one-third of the respondents didn’t believe in evolution. Of those, 41% said that there was insufficient scientific evidence to support it; 39% said that it contradicted their religious beliefs; and 17% did not understand the theory. The numbers approach those in the United States, where a survey by the research firm Gallup has shown that around 40% of Americans do not believe that humans evolved from less advanced forms of life. ...<p>[A survey] also found that 40% of biology teachers agreed with the statement that “much of the scientific community doubts if evolution occurs”; and half disagreed that “modern humans are the product of evolutionary processes”. ... [T]here are only 5–10 evolutionary scientists in the country who teach the theory of evolution in undergraduate and graduate schools.</i>
We should exclude such people from educational institutes by nature of belief. They're not teaching science if they already have an agenda, bias or belief and allow it to interfere with objectivity and professionalism. In fact any religious school or education institute should be of independent of religion how the church and state supposedly are.<p>This shit is unfortunately rife.<p>I had to explain this to my daughter's teacher who refused to teach evolution under science, even though it is part of the curriculum in the UK at primary level. The most annoying thing is that I was called into the (non-religious) school because my 9 year old daughter said she didn't believe in god and the teacher found it offensive and didn't want to teach her!
The Catholic Church's current belief is there is no conflict between evolution and church teachings. They do believe evolution was divinely inspired. They also go with the scientific theories on age of earth and gradual appearance of life. Its interesting to see the difference between the actual Catholic doctrine and those that broke away.<p>If the non-evolution Christian truly needs everything spelled out, Genesis 1:28[1] would probably explain it all. Kinda hard to have dominion if you don't have a mechanism to change things. I would love the non-evolution version of how we get good hunting dogs and modern cows?<p>1) <a href="http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Genesis-1-28/" rel="nofollow">http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Genesis-1-28/</a><p>// ok, yes the Catholic Church did some bad things to scientists, I get that - look at the current doctrine
Have you guys seen the comments there? Is it usual that Nature is read by people like that? What does God have to do with evolution anyway? Evolution is falsifiable theory on which some very useful models (which work) are based. They can believe in whatever they want, but they surely can't base any models on "God created everything".<p>Everybody can program a little evolutionary algorithm yourself and see that it can create something out of chaos... It works :)
Evolution can be further classified into "microevolution" and "macroevolution". Evidence for microevolution is directly observable (e.g. bacteria adapting to changes of nutrients in their environment, viruses adapting to vaccines). However macroevolution has never been directly observed. It is extrapolated from considering what occurs after a multitude of generations of microevolution. An interesting new documentary examines this in more detail: <a href="http://evolutionvsgod.com/" rel="nofollow">http://evolutionvsgod.com/</a>
I'm not really sure what to say, except wow. One interesting note: "However, a survey of trainee teachers in the country concluded that religious belief was not a strong determinant of their acceptance of evolution".
I love science & technology therefore I'm alarmed because so many scientist and technologist don't see the inherit paradox in evolution. Natural selection makes it virtually impossible for animals to adapt via the proposed mutations. Natural selection happens immediately, valuable life preserving mutations are suppose occur (typically) over thousands of years.<p>To illustrate Arctic terns are dying because they are not able to adapt to climate change.
Arctic terns eat herrings a cold water fish, as the water gets warmer, these fish seek colder waters, possible
by going deeper in the waters. According to biologist other birds in the Arctic can dive deeper to grab the cold water fish Arctic terns cannot, so they and their chicks starve to death. This is natural selection, there is no time to adapt via mutations, adaptations must happening quickly.
That the South Korean school system would do this is discouraging, no question. But I am also discouraged by how, when reading academic scientists and academic journals (_Nature_ in this case), it seems considerably easier to find concern about unscientific nonsense beloved of the right than about unscientific nonsense beloved of the left.<p>E.g., individual genetic heritability is even more fundamental and even more loudly supported by obvious evidence than evolution by natural selection. Yet not only is this sometimes slighted in the high school curriculum, one can find academic work from prestigious institutions that pretends heritability does not exist (or is at least, for some unexplained reason, absolutely negligible). See, e.g., Chan and Boliver "The Grandparents Effect in Social Mobility", <a href="http://users.ox.ac.uk/~sfos0006/papers/asronline.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://users.ox.ac.uk/~sfos0006/papers/asronline.pdf</a> (HT <a href="http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/a-grandparent-effect/" rel="nofollow">http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/a-grandparent-effect/</a>). It is not easy (for this reader with a BS in Biology) to see why it's scientifically OK to assume that heritability is negligible at the level of detail considered by Chan and Boliver ("if mobility follows a first-order Markovian process"; "well-connected grandparents could also use their social contacts to help grandchildren with job searches"; citations into a more than a decade of research on multigenerational issues, e.g. the cite to Bengtson). It's easy to see how this taboo can help produce useful political soundbites, and why the BBC would take it and run with it <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-23101446" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-23101446</a> . It's just hard to see why scientists wouldn't be concerned about this behavior by the BBC and by the academic research community.<p>In general, it's sensible for a scientific journal to worry about unscientific claptrap. However, specifically skipping over the unscientific claptrap beloved of their faction in the BBC, in academic science, and in academic journals in order to zero in on the unscientific claptrap of rival factions is unbecoming in an organization that claims to be scientific. It doesn't resemble science as much as it resembles sleazy-think-tank-style selective invocation of research in order to advance a political agenda.
Evolutionists should know other theories as well, or do they fear them?<p><a href="http://www.evolution-is-degeneration.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.evolution-is-degeneration.com/</a>
> do not believe in evolution<p>exactly... you need to believe in it because there can't be any proof as long as we can't travel in time.<p>get over it and recognize that everything that goes beyond the scientific method is mere speculation.