Title: paleonet Faith and skepticism
The discussion generated by Peter’s initial post has generated one of the more interesting discussion threads on Paleonet in a while. I must admit that sitting here in Canada I had not paid much attention to the resurgence of Creationism. This was in part because in Canadian Provinces education curriculum is set by each province, not local school boards as is the case in a large number of jurisdictions in the US, so there is not as much incentive for special interest groups to hijack local boards. That said the debate between faith and science is a real one here as well. In an interesting front page article in last Sundays Ottawa Citizen there were statistics that indicated that, as in the US, nearly 50 percent of Canadians did not believe in evolution either. I have recently, for the first time in 15 years teaching here at Carleton U., have personally bumped into the debate from fundamentalist students in a 350 student geologic history of climate change course that I teach (on the other hand this is the first time that I have had to teach such a large class so there may be a correlation). To complicate matters, and as we have seen in the discussion thread, there are significant numbers of paleontologists who have a ‘faith’ and have found ways to reconcile that with ‘science’. Considering the complicated nature of the debate and the policy implications for our field I think that all views, scientific, theological or otherwise are in the mandate of Paleonet. Thus in my opinion the dismissive comments of ‘JD’ on Peters summation are inappropriate.
Tim Patterson
--
Dr. R. Tim Patterson
Professor of Geology
Dept. of Earth Sciences
Carleton University
1125 Colonel By Drive
Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6
CANADA
PH: 613-520-2600 ex 4425
FAX: 613-520-2569
www.carleton.ca/~tpatters
On 2/25/05 2:00 AM, "James Davison" <jamesdavison@comcast.net> wrote:
To all,
this is a paleontology board, not a theological discussion. Let's restrict comments to science. -- JD
Peter & Nancy wrote: