Title: RE: paleonet It just keeps coming, in the US, Brazil, UK,
I'm
sorry if I gave the impression that I was mixing the two terms. I realize
that some evangelicals do not hold a fundamentalist view of religious
doctrine. And I do not think that evangelical Christians who support the
teaching of Evolution and the Big Bang pose a problem to science education in
the US. However, I would have to say that many, in fact, statistically
most, of the evangelicals today also have a fundamentalist view of religion,
hence the, albeit sloppy, interchangability of terms. For many political
scientists, the two are almost statistically indistinguishable in terms of their
attitudes about cultural questions (i.e abortion, prayer in school, gay
marriage, evolution/ID, flag-burning, etc.). Granted, many evangelicals do
not like getting lumped together with the fundamentalists, but they are all part
of this, our fourth, major religious revival in the US. The trend in most
political science literature is to look at the greater evangelical movement and
then to split the fundamentalists apart from that.
As for the space race, I should probably clarify. I was
referring to the push for science education that resulted from President
Kennedy's 'race to the moon.' That 'race,' while steeped in Cold War
symbolism, had a profoundly positive effect on scientific education in
this country. I was merely drawing
the comparison of that postivie effect with the possibility of a negative one of
equal measure if ID gets equal time in some states, Big Bang is not
taught, and NSF continuously gets cut. For whatever the cause of
either of these actions in our K-12 educational system, the results will be felt
further in time than the present political cycle. I was just wondering if
and how that might affect the US stature in the world of scientific
research? Will there be a "brain drain" from Red States to Blue
States? or from the US to other countries? Already, we are seeing an
exodus of stem cell researchers out of the US to other countries who allow
better access to all stem cell lines currently available. If biotech is
supposed to be one of the future great technologies, what impact will this
have? I was just trying to understand the global and long term
ramifications of this.
Cheers,
Lisa
-----Original Message-----
From: paleonet-owner@nhm.ac.uk
[mailto:paleonet-owner@nhm.ac.uk]On Behalf Of Bill Chaisson/Deirdre
Cunningham
Sent: Wednesday, February 02, 2005 10:31 AM
To:
paleonet@nhm.ac.uk
Subject: RE: paleonet It just keeps coming, in the
US, Brazil, UK, Turkey, etc.
The
cover story of this week's Time Magazine profiles the major leaders in
the Evangelical movement (mostly in the US). It is a very interesting
read.
My
question is this: how much damage does the impact of religious
fundamentalism (i.e. not teaching Evolution or the Big Bang) do to
science (and K-12 education) in the United States?
One of the scientists quoted in the New York Times article is an
evolution supporter and an evangelical Christian. Fundamentalists are a
subset of evangelicals and not synonymous with them. Evangelicals
central tenet is that they should actively spread the word of Jesus to pretty
much all people that they encounter. Fundamentalists are the ones who
absolutely refuse to interpret the Bible any other way but literally.
Well, 'literally' in their own terms and with their own Bible.
Will
it have a negative impact equal to how the space race of the 60's had a
positive one?
The space race was a continuation of the imperialist impulse that began
to mobilize Western governments/economies in the 14th century with the race to
'the Indies'. As such the Church (only one then!) was 100% behind
it.
In the above sense the space race did not challenge our species idea of
who or what we were, why we were here on this planet or how we got to where we
are. Evolution does all of that. Hence the objections from some of
the religious.
Does this impact anyone else other than the US? I guess
it is the larger picture which interests me most.
It will have an impact where ever religious fundamentalists (of any
stripe) have the ear of central governments and populate the board rooms of
powerful corporations.
Bill
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
William P. Chaisson
Adjunct
Assistant Professor
Department of Earth and Environmental
Sciences
University of Rochester
Rochester, NY
14627
607-387-3892