Hello, my name is Abby Clemmons and i am a junior at Olathe North High School. My seventh hour is student naturalist, with Mr. Thompson. I am 16 years old, although my birthday is in a week. I am Highly involved with band. Music is my passion, and i hope someday to teach it. I play many instruments, primarily the trumpet. My trumpet's name is Mac Daddy. Yes, I name inanimate objects. I am also highly involved in theatre. I have been in every school production since seventh grade, and do community theatre to the side. I love to read, and write, and will be taking part in Mindburst staff this year. My favorite color is green, and my favorite food is Thai and Indian. I love animals, and nature. I like to paint and draw, although i am not very good at it. This is starting to sound really cliche and cheesy, and i really don't think a handful of words in a blog post can describe someone, so i suppose ill end with something important. I enjoy spending time with friends.
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Diversity: [di-vur-si-tee, dahy-]: –noun, the state or fact of being diverse; difference; unlikeness. Living in America today, we are blessed to have such diverse culture. As humans, we must learn to accept the differences in people, and explore options in life. People must be open minded to different ideas, theories, and questions that others might ask. Living in such a diverse culture presents many different views on all sorts of things. Topics are vigorously debated, discussed, and even argued over. Unfortunately, people often overlook information, and do not always know fully the topic they are exploring. Weather it is from ignorance or a simple lack of information, people have many different misconceptions over many different things. One of the most debated topics in our society is evolution.
Some misconceptions about evolution come from simple misunderstandings that come from school experiences, or other media. Other misconceptions are caused from lies, purposely directed to the misinformed reader’s mind, to compromise their view on the topic. What are some of these common misconceptions? There are many different arguments. The following are but a few of them:Many People claim that evolution has not been observed. If evolution in is a change in the gene pool of a population over time. This is proven to be true by many obvious visual things today, like bird’s beaks changing over time to adapt to their surroundings. Scientist over the years have looked at fossil records and put time in studying the changes taking place in them. To say evolution has not been observed would be very incorrect and an insult to all their hard work. Many claim that there is no way evolution could be observed because the changes must take place over thousands of years. As humans we can not see everything with out eyes. Just because we can not see air, does not believe that it is not there. In the same way, we do not have to see the changes in the earth over time, to know that they have taken place.
Another misconception about evolution has to do with transitional fossils. Transitional fossils are fossils that look like the form of an organism in its “in between” stage, meaning it would have characteristics ranging from both the organism before it had evolved and after, and even some of its own. There is nothing in the theory of evolution that says that these fossils can only have one line of descendents, or that the fossils can not go extinct once the new forms evolve. Saying there are no transitional fossils is a complete false statement. The book Origin of Species, although hard to make out completely because of erosion over time, shows thousands of these fossils. 
Some say that the theory of evolution says that life originated and evolution proceeds by random chance. This statement is far from true, and shows how misinformed so many people are. Although chance is relevant in evolution, this statement contradicts with the idea of natural selection. Natural selection is the process in nature by which, according to Darwin's theory of evolution, only the organisms best adapted to their environment tend to survive and transmit their genetic characteristics in increasing numbers to succeeding generations while those less adapted tend to become extinct. Therefore, natural selection in itself rules out that everything is random chance. By showing how harmful mutations only die out quickly in order for an organism to adapt and survive to its best ability, shows that it is not chance, but just the logical way things adapt. 
Many try and counter evolution by saying that it is only a theory and not a fact. What these people do not understand is that evolution has more than one meaning. Its strict definition is “a change in allele frequencies over time.” This definition is pure fact, showing that evolution is not only a theory. Now, what people could argue is that the theory of evolution is not a fact. This is true, but just goes to show how the idea of a theory is conveyed completely wrong. A theory is “a coherent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a class of phenomena.” Now, you might be saying “huh?” This definition basically means that the word theory does not have anything to do with lack of certainty. This shows how claiming that evolution is only a theory does not undermine it at all. One reason that a lot of people do not agree with evolution, is that they feel it contradicts their religious beliefs. This just goes to show how misunderstood evolution actually is. As mentioned before, evolution is an observed fact. This does not mean is undermines creationism. It only means that through studies, scientist have observed changes and put a name to them. No many can look outside their window and say that there are not changes in nature taking place before their eyes. Change is everywhere: with the seasons, in the weather, and in the way animals are changing to survive over time. Evolution is simply how things happen in nature.
By Abby Clemmons
Just For laughs:
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http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-misconceptions.html
http://darwinsbu.org/downloads/evolution_misconceptions.pdf
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq.php#a5
http://daltonator.net/durandal/creationism/misconceptions.shtml
http://www.utm.edu/departments/cens/biology/rirwin/391/391lecMisconc.htm
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