2) The Alabama State Board of Education adopted the following disclaimer on evolution to be put into every biology textbook used in public schools. Read the disclaimer in the box below and consider what it is saying: A Message from the Alabama State Board of Education This textbook discusses evolution, a controversial theory some scientists present as a scientific explanation for the origin of living things, such as plants, animals, 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. (White moths, for example, may “evolve” into gray moths.) This process is microevolution, which can be observed and described as fact. Evolution may also refer to the change of one living thing to another, such as reptiles into birds. This process, called macroevolution, 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.
There are many unanswered questions about the origin of life which are not mentioned in your textbooks, 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 the 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?
3) Now using what you’ve learned from Jurmain et al Ch.2, analyze this disclaimer and answer the following three questions:
What errors and misconceptions about evolution in the disclaimer are you able to identify? What can you say about the disclaimer authors’ understanding of the scientific method? Why do you think that school boards across the country adopt similar disclaimers for evolution, but never for other theories (such as plate tectonics or gravity)?