Evolution

[jesselt]

Were you taught evolution in school? Human evolution or just evolution in general?

The only science class that was required in my high school was Earth Science, where we learned about the formation of geological structures. We were instructed that thousands of different floods are responsible for much of the terrain - many students had a problem with this as it made more sense to them that there was just one giant flood that covered the earth rather than many smaller floods. This class did not cover evolution. I personally took a biology course (students had to take more than just the one science class, but were allowed to choose from a number of different classes to fill their science requirement) in which the topic of evolution was covered. We only discussed the basics of evolution, and did not cover human evolution at all.

I would say that, in the area I was raised, the majority of people did not believe in human evolution. Without anyone to teach them the basics of human evolution most people continue to think the theory of human evolution involves humans evolving directly from monkeys, which is of course not correct. Many people I knew felt that the fact that monkeys and humans coexist in the modern day disproves human evolution.
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^Cruxis

[Slivius]

In my highschool, I had a lot of random compulsory courses which only lasted three weeks, including:

• Various random eras each got their own course
  
• Various random art movements each got their own course
  
• Writing (story writing yes)
  
• Drawing (drawing old greek statues for example)
  
• Architecture
  
• Projective geometry
  
• Astrology
  
• Astronomy
  
• Behavioral Biology
  
• Cellular Biology
  
• Various types of math
  
• Norse, Greek, Roman society and religion
  
• Evolution according to Darwin
  
• Evolution according to Haeckel
  
• Evolution according to someone I don't recall

I probably know more of evolution than most.

I personally like the following anology:

"We're the fungus on the macaroni in the pot God put away."

I'm not saying it is true, however.
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Also known as Sliv, Slivvie, Quilvius, Slivendiferious, and slivijizzisious

Ruilus wrote:

Holy hell. Yesterday was a blur of wine, whiskey and brandy. I can't remember where I left my sofa.

[Junkos]

Catholic school here.

It's actually funny since Biology class was perfectly normal, but the next class was always catechism and the teacher (read: nun) saying: "what you heard before is not true because reasons. Now pray."
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[Prester Guild]

[Soren]

Yes, we learned about evolution, the theories that preceded it, natural selection, speciation, etc. I took AP Biology so the curriculum was free of any evolution-doubting nonsense.

Everyone in my class seemed to be OK with it, even when we crossed over into the history of the Earth and the origin of life. But my teacher did tell us about this one student she previously taught who's mom didn't allow him to learn about evolution. My teacher told him that he didn't have to believe it, just understand it to the extent of passing the unit, but he refused and ended up failing that third of the class. A mess.

[CovertSushi]

Catholic school (as said in the thread about birth control). Perfectly normal biology curriculum, and the level at which I took it wasn't even IB.
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[Slivius]

It seems nobody in my class was a so-called "creationist".

No, our discussions were about whether Darwin, Haeckel or mr-whose-name-I-can't-recall had the "best" evolution theory.

My teachers liked pointing out the flaws in all three of them. Fun times.

As it turns out, Haeckel tampered with evidence, the third guy's theory can't be proven with 100% certainty until a more advanced lifeform shows up than humans, and Darwins theory if flawed because humans evolved for more quickly than they could have according to his theory.

If they did indeed evolve.

Ironically, all of the theories are 100% correct if you look at only parts of the animal kingdom.

It's almost as if different animals adhere to different theories.
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Also known as Sliv, Slivvie, Quilvius, Slivendiferious, and slivijizzisious

Ruilus wrote:

Holy hell. Yesterday was a blur of wine, whiskey and brandy. I can't remember where I left my sofa.

[JC]

I wasn't taught evolution in ninth grade biology, and I don't recall it even being mentioned in the textbook. I took a couple of medical classes in high school, and the woman who taught those courses is the one teacher I can remember talking about evolution. I live in Texas, so that was the most likely reason for it.

I've taken college Biology and Geology classes, and I was taught evolution in both of those.

[Jazzin']

My public schooling system, as crappy as it is, pretty much covered evolution entirely without a second thought during elementary, middle and high school. I don't think any of the kids I went to school with even doubted evolution, so I'm pretty glad about that.

As a kid, I was always kind of surprised that it always seemed to be an issue with the nation, when my state never had any problem with it.
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[Drake]

We had the choice of taking physics, chemistry or biology. You could take more than one, but I didn't take biology, so I can't really say what we were taught. Nobody at school really talked about these things, so I have no baseline to go on either. I would like to look into how the levels of our science education are here, though.

I'm not sure what my mom (i.e. the sole religious influence in family) "believes" as far as evolution goes, either. She had my brother and I go through RC sunday school for at least a year and we had our first communion and were generally coaxed to be religious, but she doesn't really give many hints on what exactly she believes. She hasn't read through the Bible (sometime last year she remarked, as a discovery, that in biblical days people lived for a very long time) so yeah, hard to tell. Point is that I wasn't affected by her beliefs either.

In other words I wasn't formally taught evolution or biology, but I was given the freedom to educate myself unrestricted, and I did. But I can't say much about the people around me.

[Harbinger]

Surprisingly, evolution wasn't something that was taught rigorously. I "learned" evolution when I was around 17 --- I had basic knowledge of evolution prior the class.
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[Shy Link]

I remember evolution being alluded to at certain times throughout elementary school, but I stopped properly going to school well before evolution would have been formally taught. I imagine schools around here taught it normally, since I don't really come from an area that's resistant to such things.

Of course now I'm majoring in biology with a focus in evolution, so that's more than making up for anything I might have been denied before, even if they didn't teach evolution down here.
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Yasuraka ni...

[HotFire]

Biology representing here
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Jazz <3
last.fm|tumblr

[Cloud]

Probably. I've always been aware of it, at least.

I don't really remember much from any of the science classes I've taken, though, so I can't say much more than that.
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[Divinus Fulmen]

[Slivius]

That was not the point of Haeckel's theory though.

Haeckel:
The point of his theory, iirc, is that in the embryonic state, all lifeforms eventually start to specialize, and the more advanced/ intelligent lifeforms start specializing later. Or they specialize less.

Humans in this case probably have the least specialized embryo to date.

His theory is correct for complete animal families, but not between the animal families. Eagle fetus does not look like a human at any point iirc.

Flaw in Darwin:
Darwin's theory is largely based on natural selection, right? There have been several cases throughout history (before it was properly documented of course), in which animals have evolved too fast for natural selection to be a good justification.

A few years ago there was a newscast and a few documentaries about skeletons which were found on an island somewhere in the pacific ocean on which humans lived from roughly 1500-1850 without a means of escape. They only ate fish because there was nothing else to eat, and the island was pretty small. There were also not many people stranded on the island.
Over the course of 350 years the humans who got stranded there "evolved" into much stronger built, but smaller brained pygmies.
They died out roughly 25 years before the islands were charted iirc.

Evolution according to Darwin doesn't work that fast.

And what's more, the earliest direct ancestors of the modern humans apparently evolved in even less time.

Third guy whose name I can't recall theory:
I'm currently going through my old notebooks and handouts, but so far I haven't found anything even remotely biologic. I did find some astrology though.
I believe his theory had something to do with the evolution of communication alongside humans in particular.
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Also known as Sliv, Slivvie, Quilvius, Slivendiferious, and slivijizzisious

Ruilus wrote:

Holy hell. Yesterday was a blur of wine, whiskey and brandy. I can't remember where I left my sofa.