Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Science Education

  • Why Talk about Evolution in Church?

    Watching recent commentary on the Answers in Genesis creation museum, that huge waste of $27 million designed to proved that dinosaurs lived with human beings and even were preserved on the ark has led me to believe that education on this subject in church and Sunday School is even more important than I thought.

    I do not believe the Museum glorifies God. It presents one rather lousy interpretation of Genesis, one that is at war with the facts, and in the long term will turn more people away from Christ by making Christians look as though they have no interest in honesty and integrity in science.

    There are two major problems that I see in terms of public education about science. The first is the quality of science education in public schools, which is not good, and the quality of the public’s knowledge about science in general, however acquired. Many people who claim to reject evolution, for example, reject a caricature of what is actually taught by professional scientists in the relevant fields. Often that rejection comes about because of conclusions drawn from evolution which are not part of the science at all. I’ve written about this before.

    A good, basic education based on the best scientific research available is essential. This is why I have regularly opposed the teaching of ID. My assessment of the scientific value of intelligent design (ID)–it has no value at all–is not the important thing here. The bottom line is that ID has not gone through the kind of rigorous research and testing required for a new scientific theory to be accepted as consensus science, which should be a prerequisite to its presence in high school science textbooks.

    But more importantly, I know that a very large number of Christians do accept the theory of evolution and are also very serious about their Christian faith. The problem is that very often they are quite vague both on what evolutionary theory is (see above), and on how it relates to their faith. The standard response to such a discussion is simply that they don’t take the Bible all that literally, but that leaves open the door for groups such as AiG to come in and claim that they represent the real “Bible believers.”

    It is not simply a matter of taking the language of Genesis less literally. One needs to carefully examine it to discover just what type of literature it is, and then interpret as one would normally interpret that type of literature. It is not just that AiG is taking Genesis literally; they are taking it as a form of narrative history. It’s not. Their interpretation is fundamentally flawed, and has created the huge clash they present between the findings of modern science and what they teach from the Bible. The clash is not necessary, however, if one simply deals with Genesis as what it is. (For introductory material, see my essays Genesis Creation Stories – Form, Structure, and Relationship and The Two Flood Stories. I link to many other essays from those posts.)

    When I try to talk to people in churches about creation and evolution, however, most are quite resistant, even when they accept evolutionary theory. It’s easier to be quiet and just hope that the extremists will go away. But many in the church need to know not only that pastors and teachers can accept the theory of evolution and still be Christians. They need to know how they do it. Too often I hear, “I don’t see the problem.” Well, having grown up young earth creationists–and I literally mean from the earliest memory I have of thinking of creation I was educated YEC–and having accepted evolutionary theory later in life, I do see the problem. Doctrines are stated in terms that seem to support the literal, narrative history view.

    Again, some have suggested to me that they don’t want to waste their time on such a non-spiritual issue. But here I agree with the young earth folks. Creation is an important spiritual issue. (For my view of a Biblical doctrine of creation, see the pamphlet God the Creator.) But even further Bible study is falling off in our churches today and people are losing Biblical literacy. Genesis provides an excellent workshop for teaching methods of Bible study and ways of discerning the literary genre of various passages. It can provide the foundation for a much more effective Bible study discipline for church members. Their Bible study will become much more enlightening when they understand how to handle various literary genres. What information can you get from them? What are they intended to convey? What value might they have other than conveying propositional truths?

    I think that we, as Christians, would do well to talk about this more, to preach it and to teach it in our Sunday School classes. And in spite of my own strongly held views, I do suggest that this happen no matter what your position. I no more want theistic evolution to become a Christian doctrine than I want young or old earth creationism to become enshrined in doctrinal statements. I think that we should use doctrinal statements to describe God’s relationship to us, and allow scientific study to determine how things work in the physical universe. I would be and have been perfectly willing to share Sunday School classes and even the platform with advocates for young earth creationism.

    But the discussion needs to get out in the open, especially in those mainline churches who tend to hope that such arguments will go away. If we in mainline churches are embarrassed by the creation museum, we need to get more vocal about how we understand science, our faith, and their relationship.

    Expect me to continue to be vocal on this issue for a long time to come.

  • Brownback on Faith and Science

    There have been quite a number of responses to Senator and presidential candidate Sam Brownback’s discussion of faith and science. These have varied from extremely favorable, from some Christians who think Brownback has managed an extraordinarily good balance between faith and science, while others are quite angry because Brownback has clearly injected faith into science.

    Having read his piece several times, trying to get past the probable political motivations, I have to say that I cannot join those who applaud this statement. Though I certainly do not believe that science can or should answer all questions, and faith plays a very strong role in my life, there is a clear line that should not be crossed. That line is crossed when we let faith determine something that should be determined purely by scientific evidence.

    The most blatant example of this problem can be seen in the creation museum. The sponsors of that museum believe that the earth is only 6,000 years old. This conclusion comes purely from scripture. More importantly they come from scriptural text which is clearly not designed to provide scientific information and has only a minimal historical content. Rather than allowing scientific study to determine what it is best able to study, young earth creationists come to a faith-based conclusion, and then impose it on the scientific evidence, no matter what happens.

    A better approach would be to let each element do what it does best. Genesis addresses meaning and the relationship of God to the universe, though even to understand those elements of the story one must be careful to understand the type of literature involved and why it was written. Genesis does not attempt to provide a scientific discussion. When people claim to discover wonderful, scientific things in Genesis, their example always involves taking a vague statement and claiming that it fits precise scientific data exceptionally well. But one can make such vague statements agree with almost any set of scientific data proposed. One would never derive the details from Genesis; they are not there.

    So where in Brownback’s statement does he cross this line? He starts out quite well:

    The heart of the issue is that we cannot drive a wedge between faith and reason. I believe wholeheartedly that there cannot be any contradiction between the two. The scientific method, based on reason, seeks to discover truths about the nature of the created order and how it operates, whereas faith deals with spiritual truths. The truths of science and faith are complementary: they deal with very different questions, but they do not contradict each other because the spiritual order and the material order were created by the same God.

    This statement uses appropriate words such as “complementary” for the questions addressed by science and by faith. But we already have the seeds of the problem here. Brownback asserts that faith and science can’t contradict one another. Yet if they are truly answering different questions, how could they contradict? If there are baseball games going on in two separate fields, one would hardly find it necessary to assert that the outfielders in one game can’t produce outs by catching balls from the other. We wouldn’t imagine that would happen. We would only make such a rule if we thought someone was going to try it.

    In this case, Brownback seems to be saying it’s OK for the questions to cross over, as long as they don’t contradict.

    People of faith should be rational, using the gift of reason that God has given us. At the same time, reason itself cannot answer every question. Faith seeks to purify reason so that we might be able to see more clearly, not less.

    In what way does faith seek to purify reason? If we would say that the goal of faith is to make a more open, more truth-seeking person, then I would find that acceptable, though many, many people of faith have done quite the opposite. Yet as a goal of faith (or better spirituality) I would regard that as good. But just what is it that faith is supposed to do to my reason that would make my scientific conclusions differ from those of an atheist?

    Unless one is first accusing a scientist who is an atheist of falsifying his conclusions, then there is no reason to assume that faith is purifying reason. I would like to think that my faith helps purify my reason, because I believe that my faith helps deal with my motivations and with who I am. But for all of those who read what I write and see what I do my words and actions–the effectiveness of my reason–can be judged by what I produce.

    Faith supplements the scientific method by providing an understanding of values, meaning and purpose. More than that, faith — not science — can help us understand the breadth of human suffering or the depth of human love. Faith and science should go together, not be driven apart.

    Again, I ask, in what way does faith supplement the scientific method? This is one of those statements that sounds balanced and well considered, but doesn’t seem to have much meaning. Is there something about Kenneth Miller’s science (he’s a Catholic) and the late Stephen Jay Gould’s (he was agnostic) that is different? Is one a better scientist than the other? Fit any scientist who is also a believer into the first slot and any who is not into the second, and tell me where it is that faith improves the functioning of the scientific method for the scientists of faith. (I do note some cases in which faith, however little I like the particular version involved, does harm to the science.)

    The question of evolution goes to the heart of this issue. If belief in evolution means simply assenting to microevolution, small changes over time within a species, I am happy to say, as I have in the past, that I believe it to be true. If, on the other hand, it means assenting to an exclusively materialistic, deterministic vision of the world that holds no place for a guiding intelligence, then I reject it.

    And here we see the problem. The questions of microevolution and macroevolution may be debatable. Personally I think that the distinction is simply a technical one. People who believe in microevolution but not macroevolution usually simply don’t comprehend either one. Yet whatever they are both are processes of the natural world and should be studied as such. So having said that science and faith are complementary and can’t contradict, Brownback immediately asserts (though without admitting it) that they do contradict, and that when they do, he’s going to take faith.

    Biologists will have their debates about man’s origins, but people of faith can also bring a great deal to the table. For this reason, I oppose the exclusion of either faith or reason from the discussion. An attempt by either to seek a monopoly on these questions would be wrong-headed. . . .

    Again, we contradict the “complementary idea. What precisely is it that people of faith, in other than their role as scientists if such they are, have to contribute to origins? They can discuss the spiritual values of humanity, but there will be no new interpretations of fossils, or of genetic clocks, or of the relationships between lineages that are provided by faith. All of those elements of understanding origins will be managed by scientists doing science.

    I believe the “monopoly” language is to be read as favoring the incorporation of intelligent design creationism in classrooms. Of course science should have a monopoly on determining scientific questions. That’s how science works. Senator Brownback is a politician trying to trade on people’s dislike of the word “monopoly.” Truth, however, needs a monopoly. Compromising intelligence and stupidity doesn’t produce greater intelligence, it produces more confusion.

    While no stone should be left unturned in seeking to discover the nature of man’s origins, we can say with conviction that we know with certainty at least part of the outcome. Man was not an accident and reflects an image and likeness unique in the created order. Those aspects of evolutionary theory compatible with this truth are a welcome addition to human knowledge. Aspects of these theories that undermine this truth, however, should be firmly rejected as an atheistic theology posing as science.

    “An image and likeness unique in the created order” goes beyond both science and faith. We have a Bible addressed to humans, and humans are (shockingly!) the subjects. That doesn’t mean that we are unique in the whole created order. We don’t even know whether there is life in the rest of the universe and if so whether there are other intelligent species that hold a similar position in their ecosystems.

    When he continues that “[a]spects of these theories that undermine this truth, however, should be firmly rejected” we understand that despite any lip service given to science, Senator Brownback places his particular faith, and his particular doctrines of that faith over and above the scientific evidence. The origins of human beings are to be discovered by science. The relationship of human beings to God can be discussed in religion. But if my conclusions in religion deny the evidence of science, then I’m crossing the boundary.

    As a scientist who comes to realize that the earth must be older than 6,000 years must adjust his understanding of Genesis accordingly, so a scientist who has based some aspect of man’s relationship to God on a scientific conclusion that is superceded by a better one must adjust his understanding accordingly. To do anything else would be to deny the revelation of the creator as given directly in his creation. But in this case, the most important thing to note is that such a person is not supporting science.

  • Rejecting a Creationist Museum Challenge

    In A Tale of Two Museums the Evangelical Ecologist gives the following challenge to those of us who are Christians and accept the theory of evolution. (Yeah, that’s why we use “theistic evolutionist”–it takes less time to type!):

    But clearly it’s not a scientific method that’s being debated here, though I suppose that’s part of it. At the root of the difference between these two museums is an infinitely divergent world view. One museum unabashedly acknowledges God as Creator and the Bible as a competent standard to establish the context for man’s place in the history of the biosphere. The other, not.

    So to those of you espousing the evolutionary view, before you condemn in toto what the folks in Kentucky are doing, I offer this challenge: Gather like-minded souls together, raise $25 or so million dollars, and build a museum on a Biblically-based evolutionary model that expressly brings mankind closer to the Creator rather than driving people further away from Him.

    But I have several problems with that challenge. First, the museum in Kentucky is not about acknowledging God as creator. If it was, they could do just that. It’s about acknowledging one interpretation of Genesis as superior to all forms of science. It is the scientific method that is being debated here. Young earth creationism is profoundly anti-science of all varieties.

    Second, I don’t need the new Museum. I do not desire a science museum that acknowledges God. Where should it do so? Should there be an addition to each sign that says, “And God did it?” One of the great values in science is that anybody can do it, if they’re willing. Results must be replicable. A Muslim, a Jew, a Hindu, a Christian, an Atheist all should be able to come to the same scientific conclusion. If they can’t, it’s either a bad conclusion, or one of them is not doing science.

    I’m going to stick with the my own knowledge that my heavenly father made all this and let the science museums stick with describing it.

  • Distortion Not Good for Faith

    I blogged previously about the Answers in Genesis creation museum that’s going up in Kentucky in How to Waste $25 Million. Now the museum is about to be opened, and they held special events for the true believers yesterday.

    This museum is a monument to the desire to avoid scientific evidence and to present an interpretation of the Bible that has clearly failed. Young earth creationism serves to place the Bible squarely in opposition to science, and by “science” in this case I do not merely mean “the data of science as currently understood.” Young earth creationism goes contrary to the data that we have. But the approach of young earth creationism is also contrary to the very methods of science. It takes one interpretation of a religious text, determines a very large body of “things that must be facts” from that meager information, and then sets out to impose those results on whatever observations are made. This is not a search for truth.

    This indictment doesn’t apply as I’ve stated it to all creationism. Old earth creationists, for example, take a substantially different approach. It’s easy to forget that there are many conservative Christians who don’t have a problem with the age of the earth as determined and confirmed by multiple branches of science using many different approaches. While they disagree with varying portions of the theory of evolution, the collision is much smaller.

    It is worthwhile noting that ID (intelligent design) creationism differs again by only asserting the need for divine intervention at various points in the development of life. I think it is still right to call ID creationism precisely because of that demand for a special type of intervention. Many young earth creationists are now spending their time arguing for ID. Why? It’s a simple public relations strategy. If you challenge people with the idea that the earth is only 6,000 years old, that dinosaurs lived with humans, you are running against such an overwhelming body of evidence from fields ranging from archeology to geology to biology, that many will reject you out of hand. So what you do is try to attack the scientific method in small ways, and do so in ways that some theists who believe in common descent can agree with you.

    But at the bottom line there are still the same group of organizations out there who are pushing a 6,000 year old earth, because, in their view, the Bible says so. But numerous Biblical interpreters don’t believe that the Bible says that at all. So what this amounts to is equating “faith” with their specific interpretation of a small portion of the Bible. And that, in itself, is a distortion. This is not faith versus science. It’s not the Bible versus science. It is a contest between a bad interpretation of scripture and the overwhelming body of scientific evidence. (I have some comments on the various interpretations here.)

    There’s an excellent article on the creation museum on the Panda’s Thumb. I like in particular the contrast between the spending done on creationism and that on scientific projects and education. Distorting the evidence and the record is not good for faith. It is building on the sand, a flawed building on a useless foundation at the cost of $27 million.

  • Dinosaur Protein

    If you’ve seen the information on T. Rex protein and are wondering what it does and doesn’t mean will problem find this post on Pharyngula helpful. There are already creationist misinterpretations of this information, such as this one:

    For the moment, let’s not ignore the importance of what has been found (and as will be declared in the soon-to-open Creation Museum): finding T. rex soft tissue is compelling evidence that it was not 65 million years ago that dinosaurs died out, as given on the evolutionary timeline.

    This looks like another example of excellent scientific work.

  • From the Land of the Deluded

    A couple of weeks ago I made the mistake of trying to reply to a point in Plantinga’s review of The God Delusion, and got caught. The first commenter on that post suggested I should read the actual book “if only to be able to evaluate reviews of a different book going by the same title.”

    Well, I have now read the book, and it was less irritating than I expected, though my expectations were fulfilled. In general, I was not surprised by anything Dawkins had to say. This should not be shocking considering that I have studied Christian theology fairly extensively for a non-theologian (I remind readers that my field is Biblical studies, not theology, and thus at theology I am an amateur), and I have also read a good bit of Dawkins’s writing, and I am very fond of it, even though I recognize that I am precisely the type of Christian theist for which he has the greatest contempt. This latter point is repeatedly emphasized in the text of The God Delusion.

    There is, however, one way in which the book is worse than I expected. I linked earlier to a post by Bruce Alderman, in which he performed a humorous source analysis on this text. I got a good laugh out of it, but at the time I was assuming it was pure humor. Having read the book, I think I can build on his analysis.

    Bruce’s H source writes much like the Richard Dawkins of books like The Blind Watchmaker. He does surgery on ideas with a laser scalpel, coming to specific points, and then rebuilding the structure with care and precision. You may disagree with his conclusions, but you normally do so by debating his premises, not by criticizing his logic. Such a person presumably wrote most of chapter 5. There, even though I disagree with some conclusions about religion in general, we find an excellent presentation of Darwinian explanations for the evolution of religion, or a propensity to religion in humanity.

    I originally intended to say that Bruce’s A source, contrary to H, uses a shotgun approach, but on further reading and reflection I don’t think that is an adequate description. The approach would better be compared to the use of a blunderbuss, a weapon to which I was introduced by Tolkien in “Farmer Giles of Ham.” There the question of what a blunderbuss is received this response:

    Indeed this very question, it is said, was put to the Four Wise Clerks of Oxenford, and after thought they replied, “A blunderbuss is a short gun with a large bore firing many balls or slugs, and capable of doing execution within a limited range without exact aim. (Now superseded in civilized countries by other firearms.)

    However, Farmer Giles’s blunderbuss had a wide mouth that opened like a horn, and it did not fire balls or slugs, but anything he could spare to stuff in.

    The aforementioned farmer Giles of Ham used a blunderbuss on a giant with the result that:

    . . . By luck it was pointed more or less at the giant’s large ugly face. Out flew the rubbish, and the stones and the bones, and the bits of crock and wire, and half a dozen nails. And since the range was indeed limited, by chance and no choice of the farmer’s many of these things struck the giant; a piece of pot went in his eye, and a large nail stuck in his nose.

    “Blast!” said the giant in his vulgar fashion. “I’m stung!” . . .

    So DawkinsA has loaded his blunderbuss with whatever was available, pointed it in my general direction (or perhaps I stuck my face in front of it), and fired. And thus, in the words of the giant, “Blast! I’m stung.” Well, actually, not so much, and unlike Tolkien’s giant I have no inclination to turn aside.

    Those who haven’t dealt with the vagaries of source and redaction criticism will perhaps get less amusement from Bruce’s analysis or from my aside, but those who have will recognize the stylistic differences that can make one wonder what happened between one passage and the next. I think this is also the problem that resulted in the exchange in the comments to my previous post. Basically you can get two completely different impressions from reading this book. The first is of a proposed dialog which invites a broad range of people who are opposed to placing religious dogma above science, of indoctrination, of forcing religious beliefs on people, and of limiting the freedom of scientific inquiry. The second is of a desire to suppress religion if it is possible to do so by any means short of violence, and describes all people of any variety of religious faith in disparaging terms.

    There is one basic element that I fully expected, and did in fact find. For Dawkins science is all there is. There is no supernatural of any kind, and his use of the term “supernatural” is not so nuanced as that of some theologians. For him, “supernatural” is anything that cannot in theory at least be fully investigated by scientific means.

    Thus he occasionally indicates that he is not arguing against the guy in the sky with a beard concept of God, yet in practice he is arguing against the philosophical equivalent. His God must be measurable and explainable in natural terms, thus any attributes one supposes God might possess that do not fall within that scope are automatically dismissed.

    Dawkins operates with a thoroughgoing ontological naturalism. This is it. If I were to allow him that assumption, generally implicit, we could simply say, “That’s the ball game.” And in fact most of the book is superfluous for the simple reason that Dawkins never allows a supernatural definition of God to come into play at all. Despite what he says, God is not a hypothesis. He would be a rather bad hypothesis if he were one.

    While Dawkins does not believe in God, he appears to believe he has god-like powers. Repeatedly he suggests that the religious faith of scientists or other thinkers whose work he appreciates were not really sincere, but rather went along with their time. Such is the case with Kant (footnote to p. 231, quoting A. C. Grayling favorably), Mendel (p. 99 becoming a monk was ” . . . equivalent of a research grant.”), the American founding fathers (p. 39 – “. . . the greatest of them might have been atheists. Certainly their writings on religion in their own time leave me in no doubt that most of them would have been atheists in ours.”).

    It’s astonishing how easy it is to know what someone would have been years after the fact!

    In my view, more even than an attack on belief, this book is an attack on moderation. By moderation I mean any system that does not automatically push for the extremes, but recognizes that there are a range of positions between. I do not mean that one has to accept that those other positions have an equal claim to truth; I simply suggest recognizing that they exist. Dawkins wants the conflict to be between fundamentalists of any religion and atheism. He objects to being called a fundamentalist atheist, but this very attitude suggests that in some ways the title fits. My experience with Christian fundamentalists indicates to me that if you disagree with them in any little thing, you are the enemy. I’m often called an atheist by such people because I accept the theory of evolution. Dawkins has problems with all of the folks in the middle, with moderates being a frequent target. (For notes on my view of moderation, see Moderate Thinking.)

    I’m going to divide this response into several posts, though I will post them all together. A directory follows, though you can find the entire series by choosing category The God Delusion.

    So from the land of the deluded, let me present just a bit of a response. I’m not an apologist. I’m frequently embarrassed by what Christian apologists have to say. My apologetic is very simple, and we sang it in the Easter Sunrise service at my church: “You ask me how I know he lives, he lives within my heart.” It’s subjective. I don’t expect it to convince you. But it’s what I bring to the table. Categorize me as a deluded simpleton, but a joyful one!

  • Using God as a Label for our Fears

    Way back in the prehistory of this blog I posted an entry about fear and human-animal hybrids. Yesterday I got the latest edition of this type of fear in my Breaking Christian News e-mail. In it was a story headlined Prayer Alert: Ethical Outrage as Scientists Create “Human-Sheep”. Now I’m always mildly skeptical when I see an article that doesn’t so much report the event as it reports the outrage of the reporter to the event.

    For example, consider this quote, part of a preface to the story from reporter Teresa Neumann:

    I will never forget my feelings of disbelief and revulsion when I read Toffler’s assertion that in our lifetime we would not only witness the advent of human cloning, but fully human-animal hybrids as well. Those feelings returned with a vengeance yesterday when I read that researchers in America have just “created” a sheep with half-human organs. Who does man think he is? Where will this lead? What must God think? What should our response be? Do we run to the caves and cower in shame, calling for the wrath of God to come quickly upon the earth, or—like Abraham or Jonah—do we plead forgiveness and ask God to change the hearts of man, thus changing the society we live in? Let us pray…

    So much, I guess, for objective reporting. Personally, I think I will pray for those Christians whose fear and revulsion somehow allows them to think that man is getting too close to God. I’ll let you all in on a secret–getting to the point of assuming God’s power is quite a distance away from us humans.

    The link from the BCN story is to CBN which takes essentially the same approach. Again, the primary story is about the debate:

    A bio-ethical debate is raging at a Nevada university, where scientists have created the world’s first sheep with half-human organs.

    For a more news-oriented report, see this story in The Mail.

    We often use God as a convenient label for what we don’t know, and as long as that’s not all he is, I don’t have a major problem with that use. But when God becomes the label for our fears, then I believe we have a problem in our faith walk. Somehow God has made it through the crusades, the inquisition, and the mutually assured destruction policy with nuclear weapons. I doubt he’s particularly threatened by a few human organs grown in sheep. It does make me think about a nice horror movie based on the idea of killer sheep with superhuman intelligence, chasing sheep dogs and farmers from their land and taking over the world. Baaaaaaah! Sheep Rule!

    There’s a continuing residue of thinking from the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11) that often makes Christians believe that we might get too close to God and bring on his wrath and destruction. Perhaps we should apply a little logic. Any tower in the ancient near east would be considerably less lofty than the Empire State Building, or the Sears Tower, or the Twin Towers. The Twin Towers fell, but it was evil human beings using natural weapons that accomplished their fall.

    Interestingly enough, the builders of the Tower of Babel were also not so much trying to usurp God’s power as they were trying to get protection from God’s wrath. Their fear was driving them.

    There is the very valid question of safety, but safety concerns do not come from the possibility of offending God by mismanaging his universe. There is a concern with the possibility of viruses. I have no knowledge in the relevant areas, but I found this blog entry that discusses a few of those issues. My plan here is not to lay all fears to rest, but rather to suggest rational discussion leading, I hope, to appropriate safety measures. Fear will produce retreat; wisdom will produce caution. Progress means risk–it’s worth taking just a little.

  • Carl Zimmer on Genes

    I’m a fan of Carl Zimmer’s writing, either in print or on his blog, and I wanted to call attention to today’s post on the human genome and on how science works. I think it’s well worth reading.

  • Freedom of Speech Rights Tangled

    Here’s an interesting freedom of speech issue again brought to my attention by Breaking Christian News and this time referring me to this LifeSite article. It appears that at a minimum there is confusion about the facts of the case, including the professor’s intentions and when the paper was graded, as comparison of the LifeSite article with this article on the Southern Illinoisian web site.

    I am uncertain of where the law would stand on this, and would certainly welcome comment that might clarify it for me. This whole story bothers me because of what it means for education. A professor’s beliefs do have something to do with what they teach and what they are going to find acceptable in a paper. I can imagine, for example, a person who wants to be a social worker, but who believes that the entire course of treatment should consist of prayer and Bible study. Should such a study be granted a degree in social work, essentially the university saying that this person is qualified to perform the functions of a social worker? If it’s a free speech issue, then the validity of the contents would not be relevant. I’m not suggesting that Christine Mize did not provide a reasonably competent, faith-based program, but it seems dangerous to me to apply free speech standards to the grading of college papers.

    To take an example from a field with which I’m more familiar, suppose that a biology student wished to write a paper on origins for biology class that claimed that all species appeared fully formed and without genealogy, and proposed to demonstrate this from the Bible. I would have to say that there should be no requirement that such a paper be accepted for biology credit. The student has free speech, and can go home and post his paper on his blog if he wants, but I don’t think the first amendment guarantees, or should guarantee a passing grade. Of course the level of competence required would depend on the level.

    There’s a subjective line here between thoroughly incompetent and competent but challenging prevailing attitudes. I must say that while it seems excessive to me for the professor to refuse any inclusion of faith based options in a treatment plan, considering that there is substantial disagreement on the value of such elements, it also seems to me that applying first amendment rights to the acceptance and grading of assignments is questionable, and I wonder what the courts may have ruled on this in the past.

    As I have time I will look it up, though it’s likely that brilliant readers will have straightened me out before I get the time to do that.

    Brilliant readers, where are you?? 🙂

  • Newsweek Article on Human Evolution

    There’s an excellent piece on human evolution in Newsweek, written for those of us who are not scientists. I think there are a couple of unclear points, but for the most part it’s a good update on the state of science. I did notice that things that have been around for some years seem to be considered brand new and exciting–exciting they certainly are, but the simple “begat” idea of human evolution has been weakening for a long time.

    In any case, this is an article worth reading. I’ve seen the various pieces on more scientific blogs, but as an overview for the non-scientist, this one is good.