I have just spent the last week at a field station in Kenya run by the Turkana Basin Institute, an organization founded and inspired by Richard Leakey, the famous human-fossil-hunting son of Louis and Mary Leakey. I was there for a workshop on human evolution and, although I have been an academic (student and professor) now for more than 50 years, it was one of the most exciting weeks of my life.
Charles Darwin, when he wrote his "Descent of Man," published back in 1871, could little have dreamed how much fruit his little plant would now be bearing. We now know beyond all reasonable doubt that the human line first emerged in East Africa about 6 or 7 million years ago, when we split off from the apes. We were up on our hind legs, bipedal, before 4 million years ago; our brains exploded up in size about 2 million years ago; and modern humans emerged a mere hundred thousand or so years ago.
We also know how biologically trivial are some of the things that socially seem to matter most of all. Take, for instance, skin color. Anyone who thinks this now no longer relevant has never visited Tallahassee, in Northern Florida, where I live. Simply compare the two universities, Florida State (mainly white) and Florida A&M (almost exclusively black), and look at the relative physical conditions and much else. Yet, apparently, skin color is something that differentiated humans only about 15,000 years ago. A mere flash in the eye of evolution, a process that has now been going on for nearly 4 billion years. It just isn't that important!
There were two basic messages that I came away with this week. First, just how incredibly exciting is science in general and the study of human origins in particular. Our group included paleontologists, geneticists, anthropologists, climatologists, and more. Even a historian and philosopher of science like me! New discoveries and new theories are appearing almost daily as we explore our history, showing just how it was that a bunch of African apes exploded upwards into being, producing the incredible culture that we find here today on this earth.
Second, how this isn't just a matter of knowledge but a moral quest in a way. Even for the non-religious, learning about our nature, surely forces upon us new understandings and attitudes. I have just made mention of skin color and its triviality. For the religious it is even more a moral quest, as we make use of our God-given talents to explore and marvel at the world He created for our abode. If being made in the image of God means anything, it means looking fearlessly at our own nature and our past, understanding why we are as we are and how we might move forward.
And yet, my time in Kenya was tinged with a certain sadness. Just as I was leaving for Africa, it was brought home vividly how the country in which I live is filled with prejudice and ignorance. Apparently, in state after state, particularly in the South, people have found ways to get around the constitutional separation of Church and State and to use public funds (or funds destined for the public use) to support private schools, especially private schools that teach an evangelical Christianity that excludes evolution:
Most of the private schools are religious. Nearly a quarter of the participating schools in Georgia require families to make a profession of religious faith, according to their Web sites. Many of those schools adhere to a fundamentalist brand of Christianity. A commonly used sixth-grade science text retells the creation story contained in Genesis, omitting any other explanation. An economics book used in some high schools holds that the Antichrist -- a world ruler predicted in the New Testament -- will one day control what is bought and sold.
This can if left unchecked lead to a serious corrosion of the scientific effort in terms of biology and chemistry. From an economic perspective it will with a very high probability diminish american competitiveness in the world and in all likelihood have an impact on living standards as the investments in this field migrate to more hospitable environment.
And it has nothing to do with some "creationist" scapegoat.
We know the Pope is familiar with Iron Age mythology, but I guess I missed the part where the Pope got an advanced degree in astrophysics...
Instead, create a Dept. of Science. Move all the scientific agencies into it, the USGS, NOAA, NASA, NWS, etc. Give the money formerly used by the DOE to the DOS and let them use it to educate Americans in science. Create textbooks for each grade, written by scientists, and offer to provide them for free to all classes, grades 1 - 12.
Provide funds to hire science teachers who majored in sciences, not education. If the children pass tests in science the funding continues. If they do not it is withdrawn. School districts hate losing funding.
Use the rest of the money to loan to college students majoring in sciences, medicine, engineering, math, etc. If the graduates work in their field knock 10% off the loan amount for each year. Then, at the end of ten years we will have an entire generation of scientists, doctors, nurses, and engineers who are debt free and ready to continue productive lives.
Let the ones who learned creationism in school do the jobs they are suited for, flipping burgers, making beds, and collecting garbage.
To me there are two sides to science. One is the objective understanding of physical reality, which gives us the ability to manipulate the physical world to our adaptive advantage; to build a nuclear reactor or a nuclear bomb; science as the tool of our irrational desires. The other is in the relationship between that inductively-arrived-at understanding of physical reality and our own existence; the apparent scientific reality that "we" are evolved biological mechanisms living in a "world" that is entirely a creation of our body's own brain; God and morality immaterial artifacts of our experience and not of the physical universe. While the first side may be "God given", the second is a "terrifying" conundrum, which is not lost on the religionist, even if it may be lost on the rationalist or the conciliator.
This quote is an incorrect statement and the only "evidence" that supports it is by those that confuse an effect for a cause.
Now if anyone is interested in becoming a sincere seeker into these mysteries of life dont look to scientific materialism or religion for answers. they both have an agenda. follow the money and study the effect of paradigm paralysis on the human mind to discover their agenda.
Both the religious and the materialists judge by appearances. one must seek deeper than appearances as they are only phenomena.
You didn't think it was a coincidence that racism and creationism go together, did you?
I am glad that you seem to praise empiricism. But it's not logical, and I think definitely not helpful, to inculcate assumptions about transcendent agency in our youth.
This goes for claiming that a god started evolution. Such a belief may not be immediately harmful to critical thinking, but I don't see any benefit in teaching kids to neglect the power of reason and empiricism to make specific assumptions.
I dream of the day when everyone can finally forgo the divine garnish and just feast on the knowledge set before us.
*taps mic* this thing on?
Someone...please pass me the Purell.
Sadly, the state gave them money and the Governor attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Noah's Ark being built outside.