Matches in UGent Biblio for { ?s ?p Surveys have repeatedly shown that getting evolutionary theory across to students is a daunting task. Children and lay adults tend to hold convictions that are difficult to reconcile with evolutionary accounts and that often contradict them. They understand the natural world in terms of unchanging species essences (incompatible with evolution), and as a product of purposive design (incompatible with natural selection), explaining adaptations (‘design’) by invoking a designer. Religious accounts of the origin of species are thus more in line with these intuitive assumptions than with scientific theory. To make matters worse, creationist propaganda explicitly appeals to these cognitive predispositions, e.g. evolutionary change can only occur within ‘kinds’ or, if it looks designed, it is designed. Consequently, not only do educators face the difficult task of getting students to understand and accept a counterintuitive worldview, they also have to compete with religious explanations that exploit these very same intuitions.. }
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- aggregation abstract "Surveys have repeatedly shown that getting evolutionary theory across to students is a daunting task. Children and lay adults tend to hold convictions that are difficult to reconcile with evolutionary accounts and that often contradict them. They understand the natural world in terms of unchanging species essences (incompatible with evolution), and as a product of purposive design (incompatible with natural selection), explaining adaptations (‘design’) by invoking a designer. Religious accounts of the origin of species are thus more in line with these intuitive assumptions than with scientific theory. To make matters worse, creationist propaganda explicitly appeals to these cognitive predispositions, e.g. evolutionary change can only occur within ‘kinds’ or, if it looks designed, it is designed. Consequently, not only do educators face the difficult task of getting students to understand and accept a counterintuitive worldview, they also have to compete with religious explanations that exploit these very same intuitions.".