Title: keeping the faith
I hope that, when forwarded, these two
e-mails contribute to
progress by joining two different groups that sometimes appear
to fight against each other (maybe they see rising topics that
are
much more interesting than changing
school curricula).
While I support discussion of the creationist/ID vs. evolution
topic on Paleonet, I do think that it is a waste of effort to
approach the creationist and intelligent design camps as if they
would ever be reconciled by force of logic to allowing
evolution (and, by extension, historical geology) to be taught in
public schools.
Most of the contributions to this discussion of late begin
implicitly with the clause "If they would just listen to reason
and understand that ..."
Friends, that's not going to happen.
Reasonable believers like Mr. Hosier, Wheaton-educated
evangelicals, mainstream Protestants, Unitarians/Universalists, and
Jesuits are willing to enter into those kinds of conversations.
Fundamentalists Christians (or Muslims or Jews, for that matter) are
simply not prepared to (1) consider certain information to be
hypothetical and (2) to consider metaphysical argument to be on par
with scientific argument; it is above it and that's that.
As far as I can tell the intelligent design argument has been
hijacked by (1) the New Age community (much as the Gaia hypothesis has
been) and (2) by the creationist community because that whole
"creation science" thing just didn't float. I'm sure
that there are perfectly well meaning and reasonable proponents of
intelligent design out there. The proposal is simply not ready
for prime time and the presentation is being muddied by the repeated
hijacking and co-opting of the message.
What we, as representatives of the academy, have to concentrate
on is developing pithy, interesting, integrated and (dare I say it)
fun curricula for the teaching of evolution and historical geology at
the secondary school level. Right now historical geology is
usually taught as "one damn thing after another", which is
about as exciting as sitting on a one-way street and watching the
traffic go by. Evolution does not fare any better.
At this point the defense of high school earth science and
evolution curricula is about as spirited as the defense of the
cafeteria coffee and for the same reasons. Curricula must be
developed that integrate the development of ideas about evolution and
the history of the earth with the development of ideas in other
disciplines in both the sciences and the "arts".
It is pointless to explain to a 14 year old how 19th century
Europeans changed their understanding of the earth history if that kid
(1) has never thought about how he thinks about time or
history, (2) had no idea how 19th century Europeans thought about
human history or time, and (3) has no clue what any of this has to
do with the price of beans.
What I'm driving at is that we should not be afraid of
incorporating "non-science" elements into the science
curriculum. Science itself has not operated in a cultural
vacuum. Ideally, it should, at least according to some schools
of thought, but it hasn't and it won't, so that should be acknowledged
in the way it is taught.
If one really believes in the power and elegance of the
scientific perspective, then one will allow the 'heretics' into the
'church' ... if you catch my drift.
Sincerely,
Bill
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William P. Chaisson
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
University of Rochester
Rochester, NY 14627
607-387-3892