creationists vs NBC

From
Date
Re:  Tom Kellogg's post:

Well, I am glad they didn't like it.  I guess no one who thought about it did.

As I said, it was the way they treated science, not the material, that we
should address.  I agree with Tom that the creationists are best dealt with
elsewhere.

He wrote:
>My Paleo course features a section on
>Creationism and I find one of the best ways to
>show students how unscientific Creationism
>really is, is to have them read some of the
>Creationist "literature".

I teach an freshman seminar on Creation vs Evolution.  In addition to
literature, I usually get a creationist to come into the class and give a
lecture, shortly after I go over the differences between science, religion,
and pseudoscience.  The non-science methods of data selection, rewriting
history, appeal to authority, etc., that I explain, are obvious in the
lecture.  No one goes away convinced of creation.  On the other hand, no
one goes away thinking evolution is correct either.  They all go away
pretty much thinking about the issue as they did emotionally when they came
in.  But they do know the difference between science and the others.

Jere

Jere H. Lipps, Professor and Director
Department of Integrative Biology and
Museum of Paleontology
University of California
Berkeley, California 94720 USA

Voice:  510-642-9006.  Fax:  510-642-1822.
Internet:  jlipps@ucmp1.berkeley.edu
WWW:  http://ucmp1.berkeley.edu