A number of friends have sent us various media notices regarding a recent study to the effect that “When It Comes to Accepting Evolution, Gut Feelings Trump Facts” (Ohio State University, 1/19/2012). We covered it here,and the finding doesn’t surprise us:
For students to accept the theory of evolution, an intuitive “gut feeling” may be just as important as understanding the facts, according to a new study.
Essentially, as forced on students in school, “evolution” has about the same teaching value as hip hop, Star Trek,, self-esteem courses, The Lord of the Rings, or teen vampire films. The thing either grabs your gut or it doesn’t. If it does, it can shape your values. If it doesn’t, harangue, legislation, persecution, or punishment may fail to give you that gut grab.
Of course, there is the in-between crowd – the people who don’t have that gut feeling about the Darwin story, but realize they had better pretend, in order to get ahead.
Today, they’re the lucky ones. Pity the poor student who is taught that some minor, possibly reversible variation in a life form over a few generations is equivalent to the acquisition of vast, intricate mechanisms “given enough time” … and is a serious enough student to question that assumption …
Enough time, he asks? What is “enough time”, exactly, in scientific terms?
When that student goes to the chem lab, he learns about time as a science concept: “Enough time”for a reaction under certain specified circumstances = 8.5 seconds in his flask, class average 8.4 seconds. It is not some vague concept about how something might have happened, by no exactly explained process, “given enough time.” That isn’t a scientific term at all, it is an act of faith in Darwinism.
But Darwinism is law for many school systems and the chem lab can’t undo all the damage.
Which tells you a lot about the state of education today. Reduced to grabbing the gut. Let’s hope it doesn’t get any lower …
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Hat tip: Stephanie West Allan at Brains on Purpose