Reply #67: Even evolution is adorned with beliefs

[jobycom]

If she's a good teacher, the kids are lucky to have her. It sounds like you are saying she tells the students what the theory of evolution says, then gives her own expressions of disbelief. At a public school that might bother me, but I don't see a problem at a private school.

All science is somewhat beholden to a person's beliefs. 99% of the people teaching evolution couldn't provide real evidence that it's true. They can recite what they were taught about it, but they are going on faith that THEIR teachers, and not creationists, are right. They are not active scientists in the field who understand the evidence and its limitations. They just believe that what they taught was right.

I'm looking at this from two angles. As a trained historian, I can tell you that 90% of what has been taught to students over the millenia has been wrong, and probably over 99% of science. Students are taught by former students who learned from other former students a lesson that none of them has ever questioned. Change only comes from questioning, and questioning only happens when you have a truly exceptional mind analyzing something, or when students are taught to question, even to doubt. Much of our science will one day seem childish superstition to someone. Much will not, of course.

The second angle I'm coming from is that of a scientist. You should always treat every statement, every axiom, as a question. Every great scientific breakthrough has come from questioning what everyone believed to be true. A teacher who teaches science, but still introduces questions and doubts, is a good teacher. Again, I'm reading into your comments that she is a good teacher and does teach evolution, but expresses her disbeliefs in it.

On evolution specifically-- I've read that even scientists working on it are troubled by aspects of it-- for instance, how it could have happened so quickly, or how some species seem to have made great leaps, or what happened to some of the missing links. All of those may be answered satisfactorily within the current evolution theory, but one or more of them may not be answered until someone questions the whole theory, and alters it substantially, or even disproves it. Evolution makes sense, but the world being the center of the universe did, too.

And for the record, I'm an atheist, and not a creationist. Not that anyone will read this far on a Saturday morning. :-) In fact, I'm going outside now to see if the scientific date of a real world beyond my computer screen are true.