Letters to the Editor
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Desert Son, It's o.k. to be an English Major
It is not that English Majors hurt scientific education; it is just that there are so darn many of them who later go into teaching.
Any student who studies the arts but lacks the ability (even if not the talent) to pursue an artistic career will often find themselves in the field of education.
A student who studies an applied science or even an esoteric science is far more likely to be lured into a research position or an applied field than to take on the thankless role of teaching our nations youth.
As a result you have people who perhaps have a fascination with science (like the Actress in “Insignificance”), but limited understanding teaching science in schools.
If people do not truly understand what they are teaching, if they are essentially teaching from the book, they are more likely to teach by rote and thusly fail to teach the nature of subject.
For example, if your entire English education were merely the recitation of the various works of Robert Frost, and you were never asked to understand the deeper meaning of the words you spoke, I think you would agree you would be a very poorly taught English student. But more often than not that is what our public education system does with regard to math and science.
I would offer that perhaps your own turning away from math and science had less to do with your lack of ability to learn and more to do with your teachers’ lack of ability to teach. As a tragic co-occurring problem many mathematicians and scientists are dreadfully bad at teaching as well, but hopefully the ones that choose teaching do so because of a knack for the practice.
Regardless, it is not so much that English Majors teach science as it is that when teaching science they aren't approaching it as a language. Science and math are about interactions and about beauty and symmetry, just like language. And like language it is the understanding of the smallest parts that make for the understanding of the whole.
All teachers need to understand that teaching math and science isn't about reciting rules and tables, but about understanding how these rules and tables were formed.
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The very base of creationism is flawed
Creationists claim that God created the world and everything on it in six 24 hour days. First of all, time is a man made creation, God didn't have a calendar or a watch. God is not confined by the laws of time, and could have taken millions of years to create the earth if he wanted to. Second, there is more than enough proof that the Earth is older than just a few thousand years. Besides if Dinosaurs existed at the same time as humans, in the last few thousand years, then how come there are no Dinosaurs in the bible? If they were all wiped out during the great flood, then wasn't Moses playing God by not letting a pair of each kind of Dinosaur on his arc? In the end it doesn't make God less spectacular just because the Earth is billions of years old, in fact it makes him more. He was able to create life that can evolve to survive and better itself, and that is a truly amazing creation.
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Can Faith Be Left Out?
Senator Sam Brownback, a Republican senator from Kansas and candidate for president, in trying to further explain why he raised his hand when answering yes to MSNBC debate moderator Chris Mathews’ question if he believed in evolution, wrote as part of his expansion on the question in a letter to the editor of the New York Times published today, May 31, 2007:
“Biologists will have their debates about man’s origins, but people of faith can also bring a great deal to the table. For this reason, I oppose the exclusion of either faith or reason from the discussion. An attempt by either to seek a monopoly on these questions would be wrong-headed. As science continues to explore the details of man’s origin, faith can do its part as well. The fundamental question for me is how these theories affect our understanding of the human person.”
The senator is wrong. Faith will not affect our understanding of human existence. Scientists are not trying to seek a monopoly. They simply seek factual truths. Creationist faith believers like Brownback see them as an enemy of their faith. They feel so uncomfortable about that faith that they like all doubters, blame the messenger for putting some doubt into their beliefs. Even though he wrote the letter to do damage control for his candidacy, from what I have seen of the senator on TV, he seems to be a very decent person who searches his soul for what is right. Defending creationism through faith isn’t helping his search.
What does faith mean? If I want to believe something that I don’t know the answer to, I can have faith in my most feasible explanation, until I learn new facts. If I base my reason only on faith, I can’t add anything to the explanation other than reinforce my faith.
What does religious faith mean? Religious faith is used to confirm what I believe, not necessarily what others or I know based on science or facts. Just because people write or claim to have heard a God-based or Disciple-based message, to believe them, I have to have use faith. I have no scientific or logical reason to know if they actually received the message. What I can do is examine the message and decide how I could possibly use it to benefit others and myself.
The fact that many of these people wrote or voiced things a long time before science had come even close through research and reasoning to a better understanding of our cellular predecessors, doesn’t seem to matter. If I have faith that these wise people know what God or other believers told them, I will follow what they tell me or how others interpret what they tell me. Of course, if I have faith that they are the Son of God or other kind of disciple, then I must believe them. If I don’t, I can’t be a follower of my faith. Does this sound rational? Yes and no.
It’s rational if I want to keep my faith. It’s not, if I am looking for an explanation of how I and other creatures and things got to their present state. It’s useful if the faith allows me to feel better about myself as a social and caring inhabitant of this planet. It’s not, if I don’t have faith in the explanations.
That seems to be the crux of the matter of believing in evolution or creationism. To believe in evolution, I have to accept scientific facts and reasoning. To believe in creationism, I either have to ignore science or come up with an explanation of my religious beliefs that explain how for example the Christian God who created earth in six days meant something far different than what six days means today. I have to divine what six days meant back at the time it was written or thought. Other religious faiths have other beliefs. The one common denominator is faith.
Civilizations have put too much faith in who is telling us to have faith. Terrible things have been and are being done in the name of these leaders’ “faith” con jobs. They aren’t capable of controlling lives or asking for supreme sacrifices without demanding faith in how to act in this life, what is in store in the after life and what it takes to get there. Leaving the debate alone on whether there is or is not an after life, I don’t believe in making such crucial decisions based solely on the faith of another human.
Since there have been so many different explanations of the mandatory faith required to save my soul, I have faith that they can’t all be right. Using science and reasoning, there is a possibility that none are right. What matters to me regarding evolution vs. creationism is what I have learned from others about matter, cells, bones, and artifacts, DNA etc. What doesn’t matter is any historical explanation that I can only believe through the faith of other humans.