Letters to the Editor
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Seriously...Darwin?
It really makes me sad that the whole of science is boiled into one man's work, and then tossed out with the bath water by others.
Darwin was a pretty on the ball guy, and his theory of natural selection was an elegant beauty that has stood the test of time. But it took a more than a few decades to truly understand what it meant in terms of science.
People obsess on the macroscopic world, and think that their piddling understanding of what they can perceive with their limited senses equates to understanding of the world.
The fossil record isn't proof or disproof of Darwin's theories. The closest proof we've come to in understanding how life changes is antibiotic resistant bacterium.
In that is the answer. If you want to counter act blind faith against reason, your answer isn't Darwin, it's Watson and Crick, it's Newton, it’s Plank, Bohr and Einstein. Teach children the building blocks of the universe, the forces and interactions that make up the world and evolution explains itself.
Trying to teach evolution without first teaching chemistry is like teaching language without first teaching an alphabet.
Science is taught backwards in our country, starting with biology and approaching chemistry and physics only in high school. It's no wonder that people doubt the validity of evolution, most have only the word of an English teacher to go on. They never learn the interactions of atoms and the behavior of chemicals. By the time the smartest kids do get the education on the real mechanics of the world most children are lost.
Anyone familiar with the bible knows that creationist theories are no more based on biblical writing than Darwin's work. But because we've never bothered to explain the universe to people, one all encompassing theory accepted on faith can easily replace another.
We teach children to trust men in white coats without explaining to them what the men do. Is it any wonder that a number of charlatans have dawned butchers coats themselves and were granted the imprimatur that true scientists receive?