Astronomical education concerns.

[astromark]

We do not talk of religion because we have found it all to quickly becomes a shouting match..

Unpleasant and defamatory behaviour... such unpleasantness must be avoided.. That I agree with..

But a recent read has me so concerned that paranoia would not be misused here.. Mine, not yours.

It concerns me that the USA is not teaching the science correctly.. The scientific method is not being pushed..

Firstly I must come clean. Not that there ever was any doubt.. I am a atheist, 100%.

This has got me off the couch from where I had been reading this; from the 'Skeptical Inquirer', ( yes they spell it that way...).

They have published a poll ( yes I have permission to do this..I asked.)

and it goes like this...

That in 2006 a poll was conducted involving 34 countries.. only Turkey was worse than the USA...

The question; Which of these statements comes closest to your own point of view.

1/. Human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years. ...35%

2/. God created human beings in their present form within the past 10,000 years.... 47%

3/. I'm not sure.... 18%

The article went on to break this down into regions. Some of that is frightening...

I will give more of this if asked...

My source was the Nov/ December 2010 issue of 'Skeptical Inquirer.'

yes I have a subscription there and find a great deal of interesting reading there.

[Solfe]

I hesitate to post this, but the poll is (somewhat) flawed. Nothing precludes someone from agreeing with 1, 2 AND 3 or any combination thereof. Or none of them.

People are not machines, therefore they are not binary. If you gave me that poll in my chemistry or calculus class I would figure the correct answer is 1. At church its 2. At Tai Chi, it is very clearly 3. At any given moment of the day it would likely be all 3 combined. That might me just me.

What if this question was asked of illiterate, unschooled atheists (or Wiccan or Buddhists or Frisbeetarians or Pirates)? All three choices are clearly not right. Two is specific to limited set of religions and outside of that group appear as completely random gibberish. Option 1 is unknown them being unschooled and illiterate. Option three is a wimpy non-answer.

Choice one is provable, logical and consistent with a great body of knowledge. Selection two is completely consistent with my beliefs and therefore is illogical, inconsistent and unprovable. I don't ask anyone else to believe it, merely understand that I do. Three is a non-answer but if it was changed to "I honestly haven't had a though in days... weeks... maybe a year." it would cover about 75% of the people I encounter in a day.

[astromark]

I am afraid Solfe is right.. no argument with that. I invite you to take a look at...

http://www.visioncritical.com/2010/0...ith-evolution/.

In fairness to the intent of the article.. Its making a point that in the USA a balance is not apparent.

[Tobin Dax]

The scientific method is not being pushed..

I'd say that critical thinking in general isn't being emphasized enough in secondary education, not just the scientific method.

I'd also say that it's nearly impossible to continue my line of thought without entering into the topics of religion and politics.

[astromark]

YES.. but if we is very very careful they wont see us having this little talk over in the margins....

'they' are a little bit distracted in that SWIFT has just past the number of posts by that other chap...

But what you say is true and we can have this discussion because it is directly astronomy related..

That is the point of this for me. The science of astronomy is not being well presented in schools.

If it were this little survey would have shown that across the USA science was considered as the only real option.

and I think it falls on us as part of that scientific community to present it better so as no other option seems tolerable.

[grapes]

YES.. but if we is very very careful they wont see us having this little talk over in the margins....

'they' are a little bit distracted in that SWIFT has just past the number of posts by that other chap...

But what you say is true and we can have this discussion because it is directly astronomy related..

That is the point of this for me. The science of astronomy is not being well presented in schools.

If it were this little survey would have shown that across the USA science was considered as the only real option.

and I think it falls on us as part of that scientific community to present it better so as no other option seems tolerable.

You're going to have to be more careful than that!

A discussion about astronomy education is fine, but an OP pushing personal religious beliefs is not. I have to close this thread.