Teachers of science have a duty to reveal the workings of nature even if it means challenging their faith?
Mintz asked the question:
While researching for another question I came across psychologist Susan Blackmore’s blog on The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/04/religion.evolution where she argues in favour of the above statement (actually I couldn’t fit it in verbatim I had to paraphrase it should read “Those who teach our children science have a duty to reveal the workings of nature – even if it means challenging their faith”).
What stuck me is that reading some of the posts here, it’s very clear that many fundamentalists or creationists simply have no idea what evolution actually means. Someone said in response to another question “what are alligators evolving INTO ? dogs ? “.
Susan Blackmore’s blog post says :
“In my experience it is understanding, not evidence, that opens minds. If someone really understands how natural selection works then … gulp, jaw drop, stare, think … suddenly the world looks different. All previous ideas are thrown up in the air.
I guess this happened to me when I first read The Selfish Gene. I have seen it happen to many, many others in my lectures and classes.
It may seem odd to say so, but most people do not understand natural selection. Perhaps they never learnt about it at school, or perhaps they did understand it once but then forgot. I have explained it to intelligent students who assumed that they already understood it but when asked to explain it they could not. Darwin’s great idea is so simple, and yet so slippery. So in case you are one of those, here it is in a nutshell – plants and animals produce far more (slightly varying) offspring than can possibly survive. Starvation, disease, predation, and unattractiveness mean that only a few go on to breed again. At each step the survivors pass on whatever adaptations helped them and so gradually they become better designed. You could call it “design by death”. Like a human creating a sculpture by chipping away wood, nature’s weeding-out is the force that creates new design.
Once you get it that’s that! How can you go on believing that God created humans in his own image when you can see, because you really understand the principle, that nature’s cruel and wasteful selective process can create all that design without him?”
So should teachers simply explain very very clearly what evolution REALLY is, and make sure that students REALLY understand it?How ard can it be?
I’ve just realised that because I edited down the original statement it now reads like the teachers should challenge their own faith. Well we could throw that in as a question, but the question was meant to be referring to the faith of the children being taught.
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Filed Under Religion & Spirituality |
Tagged With Jaw Drop, Susan Blackmore, Teachers Of Science
Comments
6 Responses to “Teachers of science have a duty to reveal the workings of nature even if it means challenging their faith?”
Teachers should teach facts. And leave the suppositions to the gypsy fortune teller.
Yes, they should. A tiny minority of medical students are creationists, but they are not recommended for medical school until they demonstrate they understand evolution. That goes for all medical students.
I definitely agree with the opening statement. If your faith directly disagrees with reality then you need to find a different faith.
God created this world &humanbeings
In some countries, the teaching of evolution is banned. These are the people who are trained to reject the theory all together - shockingly, this is happening in the U.S.
Most children are hard-wired to be religious just like their parents, everything else including science is taught to come second, so if it conlicts with their religion, it must be false - it is constantly taught that God comes FIRST.
The “fear factor” and unknown plays the biggest role in inlfuencing beliefs - most religious people will not risk an eternal afterlife of torture.
The theory of evolution can be explained well, I believe it has been there for a long time that there were a lot of studies made on it. On the basis of thorough studies however, they discovered flaws on the theory that observations made on actual experiments and evidences presented did not support it. In fact proponents of the the theory had to improve on it by postulating add on, such as mutation to make it stand, but to no avail {see [http://www.allaboutscience.org/darwins-theory-of-evolution.htm]}.
The verse you raised, which says God created man in his image is not to be taken literally, in context it means God like character (Ephesians 4:22,-24): You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. You see that Bible style of writing uses figure of speech as the style of the day.
We can be made to understand what the theory is, but I think it should be taught by showing also and explaining the flaws that goes with it, so as not to mislead people.