I was reading the first chapter of my Biology Textbook, and it really goes into detail about how science has nothing to say on religious matters. That along with the Syllabus I got for the class really shows how worried they are about creationists.
The professor also strongly emphasized that science does not say anything about the supernatural, and can only deal with things that happen naturally. This is an oversimplification in my opinion.
I just laughed a little about how complex the word “oversimplification” is. Shouldn’t that word be more simple?
Anyway, back on topic.
Why would a college level course in biology make such efforts to assuage the fears of the people that fear evolution? These people are paying to go to this class, and if they want to pass, which I assume everyone does, they either grasp the concepts and apply them correctly or they don’t reach their goal.
I don’t know why it seems so offensive to me. I guess it’s because I am in school to learn, and having the professor go on for 20 minutes about how science and religion aren’t at odds with each other seems like a horrible waste of time. That 20 minutes of time could have been much better spent discussing how DNA creates RNA, or any number of other things that people go to a Biology class for.
Now, I do catch the irony of me using more time to write about this 20 minutes of wasted time, but the subject of this blog is all about pointing out stupid things about religious beliefs, and this is one of them.
Needless to say, in a college level course, there should be no reason whatsoever for the book and the instructor to have to hold the hand of people that are too stupid to realize that their religion is screwed up.
I also find it odd that a book that goes to such trouble separating itself from religion, goes on to talk about evolution in a way that simply ignores the religious opposition. I’m not sure how I would have done it different, but obviously evolution is going to be the biggest thing in biology that religious people would have a problem with. It would seem that if it’s going to try to coddle fundies, it should at the very least coddle them through the introduction of evolution.
In my never to be humble opinion, we shouldn’t even try to ease these people into science. If they have a religious problem with the facts, they are only going to be able to pass the class with a high level of cognitive dissonance anyway. It doesn’t matter what you say in the beginning.
That being said though, I imagine that’s why we don’t seem to get any fundamental Christians that have credentials in the fields they spout off about.
This isn’t the only place I had something like this come up though. I’m also taking a philosophy course. The professor there decided that it was necessary to point out that he was going to go into a whole bunch of things that would question God. He felt it necessary to point out that he believed in God, but philosophy is often used to question the big questions in life, like God.
Now, I had less of a problem at this point, since most of the great philosophers throughout time have been theists, and much of what has been examined has been God. It’s obvious that the subject is going to come up, but to try and settle fears preemptively shows that too much credit is given to belief.
So, I guess I’m going to have to get used to this hand holding and coddling behavior in both my teachers and textbooks. I just think it’s an unwarranted waste of time.
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