The Monkey Trial in 1925 was the beginning of an anti-evolutionary campaign that continues to this day
"And Cain knew his wife" where the hell did this come from? From the play 'The Monkey Trial'.
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In the chapter "Darwin's Bulldog vs. Slippery Sam" from the book Big Conflicts in Science by Hal Hellman, Had-Erzi Publishing - Ma'ariv, 2001, the author writes that even though the evolutionary team in Dayton achieved exactly what it sought to achieve and even though the state of Tennessee came out From the matter of shame, the anti-evolutionary forces did not shy away from the results either way. The truth is that it was not until 1967 that educators could legally teach the theory of evolution in the state of Tennessee. Furthermore, the ongoing controversy has left evolution out of the textbooks and curricula of many schools in the United States, especially in the southern states. Following the Scopes trial, a dozen anti-evolution bills were immediately submitted, and two of them, in Mississippi and Arkansas, were passed. After that, two notable events occurred that added strength to the camp of evolutionists.
Hellman explains that the first event is a scientific one - a merger between genetics, systematics (taxonomic sorting of biological groups) and paleontology, and the second event was the Soviet Union's success in launching Sputnik, which started the space race. This event electrified the scientific establishment and led to a concerted effort to improve the teaching of science among young Americans. This teaching included recognition of the theory of evolution as an absolutely necessary foundation, a basic organizing principle, of modern biology.
The law in Arkansas was canceled by order of the Supreme Court and the creationists began to change their approach because they realized that it was against the 14st and 1981th amendments to the US Constitution. Therefore, they proposed a clever solution: turning their doctrine into "science" - the science of creation. Since the word creation is also suspected to have a religious origin, they changed the name again and called their Torah the Intelligent Design Theory. Through the new approach, they were able to pass laws here and there that in most cases required both approaches, such as the law passed in 7 in Louisiana, but the Supreme Court rejected this law by a majority of 2 to XNUMX.
The next stage, in which we are still today, is the hidden mirroring stage. The creationists as a vocal group are able, by infiltrating local education boards and political groups, to make the lives of natural science teachers and the publishers of biology textbooks for the schools miserable. Both of these groups, subject to continuous and ongoing harassment, are ultimately tempted to evade this problem by downplaying or even ignoring evolutionary science, thereby playing into the creationists' hands. Today, creationists also use debates among scientists to emphasize that their view is much simpler and settled.
Lies they spread during such debates can appear in many different forms, including what can be called "slippery slopes" around the basic argument. One of the gains in them holds that systems in living bodies, such as the eye, are so "irreducibly complex" and so dependent on each other, that it is simply impossible to believe that all these systems were able to merge through natural selection and reach a perfection that functions in supreme harmony. There must be some kind of "intelligent planning" somewhere. Richard Dukanins, in his attempt to deal with creationist arguments such as these, devoted no less than 59 pages to the subject of the eye in one of his books.
Another area is the area of gaps in the list of fossils, which we discussed in the article "Misconceptions of evolution". There are creationists who are not satisfied with the rate at which science fills in the gaps and in their opinion any gap that is not filled indicates a Creator.
Another slippery slope: creationism originates from the "argument of design", put forward 200 years ago by the British theologian William Paley. If you find a clock on the ground, what is the probability that it was built by chance? Not high, you must admit. Similarly, what is the probability that a human being appears in this way? The theory of modern intelligent planning compares evolution with the hand of chance and claims that its complexity cannot but be the result of planning. Dawkins emphasizes that many of the 'intelligent design' theorists who have difficulty accepting Darwinian evolution simply miss an important point (or ignore it) and that is that "Darwinism is not a theory of random chance. This is a theory of random mutation and cumulative and non-random natural selection."
According to Hellman, the adoption of the creationist Torah could cause serious consequences. According to one estimate, it is fundamentally affectionate "at the very least", turning its back on all modern astronomy, a large part of modern physics and most of the earth sciences. In addition, there are increasing attempts to apply the evolutionary principles to various fields such as medicine, pest control, agriculture and even psychology and psychiatry, anthropology, moral theory and sociology (for example the origins of the behavioral sciences) and I will add from Dr. David Passig's lecture - futurism is also an extension of evolution .
"...let's start from a point of assumption that the creationists will indeed get what they want. There is no doubt that the instruction that will emerge from such an adoption will weaken the public's ability to consider and evaluate scientific principles. On such ground, it will be easier than ever to grow evil thinking patterns." Indeed, public opinion polls show that almost half of Americans believe that God created humans over the past ten thousand years and that 75 percent of Americans are unable to successfully answer a basic scientific questionnaire from the National Science Foundation (National Science Foundation), which presents, among other things, questions such as - are my sons Man and dinosaurs lived at that time.
What is happening in the field is part of the strengthening of fundamentalist beliefs, along with the strengthening of the anti-scientific feelings of the public in general. And although the scientific level of a degree holder in the United States is the highest in the world, the scientific education in the lower grades is worse than ever. These contradictory findings do not bode well for this nation.
To purchase the book "Great Controversies in Science" on the Mythos website
Darwin and the struggle for evolution
Misconceptions about evolution
Additional articles on the subject:
Evolution is an undeniable fact
The evolution of evolution
Evolution as a theory that explains phenomena ranging from the development of the universe to the development of society - Yuval Neman
Creation versus evolution
Creationism or evolution
Evolution of theories
Ohio's new evolution curriculum is troubling science advocates
Misconceptions about evolution
There are 4 responses to this page
0:18 13/04/2004
Sender: S. Yehuda
The evolutionary development of the struggle in the theory of evolution
0:30 13/04/2004
Sender: A. Blizovsky
Supporters of evolution sound like fur to me
0:45 13/04/2004
Sender: S. Yehuda
it has got something in it
1:53 13/04/2004
Sender: D. Oren
Richard Dawkins
