http://www.slate.com/articles/health_an ... ingle.html

Rarely do I have a Kentucky student who learned about human evolution in high school biology. Those who did usually attended high schools in large urban centers like Louisville or Lexington. Given how easily it can provoke parents, the teaching of human evolution is a rarity in high school, so much so in Kentucky that it startled me when I first arrived.

it startled me when I first arrived.

must be like getting posted to the front.

If you enjoyed that article, you might want to scan the original from Orion Magazine - it provides more detail in several areas such as evolutionary medicine and human evolution.
https://orionmagazine.org/article/defending-darwin/

nor do we avoid the “c-word”

quite

wow, good read, you really feel for the guy...

wish we had a thousand more just like him, you can really feel his heart in all of it.

that closing story was gold.

Great article. I just read it out loud to my 4-year old son just because he loves to listen to me read no matter what the content.

As youkrst said we need more educators that approach this subject with such a passion. Evolution needs to be taught as the foundation of all we know and understand of biology and therefore it cannot be relegated to one autonomous week-long unit at the end of a semester.

Perhaps the discussion would go better if we heard more of the following and less about dinosaurs and fossils?

My classes provide an abundance of examples of how evolutionary theory explains biological phenomena, with evolutionary medicine surfacing toward the end of the semester. I focus on four basic points: our evolutionary legacy influences present-day health problems; overuse of antibiotics is causing pathogens to evolve resistance; treating conditions (fever, coughing, sneezing, diarrhea, vomiting) as symptoms of an illness can harm our health, while treating these conditions as adaptations and leaving them to run their course (unless they’re acute) can benefit our health; and how the ecological phenomenon of “corridors” (not washing hands, openly sneezing and coughing, shaking hands, unprotected sex) causes pathogens to spread easily, permitting them to evolve greater virulence, while maintaining “barriers” (washing hands, covering your mouth when sneezing and coughing, not shaking hands, using condoms) causes pathogens to evolve lower virulence.

If mild fever evolved as an adaptation to “cook” pathogens, and coughing, sneezing, and diarrhea evolved to expel them, then it is unwise to use medications to suppress these adaptations. Similarly, if a virulent strain can kill a host and escape to another via a corridor, greater virulence evolves. If, however, a barrier prevents spread of this pathogen, the most virulent die along with their host, leaving only less virulent forms to survive.

Evolutionary medicine brings the significance of evolution home. Students realize that not understanding evolution can have severe consequences to their health. If everyone understood that pathogens evolve (not develop) resistance to antibiotics when used excessively and unnecessarily, we would have fewer problems with ineffective antibiotics and highly resistant pathogens.

The problem is. this is only one blood-sucking tentacle of the monster called Ignorance. Anti-evolution goes hand-in-hand with the denial of global warming as well as anti-hunting advocates and those who believe in aliens. What I find in all cases is that the people denying global warming know nothing about it to begin with. For example, one guy said to me, "If global warming was real then every time we exhale, we make it worse!" How can he begin to debate global warming if he is that ignorant?

Another person said to me, "If the world is covered in bacteria then why isn't the earth just a big ball of fuzz?" He also reiterated the "If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?" question.

Even atheists can be complete idiots. One guy asked me if I was an atheist. I said yes. "Me too," he said but he admitted he got his ass kicked in debates with Christians.

"Maybe you shouldn't argue then," I helpfully suggested.

Then he asked me, "Do you believe morals are relative?" I said yes. Then he asked, "So if morals are relative, wouldn't there be an instance in which you believe that rape or cold-blooded murder is right?"

I said no. "But there would have to be if morals are relative, right?" I started to explain that morals being relative means from person-to-person. No two people have exactly the same morals. There ARE people who believe that rape is okay--our prisons are teeming with them. But before I could say that, he said, "See, I normally wouldn't kill you but if we ended up trapped on barren island somewhere where there isn't much food--sorry but I'm going to be killing you so I can survive."

That pissed me off. I suppose I could have said that if two people combine their knowledge and talents, it's more likely both would survive whereas if one murders the other then he's probably not smart enough to survive on his own and so both will be dead in a short while but instead I said, "Thanks for letting me that I have to kill you if we end up stranded that way. I WILL keep that in mind." He just looked at me for a second and then walked away. Jerk. No wonder Christians kick his ass in a debate. They should just kick his ass--period.

And don't waste your time arguing with believers in aliens, they are just dumb-assed superstitious Christians in disguise. They throw "alien" around the way medieval Christians did with "demon." Slept all day yesterday for no good reason? Must be aliens. Too many planes crashing lately? Aliens. Two nations erupt into war? Aliens.

Everything is aliens. Once I posted a link about "ghost planes" in an effort to show that people see all sorsts of things in the sky but that doesn't make them real. The ghost planes were these WW2 bombers and fighters that people report seeing, some flying very low. They never seem to come from anywhere or go anywhere and will be seen even in bad flying conditions when all other planes would be grounded. This woman replied, "Do you think aliens might have the ability to disguise their overflights as these ghost planes?" I left that forum and never went back. Another guy called me an idiot and asked what in hell does the moon have to do with the earth's tilt?? Again, when someone is that ignorant, why are they arguing??

Then there were these anti-whaling guys--who are just a contingent of the whole anti-hunting morons camp--who seem to have laudable goals of preserving whales. But I soon realized they were insane. They want all whaling banned forever and all time no matter what. So I asked that just suppose sperm whales, for example, should start to overpopulate. Say, one day, we realized there were more than the planet could safely support and that they might start crowding out other groups of whales, how would the anti-whalers deal with that?

"Well, that isn't going to happen," he said.

"But just suppose it does," I said. "How would you handle that situation?"

"How would you handle it?" he asked.

"Bag some sperm whales," I said.

UNACCEPTABLE!!!! Not a SINGLE whale will be permitted to be killed for ANY reason! That's the same idiocy I get from the anti-deerhunters. We must stop killing all deer! When you point out that deer can populate very quickly and overgraze an area in no time flat, they don't care. That, in fact, without hunters (I am NOT a hunter, btw) the deer here in Michigan don't have enough natural predators to keep their numbers in check. They would balloon out of control and have inside some city areas where deer-hunting is illegal. In those cases, the city hires people to bag enough to shrink the numbers down. But no, this was "barbaric" and "there are better ways."

"Such as what?" I asked. No answer. In some areas, they've tried moving the deer to other areas. Doesn't work. They just come back. The deer aren't stupid. They come right back and frequently wander into roads and get hit. That also puts drivers at great risk and destroys vehicles. They don't care--no hunting deer!!!

All these groups are, to me, just part of the same monster. They are against that which they do not even understand. A guy doesn't even know that the moon influences the earth's tilt but he's going to tell me how denizens from other planets are traveling here to abduct citizens. Some boob doesn't understand the carbon cycle on the surface of the earth but he knows there's no global warming. Someone can tell me that Darwin is wrong but has never read "The Descent of Man." That's as ridiculous as the time I went into a Whole Foods and saw a whole aisle of "homeopathic" remedies for sale. But so many of their customers won't get vaccines because they are scientifically unsound.

Anti-evolution goes hand-in-hand with the denial of global warming as well as anti-hunting advocates and those who believe in aliens.

Yeah, those blood sucking ignorant scientists and their ignorant search for little green men:

http://www.seti.org/

Anti hunting advocates?

Are you promoting belief in hunting?

DB Roy wrote:And don't waste your time arguing with believers in aliens, they are just dumb-assed superstitious Christians in disguise.

Do you mean like Richard Dawkins? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weIx6PctSv8
Beware,the robot aliens are coming!!

ant wrote: Yeah, those blood sucking ignorant scientists and their ignorant search for little green men:

http://www.seti.org/

@ DB Roy - you had me laughing there

I'm going to be killing you so I can survive.

survival of the dumbest