sonofccn wrote: Granted but I wasn't trying to make an argument against the theory. Just that man survived a very long time without it creating the underpinnings of civilization which allowed Darwin to notice how animals were adapted to their environment.
While that is true it is simplistic as its like saying we did ok before we new about the theory of gravity or atomic theory or other basic science theories, yes in the days they were first hypothesized about they were not overly important.
But today those basic principals and the investigation of them gaining more and more knowledge are part of our social and economic infrastructure from power-generation to curing diseases and illnesses and even engineering principals are all based on scientific theories that were started centuries ago and at that time were not important to society.
Not being a biologist such things are far above my pay grade but out of curiosity what exactly are we talking about? If you don't mind.
Its understandable as most people see evolution as people digging up old fossils etc and do not realize it is a vast science that includes chemistry and unifies all of biology and by doing so saves lives in ways they do not begin to imagine.
Quite literally all biological research a lot of areas of chemical research and even engineering benefit from the study of evolution, the mapping and understanding of the genome in humans and other animals that gives us access to the building blocks of life have benefited medicine in many ways.
Evolution in agriculture helps us improve crops, understand how to modify them to produce more and or survive in harsh conditions and how to understand and deal with the fact that insects evolve to resist pesticides.
Evolution in conservation knowing how biodiversity works for examples helps us recover or prevent things like fishing stocks from being depleted and help us speed up their recovery.
Evolution in medicine is obviously huge as we know diseases evolve and become immune to treatment so knowing how they do this and knowing how to make cures or treatment that evolve is a vast benefit, obviously knowing exactly how a lifeform is built down to the base chemicals also helps immeasurably in dealing with genetic diseases or anomalies.
Using a evolutionary natural selection modal to find the optimum design in engineering projects quickly and efficiently has been going on for decades.
3:15
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BQhW4tx ... re=related
Ok the list is huge and i cannot post it all but some more are covered here superbly with examples if you feel like reading them and i highly recommend it as its a huge eye opener:
http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/bull.html
The field of study is vast and virtually endless as stuff is being developed and studied as we speak and it all hatched from that small seed that Darwin first planted.
Here are more links the one above is on it as well:
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrar ... opic_id=47
You misunderstand. I am talking about the market place of ideas which by all accounts Evolution hasn't sold well. 36 percent are indiffernt/undecided to the theroy and 25% flat out don't believe in it according to the Poll I linked too. Looking around they also had
this which breaks it down to Evolution-Creationism-Intelligent design with Evolution getting 16 percent.
According to the graph Evolution has doubled, creationism has dropped and ID has not moved. It could do with a bit better promotion and a faster climb would be nice to see but regardless Evolution is a proven and supported fact that cannot be disputed either rationally or scientifically.
The above links showing its already massive benefit to mankind that people do not realize all come from Evolutionary theory being proven right and researched presented well and in a understandable way i think would turn heads.
If they enacted such the academic ability would obviously worsen and such errors would self correct. In the end through I feel it should be a community's choice to determine their local curriculum.
Actually if you look at the educational standards of countries that adopt a theistic view it drops significantly along with human rights and other things.
I disagree. That trends will change or that a top down institution is the manner in which to win people over. To go back to the market place analogy its akin to forcing people to buy your product, I see it more sowing resentment then anything else.
You do not get a more top down institution than one that answers ultimately to a god but i understand your meaning.