Challenging Evolutionary Dogma in Biology Class

Thursday, 21 July 2016 00:00

Challenging Evolutionary Dogma in Biology Class - Instructions

Written by RMCF Admin

Student Instructions

A majority of high school biology classes use a certain text; namely, Biology by Miller and Levine. (currently 2014 edition). This webpage provides a database of scientific questions, to be asked by students, in response to evolutionary statements selected from the Miller/Levine text book (one page per sound byte). The questions track the book’s outline by page number, and students are hereby encouraged to ask the question in class about the content of the current lesson, and then hand the teacher a printout of the appropriate page.

For example, in Chapter 1.3 on the nature of life, p.19, the statement:

“Over generations, groups of organisms evolve, or change over time. Evolutionary change links all forms of life to a common origin more than 3.5 Billion years ago.” [emphasis added]

might evoke the question:

If evolution means change, why do so many organisms never change (called ‘stasis’), such as the so-called “living fossils”? e.g., horseshoe crab (445 My), coelacanth (400 My), stromatolites (3.5 Billion Years, etc.)

The documentation would include the following quote:

We know that “Stasis is the single-most compelling fact of the fossil record” (Niles Eldridge, Fossils, Nevraumont, 1991, p. 44).

Each item on the Challenging Evolutionary Dogma in Biology Class page is a standalone .pdf document, identified by the page number in question, and contains a reference (and quote) from the textbook statement being challenged. Each question can be downloaded for the student’s use in class by merely clicking on its title in the index.

The goal of this website is to equip students to question the evolutionary dogma disseminated by the textbook Biology, in a statement-by-statement fashion, as they come up in class. Such activity is encouraged by the textbook itself, when it states the following:

“Good scientists are skeptics which means they question existing ideas and hypotheses, and they refuse to accept explanations without evidence (p.10).”

Students are therefore justified in challenging evolutionary explanations for life’s design and complexity without supporting evidence.

Please click here to go back to the questions page.

Published in Challenging Evolutionary Dogma in Biology Class

Challenging Evolutionary Dogma in Biology Class

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