Evolution is not something to "believe"...

... it is science that ought to be taught and learned. In case you missed this, as I did, from Patricia J. Williams' column in the February 21st issue of The Nation:

If Singapore, China and Hong Kong are producing a greater number of students with musical proficiency and excellent test scores, it's because they have made huge public investments in education. They make musical instruments available to students - as the United States once did in the first part of the twentieth century. They have teachers certified in the subjects they teach - as was the case in Russian schools during the Sputnik era. "Westerners" are not nearly as lacking in work ethic as Chua maintains; but you don't get to Yale if your elementary school has no books. You don't rank first in the world in science if, as in the United States, 60 percent of your biology teachers are reluctant to teach evolution - and 13 percent teach creationism instead.

Notably quotable

I am breaking my post-break silence with this observation from The Economist (March 20):

The doubters tend to focus on specific bits of empirical evidence, not on the whole picture. This is worthwhile - facts do need to be well grounded - but it can make the doubts seem more fundamental than they are. People often assume that data are simple, graspable and trustworthy, whereas theory is complex, recondite and slippery, and so give the former priority. In the case of climate change, as in much of science, the reverse is as at least fair a picture. Data are vexatious; theory is quite straightforward.

Although this comment describes the controversy surrounding climate change today, I think it applies to so much more - including human biological evolution and "intelligent design," not to mention the persistence of the fallacy of biological "race." The theory of evolution is elegant and the data tedious. Why is there an assumption that it should be otherwise?