Does evolution imply atheism?

We’ve got another troll in the comments — she wouldn’t necessarily be a troll, except for the dead giveaway of asking the same question a dozen times and running away from any answer any of the non-troll commenters might give. The question is, “Does evolution imply atheism?”, and I’m going to have to disagree with most of the people who have already answered it by giving a conditional yes.

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Yet another creationist quotemine

I’ve been asked to publicize another creationist quote mine. Gene Myers, a former vice president at Celera who was one of the leaders in sequencing the human genome, has been quote by Tom Abate in the San Francisco Chronicle as saying, “What really astounds me is the architecture of life…The system is extremely complex. It’s like it was designed… There’s a huge intelligence there.” This quote is one of the stock items used by Muslim and Christian creationists everywhere.

He was interviewed by TonkaFocus, and asked flatly whether he was an Intelligent Design creationism supporter. His answer:

I am not. I am being taken out of context and upset about this. Abate [SF Chronicle reporter] interviewed me shortly after we had completed the genome and for a moment I waxed poetic about the complexity of what was there and the elegance of the ‘design’. Evolution is very real – it is directly observable in the time frames of mutating bacteria, e.g. the acquisition of antibiotic resistance.

Case closed on that one. Not that any creationists will care.

At least Minnesota hasn’t gotten this bad

Some teachers were at a workshop in Atlanta to talk about their experiences teaching evolution, and how to overcome some of the problems. They’ve had it worse than I have.

Some students burst into tears when a high school biology told them they’d be studying evolution. Another teacher said some students repeatedly screamed “no” when he began talking about it.

Other teachers said students demanded to know whether they pray and questioned why the had to learn about evolution if it was just a theory.

I get remarks on my student evaluations (last year, a group of students must have collaborated, because there were a half dozen evaluations that said exactly the same thing: “This class taught me to love Jesus even more!”, which they may have thought would hurt my feelings, but I just laughed.) I’ve had some students who talked to my colleagues about this evolution stuff — they were apparently afraid to confront me. I do get some forthright creationists, but they don’t respond with tears…they try to argue with me, which is just fine. But otherwise, the only screams I get are when I return exams.

The solutions are a little vaguely stated, but OK — they are actively responding to the problem.

A few years ago, Pratt started holding meetings – open to parents, students, church members and others – to address their questions about evolution. She holds the annual session a few weeks before she begins the unit and gets about 200 people.

“It used to be that the whole unit was a struggle, and we were butting heads,” Pratt said. “This meeting helps everyone understand that science teachers are not the enemy. Now, the kids are showing up ready to learn about evolution.”

Other teachers said they try to fix students’ misconceptions. They explain how humans and apes share a common ancestor that no longer exists, not that humans and apes evolved from one another. They say that while “theory” may describe a hunch in everyday language, in science it is defined as an explanation supported by factual evidence to describe events that occur in our world.

Graham Balch, a biology teacher at Grady High in Atlanta, addressed the controversy head-on. He had his students read about Cox’s actions and the response she got. They learned about efforts across the country to water down lessons about evolution and how other public and private schools teach the material. They debated the cause of the conflict and whether evolution should be taught in public schools.

As for myself, the way I handle it is not to push atheism in the classroom (you’re shocked, I know), since that would lead into arguments that aren’t part of the subject matter of the course. What I do instead is teach a historical approach to the issue of evolution, showing that there really wasn’t an Evil Atheist Conspiracy at work, but simply scientists who were making honest evaluations of the evidence: 19th century geology was driven by profits to be made from coal and railroads and canals, not ideology, and Darwin arrived at his conclusions in spite of his upbringing in a faith. And once you’ve gone through the evidence, it becomes really easy to spend a lecture or two ripping up creationists, because the students can easily see how creationists are not operating in good faith and are in denial of the facts of geology and biology.

Some still argue with me now and then, but usually my problem is keeping the other students in the class from brutalizing the poor credulous sap’s arguments too cruelly.

Losing the sense of the argument

I think we can all already see the defense the right wing is throwing up to rationalize Sarah Palin’s inane remarks about “fruit fly research in Paris, France”: she wasn’t disparaging all research into fruit flies, but only one specific earmark for studying agricultural pests.

Baloney.

The context of that comment was that she was claiming research had “little or nothing to do with the public good”, and she brought up these seemingly trivial little animals and a place the right wing despises as dogwhistles to her hoople-headed fans. Claiming now that she was making an informed criticism of a specific study is a feeble attempt to distract with a lie.

Remember, this is the crank governor of Alaska who denies evolution and global warming, the backup candidate to a man who mocks research into bear DNA and calls a multimillion dollar educational tool an “overhead projector”, from a party that ridicules people with Parkinson’s because they want more stem cell research, and idiots want to claim that she isn’t really anti-science because in this one case she was actually targeting an instance of applied research that directly benefits agricultural interests?

That’s insane. You have to be a purblind slavering zombie of the Rethuglican party to swallow that.

It goes deeper than just trying to belittle science, too — we are a technological society that is entirely dependent on the advancements science has brought to us, that is facing a new series of challenges that will require new science to overcome. The Assemblies of God churches are not going to come up with anything to help with global warming, alternative energy, new medicine, new reproductive technologies, new discoveries, new ideas. Science is our tool to help people, yet the Republican party only sees it as a kind of armament factory to help them kill strangers in foreign lands. As John Cole put it, “why is it that the people who claim to adhere to the culture of life are so filled with hate for…people?”

It’s snowing!

We’re having our very first snowfall of the new winter. It’s kind of comforting to see, but a) my wife has an hour long commute each weekday, and b) this usually marks the descent of the region into the deep freeze for the next 4-6 months.

Radio reminder

This morning at 9am, Atheists Talk radio will be about the Ghosts of Minnesota and American Atheists. One of those two is entirely unreal.


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Elitism is not a four-letter word

I just got this in the mail, and smug elitist that I am, I thought it was worth passing along.

Dear friends, In these times, with extremely serious, complicated crisises confronting us both economically and internationally, we need to have intelligent, educated people as president & vice president:

Educational Background:

Barack Obama:
Columbia University – B.A.
Political Science with a Specialization in
International Relations.
Harvard – Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude

Joseph Biden:
University of Delaware – B.A. in History and B.A. in Political Science.
Syracuse University College of Law – Juris Doctor (J.D.)

vs.

John McCain:
United States Naval Academy – Class rank: 894 of 899

Sarah Palin:
Hawaii Pacific University – 1 semester
North Idaho College – 2 semesters – general study
University of Idaho – 2 semesters – journalism
Matanuska-Susitna College – 1 semester
University of Idaho – 3 semesters – B.A. in Journalism