Carol Riggles's electrons arrived as:
>To elaborate further on Deb's rational letter...
>
>I took college biology from a creationist. He handled his religious beliefs
>very diplomatically. He taught textbook evolution, and added the
>mathematical improbability that life could have spontaneously generated
>itself (something like 10 to the 27th power). He suggested the
>discrepancies between the timeline in the Bible and actual scientific
>evidence are related to non-scientific time being kept or understood when
>the Bible was written. Then he allowed us to decide or believe what we
>wanted.
Why was this instructor invoking the Bible at all -- in a biology class?!
This is exactly the problem... you accept the confluence of science and
religion without the righteous indignation that academic integrity
demands. Science is not a contest between its findings and all
non-scientific alternative beliefs -- and those alternatives, while they
may have a place in academia, do not belong in science curricula. Your
biology teacher wasn't teaching "science."
This kind of misconception about science is what endangers a presentation
of the subject in museums!
Stephen
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