New poll says Big Bang theory a big question for many Americans

a reply to: WarminIndy

Fair enough. I have no problem discussing "ideas" or "theories". The problem as I have previously stated, is that laypeople don't realize that a scientific theory is not just an "idea".

A scientific theory is a collection of confirmed facts (hypothesis and law). The theory is just an easy to understand summation. It is the highest class attainable.

Will some theories be modified over time ... Sure. However, acknowledging there are some unknowns to all theories is quite different than denying those theories based on nothing but ignorance and incredulity.

originally posted by: WarminIndy

originally posted by: solomons path
a reply to: WarminIndy

All you've shown is that you don't know the difference between scientific theory and conjecture either. The scientific community doesn't use or teach conjecture because there is no evidence to back it. You know, like creationism or ancient aliens or a global flood.

I'm not "defending" the scientific community, the weight of evidence does that.

I'm assuming you took part in this poll?

Let's go through this one more time...

Scientific conjecture is taught as fact in schools. Whether or not you want to disagree with conjectures, the point is that it is taught as facts.

I don't know how old you are, but when I was in school, Neanderthals were taught as being a species that went extinct and that's it, because Cro Magnon replaced them.

Now we know that many Europeans, myself included, have Neanderthal percentages. And yet this has not been revised in the textbooks, which many students are led to believe that everything previously known about Neanderthal is still fact, therefore believable, even though the facts have changed.

Facts change all the time, but the point is, the education system isn't teaching that facts change.

Umm, I'm not sure which science texts you are looking at, but I taught secondary science curriculum from 96 to 2002 and not one text we used stated that Neanderthals went extinct and then rose cro-magnon. In fact, a lot of science texts don't go into much detail at all about hominid evolution due to the zealous creationist influence on school boards.

To blame "science" for what appears in HS texts shows you have no idea how districts create standards and instruct publishers on what they want text books to cover, usually based nothing but politics and religious beliefs. It's the reason I left teaching HS science. And, the major reason America lags behind the rest of the world in science literacy.

You should watch the doc "The Revisionists".