Why is evolution so controversial in the US? I mean...

Why is evolution so controversial in the US? I mean, in the rest of the world people who don't understand evolution are seen as mentally handicapped, yet in the US it's a non-trivial segment of the population.

Fundamentalism and Evangelism are seen as the norms here. Heck, we still have a beef with the Catholics even after all these years.
Bear in mind, each generation is instilled with a sense of fear of the unknown. Some of us don't even trust doctors or academia. The anti-intellectualism never truly went away here.

It isn't properly taught. I know I didn't understand it till I got to college. I don't really it ever being mentioned in biology, even the AP bio class I took but as a very basic sort of thing. I don't really remember it being talked about in freshman biology either. It wasn't till I took physical anthropology and mammalogy till we actually got into the nuts and bolts. Hell, one of the kids who graduated with me at a state school didn't even believe it was a thing, and he was our valedictorian (I graduated from a hick school in Texas because it was cheaper).

Part of it is teachers not wanting to deal with angry parents and indignant kids. So it's kind of self perpetuating.

I would also say it's used as a distraction to get people riled up politically. It's always framed as an us vs them argument, which is bullshit.

In the free world, people know but rarely understand evolution, desu. It's more like people think environment itself affects directly, for example, a rabbit living in a city would itself turn grey to match its concrete surroundings and asphalt. To claim that people understand evolution outside the US is a bit too strong statement.

This.

Most people don't understand evolution, including the majority of Veeky Forums posters.

People are still raised with the belief that the Bible is the only and absolute truth.
Parents refuse to let their children be taught the "Devil's work".
These people complain and raise such a stink in such large numbers that officials are forced to pander to them.
Even though it's holding the country back.

tldr; closed minded people have too much influence.

Yeah, I get questions like "if humans evolved from monkeys, how are there still monkeys?" a lot even here in the EU. It's just that evolution is not horribly simple to understand and schools really fail to teach it.

This

Evolution is such a hard concept to comprehend, not even biologists get it. Even after studying it for decades, people are still baffled and don't quite grasp it.

Fuck I don't know if I'm getting memed hard or people in here are serious.

Maybe schools are bad at teaching evolution where you guys are from, that doesn't sound unrealistic. But seriously evolution as a concept is not hard to understand at all.

I second this opinion.
It's pretty easy to understand.

I shit you not, the Kurzgesagt video better explains evolution than my high school textbook.

I mean, I managed to understand it back in high school, but the way it was presented was so convoluted it was stupefying. I supplanted my reading with a bit of Dawkins (because I was really interested in evolution) but most of my friends were like, "What the fuck is going on." and I couldn't blame them. The way it was taught was a mix of history, barely mentioning mutations in DNA (just calling it "variation") and somehow fucking up the explanation for natural selection.

I mean, I don't even know how it's possible to fuck up explaining natural selection, but my textbook's authors did it.

Imagine 10 different individuals from a species.

They're all different in some ways.

Some of these, due to their differences, can survive better in their environment.

Logically, those who survive will be able to create babies, and pass down their genes (the stuff which made them survive). The cycle repeats itself, and with every generation you have people who are better and better adapted to their environment.

There. Natural selection.

But my fucking high school textbook would make you think it's black magic.

What's funny is that creationist textbooks from when I was a wee lad actually described it quite accurately, minus the evolutionary aspect of course. They taught about "baramins" and stuff like that.
Also, the writers made sure to make a jab at scientists who disagree with them, or "darwinists" as they'd put it.

Evolution is not controversial in the US. Even Genesis chapter 1 poorly describes evolution. The only problem is bastions, and they dont exist in large numbers.

exactly and its just a thery, not a proven law

the truth is we just dont know if evolution is real

why? because it would take a million years to find out

it makes some sense, but doesnt answer everything

eg

why would so many land animals evolve when 90% of earth is covered by water?

why would predators evolve eyes that see light from the visible spectrum when x-ray eyes could see objects through walls OR inter red eyes which can see heat vision?

why is the human brain so much smarter than others of comparable size? if evolution is "fair" all animals with the same brain size should be just as smart, but clearly we are special.

lots of the science behind evolution is balongey too, like carbon dating, which is super super inaccurate to something like 3000 years, so their claims of billions of years are pure balongey.

>exactly and its just a thery, not a proven law

You're going to need bigger bait, etc

I nearly fell for it before you said something. I'm very easy to bait when it comes to people spouting bullshit.

Was about to point that out, too.

it's not controversial, it's just that evangelicals get a lot of power

A much more controversial thing is vaccines. People, on both sides, enjoy the right to deny them even if it goes against all logic. Same is true for climate change denial, free speech trumps all other motivations.

How exactly could it not make total and perfect sense. Evolution happens because some creatures obtain mutations that give them an advantage over other ones. They reproduce more and thus the mutation spreads.

Please explain how your schools fucked it up, I'm curious. Even the shitty mormon school I went to explained evolution accurately - though as a "theory".

It's not so much a lack of understanding as it is a clinging to the last straw. These people will say things like "Speciation has not been observed" which is technically true (except for some plants), the problem is that they think this is somehow an argument for their completely implausible creation myth.

>though as a "theory".
I'm not the guy you're replying too, but in science theory is the 'highest' form of scientific development. Facts are undusputable, but trivial. Theory is falsifiable, but from that follow non-trivial predictions about reality. A theory can never become a fact because that would undermine its unique predictive power and would render it a dogmatic interpretation of trivial constituents.

Pretty sure thats why he put it in quotes

Religious evolutioners (consciously or sub) tend to regard evolution as a causal agent, like a hidden hand that favors them above all else, rather than a hindsight narrative detailing a minor aspect of life.

"Evolution is a slow and shitty process, whether in nature or simulated on computers. No, it does not produce the best things possible, it gets stuck at dead ends a lot and produces redundant, inefficient, self-destructive structures." -- A. Non

Oh yeah, fucking this. I am always quite annoyed when people use scientific theories and models in their religious beliefs. "This just shows how god does it"

I swear, education regarding things like evolution would be so much better if you made kids print out the Wikipedia page and read it out loud in front of everyone else

And then take away the pages and make them summarize it

...
There should be a required class in HS where for an hour each day you watch those educational YouTube videos with the cute animations and voice overs

This is something I also wondered. The US education cant be this bad. Surely there are countries with worse systems. But the amount of evangelist and fundamentalists seems quite outstanding for a country like this. Other nations were also build on christianity and have a lot of religious people in it, but they are more moderate

Not really. Things would be better if teachers cared and allowed discussion of various ideas and logical thought in class.

What should be taught is how theories work. What makes a good theory, and how to compare theories through hypothesis. Then take opposing theories (evolution vs. creation), and see what their predictions are, what the evidence for both is, and which describes the world around us better.

That is how science works, not indoctrination. This isn't fucking women's studies.

Our schools taught what you described, but in a very shallow way. We didn't get into things like how speciation is a gradual shift in the genetic make up of populations or how that really occurs, evidence from the fossil records and experimentation and observation (for example the citric acid E. coli one or the peppered moths in London), or really even basic terms like fitness. How many times have you seen people use "survival of the fittest" and not had a damn clue what that actually means?

It isn't really taught in a way that fosters an actual understanding of the concept, so you get shitty ideas about "missing links" and species just popping into existence out of nowhere.

Or even just a basic conversation on how the whole idea of a species is flawed but useful.

The basic theory isn't hard to understand at all

No one is expecting normal people to understand it at the level of a biologist

I remember my teacher telling the famous story of Darwin and the Galápagos finches.
It was quite eye opening at the time and made the whole concept intuitive.

I thought it was just a joke and not bait, all those arguments are meme-tier stereotypical ones

Our booklearners deny evolution as well when it comes to IQ and sociobiology.

I suppose I misinterpreted it then. I figured that he meant to imply that the fact that it was taught as a theory somehow makes it less valuable. But you're probably right.

That picture doesn't seem quite accurate. Evolution is still one of the longest standing theories (at least its bare bones mechanics) in all of science. Even without religion it wouldn't be just a footnote.

It's not that people dont understand the idea so much as it is that they don't want to accept anything that would put their religion down any more in a country where they already think it's "under attack".

What do you accept from the same country that has the most overwhelmingly large percentage of climate change deniers and anti-vacciners.

A superpower like the US can not survive if every citizen was capable of critical thinking and reflection. It's better to have a few smart people and the rest being dumb, than most smart people and a few being dumb.

Take your pedophile cartoons back to .