Hello all,
I've been following (on and off) the discussion of Christianity
and science with some interest, in part because I'm currently putting
together a course on the social/cultural and scientific consequences of
Darwin's work. It is well known, as I'm sure someone has probably already
pointed out, that Darwin believed that his theory was incompatible with
religion, at least a religion involving a beneficent god. And I think that
most everyone on this list would agree that the separation of science and
religion in the (science) classroom is necessary. I sometimes wonder,
though, how even-handed we are in applying that rubric.
I was recently discussing this with a colleague who is putting
together a four year, college level environmental science program for a
tribal college, apparently the first of its kind in the US. I was asked,
in fact, to provide a syllabus for their limnology course. An important
aspect of the program is the incorporation of Native American spiritual
beliefs into the science curriculum. [as an aside, having been brought up
Catholic I found the prospect of incorporating spiritual beliefs about
water into my 'regular' limnology teaching to be somewhat amusing] During
our discussion he told me that one of the upper level Native American
science administrators was late for a recent curriculum meeting because
spirits around her house had been restless the night before, and had kept
her up. My colleague reported, with no small degree of pride, how everyone
on the science curriculum committee exhibited profound respect for this
explanation of her tardiness, before getting down to the work of developing
their science program. It made me wonder if the same degree of respect
would have been shown for, say, a Christian who was late for a science
curriculum meeting because they'd had a visitation by Mary the night
before. It also made me wonder whether we in the Western Academy apply
somewhat different standards when applying labels like 'superstitious' and
'spiritual' to different religious traditions, depending upon their
distance from mainstream (Western) culture. It might be worth pointing out
that Native American spirituality, if one can generalize about it, is as
incompatible with a Darwinian view of the natural world as Christianity
is. Those unconvinced of this would find Red Earth, White Lies: Native
Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact, by the renowned Native American
scholar Vine Deloria Jr., to be particularly enlightening.
I hope that this post isn't too off-topic. It does seem to me,
though that to an extent, and an unfortunate extent at that, Darwin has
become something of a stand-in, not for our attitudes on religion per se,
but rather for our attitudes about politics. I think that several posts in
this thread have provided some evidence of this. It has long been my
contention that politics has even less place in the science classroom than
religion does. One need only call to mind Nazi science or Lysenkoism to be
convinced of that. While I would certainly agree that the efforts by some
Christians to incorporate intelligent design into science curricula are
unwise, I also sometimes wonder what other subtexts might be at play in
these debates.
Rick Barbiero
At 03:29 PM 8/23/2007 -0400, you wrote:
>It seems worth pointing out that anyone who thinks the existence of
>God can be proved through the presence or absence of physical evidence
>may be lacking an understanding of both theology and science! As the
>saying goes, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence...
>
>Ever notice that the folks who think that maybe there is something to
>this world beyond what we can see, feel, smell, and hear are thought
>to be "close minded" and the "open minded" folks think that if you
>can't prove it, it doesn't exist?
>
>That said, science is a way of knowing that is based on reason and
>what we can measure, and its teaching should be restricted to those
>things, so I applaud the efforts to keep faith (beyond the faith
>needed to trust science) out of a scientific classroom.
>
>Interesting discussion. I hope there's no need of a "holy war" in
>civil discourse...
>
>Cheers,
>Darren
______________________________
Richard P. Barbiero, Ph.D.
Senior Environmental Scientist CSC
Senior Instructor, Loyola University Chicago
1359 W. Elmdale Ave. #2
Chicago IL 60660 tel. 773 878 3661
Man is condemned to exhaust all possible errors when he examines any set of
facts before he recognises the truth. - Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
