Lesson video

Oh.

Gosh.

Oh, hi there.

Sorry, what am I like, being so vain.

I've got an interesting story to tell you about selfies, but I'm going to wait 'til the end of the lesson to keep you interested.

My name's Mrs. Cooper, and I teach a school in the West Midlands, as some of you might know if you've seen any of my previous videos.

Today, we are going to be looking at some philosophy, and we're going to be looking at some scientific sides of philosophy.

We're going to be discussing or looking at the theory of evolution.

So, rather than get too into it, let's have a look, a deeper look at what we're going to look at this lesson.

So, in this lesson, we will describe the design argument, describe the theory of evolution and evaluate how humans came into existence.

What you will need is two different coloured pens or pencils, and some paper.

When you're ready, go and find a nice quiet place to sit down where you won't be disturbed.

If you're not watching this video on your mobile phone, then please turn it off or put it somewhere else so you don't get distracted.

And we're ready to begin.

So, how did humans come into existence? Well, there's some key words that we need to discuss to think about this.

The first one is argument.

We're going to look at some arguments today, and I don't mean two people disagreeing with one another.

An argument in this sense is a set of reasons that help support an idea.

So, someone presents an argument for something.

My argument that Aston Villa is the best football team in the world is that.

Actually, I haven't got a good argument for that.

I'm sure some of you that loves football has, though, and is giving me lots of reasons why there's really good players and they've scored lots of goals, that would be giving some reasons why their idea is that Aston Villa is the best football team in the world.

Logic.

When we look at philosophy, which is what we're doing today and what we did in the previous lesson, we have to look at something called logic.

And this comes from a Greek word, logikos, which literally means sensible.

But if we unpick that a bit more, it's about a judgement which is based on reason.

So, having using your brain to think about whether something is reasonable, sensible, or not.

And we're going to do something today called inductive reasoning.

We're going to use evidence and logic to come to a conclusion.

So, just going to move myself over a little bit.

Shrink myself a little bit.

There we go.

So, some quick questions for you to check your learning of these key words.

An argument is, and what I'd like you to is point at the option that you think is the right answer.

So, an argument is, option one, logikos- sensible, a judgement or reason.

Option two, a set of reasons that help support an idea.

Option three, using evidence and logic to come to a conclusion.

Or option four, where two people disagree.

Point to the answer that you think is correct.

Now, that was a bit of a trick, and that was a bit of an extra easy question, because I realise as I've done this I'd already changed the colour of the words, so any clever clogs out there would realise I've already given you the answer to that question.

It was option two, an argument is a set of reasons that help support an idea.

Now, not so clever on this one, because it's still the wrong colour, but it's definitely not the right answer.

So, logic is option one, option two, option three, option four.

Point your finger at the correct answer.

It is option one.

Logic comes from the word, drives from the word logikos, sensible, judgement based on reason.

And the third question.

Inductive reasoning is, what? Where will the magic finger point? You were absolutely right, well done.

It's using evidence and logic to come to a conclusion.

So, hopefully, we are going to try and use these key words over the next few parts of the lesson.

Now, going to move myself over here again.

There we go.

So, next thing I'll ask you to do is pause this video to complete the task.

I'm not going to read it to you, because you are a very mature person, I'm absolutely sure.

We've got to know each other over the last couple of lessons.

Pause the video, read through the questions.

If you're feeling a little bit spicy or a little bit confident, then you can choose the challenge of the one chilli pepper, or you can accept my double chilli challenge and do the two chilli peppers.

Your choice.

When you're ready, pause the video and complete the tasks.

Okay, now I'm going to find myself a little bit bigger here so I can explain the next thing that we're going to do.

So, when you're ready, have a look at the four pictures.

Just in case you need some clarification, we've got a diagram of the inside of an eyeball, how lovely.

We have got the inside of a pocket watch.

This might be something that we're not so familiar with these days, because a lot of people don't even have watches, they tend to use their phones.

But we've got a pocket watch, so you can see what it looks like inside, and it's incredibly clever and intricate.

We have got a fingerprint, and we have got a diagram of the water cycle.

So, pause the video and just write down, jot down on your piece of paper, what do you think those things have in common? Right, so, how did you do? Don't worry if you didn't get the right answer, because actually, lots of different ideas in philosophy, as long as you can explain your ideas, they can still all be the right answer, so don't worry too much about that.

This, however, is my answer, and this is the point I was trying to get to.

So, my answer is an eye, a watch, a fingerprint and a water cycle all have many parts that all work together to achieve a purpose.

Therefore, they don't seem like they could have come about by chance, they appear that they've been designed.

Now, there was a philosopher called William Paley, who had an extended version of this argument.

Remember we talked about an argument at the beginning, which is a series of reasons that lead to a logical conclusion.

So, Paley said that logically, if you look at the world, if you imagine you're walking along one day, walking across the field and you find a watch, a pocket watch in a field.

And when I'm talking about a watch, I'm not talking about an iWatch or whatever, very different when it's digital, but like the pocket watch that we had in the slide, a couple of slides previously, you could see that if you'd look in the back of it, you've got all these little cogs that move the next cog that move the next cog, they were all intricately designed to make the hands on that clock face move.

Now, what he said was, if you find, if you've just found a watch, something as complicated as that in a field, you would not assume that it had just grown there.

You wouldn't assume that it just appeared out of nowhere.

You would assume, wouldn't you, that it had been designed by someone.

Now, Paley said, if you look at all the complexities of all the things that are in nature, it is the same thing.

That, in fact, nature is so complex, it can't have just happened by chance.

It must have been designed by someone.

Things work too well together.

The water cycle works too well together.

Each person's fingerprint is so unique that not one person in the entire planet has the same fingerprint.

Surely, if things were by chance, then there would be two people on the planet that have the same fingerprint.

But in fact, even identical twins don't have the same fingerprint.

So Paley argued that the uniqueness and the complexity of humans mean that must have been designed, must have had a designer.

Now, let's look at this argument a little bit more closely.

Let me shrink myself so I can fit here.

There we go.

So.

Here I am.

When you look at something like a watch, you will see that it is very complicated, with lots of parts.

Complex things with parts need to have been designed by somebody.

That's the assumption we make from all the experience we have in life.

Therefore, the watch must have a watch maker.

That's logic.

The world is very complex and intricate, like a watch.

Therefore, the world has a designer, and this designer, it would make sense using our inductive reasoning, must be God.

Now, next, I am going to get you to pause the video, read the task that I've given you there, and when you have finished, you can un-pause.

And remember, if you're feeling very confident on this topic, you might want to try one of my chilli challenges.

Are you feeling very spicy? Are you feeling very, very spicy? So, how did you do? Here's my answer.

What I'd like you to do is if you take a different kind of pen, you can have a go at marking your own work.

Now, I'm going to let you read my answer.

I've highlighted some of the key words in there to help you think about things that you might not have included.

And what I'd like you to do is go, use a different coloured pen, and make any changes that you wish to improve your work.

You may wish to pause the video to make these changes.

Okay, so, we've talked about a bit of the philosophy, a philosophical argument.

We're now going to look at a scientific theory.

So, does the theory of evolution prove that the universe wasn't designed? Let's have a look at the evidence.

Okay.

What I'm going to do, I'm going to briefly explain to you the theory, what a theory, yes, a theory, it is a theory, because it is something scientific that is trying to explain something.

So, I'm now going to explain to you the theory of evolution, and I'm going to try and use these key words that you can see on the slide.

So, bear in mind while you're listening to my explanation, you might want to try and jot down what these words mean.

So, the theory of evolution has been around for quite a long time, but it started, the first proper formulation of the theory of evolution, started with someone called Charles Darwin.

He discovered, when he went to somewhere called the Galapagos Islands, that there were lots of different species of animals that he'd never seen before.

This led him to think that many of these species also had similar species that he had seen before.

So, he'd seen birds, but he wasn't seeing the same birds, because the climate in the Galapagos Islands was different to anywhere he'd been before.

And he started to reason and use his logic to say that there were different animals in different environments.

This started him thinking about why are there different species in different places? What he came up with was this.

Evolution occurs because of natural selection.

Natural selection is a process where organisms produce more offspring and they're able to survive in their environment.

So, essentially, whether it is a polar bear, whether it is a flea, whether it is a human, we, generally, as species, will produce a lot.

And part of nature is not everyone will survive, and we know that sadly, that people do die, and it's usually people die if they are born with abnormalities or things about them that make life more difficult.

So, for example, if you were born with only one leg, well, in this day and age, there would be lots of things to help you with your disability.

If you'd been born millions of years ago with one leg, it might not have helped you so much in being able to hunt and gather your food and things.

So, it would have already put you off a disadvantage to some other people.

So, therefore, it's usually the strongest and the fittest that survive.

And they are the ones that go on to reproduce.

Those who aren't fit will not survive long enough to reproduce.

Now, because the species that have the good, strong genes, or what we call DNA, will then reproduce and pass this on to their offspring.

And this, essentially, is the idea of the fittest surviving.

That is natural selection.

Natural selection kind of suggests that if you were born not as strong as something else in an environment, and there's only enough food for one person, that the strongest and fittest one will be the one that survives and has it.

If you've ever watched The Hunger Games, I guess this is a really extreme example of Darwinism.

The idea that, actually, all of the tributes have to go and fight to the death, and it's the fittest one that will survive to win.

And that is essentially life itself.

It's always the fittest that survives and carries on.

So, an example of this to explain, and this is the reason why I've put a monkey on a typewriter, to try and explain to you why, in a sense, while it is about the fittest surviving, it is also about having a real element of chance in there.

If you got a thousand monkeys in a room on typewriters, they would keep tapping away and saying lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of different words.

And for many of them, it would be LMNOPQ, che, cha, SPVBB.

But one of them, out of those thousands, if you left them for a year, will have spelt out the word Shakespeare at some point.

One of them will probably have spelt out the word evolution at some point, but it won't be because those monkeys have learned to spell.

It will be purely by chance, that if you've got that many of them and they're tapping away for that amount of time, by chance, one of them is going to write the word evolution or Shakespeare.

In the same way, lots of different species reproduce and reproduce and reproduce.

The ones that reproduce with mutations that don't fit their environment will surely not survive.

And the ones that happen to fit in with the environment they're in will survive.

So, while in a sense, it's not total chance, because it is about being strong, it is chance that every possible variation of a species at least has some time on Earth.

And therefore, there is no complex, intelligent design, as this theory suggests.

Now, let's see how well you were listening to my explanation for evolution, then.

So, true or false.

True or false.

Charles Darwin first described the theory of evolution.

That's kind of in the middle.

His granddad was actually one of the first ones, but I didn't explain that to you on the first slide.

So, if you've gone for that, I think I give you a mark.

Okay, true or false, true or false.

The Selfish Gene is a book about a selfish person called Gene.

Now, once again, I didn't tell you the answer to this question.

So, The Selfish Gene is a book written by a evolutionary biologist called Richard Dawkins.

And he has also written about evolution, but he has written about that much later on, so he's written about it in this century, in fact, he's still alive, and he works at the University of Oxford.

And true or false, true or false, true or false.

Evolution is a theory that we were all born as monkeys.

No.

Quite often, people say that we, when they're asked to explain evolution, say, "Well, we were born as monkeys, or we evolved from monkeys." Okay.

Can we go back to the picture on this slide? Okay.

And you can see, I'm going to use my pointer now, that there are monkey-shaped creatures here.

It doesn't go straight from a monkey to a human, there were lots of, or homosapien, if you want to use the correct terminology, there were lots of things that happened in between.

And there are, there's Neanderthals, which we found their skeletons, so we know that there were, it was like the pre-human.

There's something also called the missing link, which is essentially, we haven't really found the skeleton for the missing link, but we reckon, well, scientists think that there was this person that wasn't quite a Neanderthal, wasn't quite a human, based on the size of their skull, based on their bones, based on how their body was.

It's not quite a human skeleton, but it's not a Neanderthal either, and it's definitely not a monkey.

So, we didn't evolve from monkeys because, in fact, it has taken millions of years of evolution.

So, when I described this process, what I didn't say was, actually, this happens over a very, very long amount of time, and a very slow amount of time.

And in fact, the monkey analogy helps to explain that.

It's not like, a monkey by day two in their room full of monkeys has written Shakespeare, it will have taken a year, if not longer.

In the same way, monkeys might have been around a lot longer than humans, but there were a lot more stages of evolution between humans and monkeys.

Okay.

So, again, I would like you to pause the video, read through my tasks.

There are some questions to help you.

And if you feel lucky and you're feeling good, have a go at my chilli challenge, So, how did you do? Remember to read through, and in a different pen, make any changes to your slide, or to your piece of paper, even.

Remember, you can pause this video if you need more time.

Now, the last slide, the last chilli challenge question that I gave you was does the theory of evolution prove that the world was not designed? And I'm going to go through this answer with you.

So, on the one hand, it could be argued that the theory does not support the argument of intelligent design, because evolution is a process in which both good and bad DNA are formed, but only the good DNA survives.

This suggests that we, as humans, exist by chance, rather than by design.

On the other hand, it could be argued that evolution is a theory which can never fully be proved, because once again, it is a theory, and there is nobody that has been around the billions of years that this planet has.

Now, before I end this lesson, don't forget to complete the quiz.

It's only about five questions, and you will smash it.

Now, one last thing I want to talk to you about and give you some final arguments against intelligent design.

And these are based on something called the Darwin Awards.

Let's see if I can make my face a bit bigger.

There we go.

Okay, so.

Some of you may have heard of the Darwin Awards before.

So, if we're going to continue to believe in this idea of intelligent design, I'm going to give you some evidence to the contrary that might, in fact, support evolution.

And it definitely is not survival of the fittest in these examples that I'm going to give to you.

So, the first one was somebody called David Monk.

He stole a protective mat that covers the barriers in a ski resort.

Now, these protective mats were at the bottom of a great big, long ski slope.

Now, in honesty, in all likelihood, he'd been out drinking, and this is a terrible result of what can happen if people intoxicate their body with things.

So, he went out and he stole the covering mats from the ski slope.

He then hiked up to the top of the hill, hurled himself down, using the barrier as his ledge, and unfortunately, slammed straight into the barrier that now had no protective mat.

Unfortunately, David died.

The other thing I was going to talk to you about, and I told you that I was going to explain something about selfies by the end of this lesson, in 2018, a shocking 253 people died when taking selfies.

Now, if you look at the fellow in the shark photo, I'm not terribly surprised.

Hopefully you've learned something today and you've enjoyed the lesson.

And I hope to see you again for some of my other lessons.

Thanks for listening, thanks for watching.

Bye.