Are attacks on evolution just the beginning?

[Wolverine]

Note: I'd posted this on the BABB recently, and figured I'd duplicate it here to hopefully acquire additional perspective.

The other day I began reading the April 2005 issue of Sky & Telescope, in which Editor-in-Chief Richard Fienberg's article Evolution: We Can't Sit Idly By (p.8) really got me thinking. It begins:

Fienberg writes:
In Dover, Pennsylvania, 9th grade biology teachers must present "intelligent design" as an alternative to Darwinism. National Park Service bookstores stock a volume claiming that the Grand Canyon was carved 4,500 years ago by Noah's Flood. Until a wise judge intervened in January, biology textbooks in Cobb County, Georgia, carried a warning label reading "evolution is only a theory, not a fact." So it's probably only a matter of time before astronomy teachers in the United States will have to balance any mention of Big Bang cosmology with the creation story from the Book of Genesis.

Science, like so many other things these days, is under attack by religious fundamentalists, and if you think the only field in the crosshairs is biology, you're wrong. If our public-school students are to learn that the Earth is only 6,000 years old, as some Christian fundamentalists would like, then virtually all of modern science, from astronomy to zoology, goes out the window.

Fienberg goes on to describe (IMHO, quite accurately), misconceptions & misunderstandings about science and the scientific method amongst adults in the US, interspersed with comments on critical thought. He also cautions that if astronomers don't adopt a proactive stance we may find ourselves in a position where texts must be altered to appease school boards rather than reflect new discoveries.

What I'm wondering, though -- is our educational outlook in the United States really this bleak regarding study of the cosmos (or science in general, for that matter)? Will we have a battle on our hands to keep astronomy in the classroom as has been the case with evolution?

I'm curious to better understand whether the picture painted above demonstrates accuracy or pessimism, or perhaps a combination of the two. While the fight to preserve teaching evolution has been publicized extensively, I'm not aware of ongoing legal wrangling in astronomical areas. However, I'm certainly not attempting to discount the possibility of such, if this page from the Institute for Creation Research offers any indication:

Some progress has been made in creationist astronomy, but there is much work to be done.

Thoughts?

 

[athon]

Welcome to the fundamental flaw in science education throughout a lot of the world. I do believe, however, that it is worse in the US...however it remains a massive problem in a lot of curriculums globally.

The problem stems from how science is taught.

Education systems in the present state have only been around for about a hundred and fifty years. Over that time, they have evolved in some ways but the fundamentals have remained; education is the passing on of facts and skills from society to the individual. Changes have been rare but important; sustained changes have included studies of pedagogy (how we teach) and appliation of cognitive science (how we think and learn).

Outside of that, we still learn 'things'...facts and trivia. Science is taught as approxiamately 80% trivia, 15% skills and 5% complex reasoning (this varies across countries, but not by much). Learning how to think is still a difficult thing to teach, and a near impossible thing to assess. And here is the key!

Without assessment, modern governments cannot convey to their voting public how efficient their system is. So it's a circle, where each generation learn that a discipline is made up of the facts within it. Critical thinking is a difficult thing to implement fully in a curriculum because it is seen as such a minor field.

In science, it is more than necessary. It is the core of the discipline. Teaching that science has no answers, that it is a process rather than a textbook of knowledge, is essential but is unfortunately neglected.

When we then say 'evolution is only a theory', it is misleading because (as we well know) every answer science proposes is 'only a theory'. It is indicative of the core pathology of education today; we teach facts over thinking. If not for that, the very stickers themselves would be seen as absurd by every student in the country.

There might be a shift in thinking, but it won't be tomorrow. The revolution in the system will only occur when it becomes acknowledged that 'what' is taught is not as important as 'how'. Some curriculums in some countries are already doing this; in Australia, for instance, fact-based education is slowly losing ground to skill / complex reasoning based. It is assessed differently to a federally centralised curriculum, and seems to work well enough. The downside is that you could easily teach ID (alongside evolution) without reprisal...but hopefully the skills you are required to teach through five years of highschool would prepare students enough for them to ask questions.

There are no easy answers. But I think the more we push change on educational policies, the closer we can get to having people think for themselves.

Athon

 

[bPer]

Will we have a battle on our hands to keep astronomy in the classroom as has been the case with evolution?

Certainly, Wolverine! Evolution is just the biggest hurdle these cretins have to overcome, in order to mold society to their medieval worldview. Certainly geology and astronomy (in that order IMO) are next on their list. These branches of science offer major, compelling evidence against their worldview, so they have to attack them.

I have seen the vanguard of this attack myself. I hope you don't consider this a derail, but I'd like to relate this personal event as an illustration of what we face.

I am a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Ottawa Centre. We have an observatory west of Ottawa, set in the midst of a rural conservation area. One night a few years ago, someone who we had seen at our meetings (which are typically 120-180 people) but never at the observatory showed up, without any observing gear (which is odd). As you know, Wolverine, we amateur astronomers are a gregarious bunch, and we welcomed the newcomer into our midst, showing him our equipment and various views in our scopes as the night progressed.

The newcomer behaved quite differently than anyone I have ever seen around a telescope (and I've attended dozens of public events with my scope before). Instead of the 'oohs' and 'wows', silence. Finally, several hours into the night, he screwed up his courage and started spouting fundamentalist Christian garbage. WTF! In the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, in the dark, to a bunch of people who know a heck of a lot more than most about what we were looking at, this jerk (to put it mildly) spouts off his ignorant drivel. The rest of us tried to politely ignore his ranting at first, but when he didn't get the hint that his proselytizing wasn't welcome (to say the least!), we started giving him the cold shoulder. He finally got the hint and left.

Discussing this later with my buds, it turned out that this guy had been stalking the RASC for months, going to the meetings to strike up conversations with members to get their e-mail addresses, under the pretense that he had questions he'd like answered. He'd send them proselytizing crap instead. Showing up at the observatory was just one more move in his stalking. So here we have someone who was willing to spend $46/year to join the RASC, and $35/year to have the use of the observatory, just to proselytize!

It was this incident that really made me consider myself part of a group (the 'reality-based' say) under attack by religion, and led me on a search for others like me, which led to JREF.

If a small, benign group of amateur astronomers is under attack from these cretins, it is only a matter of time before our school curricula come under attack by them too.

Oh,and Athon, I wholeheartedly concur with what you said. We really need to bring critical thinking skills into the curriculum, at a level where no students will miss out on them (i.e. not only in the academic stream).

βPer

p.s. Wolverine, I'm probably the only person at JREF who instantly knew what the graphic in your sig was. No observing for you tonight, buddy. I saw Attila Danko on Friday at the RASC meeting, but wasn't talking to him, unfortunately.

 

[pupdog]

It's not just about evolution!

Those leading the current Creationism (Intelligent Design) movement have published and spoken about their ultimate goals. They see naturalistic science as an abomination, the ultimate heresy, and wish to replace what we consider normal science with what they call "theistic science" which would be a leap back into the Dark Ages. Although they stridently claim that Intelligent Design has nothing to do with religion (when speaking to the courts and in certain public forums), when speaking to their congregations and amongst themselves they talk of overthrowing science and bringing the world to Jesus. Intelligent Design is bereft of science, useless for fostering a growing understanding of the world about us, and promoted by people who are misinformed, self-deluded, and downright liars.

In one sense, the ID people are a little less lunatic than Young-Earth Creationists, in that they do not insist that geology, astronomy, physics, and every science known to man is in error (because they disagree with the Bible). Nevertheless, they remain anti-science.

 

[bigred]

Welcome to the fundamental flaw in science education throughout a lot of the world. I do believe, however, that it is worse in the US...however it remains a massive problem in a lot of curriculums globally.

The problem stems from how science is taught.

Education systems in the present state have only been around for about a hundred and fifty years. Over that time, they have evolved in some ways but the fundamentals have remained; education is the passing on of facts and skills from society to the individual. Changes have been rare but important; sustained changes have included studies of pedagogy (how we teach) and appliation of cognitive science (how we think and learn).

Outside of that, we still learn 'things'...facts and trivia. Science is taught as approxiamately 80% trivia, 15% skills and 5% complex reasoning (this varies across countries, but not by much). Learning how to think is still a difficult thing to teach, and a near impossible thing to assess. And here is the key!

Without assessment, modern governments cannot convey to their voting public how efficient their system is. So it's a circle, where each generation learn that a discipline is made up of the facts within it. Critical thinking is a difficult thing to implement fully in a curriculum because it is seen as such a minor field.

In science, it is more than necessary. It is the core of the discipline. Teaching that science has no answers, that it is a process rather than a textbook of knowledge, is essential but is unfortunately neglected.

When we then say 'evolution is only a theory', it is misleading because (as we well know) every answer science proposes is 'only a theory'. It is indicative of the core pathology of education today; we teach facts over thinking. If not for that, the very stickers themselves would be seen as absurd by every student in the country.

There might be a shift in thinking, but it won't be tomorrow. The revolution in the system will only occur when it becomes acknowledged that 'what' is taught is not as important as 'how'. Some curriculums in some countries are already doing this; in Australia, for instance, fact-based education is slowly losing ground to skill / complex reasoning based. It is assessed differently to a federally centralised curriculum, and seems to work well enough. The downside is that you could easily teach ID (alongside evolution) without reprisal...but hopefully the skills you are required to teach through five years of highschool would prepare students enough for them to ask questions.

There are no easy answers. But I think the more we push change on educational policies, the closer we can get to having people think for themselves.

Athon

A most excellent post.

I can't even describe how tired and lame I think this whole thing has been for far too long. Why can't we just allow for science being the "how" and religion the "why" - ? God and Einstein are NOT in conflict. It's not like if you believe one it invalidates the other. If there are some extremists who can't hang w/this, fine, put your kid in a "Christian" school and move on.

On the other hand, I won't freak out too much because such folks in BF Pennsylvania (etc) are going a bit too far.

 

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

Is CREEPY, this will make america enter a modern "dark age". Worst of all, religion followers are organized, while critical thinkers are not.

 

[bigred]

With the strong and growing "religion is bad mmmkay" sentiment in this country, you have nothing to worry about.

 

[ReFLeX]

Are you sure your perception of that sentiment is not just a false consensus?

 

[bigred]

Yeah, pretty sure.

 

[drkitten]

Are you sure your perception of that sentiment is not just a false consensus?

I believe that American (and to a lesser extent, world) society is becoming increasingly polarized over the issue of religion and theism in general. So while there appears to be an increase in the "religion is bad, mmkay" belief, there also appears to be an increase in the "save our children from militant atheism" belief. The middle ground is getting squeezed out.

Just as an example, the number of churchgoers in traditional, mainstream Protestant churches (and in Catholic ones as well) has been decline for some time. Atheism has actually been on the increase. (For example, adherents.com documents an increase from 200,000 acknowledged atheists in 1970 (0.10%) to 750,000 (0.30%) in 1990, to about 1,670,000 (0.60%) in 1999.) The actual percentage of Chrisitans has declined.


On the other hand, the percentage of militant, fundamentalist, non-mainstream evangelical Christianity has also increased. For example, the number of people in the US who self-described themselves merely as "evangelical Christians" increased nearly five-fold from 1990 to 2001. The number of people who self-described themselves as "non-denomination Christians" increased nearly tenfold over the same period, and the number of people who self-described themselves only as "Christian" nearly doubled, to about 7% of the population. At the same time, the numbers of Baptists actually decreased, despite about a 12% increase in US population over the same time.

 

[bigred]

I believe that American (and to a lesser extent, world) society is becoming increasingly polarized over the issue of religion and theism in general. So while there appears to be an increase in the "religion is bad, mmkay" belief, there also appears to be an increase in the "save our children from militant atheism" belief. The middle ground is getting squeezed out.

Good point, although I would tweak that to read "the Christian middle ground." ie atheists really don't have such a breakout; if you don't believe God exists, you don't believe God exists; that's pretty much it. I'm not aware of any "denominations" within atheism.

This also gets back to one of the things that has bothered me the most about atheist attitudes towards Christianity for years; they lump all Christians together as extremists/fundamentalists, which makes no sense whatsoever, as only a small percentage fit this category.

 

[SezMe]

Good point, although I would tweak that to read "the Christian middle ground." ie atheists really don't have such a breakout; if you don't believe God exists, you don't believe God exists; that's pretty much it. I'm not aware of any "denominations" within atheism.

This also gets back to one of the things that has bothered me the most about atheist attitudes towards Christianity for years; they lump all Christians together as extremists/fundamentalists, which makes no sense whatsoever, as only a small percentage fit this category.

bigred, you just committed the very sin you are railing against. You basically said "all atheists ..." Which is just as wrong as someone saying "all Christians ..."

Stones, glass houses and all that.

 

[drkitten]

Good point, although I would tweak that to read "the Christian middle ground." ie atheists really don't have such a breakout; if you don't believe God exists, you don't believe God exists; that's pretty much it. I'm not aware of any "denominations" within atheism.

No. The same sort of loss of the middle ground is being observed elsewhere in the world with other religions, for example, the rise of radical fundamentalist Islam and of atheism at the expense of moderate Islam. Similarly, orthodox (and specifically "haredi") Judaism is on the rise, as is Reform Judaism, while the middle "Conservative" sect is shrinking.

 

[bigred]

bigred, you just committed the very sin you are railing against. You basically said "all atheists ..." Which is just as wrong as someone saying "all Christians ..."

Stones, glass houses and all that.

No, it's not the same at all. As I said before, I've never heard of differing factions or denominations of atheists, ie in terms of their religious beliefs. If you're aware of any, I'd be very curious how their religious beliefs differ.

 

[bigred]

No. The same sort of loss of the middle ground is being observed elsewhere in the world with other religions, for example, the rise of radical fundamentalist Islam and of atheism at the expense of moderate Islam. Similarly, orthodox (and specifically "haredi") Judaism is on the rise, as is Reform Judaism, while the middle "Conservative" sect is shrinking.

Hold on, time out, you're talking about something different now....we were talking about the growing trend of atheism in this country, now you're shifting into discussion about religious extremists vs moderates in the entire world. No big, but in the bounds of this discussion you just compared apples to oranges. If we're talking about a growth of extremists/decline of moderates within religions, I quite agree. But that's not the same as comparing "religious" people to atheists.

 

[drkitten]

Hold on, time out, you're talking about something different now....we were talking about the growing trend of atheism in this country, now you're shifting into discussion about religious extremists vs moderates in the entire world.

Re-read what I wrote.

I wrote:

I believe that American (and to a lesser extent, world) society is becoming increasingly polarized over the issue of religion and theism in general.

Atheism is one end of the spectrum, with militant fundamentalism (of whatever stripe) typically being at the other end. The point at which "modernism" shades into apostacy is closer to the middle -- from either end.

I think that your biases (as well as the lack of numbers) are also preventing you from seeing the various divisions within non-theism. The self-described "atheists," especially the militant ones that would, for example, sue to have "under God" removed from the Pledge of Allegiance are not typical of the vast majority of non-believers worldwide or US-wide. A much larger and less activist group would be the various degrees of agnosticism, and beyond that (closer still to the "center") are the various degrees of apostate who don't actually believe or hold any philosophical objection to belief. (Somewhere in this continuum would probably be placed so-called "secular humanism" as well).

Simple apostacy, the people who claim "no religion" (as opposed to either atheist or agnostic) is approximately thirty times as popular as the more militant positions, reflecting an increasing number of people abandoning religion altogether. So what we see -- and we see this trend world-wide and among at least three of the world's "major" religions -- is a trend to abandon religious moderatism. This means either people rejecting religion altogether ("religon is bad, mmmkay?"), or people adopting a more personal, fundamentalist, militant branch of their prefered religion.

 

[SezMe]

Here is a recent article about this topic (not sure how long the link will last). To my mind, this is pretty chilling stuff.

 

[SezMe]

No, it's not the same at all. As I said before, I've never heard of differing factions or denominations of atheists, ie in terms of their religious beliefs. If you're aware of any, I'd be very curious how their religious beliefs differ.

As new drkitten has pointed out, there are various shades of atheistic thought. Surely you aren't saying that the 30 million or so atheists in the USA all think alike...or are you?

It is easy to see the various shades of Christianity by just noticing the various denominations and churches. Atheists don't have denominations or churches. That may make it harder to see the various atheistic perspectives but it certainly does not mean they don't exist.

 

[bigred]

As new drkitten has pointed out, there are various shades of atheistic thought.

In terms of their religious belief itself....no, there aren't. Again, being an atheist means you don't believe God exists. Period. If you believe he does exist, or believe he might, you are by definition no longer an atheist.

Surely you aren't saying that the 30 million or so atheists in the USA all think alike...or are you?

In general? Of course not. But again I'm just saying they do think alike in terms of believing that there is no God, ie terms of their religious belief. They may have different ways of expressing it (or not) and so on, but their belief is the same.

It is easy to see the various shades of Christianity by just noticing the various denominations and churches. Atheists don't have denominations or churches. That may make it harder to see the various atheistic perspectives but it certainly does not mean they don't exist.

I quite disagree (not that that's good or bad per se, btw). There are no denominations because there is no need. What would an "atheist denomination" be? "Hey I don't believe God exists." "Oh well my denomination....um......doesn't either." ??

If you don't believe God exists, you don't believe God exists. That's pretty much it.

 

[bigred]

Atheism is one end of the spectrum, with militant fundamentalism (of whatever stripe) typically being at the other end. The point at which "modernism" shades into apostacy is closer to the middle -- from either end.

I may have confused you using "atheist" and "non-theist." If so, beg pardon.

However some of this I don't get, ie:

1. How are atheism and militant fundamentalism "opposites?" One says there is no God. The logical opposite of an theist is of course a theist, not Fundamentalists, who are but one sect of theists.

2. Apostasy means abandoning one's faith, which could mean any number of things (ie going from an atheist to Christian or vice-versa, or even going from Hindu to Islam, etc etc). Perhaps the more common usage is a sort of shoulder shrug when it comes to a belief in God, ie a lack of any strong belief in either direction, but I'd say that's an agnostic.

I think that your biases (as well as the lack of numbers) are also preventing you from seeing the various divisions within non-theism.

I don't think so, again think I just mis-read something somewhere. That's a first, really.

The self-described "atheists," especially the militant ones that would, for example, sue to have "under God" removed from the Pledge of Allegiance are not typical of the vast majority of non-believers worldwide or US-wide.

Thank God. (PS - fortunately, Fundamentalists are also in the vast minority when it comes to theists, and even Christians)

Simple apostacy, the people who claim "no religion" (as opposed to either atheist or agnostic) is approximately thirty times as popular as the more militant positions, reflecting an increasing number of people abandoning religion altogether.

I would say atheists and agnostics do the same. I don't know too many "religious" atheists.

So what we see -- and we see this trend world-wide and among at least three of the world's "major" religions -- is a trend to abandon religious moderatism. This means either people rejecting religion altogether ("religon is bad, mmmkay?"), or people adopting a more personal, fundamentalist, militant branch of their prefered religion.

Yeah, maybe so. Really it seems to me that in many respects, a "polarization" is going on, not just in religion (witness the whole ridiculous "red vs blue" thing that erupted in the elections last year - far worse than I ever recall it before)...