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When were you taught evolution?

This is a quickie - how old we you when you were first TAUGHT about evolution.

In the UK, it was in advanced biology - an optional class for school leavers and I was about 17 at the time - in 1980. (Oh god, I'm old!)

I didn't understand it: accepted it, yes, but didn't understand it.

Anyone who knows me well might find this surprising, because I didn't bother looking at evolution proper until a couple of decades back - while researching something completely different.

These days, evolution is taught in secondary schools (at least, it should be) which puts it in the age 11-16 or 11-18 depending on when the child started.

Dawkins thinks - and I heartily agree - we should introduce this cornerstone of Biology in primary science - so I wonder, how many people hear came to understand Darwin later in life?

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Marc Draco on September 26, 2011 at 10:59am

It is faith, but the problem is the word has been hijacked just like "theory" has.

I have faith in science, for example, that's not religion, it's faith in things that are rational; even if I can't see or prove them myself.

If my verbage is accurate, I suspect that faith is becoming something of "weasel word". Here's the wikipedia article which might clear that up (and then again, it might not.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word

Permalink Reply by Diana Bett on September 26, 2011 at 11:06am

Oh, I'm aware what "faith" *actually* means. I'm just so used to atheists using it as "belief without evidence" or "belief in spite of evidence" that to have it thrown out here, in that context, shocked me a bit.

Permalink Reply by Marc Draco on September 26, 2011 at 11:12am

Wasn't aware that I had, Diana. Sorry if I gave that impression.

Like most atheists here, you'll find that I'm a thinker. Faith in science is still belief but belief with evidence to back it up.

From my Mac's dictionary:

complete trust or confidence in someone or something: this restores one's faith in politicians.
strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.

a system of religious belief: the Christian faith.

a strongly held belief or theory: the faith that life will expand until it fills the universe.

Note that the first sense is secular, but this really is a weasel word. I wonder if anyone else could suggest something more suitable? Trust, perhaps?

Permalink Reply by Diana Bett on September 26, 2011 at 8:13pm

Oh, no, it was more surprising than anything. And I find it interesting that I react to it in such a way-- I love finding emotional reactions in myself and going "wait a minute, why do I feel this way?"

Permalink Reply by Tom Sarbeck on September 27, 2011 at 1:43am

Wait a minute, why do I feel envy for your ability to feel an emotional reaction and then ask why you feel that way?

Can it be because I was born male, males are supposed to be logical, and logical discourses lack something?

Thanks for saying it so clearly.

"I think,

Therefore I am,"

Said the philosopher.

Bunk! He didn't feel; he only

Half-was.

(Using the cinquain form devised by American poet Adelaide Crapsey: five lines; 2, 4, 6, 8, qnd 2 syllables.)

Permalink Reply by Diana Bett on September 27, 2011 at 8:21am

Bah, I'm too used to facebook-- was going to 'like' this comment before I remembered that this site doesn't have that feature. >.<

Permalink Reply by Orson_Zedd on September 26, 2011 at 11:13am

Faith is a little more nuanced than that. Faith is any axiom that must be assumed to be true. Under a definition like that, science and empiricism are faith. However, I would argue that anything like science that is internally consistent is a methodology and, while you must assume your evidence and results aren't being manipulated by undetectable external forces, their consistency and lack of wild variability would lend strong evidence to the methodology being true about the universe.

Permalink Reply by Erik Weissengruber on October 6, 2011 at 3:01am

Really, Fantasia and visits to the planetarium inoculated me against fundamentalist nonsense at an early age. I never saw the need for the universe to have a King/Daddy/Traffic Cop making sure everything ran smoothly.

Permalink Reply by Carl Pastor on October 6, 2011 at 2:48pm

heh, when i was 5 i was sent as a fosterchild to fundy trailor house homes in marin co. im afraid the xer fundys lost me after they beat me bloody. my youth was pretyy fucked up

Permalink Reply by Grace Fitzpatrick on October 6, 2011 at 3:37pm

That's terrible, Carl. :o(

Permalink Reply by Carl Pastor on October 6, 2011 at 4:42pm

you dony know the half of it heh heh heh

Permalink Reply by Carl Pastor on September 26, 2011 at 2:57pm

sorry, but to me the word faith is too tinged by religion for me to use it to describe any idea i may have. i tend to use the word believe as in "fire has burned me in the past every time i got too close and i believe it will do it in the future