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Hi Ray (and All)! Please accept my apologies for sounding like I'm in the classroom. The last thing I want to do is insult anyone's intelligence. So many people don't recognize what for me is a very major difference in thinking, though, that I feel compelled to bring it up. I make a great effort to help my students understand this: Belief requires no facts, just faith. As a scientist--like anyone who simply examines the evidence, I need not *believe* in biological evolution; I *accept* it and I *know* it, from the overwhelming facts that exist. We have fossil evidence of it, DNA evidence of it, archaeological evidence of it, and now we can *watch it occur*--something we couldn't do very well a few decades ago. Most of us who teach university-level courses no longer use the term "evolutionary theory" because it's confusing or misleading. (A theory is an explanation, but no more than that until it is supported by factual evidence.) We teach evolutionary science. Nothing we teach in science is a matter of opinion, it's a matter of facts. Again, belief doesn't enter the picture. As far as the statistic of only 39 percent of Americans "believing" in evolution, that figure certainly is not representative of the hundreds of students I've had over the past decade and a half. Per my experience, the number of university students (again, those in my classes) who accept evolutionary science as fact is closer to 80 percent.--maybe higher That figure might be lower on the first day of a freshman class, but by the last day they've examined the facts for themselves and drawn their own conclusions, favoring knowledge. A minority, however, always will believe what they've been told to believe, regardless of solid evidence to the contrary. Belief is an amazingly powerful phenomenon, but we don't need it in terms of biological evolution. Human evolution has favored us with the ability for abstract thought, thus the ability to believe in that which we cannot perceive with our senses. Belief was a powerful survival tool for our ancestors. What they couldn't know, they had to believe. Today belief still is useful to us, of course, but we have supplanted it in many respects with knowledge: scientific knowledge, historical knowledge, the knowledge that comes from a wider range of personal experiences than our ancestors had. Our *scale of observation* is hundreds of thousands of times wider than that of our ancestors. Yet, many people today continue to believe what our ancestors believed. They will believe beliefs that have been passed on through millennia, even those the facts dispute them. Pretty amazing, when one thinks about it. Bottom line: Please let's not *believe* in biological evolution. That's like believing in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. In other words, if we must believe in something, believe those things for which we have no evidence. Otherwise, let's either accept the facts, or not. Be well. Scott Scott E. Antes Northern Arizona University Department of Anthropology PO Box 15200 Flagstaff, AZ 86011 ________________________________________ From: Parkinson's Information Exchange Network [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of rayilynlee [[log in to unmask]] Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 2009 1:50 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Darwin Film "Creation" Controversial only 39% of Americans believe in evolution; many people are hostile to the scientific method which is self correcting and this has negative consequences for those of us unlucky enough to have incurable diseases. Rayilyn Brown Director AZNPF Arizona Chapter National Parkinson Foundation [log in to unmask] From: Diane Wyshak Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 2009 1:04 PM To: [log in to unmask] ; ray ; don C. Reed ; chew Nee Kong Subject: Is Darwin Film "Creation" Too Controversial for American Audiences? « MrGreen.Biz http://mrgreenbiz.wordpress.com/2009/09/28/is-darwin-film-creation-too-controversial-for-american-audiences/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkins ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn