Re: paleonet Fwd: an article on ID

[Bill Chaisson/Deirdre Cunningham <chaisson@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Title: Re: paleonet Fwd: an article on ID

Here is  an article published in the Phi Delpha Kappan that is well worth reading - One, Nation, Under the Designer - a look at the Wedge and Intelligent Design.

For your enjoyment:  http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/k_v86/k0412ter.htm

This article has a few suggestions on what biologists and paleontologists can do and a lot of useful references.   Intelligent design is coming your way soon, so be prepared.

Thanks to Prof. Lipps for forwarding Mark Terry's article.  I didn't know that the ID movement was so ... evangelical.

Terry notes:

But the ID folks -- especially those from the Discovery Institute -- make headway almost everywhere they go, because not only students and parents but teachers themselves are so poorly educated about science in general and about religion, philosophy, the history of ideas, and evolution that they have no ready defenses against the attack.

That students, parents and teachers are "poorly educated in science in general" is quite a slam and, in my experience, true.  So it is a bit dissonant for Terry to go on to suggest that teachers and parents go on to do all this reading and committee-joining.

In his list of suggestions Terry states:

Oddly, if religion could be accorded a position of greater respect and importance in our humanities curricula, it could well be less threatening -- even to fundamentalists -- for students to learn in their science courses what scientists are up to.

It is my understanding that fundamentalist Christians respect no religion but their own.  Furthermore, they respect no cultural perspective other than their own.   "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other.  Ye cannot serve both God and Mammon." (Matthew 6: 24)

He states further:

In the end, shouldn't it to be possible for fundamentalists, mainstream believers, agnostics, and atheists to have a rich understanding of, let us say, Islam, Buddhism, or any religion? It is possible to understand a great deal about these religions without adopting their belief systems. Likewise, both believers and nonbelievers could have a rich understanding of what evolutionary researchers are up to.

I find the implied equation of the understanding of science with the comparative study of religions to be troubling.  Evolution theory is not a 'belief system' in the same way that Islam or Buddhism or Christianity is.  To present it as such is disingenuous and when the brighter students figure out that they have been misled, they will not be happy about it.

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William P. Chaisson
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
University of Rochester
Rochester, NY  14627