http://www.springerlink.com/content/phj263762420/

NCSE is particularly delighted to be contributing a regular column—“Overcoming obstacles to evolution education”—to Evolution: Education and Outreach as part of those efforts.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/w685j52320518287/fulltext.html

“Yo Mista, does evolution mean people will grow wings and fly around?” This is the question I am most frequently asked when introducing evolution to incoming ninth graders. The posing of this particular question tells me two things: (1) students have a very basic idea of what mutations and adaptations are but little understanding that mutations are slight and must be passed down through generations, which is a slow process when the affect is evolutionary change, (2) for evolution to occur, there often needs to be a catalyst (for example, drastic climatic change causing environmental degradation resulting in mass extinction opening niches).

The common thread of evolution runs through all science disciplines, and the concept of evolution enables students to better understand the nature of the universe and our origins.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/b5525202843mn490/fulltext.html

Most Recent Refinements/Advancements in Science:

Precession of Mercury’s orbit is solved by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. Theory and observations agree. Pluto is demoted to non-planet status

Plate tectonics; seismology used to get more accurate picture of interior structure of earth. Early atmosphere and conditions better understood.

Dark matter & dark energy. Attempts to explain increased rate of expansion of universe. Improvements in telescopes and spectrometers advance knowledge

Relation between elementary particles and fundamental forces sought. Process of reductionism seeks to find a grand unified theory (GUT); superstring theory, M branes are under active research

The universal gravitational constant is hypothesized to change as the universe expands. Black holes are the ultimate condensed matter state. Strong and weak forces discovered

Ceramics, high temperature superconductors, advanced pharmaceuticals

Discovery of the DNA double helix, RNA; the mechanism of inheritance was detailed; gene sequencing & mapping. Prebiotic chemistry and origin of life hypotheses: Miller—Urey, RNA World, Lipid World

Settling differences will be harder to settle as government takes a more pro-religion / creationism stance.

Check out the National Center for Science Education ( http://ncseweb.org ) for information regarding the Fight for Scientific independence against ID/Creationism. One story in particular concerns Sen. David Vitter, R-LA who earmarked 100k to christian group that has challenged Darwinian Evilution in Public Schools.

Also, check out story about religion in the military at:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/CSM/story?id=3694726&page=1

Settling differences means involves things like:

Writing to your individual State Senators and politely mention your opinion about Sen. David Vitter, R-LA and his 100k support for a christian group that wants Creationism in public school Science Classes.

Run for School Board in your community.

Read Darwin’s writings (hard, I know), or maybe just Cliff’s Notes… or how about Wikipedia.
Read more about what’s being fought about Today, especially in the U.S., regarding the War on the scientific Theory of Evolution at web-sites like the ones I mentioned: Panda’s Thumb, and NCSE.

Talk to your children about the Scientific Method.

Evolution does not disprove god… but religious fundies make it unacceptable for people to be a member of their community, and believe in things like the Theory of Evolution.

Belief, or lack of Belief in god should not be predicated by a belief in the Theory of Evolution. But from a practical point of view, Religiosity trumps Theology. In a religious society, with increasing demands for individuals to accept complete church dogma, belief in a god is moot, and micro-management becomes de rigeur.
Thus, belief in the One-True-God depends upon things like your belief / disbelief in theories such as Evolution.

It’s funny how things work.

The future of the Theory Of Evolution depends upon Society however, and this will require some work to settle differences.

I disagree. The relatively small group of Christians that require the Bible (or at least certain translations of it) to be absolutely and literally true in every detail seem to see the conclusions from geology, or astronomy, or biology, or any other field not actually mentioned in their book to be a challenge to their faith. What is known about the physical universe now compared to even 600 years ago is as a sand dune to a grain of sand. The desert is yet vast, but we see much more of it now than when most holy books were written.

However, nothing in any theory of evolution denies that God may have started the whole thing going, possibly even with the intention of us being here now. God may well have even stacked the deck to guarantee that only one species in one tiny slice of time will write a book about Him.

I don’t buy it. But my lack of belief in an invisible friend (or enemy) is not predicated by any particular theory from science. The universe as understood without reference to godly agents is plenty miraculous enough for me.

As regards the Book of Revelation, that book is for me a bellweather: whenever a Christian preacher quotes from that book, I know that what follows will be utter nonsense. Just listen to the most loony televangelists and you will hear them quoting often from either Daniel or Revelations, sometimes also from Genesis, but they love Revelations. When I was in grad school, I joined a Bible study group that was headed up by a guy who knew a lot about the Bible, in part through life-long personal study and in part because his father was a minister. Despite my repeated urgings that our study group study Revelations, he would always direct us to a different book, because Revelations is so dense with bizarre visions and imagery. Even Bible experts don’t agree about that book, yet most any crackpot televangelist — most of whom have no credentialed expertise in Bible scholarship — will happily dive in and talk as if they are experts.

Another tip about Revelations is that anyone who wants to learn more about that book should first study Zoroaster — a fellow who predates Christ by many centuries, yet who also described an afterlife that included a day of judgment by a supernatural god, said god dividing the good people from the bad, and sending the good to a place of eternal paradise and the bad to a place of eternal damnation. With that as an antecedent to Christianity, it’s easy to see that Revelations just adds a lot of theater to a belief system that had been around for a very long time…all of which makes me wonder to what extent all those ‘fire and brimstone’ Chrisian evangelicals (who get lots of mileage out of Revelations) appreciate that their religion is mostly a hand-me-down of previous beliefs.

Also, as regards Pat’s comment that, “Creationists try to shoot down evolution by claiming there is no absolute evidence of a single-species gaining new function(s),” indeed, there is plenty of such evidence. Just last year, a three-armed human baby was born in China. Likewise, other human rareties include mutations such as hermaphroditism. Of course, gaining new function isn’t the only way evolution can occur: species can also lose function, as evidenced by the animals that evolve in underground caves and lose their eyesight. What creationists conveniently ignore is the fact that higher mammals are already so highly evolved that *adding* new functions is exceedingly unlikely. They will point out that we don’t see (highly evolved) cats giving birth to (highly evolved) dogs, which is a true statement, but it misses the point of evolution. Evolution isn’t about one highly evolved species turning into another one; it is about multiple species having a common antecedent; namely, a relatively unevolved ancestor species that possessed a successful new form, which then provided the genetic raw material from which subsequent offspring could adapt to many different niches in the food chain…eventually leading to species specialization. This process is invariably happening today, too, but we have no way of knowing which of the various critters on our planet are the common ancestors to life of the 30,000th-century. Probably, it includes a cockroach, an ant, a fish, and a human. But if we speculate about a common ancestor to life of the 300,000th-century, I suspect humans drop off the tree. Given the trajectory of our lifestyle, it seems to me a few hundred thousand years will be enough time for our species to exterminate itself. Evolution giveth, and evolution taketh away.