Urbanguerrilla
Silver Member
- Aug 27, 2010
- 1,079
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Thought this comment was interesting:
"I live in San Antonio, Texas (deep in the heart of creationist territory, or its supposed to be) and go to a community college (in other words, the lowest form of accredited college) and I can say that I have had no trouble with this sort of thing. The professors in science that Ive had in areas that even deal remotely with an old earth (geology, astronomy, biology, anthropology) were quite frank that evolution is real and there is no conflict over it in the scientific community. Both my astronomy and geology professors (since they were teaching intro science courses) took the opportunity to use evolution as a way to distinguish between a laymans theory and a scientific theory, using evolution as an example of a theory that has held up to testing, criticism, and been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. The closest theyve came to peddling to Creationists is to reassure us that science and religious belief do not need to be in conflict (in a very general way, such as what I just stated). In my biology course, creationism was not even discussed, we simply had a question on the first exam clarifying that evolution was the cornerstone of modern biology and made reference to it occasionally from there (though, speciation wasnt discussed until Bio 2 which I didnt take).
This image of it taking over universities is really not the case. Whats happening is that Creationists/IDers are increasingly trying to lobby to get it taught in universities in fury over losing so badly and attempting to poison the well before people get to university by trying to have it (or problems with evolution that dont exist) taught in secondary school. We will occasionally have a creationist astronomer, biologist, paleontologist, or something like that but in those cases its uniformly a case where the truth was presented to them in their courses and they wrote it down their answers on tests, but plugged their ears and said to themselves that it must not be true, even though they need to give lip-service to get their degree. If someone is deluded enough, no amount of reasoning with them will do any good.
Comment by Thomas M. April 30, 2008"
"I live in San Antonio, Texas (deep in the heart of creationist territory, or its supposed to be) and go to a community college (in other words, the lowest form of accredited college) and I can say that I have had no trouble with this sort of thing. The professors in science that Ive had in areas that even deal remotely with an old earth (geology, astronomy, biology, anthropology) were quite frank that evolution is real and there is no conflict over it in the scientific community. Both my astronomy and geology professors (since they were teaching intro science courses) took the opportunity to use evolution as a way to distinguish between a laymans theory and a scientific theory, using evolution as an example of a theory that has held up to testing, criticism, and been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. The closest theyve came to peddling to Creationists is to reassure us that science and religious belief do not need to be in conflict (in a very general way, such as what I just stated). In my biology course, creationism was not even discussed, we simply had a question on the first exam clarifying that evolution was the cornerstone of modern biology and made reference to it occasionally from there (though, speciation wasnt discussed until Bio 2 which I didnt take).
This image of it taking over universities is really not the case. Whats happening is that Creationists/IDers are increasingly trying to lobby to get it taught in universities in fury over losing so badly and attempting to poison the well before people get to university by trying to have it (or problems with evolution that dont exist) taught in secondary school. We will occasionally have a creationist astronomer, biologist, paleontologist, or something like that but in those cases its uniformly a case where the truth was presented to them in their courses and they wrote it down their answers on tests, but plugged their ears and said to themselves that it must not be true, even though they need to give lip-service to get their degree. If someone is deluded enough, no amount of reasoning with them will do any good.
Comment by Thomas M. April 30, 2008"
