Jim Guinee wrote:
> You make soom good points here.
>
> I'm not necessarily advocating overthrowing the curriculum.
> In my courses I don't bring religion up very much, partly because this is
a
> state school and I don't want to be inappropriate, but also there are
certainly
> a lot of things out in the world that religious doctrine/dogma just
doesn't cover.
Fair enough. I believe that religious belief should not be taken as
a reason to disrespect a person, and I think that having some awareness of
religion is a good thing (I personally expect to learn more as time allows).
Ethically I believe that overall religion is essentially a "wash", though,
largely because so many people want their religious beliefs to "count" in
the public realm, despite the clear conflicts of various interests. Science,
of course, offers a method of overcoming those conflicts - as you pointed
out below, with the "certain information" comment in the next paragraph.
> I think that's really one of my main points -- we should be
> teaching what we are supposed to teach. But I do get irritated when I
hear
> about certain psych professors that try to present certain information
that
> contradicts religion as factual (e.g., spanking leads to abuse) when that
ain't
> necessarily so,
I personally wouldn't make any claims to have good evidence one way
or another for that particular (though of course I recognize that many
people believe it's outside the realm of evidence, because they believe that
spanking is _by definition_ abuse). Whichever way that particular example
falls out, I do think you've got a legitimate point in general, and as a
devout liberal, I think that you've pinpointed liberals' Achilles Heel. But
of course I never said that liberals were the model of evidence-based
critical thinking either... (smile)
> and worse when I hear of prof's making snide comments about religion and
> religious people.
Well, that obviously runs both ways, and surely the religious snide
comments about science present a far larger problem. Here's an not-at-all
unusual excerpt (from the blurb on the back cover of the book I'm about to
briefly describe:)
"Now we have digressed from the legalities of teaching evolution in our
schools to a single mindset that evolution, though unproven, is the only
answer to the question of human origins. AND WE WONDER WHY WE ARE HAVING
PROBLEMS WITH CHILDREN IN OUR PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEMS!" (Caps in original).
Similar stuff appears almost weekly in my local newspaper.
> >The creationists' arguments
> > against evolution make that point crystal clear.
>
> Hmm...I'm not so sure. Certainly there are those in the
> religious and non-religious community who still don't have a good grasp of
> evolution. I realize that evolution is more than just a theory, but I
would still
> contend that micro-evolution is much closer to being "factual" than macro.
But of course that distinction is a religious one, not relevant to
scientific notions of natural change. What religious people refer to as
"micro-evolution" is the only kind of evolution that evolutionists propose.
Someone at MIToP today was handing out copies of a small book titled
"Refuting Evolution: A Response to the National Academy of Sciences'
'Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science'" (the person handing it
out said that the author, a "Jonathan Sarfati" was a friend of his.
Incidentally, he was fairly discrete about handing them out). The first
printing was May 1999, and the author "works full-time" for a group called
"Answers in Genesis", which I believe I have heard of before. I take it this
is the state of the current anti-evolution argument. Perhaps not - hope
springs eternal.
Obviously I haven't read it yet, and paging through the first few
pages makes me not very inclined to do so:
"Evolution is ...essentially the idea that things made themselves. It
includes these unproven ideas: nothing gave rise to something at an alleged
'big bang', ..."
"Many people do not realize that the teaching of evolution propagates an
anti-biblical religion" (a claim "supported" by quotes from "Humanist
Manifesto II").
"The basis of modern science depends on the assumption that the universe was
made by a rational creator. An orderly universe makes perfect sense only if
it were made by an orderly Creator. But if there is no creator, or if Zeus
and his gang were in charge, why should there be any order at all?".
The next few pages are appeals to authority, for example pointing to
the fact that creationist Duane Gish "has synthesized peptides, compounds
intermediate between amino acides and proteins. He has been co-author of a
number of outstanding publications in peptide chemistry".
I doubt that there's much point in continuing - it's pretty clear
why I wrote that "the creationists' arguments against evolution make that
point (that we need to spend a LOT more time on science than we already do)
crystal clear".
> >But the notion that we get an overall
> >balance in students' lives by equally presenting religion
> >and science in the classroom is simply wrong, in light of the fact that
> >outside of the classroom religion absolutely dominates their views
>
> Oh, I would disaree with that very much. My experience with
> students and my perusal of research on religious behavior simply does not
> support the statement that religion dominates students' views.
>
> If so, how do we explain the high rate of premarital sex
> among students? cohabitattion? How about Stephen Davis' research
suggesting
> that 60-70% of college students have cheated on at least one occasion in
college?
None of those examples seem to conflict with the statement that I
made, unless you take those behaviors as "trumping" self-reports of
religiousity. If a student claims to be a strong believer with religious
morals, and that student is caught cheating, I don't discount the students'
claim to be a strong believer with religious morals. In fact, Drew Appleby
related just such an example to me at breakfast yesterday - I don't remember
if that was before or after Steve Davis* stopped by to join the discussion
<grin>. The student he caught referred to her religious belief as defense
for her behavior. I can't say I was at all surprised to hear that.
The notion that having a world view dominated by religion is
incompatible with misbehavior simply doesn't square with the facts about the
nature of the world. It can only be rescued by making good behavior
_definitional_ of "having a world view dominated by religion", and of course
then it becomes very uninteresting, not to mention fairly offensive (do you
want to be the one to tell a devout student that she's not really religious,
because she had premarital sex? That'd put you in the realm of "Dr. Laura").
*(shameless name-dropping...)
In fact, I'm almost certain (though memory does occasionally fail
me) that when I presented with Steve Davis on academic honesty at APA a few
years ago, someone in the audience asked him about his observations with
respect to (professed) religious belief, and that his answer didn't bode
well for the notion that cheating and religious faith are incompatible.
Rationalization works wonders.
If, in fact, your claim is that a person has a world view dominated
by religion if and only if that person consistently behaves in such a way as
to square with some defined set of religious values (e.g., the Ten
Commandments), then _no-one_ has a world view dominated by religion - even
according to the Bible. "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of
God" (a paraphrase - my Confirmation was a LONG time ago!). But then none of
this is very interesting. For example, if professed belief is not at all
relevant to behavior, that's pretty much a death knell for "faith-based
initiatives", right? :)
> I know I said many Americans are theistic, but that does not
> necessarily mean the same percentage of Americans are strongly adhered to
> a set of religious beliefs.
>
> This is especially true for college students. Based on
> research, we can *tentatively* conclude that late adolescence/young
adulthood
> (where age-wise most of our college students are) is a time in life
> where religion is far less important, and church attendance is far more
infrequent
> than at any other point in the lifespan.
Perhaps my unique situation is showing here. We have a high minority
population, and we're a Catholic institution, both of which seem, at least,
to contribute to higher importance of religion among the late
adolescents/young adults we serve. In addition, a significant proportion of
our students are not in that age range - they're a decade or more older.
> >(how many of your students spend over an hour of their free time once a
week
> >at scientific lectures? Now, how many attend church weekly? <grin>).
>
> Good question -- but mere attendance at EITHER event doesn't
> necessarily mean the material is getting through.
Fair enough on all counts. Still, none of that alters my claim that
a "balance" between religion and science is best achieved in college
teaching by additional science education, not by addition religious
education. Whether the material is getting through or not, in the
non-academic life, there's clearly far more exposure to the religious
material than to the scientific material.
Paul Smith
Alverno College
Milwaukee
