When, as a child, you first hear that "babies’ skulls are in pieces to allow the birth", it's natural to think, well it was for me as a 7 year old in my first human biology class.
"How does the baby know that it needs to get out through a passageway that's too narrow for it?"
The apparently unanswerable nature of this question, the idea that it's 'too impossible' for the baby to 'know' that, I feel gives rise to and is followed by the incorrect assumption of "somebody must have made it to work like that."
This is a natural and seemingly logical progression, for a child; a conclusion without much evidence is often required in order to progress through the learning process. Indeed, our whole education system depends on children just accepting a lot of what they are taught without evidence. Logarithmic tables, for example, were presented to me age 14 or so with the message, "You'll need these to work out the answers to the 'sums' we are about to learn". Not a word, that I can remember, about where the tables came from, how they came about, why they were right etc. I was supposed to just accept I needed them and move on. I passed maths so I must have but it illustrates how assumptions must be made all the time, so children learn to make 'accept it and move on' assumptions from day one.
Incorrect assumptions about the physical world are corrected naturally with the odd bump or scrape but incorrect psychological ones can linger and fester unchecked for, sometimes, one's entire life.
To continue the thought from the beginning, had I the awareness and understanding of genetics that we have available today, the answer, "Over millions of years of reproduction, only the babies with the genes to make the necessary skull shape have survived and those that did not have them died as a result, probably taking the mother with them", I may have realised that the baby doesn't 'know' it must squeeze out, natural selection has furnished it with the necessary 'sliding roof panels' because it's mother inherited the proper genes to make babies with sliding roof panels.
Wouldn't that knowledge of the natural then have obviated the incorrect super-natural assumption "somebody must have designed it to happen that way", thereby and consequentially removing a pillar of support for a supernatural cause (the 'god' notion)?
And so the question arises, if information can be delivered free of supernatural implication should it not be? As my post Oxford University Shame discusses it has been found that most humans have a genetic propensity to be dazzled by fantasy explanations so, I'd suggest, it's easy for 'us' to take inference that a super-natural cause may apply if there is implication for such in the teaching material.
So shouldn’t educators take this genetic propensity into account and assume the mantle of delivering information that's been vetted for supernatural implication?
If we are ever going to crawl out of this Bronze Age swamp, surely we need the newest of us, our next iteration, to be free of those ancient primitive superstitions. And, as far as I can see, the only way to achieve that is by properly furnishing them with the best facts we do have. And then, when they are standing firmly on the shoulders of 'our' knowledge, perhaps they will be able to see the solutions to questions we have not yet even considered or ones which religions have shrouded in 'god'; maybe even find a way to evolve towards what is, as all our 'good books' reflect, 'our' greatest wish of immortality.
Or, we could just stick with lovin de baby Jebus or suckin' up to ol' Mo' and watch medieval mediocrity and witchcraft gobble up our fabulous advances.
I didn't really know what I was writing when I started this, I just happened to be thinking about babies heads but now I've got to the end, I find I've lined up alongside a what appears, to me at least, to be a simple truism;
With this post in mind, check out what the ignorant are up to in the University College London.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2066795/Muslim-students-walking-lectures-Darwinism-clashes-Koran.html
This is one of the Too Many Questions
"How does the baby know that it needs to get out through a passageway that's too narrow for it?"
The apparently unanswerable nature of this question, the idea that it's 'too impossible' for the baby to 'know' that, I feel gives rise to and is followed by the incorrect assumption of "somebody must have made it to work like that."
This is a natural and seemingly logical progression, for a child; a conclusion without much evidence is often required in order to progress through the learning process. Indeed, our whole education system depends on children just accepting a lot of what they are taught without evidence. Logarithmic tables, for example, were presented to me age 14 or so with the message, "You'll need these to work out the answers to the 'sums' we are about to learn". Not a word, that I can remember, about where the tables came from, how they came about, why they were right etc. I was supposed to just accept I needed them and move on. I passed maths so I must have but it illustrates how assumptions must be made all the time, so children learn to make 'accept it and move on' assumptions from day one.
Incorrect assumptions about the physical world are corrected naturally with the odd bump or scrape but incorrect psychological ones can linger and fester unchecked for, sometimes, one's entire life.
To continue the thought from the beginning, had I the awareness and understanding of genetics that we have available today, the answer, "Over millions of years of reproduction, only the babies with the genes to make the necessary skull shape have survived and those that did not have them died as a result, probably taking the mother with them", I may have realised that the baby doesn't 'know' it must squeeze out, natural selection has furnished it with the necessary 'sliding roof panels' because it's mother inherited the proper genes to make babies with sliding roof panels.
Wouldn't that knowledge of the natural then have obviated the incorrect super-natural assumption "somebody must have designed it to happen that way", thereby and consequentially removing a pillar of support for a supernatural cause (the 'god' notion)?
And so the question arises, if information can be delivered free of supernatural implication should it not be? As my post Oxford University Shame discusses it has been found that most humans have a genetic propensity to be dazzled by fantasy explanations so, I'd suggest, it's easy for 'us' to take inference that a super-natural cause may apply if there is implication for such in the teaching material.
So shouldn’t educators take this genetic propensity into account and assume the mantle of delivering information that's been vetted for supernatural implication?
If we are ever going to crawl out of this Bronze Age swamp, surely we need the newest of us, our next iteration, to be free of those ancient primitive superstitions. And, as far as I can see, the only way to achieve that is by properly furnishing them with the best facts we do have. And then, when they are standing firmly on the shoulders of 'our' knowledge, perhaps they will be able to see the solutions to questions we have not yet even considered or ones which religions have shrouded in 'god'; maybe even find a way to evolve towards what is, as all our 'good books' reflect, 'our' greatest wish of immortality.
Or, we could just stick with lovin de baby Jebus or suckin' up to ol' Mo' and watch medieval mediocrity and witchcraft gobble up our fabulous advances.
"Here's your chastity belt & shut the fuck up!" - Any takers, ladies?
I didn't really know what I was writing when I started this, I just happened to be thinking about babies heads but now I've got to the end, I find I've lined up alongside a what appears, to me at least, to be a simple truism;
Proper education diminishes the need for us to make unnecessary incorrect assumptions.
With this post in mind, check out what the ignorant are up to in the University College London.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2066795/Muslim-students-walking-lectures-Darwinism-clashes-Koran.html
PEACE
Crispy
Crispy
Please leave a comment - Anything will do
The best communications are often,
THREE WORDS OR LESS
OR ONE OR MORE FINGERS!
The best communications are often,
THREE WORDS OR LESS
OR ONE OR MORE FINGERS!
