I am actually writing a book, a memoir in fact, on making peace between evolution & Christianity. Should be out Spring 2010 (Beacon Press). What I've found in my research, which involves talking to young-earth-creationists and intelligent design proponents etc and my experiences with biology students are these things:
1. When most people hear "evolution" they hear "evolution of humankind." 2. When asked to journal about what they'd heard about "evolution" and what they thought it meant, my college bio students said (time after time) it meant "we evolved from apes". Never common ancestry. Nor any mention of other animals/plants/etc. (hence #1 conclusion above. They also said they heard evolution was immoral, that they should not "believe in that stuff the teacher taught" (from their parents), and it was wrong, and there was no evidence. Clearly this shows where they learned the definition - parents, peers, and pastors - NOT from the h.s. biology lessons they should have learned it from. 3. Young earth creationists (and ID-proponents) accept microevolution (though they will not accept the term 'natural selection') and change within what they call "kinds" (all cats, all whales/cetaceans, all hominids etc) but ONLY have a problem with the change of one organism to another - dino to bird for example. So any evolutionary study that would have taken place in Darwin's finches, sticklebacks, HIV viruses, would have no bearing on their continued disbelief in macro-evolution. I found some YECers don't even oppose the evolution of humanity between various fossil forms of early hominids. That surprised me. 4. Many mainstream Christian denominations accept evolution doctrinally - though this never gets media play. Methodist, Episcopal, Presbyterian, ELCA Lutheran and Catholic all accept evolution. The majority of the US Founding Fathers belonged to Episcopal & Presbyterian (inc Congregationalist) denominations - which have always embraced logic and reason alongside faith. These denoms are associated with some of the US' earliest universities - Dartmouth, Princeton etc. So what needs to be done is to understand the opposition to evolution is really only macro-evolution (accepting that natural selection is the mechanism for macro- evolution). And also the "origin" of life from macromolecules they think is "statistically impossible" without God. So all the textbook criticisms deal with these issues. HOWEVER a big problem is that the general public does not seem to know ANY of this (meaning those who happen to call themselves ID or YEC)! The "teachers" (IDists, YECers, etc) who are leading the movements, say all the above. However the masses get confused by all the media reports where journalists are not quite getting all of this... No one defines any terms. No one really understands what the others' motivations are, or what they are disagreeing over. My book is still in progress and I am sure there are exceptions to the above. I didn't even get into ID because I think their motives are hidden and possibly insidious. (One of the Discovery Institute's primary funders is funded Howard Ahmanson, who is well-known for desiring a theocracy (ties to Christian Reconstructionist movement). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Ahmanson,_Jr Enough for now, gotta get back to my book writing. :) Wendee ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Wendee Holtcamp, M.S. Wildlife Ecology Freelance Writer * Photographer * Bohemian http://www.wendeeholtcamp.com http://bohemianadventures.blogspot.com ~~6-wk Online Writing Course Starts Feb 21, 2009~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 'Better to light a candle than curse the darkness' -----Original Message----- From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Bruce J. Turner, Dept. Biol. Sci., VPISU, Blacksburg, VA 240 Sent: Sunday, February 15, 2009 11:00 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [ECOLOG-L] On circumstantial evidence for evolution... I think we do ourselves a disservice when we uncritically (implicitly) accept the notion that evidence for evolution is largely "circumstantial." Obviously, circumstantial evidence can be quite powerful---even virtually irrefutable in some cases. But the public at large seems to have been taught, perhaps from numerous courtroom dramas on TV and film, that "circumstantial" = "weak." I think we would do better to more widely discuss the numerous and growing cases of "evolution in action." From the Endler-Reznick work on Trinidadian guppies and the Grants' work on Darwin's finches to the Rice - Salt work on inducing reproductive isolation in laboratory populations of Drosophila, we have a plethora of cases in which evolution occurs in "real time" and with results that are predictable in advance. Likewise, the public seems unaware that some diseases use evolutionary change as an adaptive strategy, and that the appearance of insecticide resistance, antibiotic resistance etc. are obvious instances of evolutionary change. We need to make more of this. I teach Evol. Biol. every semester to sophomore biology majors, and the first point I make, and I try to make it very strong, is that evolution is happening all around us---it is not something we can see only by looking at the fossil record (I use readings from Palumbi's The Evolution Explosion to help with this). We need to make the public more aware that evolution is a dynamic, ongoing process that can be studied like any other biological phenomenon, and that the usual "circumstantial" evidence that is traditionally offered in support of it is only part of the story. Bruce J. Turner Dept. Biol. Sci. VIRGINIA TECH Blacksburg, VA 24061 USA "Truth, she lives in a distant land of snow, and ice... And burning sand." ><((((º> ><((((º> ><((((º> ><((((º> ><((((º> ><((((º> ><((((º> ><((((º> ><((((º> ><((((º> ><((((º> ><((((º> ><((((º> ><((((º> ><((((º> ><((((º> Facilis est descensus Averni - Virgil
