Bill Nye Explains Why Kids Need to Know About Evolution

One common theme in the never-ending discussion of Creationism versus evolution is "Why not teach both and let kids make up their own minds?"

The problem with that line of thinking -- leaving aside the fact that Creationism is usually understood to mean the creation story of one particular culture, rather than a comparison of the many, many traditions of how the world began -- is that when it comes to evolution, both sides are just not equal. In order to believe in Creationism in a literal sense, you have to unbelieve practically every big idea to be embraced by science in the last century. This is the argument Bill Nye makes in the video above:

Your world just becomes fantastically complicated when you don't believe in evolution. I mean, here are these ancient dinosaur bones or fossils, here is radioactivity, here are distant stars that are just like our star but they're at a different point in their lifecycle. The idea of deep time, of this billions of years, explains so much of the world around us. If you try to ignore that, your world view just becomes crazy, just untenable, itself inconsistent.

The Science Guy goes on to plead with parents not to make their children deny evolution "because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need people that can ... build stuff, solve problems."

The video comes from a website called Big Think. Thanks to its sensationalist title -- Bill Nye himself talks only about "denying evolution" and makes no comment on people's personal beliefs -- the video has gotten over 3.5 million hits since it was posted on August 23, a little over a week ago. It has been mentioned on news sites around the internet, and Nye went on CBS and CNN to clarify his views.

As he says, "Learning the story is great, but it's not science."

Charlie's Playhouse - Toys that Teach Evolution

Thanks to my fellow GeekDad writer Jenny for pointing me towards Charlie's Playhouse, a toy company dedicated to games and learning tools about evolution. As Jenny writes:

The 24th of November is the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s work, “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.” To celebrate this important anniversary, Charlie’s Playhouse, maker of evolution-inspired toys, play things and apparel, is inviting us all to ask our kids (age 4 to 10), “What is evolution?” They are hoping this will spark family discussion about evolution.

Devolve Yourself

As Darwin Week draws to a close, here's a little evolution fun. The Open University website has a tool that lets you devolve yourself back to your primitive ancestors. Here's what one of my kids looks like millions of years in the past.

The British-based online university also has more Darwin information put together in conjunction with the BBC. If you're in Britain you can even order a free Tree of Life poster.

Enjoy!

Darwin Week at GeekDad

It's Darwin Week at GeekDad, the Wired.com blog for which I am privileged to be the token mom. When I suggested the theme week I hoped to contribute a few posts about my family's exploration of opposition to teaching evolution. However, the final consensus was to leave out any mention of creationism/intelligent design. Of course, the commenters have brought it into the discussion anyway. Unlike last year's post on the topic, the comments to the post I contributed this year have at least been coherent. But it's still upsetting that people want to "let kids decide what to believe." Here's my reply to that suggestion:

We should teach evolution to our kids because:

1) It is the basis of all modern biology;
2) It provides the best explanation of how living things came to exist in their present form;
3)It fits the observations of thousands of scientists working over hundreds of years (Darwin used earlier discoveries to formulate his theory);
4) It makes predictions which have been verified (for example, that transitional -- "missing link" -- fossils will be found between one species and another);
5) Like the laws of physics and facts about the Earth's place in the Solar System, it is somewhat counterintuitive -- meaning it is not something kids will necessarily figure out on their own from direct observation;
6) After a certain age it is difficult to correct inaccurate ideas about the world. (Go to the article Unlearning Bad Science by John Merrow to read about the study which asked graduating Harvard seniors why it's warmer in summer. Nearly all said it's because the Earth is closer to the sun!)
7) We want our children to have accurate information about how the world works, so that they can make good decisions about how to run it when it's their turn.

Teach Them Science

A new website called Teach Them Science was mentioned in stories about the recent defeat in Texas of anti-evolution statements some school officials wanted to insert into the state's textbooks. This threat is bigger than just Texas, because textbook publishers cater to the Texas market -- which buys in bulk for the entire state. Here is what the National Center for Science Education says about the new website:

As the Texas state board of education prepares to vote on a revised set of state science standards, two organizations — one secular, one religious — have joined forces to produce a new website, Teach Them Science, in order to advocate for a twenty-first-century science education for the students in Texas's public schools. Sponsored by the Center for Inquiry Austin and the Clergy Letter Project, the Teach Them Science website is intended to empower parents, educators, and concerned citizens to rally in support of the new standards, which treat evolution as the central and unifying principle of the biological sciences that it is.

The National Center for Science Education's own site has some interesting information about the why the controversy is important:

• The new standards last for ten years. The SBOE voted on the new standards during their January 2009 meeting, and barring a reverse vote in March, the new standards will apply for ten years.
• Evolution is science, not politics. Anti-evolutionists argue against evolution using rhetoric, but it takes new evidence to change science. They are teaching students that science works like politics. Evolution is one of the most strongly confirmed theories in science.
• God and evolution get along just fine. Many people of faith accept evolution, including both clergy and scientists.
• Science is our children's future. If we teach students that science works in ways that it does not, we risk their future in science. We also risk our country's future in science.
  

About that site:

The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) is a not-for-profit, membership organization providing information and resources for schools, parents and concerned citizens working to keep evolution in public school science education. We educate the press and public about the scientific, educational, and legal aspects of the creation and evolution controversy, and supply needed information and advice to defend good science education at local, state, and national levels. Our 4000 members are scientists, teachers, clergy, and citizens with diverse religious affiliations.

Do You Have Your Darwin Action Figure Yet?

Sorry, I couldn't resist. I am VERY busy for the next two weeks, but I will be sure to have the kids update some of our ongoing projects.

More Evolution Resources from Nature Magazine

To add to the post a few days back, I just found this full page of Darwin resources at Nature Magazine. You'll need a subscription to read most of them, but there is a free a 15-point evolution cheat sheet you can print and keep in your purse (or, I guess, download to your PDA) for when your creationist friends gang up on you. And you can scroll down for a slideshow on the evolution of the eye.

(Everyone's working their way through the nifty Scientific American issue on The Evolution of Evolution, by the way.)

Nature Magazine's Evolution Piece (via Wired)

Happy New Year! Just wanted to save the link to 12 Elegant Examples of Evolution
by Wired.com blogger Brandon Keim. It has some interesting examples of evolution.

(You have my permission to skip the debate in the comments.)

Why Everyone Should Learn the Theory of Evolution

An opinion piece in the January 2009 issue of Scientific American focusing on "The Evolution of Evolution" has this to say about Darwin:

Darwin’s genius—and, yes, genius is the right word—is manifest in the way his theory of evolution can tie together disparate biological facts into a single unifying framework. Evolutionary geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky’s oft-cited quotation bears repeating here: “Nothing in biology makes sense, except in the light of evolution.”

Read the rest of SciAm's features -- including Testing Natural Selection with Genetics, Putting Evolution to Use in the Everyday World, and The Latest Face of Creationism in the Classroom -- here.

Roger Ebert's Review of Expelled

Movies are big at my house, and no mention of a title can pass without a certain child announcing how many stars it was given by Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert.

Ebert lost his ability to speak after an operation not long ago. But he has more than made up for it by creating a wonderful blog that touches on every subject under the sun, not just movies.

A few weeks back he ran a puzzling blog post that seemed to be favoring creationism. I immediately Googled him to find that he is indeed a staunch proponent of evolutionary theory. And he did later explain the post was intending to make a point.

Today he has posted a review of "Expelled," the documentary by Ben Stein which claims American schools are unfairly censoring creationist theory. You can read "Win Ben Stein's Mind" here.

Tree of Life

I just came upon The Tree of Life website which making up a worksheet for the kids to do our Backyard (and Frontyard -- we've got a snake living under the sidewalk, and I saw some slime mold there the other day) Survey.

It looks like a wonderful resource for studying how organisms are related, according to DNA evidence of their evolution. In the Treehouse section in particular are games, webquests, etc. for students created by teachers and as class projects.

Here's the description from the TOL homepage:

The Tree of Life Web Project (ToL) is a collaborative effort of biologists from around the world. On more than 9000 World Wide Web pages, the project provides information about the diversity of organisms on Earth, their evolutionary history (phylogeny), and characteristics. Each page contains information about a particular group of organisms (e.g., echinoderms, tyrannosaurs, phlox flowers, cephalopods, club fungi, or the salamanderfish of Western Australia). ToL pages are linked one to another hierarchically, in the form of the evolutionary tree of life. Starting with the root of all Life on Earth and moving out along diverging branches to individual species, the structure of the ToL project thus illustrates the genetic connections between all living things.