Oklahoma Biology Lesson

Charles Darwin
Daniel Dennett, in Darwin's Dangerous Idea:

Let me lay my cards on the table. If I were to give an award for the single best idea anyone has ever had, I'd give it to Darwin, ahead of Newton & Einstein and everyone else. In a single stroke, the idea of evolution by natural selection unifies the realm of life, meaning, and purpose, with the realm ... of physical law.

Despite Darwin's great pathbreaking ideas on the evolution of all living matter via natural selection, and despite the fact that 99.99% of biologists consider these ideas as the best explanation of the evidence available, Creationists in the U.S. persist in pushing an alternative explanation, currently called "Intelligent Design".

P.Z. Myers at http://pharyngula.org/ is a university biologist who maintains an active and powerful blog presence.

His "Oklahoma biology lesson" post is so good, I am going to repost it here, to help increase its visibility among the few lost souls who land (surely by accident) on my blog.
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A lesson plan for Oklahoma

Hi, kids! Today, in our 8th grade life sciences class here in the beautiful state of Oklahoma, we are going to learn all about Evolution. Evolution is a powerful scientific tool to explain the wonders of the world around us, and a famous scientist once said that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. We're going to learn that it is even more powerful than that, and that evolution also helps us understand politics, religion, and economics; the light of evolution will show us the brilliance of our representatives in Oklahoma City, the enlightening faith that guides them, and that you lucky children will have a bright, happy future as Wal-Mart employees.

Everyone, open your science book to the inside front cover. Let's read this nifty little guide to biological science that we can thank Representative Bill Graves for. We will have to correct a few minor errors in it, but otherwise, it's very helpful.

This textbook discusses evolution, a controversial theory, which some scientists present as a scientific explanation for the origin of living things, such as plants and humans.

Yes! This textbook does discuss evolution. That is correct. Rep. Graves is off to a good start. There is a mistake in the next part, though: he really shouldn't say it is a controversial theory. It is accepted by nearly every biologist on the planet. Could everyone scratch out the word "controversial"? Thanks.

Uh-oh, we still have some problems. "some scientists"? That's kind of misleading, I think. Scratch out "some", too.

And "present as a scientific explanation"? It is a scientific explanation. I'm not clear what he's getting at, but let's simplify. Draw a line through "some scientists present as" and write "is" above it. Good work! Let's move on.

No one was present when life first appeared on earth. Therefore, any statement about life's origins should be considered as theory, not fact.

Yes, Danielle? You have a question? "What about God?"

That's a hard question. Some people don't believe in god, and would say he wasn't present when life first appeared. Others think he was. We don't know one way or another, and we don't have any evidence for either possibility. Rep. Graves really shouldn't be saying that. We don't worry about god in science class, anyway.

Would it make you feel better if we scratched it out? OK. Everyone, draw a line through the first sentence.

If no one was present, though, does that mean we can't ever figure out if something happened? Was anybody around last weekend when the second floor toilet overflowed and flooded the art room? No? I guess that means it didn't happen then.

Oh, it did happen? How do you know?

That's right: evidence. The broken toilet left evidence of the event. We'd be pretty silly if we tried to claim it didn't happen because no one was standing there watching the whole time, wouldn't we? It's a good thing we scratched that sentence out already, because it made poor Rep. Graves look awfully silly.

The second sentence also has a problem. When we started this unit on science we explained what a theory was. Does anyone remember?

Exactly! It's an explanation that is well-supported by evidence. Rep. Graves is correct when he says that evolution is a theory. It is a very, very powerful explanation, and as you'll learn once we get past the inside cover of your textbook, it is very, very well supported by the evidence.

What about "fact"? What is that?

You kids are so good. Yes, it is an idea that is accepted as true, until further evidence refutes it. All the evidence so far supports evolution, and it has not been refuted, so it's also a fact. It is both a fact, just like the broken toilet flooding the art room is a fact, and it is also a theory or explanation, just like the story that Chunk Jones tried to flush Dexter's underpants is an explanation for how it was broken.

Hmmm. The second sentence in this paragraph is wrong, too. Maybe you should just scratch out the whole thing.

The word evolution may refer to many types of change. Evolution describes changes that occur within a species. (White moths, for example, may evolve into gray moths). This process is micro evolution, which can be observed and described as fact. Evolution may also refer to the change of one living thing into another, such as reptiles into birds. This process, called macro evolution, has never been observed and should be considered a theory. Evolution also refers to the unproven belief that random, undirected forces produced a world of living things.

Now you get to learn some useful things. Evolution is about change, and there are different kinds of change, even more than just the two Rep. Graves mentions here. One kind of change is change that doesn't result in a new species, and we call that microevolution, because the changes are small. Another kind is called macroevolution, because it results in big changes between species. This part of the paragraph is correct.

There are some problems, though. Evolution is a theory about populations, not individuals. We really don't talk about a white moth turning into a gray moth; the white moths stay white and the gray ones stay gray. Could you write "Populations of" just before the words "white moths"? Very good.

Rep. Graves also has the definition of macroevolution wrong. Scratch out "change of one living thing into another, such as reptiles into birds", and replace it with "change above the species level".

There is a typo in the next sentence. Macroevolution has been observed; we'll talk about fruit flies and Rhagoletis pomonella and the Faroe Island mouse and Culex molestus and ring species and many other examples later. Scratch out "never". Also, where he says "theory"? That should be "fact".

The last sentence is a bit of a mess, I'm afraid. Do we talk about "proof" in science class? No! Save that for Ms. Johnson's geometry class. Do we talk about "beliefs" in science class? No! We talk about evidence and hypotheses and theories and experiments. Both of those words have to go. We'll learn later that evolution is also not random; bye-bye, "random". "Undirected"? Well, the evidence is compatible with that idea, but you know what? This sentence has so many errors in it, let's just draw a line through the whole thing.

There are many unanswered questions about the origin of life, which are not mentioned in your textbook, including: Why did the major groups of animals suddenly appear in the fossil record, known as the Cambrian Explosion? Why have no new major groups of living things appeared in the fossil record in a long time? Why do major groups of plants and animals have no transitional forms in the fossil record? How did you and all living things come to possess such a complete and complex set of instructions for building a living body? Study hard and keep an open mind. Someday you may contribute to the theories of how living things appeared on earth.

I'm glad to see that Rep. Graves appreciates the many unanswered questions. Biology is an exciting topic, and one of the things that makes it fun is that there are so many new things to learn. I'm afraid some of his questions are wrong, though.

Your book does mention the Cambrian 'Explosion', like many general textbooks do. We have many hypotheses about how it happened, such as that it occurred as oxygen was becoming enriched in the atmosphere and making available new materials and greater metabolic rates, or that life evolved to a threshold of complexity that allowed for exploration of novel forms. We don't have nice, sharp, final answers, but it is an interesting topic. Since it's a good question, leave it in, but let's strike out "which are not mentioned in your textbook", OK?

I don't know what Rep. Graves was thinking of in his next question. Major groups have appeared much more recently than the Cambrian—flowering plants and mammals, just to name two we think are kind of important. Maybe you'd better scratch out this question.

The next question is also mistaken! We're going to show you lots of transitional forms from the fossil record: Basilosaurus, Homo erectus (calm down, Roger, or we'll be sending you to the prinicipal's office), Ichthyostega, I have a long list of really cool fossils to show you, and there are lots in your textbook. I think maybe Rep. Graves just forgot to read your book before putting in this question—so let's delete this one, too.

We do wonder how we got these specific, complex instructions that built your body, so that is a good question, too. As you'll see, we think the best answer is evolution.

The last sentence here makes me a bit sad. I'd like to think that someday you'll all be able to help learn new things about life, but some people in your state's government seem to be trying hard to make that difficult and confusing for you, and are making it difficult for me to teach you what you need to know. You're all smart kids, though, so I think you can overcome these obstacles. Let's leave that last sentence in and hope for the best.

So let's see how the revised textbook disclaimer looks.

This textbook discusses evolution, a controversial theory, which some scientists present asis a scientific explanation for the origin of living things, such as plants and humans.

No one was present when life first appeared on earth. Therefore, any statement about life's origins should be considered as theory, not fact.

The word evolution may refer to many types of change. Evolution describes changes that occur within a species. (Populations of White moths, for example, may evolve into gray moths). This process is micro evolution, which can be observed and described as fact. Evolution may also refer to the change of one living thing into another, such as reptiles into birdschange above the species level. This process, called macro evolution, has never been observed and should be considered a theoryfact. Evolution also refers to the unproven belief that random, undirected forces produced a world of living things.

There are many unanswered questions about the origin of life, which are not mentioned in your textbook, including: Why did the major groups of animals suddenly appear in the fossil record, known as the Cambrian Explosion? Why have no new major groups of living things appeared in the fossil record in a long time? Why do major groups of plants and animals have no transitional forms in the fossil record? How did you and all living things come to possess such a complete and complex set of instructions for building a living body? Study hard and keep an open mind. Someday you may contribute to the theories of how living things appeared on earth.

Much better! We had to spend today fixing the mistakes of your state representatives, but maybe tomorrow we'll be able to start working on biology. I sure wish politicians would leave the textbook writing to the authors and scientists.

Michelle! Please do not use language like that, and I don't know why Rep. Graves is such a butthead. I didn't vote for him, why don't you ask your parents?

Charles Darwin