Al Shealy wrote:
> That's a convenient way of making yourself feel better about it; but we
> all know that beliefs about evolution are strongly correlated with
> religious beliefs. So we can excuse our discrimination while there's no
> evidence that students with these beliefs will be less successful in
> graduate school or practice.
The discrimination is between truth and falsehood, and that's not
something that many of us are willing to abandon, nor should we. We have a
right to our personal religious beliefs. We do not have a right to impose
those beliefs on others, for example by insisting that they treat the false
beliefs among them as though they were as valid as true beliefs. Nor should
we be forced to support graduate programs that fail to make that kind of
distinction. There's a moral issue here, and we can't just brush it aside or
disguise it with accusations of discrimination.
On top of all of that is the fact that still gets swept under the rug -
that creationist beliefs are often if not typically connected to the
intentionally dishonest work of the organized creationist groups. Even if it
were reasonable to ask professors to accommodate honest confusions about the
subject matter, is it not at all reasonable ask professors to accommodate
the product of this kind of deliberate lying. Belief in creationism is no
longer so clearly an honest misunderstanding (like for example belief that
ulcers are caused exclusively by stress). It far more closely resembles
Holocaust denial or the tobacco marketers' campaigns, the product of a
deliberate campaign of deception that has nothing to do with the normal
processes of disputes within science. If honest believers in creationism are
suffering as a result, it is the creationist movement they should blame.
The consistent and apparently utterly shameless dishonesty of that
movement has left us in a place such that negative assumptions about
creationists no longer constitute prejudice: they constitute a common-sense
response to what we know about the situation. There are people who have a
sincere though generally naive belief in creationism, but there are many
people who make a living lying in support of those beliefs. I would not give
a recommendation to a Holocaust denier (even if there were no evidence that
Holocaust denial is related to success in a graduate program), because
besides the fact that my name would be attached to a person with that
specific belief, my name would also be attached to a person whose sense of
"truth" and "falsehood" was so seriously flawed that the person could not be
trusted in completely important conceptually unrelated areas. The same is
true (though admittedly to a lesser degree) with respect to the sincere
creationist. It is true to an even stronger degree with respect to the
creationist who is active in the creationist movement.
It's a complete waste of time to argue this point in a framework of the
assumption that belief in creationism is, in general, nothing more than an
honest disagreement over some scientific facts. Creationism has long since
lost that status. The existence and in fact strong influence of the
organized creationist movement is an important part of any discussion of
this issue, just as the motivated lying of the tobacco lobby colors disputes
about the dangers of smoking. Telling the truth matters, regardless of the
creationist movement's efforts to the contrary. Holding a value for
truth-telling is NOT discrimination.
-----------------------------------------------
Okay, so "political correctness" isn't high on my list of motivations...
<grin>
Paul Smith
Alverno College
Milwaukee
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