Ignorance Most Foul

I never cease to be amazed at the almost unbelievable ignorance that seems to permeate the public at large about things scientific in general and about evolution in particular. It seems like no matter how many times a misconception gets squashed, it pops right back up again. The ones I run into the most are:

Evolution is JUST A THEORY, it hasn't been proven.

No, evolution is a SCIENTIFIC THEORY and that word scientific makes all the difference in the world. Within the realm of science, a "Theory" is not a guess or a hunch as it may be in colloquial usage. Using the definition from the Oxford English Dictionary, a scientific theory is "a scheme or system of ideas or statements held as an explanation or account of a group of facts or phenomena; a hypothesis that has been confirmed or established by observation or experiment, and is propounded or accepted as accounting for the known facts."

A "Theory" is about as close to a declaration of fact as science comes. All scientific conclusions are tentative and subject to revision should new evidence appear so, technically, nothing is ever "proven," but does anyone really doubt the Theory of Gravity? Well it makes about as much sense to doubt the Theory of Evolution as the Theory of Gravity.

If evolution is true, then why are there no Transitional Fossils?

DUH, well THERE ARE Transitional Fossils. Lots of them actually and more get added every year. Are there gaps in the fossil record? Sure lots of them and given the rarity of fossilization we're lucky there aren't a whole lot more gaps. Palontologists estimate that maybe, MAYBE we have fossils representing one in a thousand of all the species that have existed.

How could a man have descended from an ape?

He didn't. That's NOT what evolution says. It says that men and apes descended from a common ancestor. Now personally I don't consider this common ancestor an ape but a prototype primate.

Believing in Evolution requires as much faith as believing in Creationism.

Errr, no, not really. Evolution is the end result of considering a broad range of empirical observations and arriving at a possible explanation for those observations. Then that explanation was further evaluated in terms of predictions about what would be found if one looked and about the types of fossil remains that could be expected to be discovered. And guess what? At least so far, all of those predictions have been right on the money.

Evolution doesn't require "faith" because it is based upon the analysis of EVIDENCE and there is lots and lots of EVIDENCE. Every year the amount of evidence increases as, at least so far, every discovery made has fit into the evolutionary framework. Have lots of adjustments been made? Yup, but so far nothing has been found that undermines the basic paradigm.

Is it possible that next week a fossil may be found that destroys the theory (such as a bunny rabbit in the Jurassic)? Yup, it's certainly possible, but so far it hasn't happened.


Now I don't know exactly WHY these misconceptions keep coming up but I've noticed at least three sources.

1. People that simply haven't been told any different either because they didn't get an adequate education OR the information was purposely kept from them.
2. People that have been repeatedly told that these are misconceptions but refuse to believe it for some bizarre reason such as they think you're working for Satan or that somehow accepting that these are misconceptions is going to turn them into a godless atheist that will immediately begin massacreing helpless infants.
3. People that have learned these are misconceptions and then were convinced by someone who still believes them, or wants others to believe them, that they aren't.

People in category #2 are certainly hopeless and this is where you'll find any Christian fundamentalist that has been exposed to the facts (the rest of them are in category #1). People in category #3 tend to have the IQ of a retarded sponge and trying to educate them is probably pretty hopeless also. That leaves the, non-fundamentalist, folks in category #1 that perhaps can be educated as to reality. I discount the fundamentalists since their minds are both closed and set. The most you can do with these folks is shift them into category #2.