In this article from a recent issue of the New York Times, reporter Amy Harmon discusses the teaching of science in a public high school as students attempt to reconcile their faith in a supernatural being with what their biology teachers attempt to convey to them about what science can demonstrate. Here's my question. Why, after so many decades after the publication of Darwin's writings, do so many people still believe that he wrote that human beings are "descended from monkeys"? Why aren't they listening? And reading? Ms. Harmon provides part of the answer.
[I]n a nation where evangelical Protestantism and other religious traditions stress a literal reading of the biblical description of God’s individually creating each species, students often arrive at school fearing that evolution, and perhaps science itself, is hostile to their faith.
Some come armed with “Ten questions to ask your biology teacher about evolution,” a document circulated on the Internet that highlights supposed weaknesses in evolutionary theory. Others scrawl their opposition on homework assignments. Many just tune out.
With a mandate to teach evolution but little guidance as to how, science teachers are contriving their own ways to turn a culture war into a lesson plan. How they fare may bear on whether a new generation of Americans embraces scientific evidence alongside religious belief.
Read her article here. Check out the video clip as well. And here's a link to that document mentioned in Ms. Harmon's article.
As scientists like Kenneth R. Miller have shown in their writings, one can be both a devout Christian and a good scientist. The Catholic Church accepts the theory of evolution. Science is silent on the philosophical "why" questions. As Dr. Miller says,
Consider these words from George Gaylord Simpson, widely recognized as one of the principal architects of the neo-Darwinian synthesis: "The process [of evolution] is wholly natural in its operation. This natural process achieves the aspect of purpose without the intervention of a purposer; and it has produced a vast plan without the concurrent action of a planner. It may be that the initiation of the process and the physical laws under which it functions had a purpose and that this mechanistic way of achieving a plan is the instrument of a Planner - of this still deeper problem the scientist, as scientist, cannot speak."
As a discipline, science does not promote that pursuit. Scientists, as well as the rest of us, make decisions about "why" in some other realm, in some other way, not with science, because such beliefs are not open to scientific proof. We make those decisions on faith. We can and should make decisions about our beliefs in private, where neither the government nor our neighbors should intrude. As for the scientific method, the reliability of which we rely on every day for our health and safety, we must find some way to convey it to our young people, or they and we will not be able to compete, much less keep up, in the world of the twenty-first century. For years now, the canary in the mine has been singing about a crisis that has no magic cure, but we haven't been listening. Perhaps he's now getting through.
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