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Thursday, December 17, 2015

Joe Hanson tells us about evolution

Joe Hanson Ph.D. (Biology) of It's Okay To Be Smart is posting a series of videos on evolution. They're called The 12 Days of Evolution.

The first one is "What Is Evolution Anyway?" You won't surprised to learn that Joe Hanson conflates "evolution" with "natural selection" and fails to mention the most important features of evolution [see What Is Evolution]. You WILL be surprised to learn that Jerry Coyne has the same objections I do! [Twelve Days of Evolution: #1: What’s evolution?]

We need to do a much better job of educating the general public about the meaning of evolution but first we need to educate the teachers. It's okay to be smart but it's not okay to just pretend to be smart.



13 comments :

Donald Forsdyke said...

Berkman and Plutzer did just that,
With teacher ed were much dissat.
Surveyed high and surveyed low,
To find out just what teachers know.

Concluded that it was quite scary,
How concepts evolution’ry,
Were fabulated and much worsy,
To avoid all controversy.

Macroevol said B and P,
They did utterly ignore.
Badly taught throughout the land,
Far and wide we hear the snore.

How this situation to better?
Try page 10 of this Newsletter

Uncivilized Elk said...

I find this particularly amusing (in that sad, shake your head kind of way) because the video lists Coyne's book as a source it used for the video.

Tommy Hall said...

well they stick to this outdated and laughably incorrect neo-darwinian explanation because they want to continue to fool everybody that everything got here via a non-teleological mechanism. To incorporate epigenetics or horizontal gene transfer or changes in gene expression or anything else that involves internally-regulated, environmentally-induced changes would be to admit that naturalism is insufficient to explain the existence of adaptive traits. Can't have that, can we....gotta keep the lies circulating so everyone stays dumbed down. I would be interested in seeing evidence of Dr. Moran's random drift creating parts of a pancreas, kidney, liver, blood vessels or knee caps. I'd dearly love to see the science behind that.

Petrushka said...

Damn, you caught us.

Uncivilized Elk said...

I can't even...

The things you list evoke naturalism to explain gaps in knowledge. Like all science.

Are you under the impression creationists discovered these things?

Mikkel Rumraket Rasmussen said...

"To incorporate epigenetics or horizontal gene transfer or changes in gene expression or anything else that involves internally-regulated, environmentally-induced changes would be to admit that naturalism is insufficient to explain the existence of adaptive traits. "

What? HGT, epigenetics and gene expression is unnatural?

"I would be interested in seeing evidence of Dr. Moran's random drift creating parts of a pancreas, kidney, liver, blood vessels or knee caps. "

Parts of a pancrease? Parts of a blood vessel? You think organisms evolved with half of a leg too? Do you have only half of a brain?

Christ that is dumb. Reminds me of Ray Comfort's question "how could dogs evolve when the male dog would have to wait millions of years for the female dog to evolve and then magically have matching genitalia".

Against stupidity this intense there can be no cure.

Dirk said...

Against stupidity there is a cure, it's called education but there no cure against ignorance and I am afraid that's what we have here. If people intentionally decide to stay stupid our problems begin.

Dirk said...

I am not surprised that this video despite good intentions isn't getting things right. I always wonder what I would do if I only had 1:30 to teach this concept. Perhaps a bit more time would have done some good. The attention span in the Youtube era is not that short, 10 min should be fine for some good education assuming the educator has been properly taught before.

Tommy Hall said...

Mikkel. I'll wait for Dr Moran to present evidence that his beloved drift can create new anatomy, big or small, and thus is a legitimate explanation for how all of biology and anatomy got here.

Tommy Hall said...

that's what I thought.

Unknown said...

Dr. Moran your explanations tend to be the best I’ve seen in terms of clarity, correctness and completeness. Thank-you for the continuing posts. I can learn something here everyday and it is hard to find correct information like you give on the web elsewhere.

wallace.b.s.88 said...

"If people intentionally decide to stay stupid our problems begin."

And one of those problems is the forced maintenance of evolution in middle of actual science... So sad

Dazz said...

How about molecular clocks?