Biology teachers think understanding faith, teaching evolution not mutually exclusive
No, they wouldn’t. Their faith is Darwin = jobs and facts don’t matter:
Critics of evolution often take advantage of a teacher’s limited understanding of evolution to foster doubt in the science and make the science seem less settled than it actually is, according to Berkman, who worked with Eric Plutzer, professor of political science and academic director at the Survey Research Center. These critics need only a slight opening to sow that doubt, he added.
“You don’t have to necessarily prove an alternate theory, you just have to shed sufficient doubt on the prevailing scientific consensus,” said Berkman. “This is not an original idea. A variety of people and groups use the strategy of enabling doubt, in terms of doubting evolution, or climate change, or even, in the past, with tobacco research.”
Although many religious denominations now accept the compatibility between religious faith and the science of evolution, students from the non-religious schools often revealed that they experienced tension between the two, according to the researchers, who released their findings in the March issue of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, which is online now.
How about teach something useful instead, despite the risks. Teach human beings to think.
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I couldn’t agree more. Teach students to think critically about science, certainly, but not just science. Teach them to think critically about their faith as well. What concerns me is that children of religious families who are being educated in faith schools or being home-schooled are not getting that kind of training.
as to: “What concerns me is that children of religious families who are being educated in faith schools or being home-schooled are not getting that kind of training.”
It seems, academically speaking, ‘faith schools’ are doing quite well, and it is the public schools that you should be worried about:
The last graph on the following site shows that the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) scores for students showed a steady decline, for seventeen years from the top spot or near the top spot in the world, after the removal of prayer from the public classroom by the Supreme Court, not by public decree, in 1963.
If anyone doubts those sobering numbers cited by David Barton in the preceding, here is the raw data on crime statistics for America from 1960 to 2013:
Quote, Verse and Music:
Supplemental notes
I am worried about the public schools. I think they are underfunded and undervalued and deserve far more support than they are ever likely to get from conservatives. Unlike faith schools they have to take on the most disadvantaged in society. They can’t cherry-pick the best students.
And you’ll have to do a lot better than David Barton as a credible authority on anything.
As for the Establishment Clause, are you seriously touting Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council as a greater authority than Thomas Jefferson?
— Letter to the Danbury Baptists. Jan 1 1802
The purpose of the clause is quite clearly to prohibit the establishment of a state church and, as a corollary, to prevent any one church gaining ascendancy over all others thereby guaranteeing the rights of all from encroachment by the government or anyone else.
pushing the usual atheistic Ad hominems aside, its funny no one, including Jefferson, noticed that the ‘separation of church and state’ included the state making prayer in school illegal for 150 years.
In fact, Jefferson attended church at the Capitol while he was Vice President
http://www.wallbuilders.com/LI......asp?id=90
Funny kind of separation that Jefferson championed,
Of note, Barton addresses the ‘only the best students go to private Christian schools’ objection in the video I referenced, and shows it to be fallacious
As well, the family research video analyses the Jefferson letter to the Baptists in full starting at around the 26 minute mark of the lecture and shows how the ‘separation’ phrase in the letter has been twisted out of overall context
Says who? That’s just a bald unfounded assertion. It looks like an argument from ignorance.
And yet the studies author, Michael Berkman, a professor of political science, thinks that he is qualified to comment on the validity of evolution. I wonder where he got that idea?
Seversky @ 3
“And you’ll have to do a lot better than David Barton as a credible authority on anything.”
As a matter of fact, Barton himself does a lot better than citing “David Barton” in citing credible authority. If you actually watch the videos and listen to Barton you will see that he cites American founders such as George Washington, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, John Jay and others. You will see that religion and prayer were part and parcel of public and school life for some 175 years prior to your progressive capture and re-write of American history in the 1960s.
Do a search/study on the statements and actions of our founding fathers with respect to faith, in particular the Christian religion. Look at Benjamin Franklin’s call to prayer at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Look at the inauguration of George Washington as our first president, and the gathering at St. Paul’s chapel immediately after the inauguration – a gathering for prayer which included the new president and the congress.
Do a search/study on all of the officially sanctioned religious activity and words of virtually all presidents up to and including 44.
Ask yourself why was the Bible and prayer an accepted part of America for 175 years following the founding in 1787.
We each choose the history of our own nation; some of use choose the history beginning with the founding and the founders – and the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence … and others choose a history beginning in the 1960s or even later with the election of George W. Bush and the “savior” who followed him in order to correct the wrongs and evils of this nation.
And Tony Perkins probably has a sounder understanding of American history, including Thomas Jefferson than do you.
“Critics of evolution often take advantage of a teacher’s limited understanding..” No, we merely demolish the so called evidence (s) for evolution and allow the kids the chance, currently unavailable, to process the data, from both sides, and make up their own minds. The fact the so called evidence isn’t strong isn’t our problem it is yours. If you have the evidence put up or shut up.
“Critics of evolution often take advantage of a teacher’s limited understanding of evolution…”
If evolution were an open-and-shut case, then such a strategy would invariably fail, because even a limited understanding would be enough to demolish any rebuttal.
But it does confess a key point: That we are being asked to accept something we do not understand.
“But it does confess a key point: That we are being asked to accept something we do not understand.”
Love the comment. Apparently not asked just to accept it, but teach it as well, without adequate understanding. I will bet we could also extend that comment to include research, experiment, hypothesize, (which are all good and well, but here is the unscientific agenda driven truth of the matter that irritates so many thinking well informed individuals)and actually proclaim significantly unsubstantiated conjecture as “scientifically” empirically demonstrated truth.
And that is a problem, how, exactly? You’re quite prepared to accept a god who’s motives and methods you admit you don’t understand and for whom there’s even less evidence.
“for whom there’s even less evidence”
Yes Seversky, the ‘appearance of design’, (Dawkins pg.1 The Blind Watchmaker), that is all around us is merely an illusion, even though atheists have not one shred of evidence that unguided material processes can produce that ‘appearance of design’!
“for whom there’s even less evidence”
Yes Seversky, the ‘appearance of design’, (Dawkins pg.1 The Blind Watchmaker), that is all around us is merely an illusion, even though atheists have not one shred of evidence that unguided material processes can produce that ‘appearance of design’!”””
BA, don’t you understand? We are supposed to take their word about this even though they have no evidence that design is only the appearance of design.
Wow ,I can’t believe I was so brainwashed to have been an evolutionist, that is until I decided to think for myself
ayearningforpublius @ 7
What was part and parcel of school life, until the Supreme Court finally put a stop to it, was compulsory prayer. You and yours can pray when and where you want. What you don’t get to do is force me and mine to join in when we don’t share your beliefs.
Look up what actually happened to Franklin’s call to prayer rather than just accepting Barton’s distortion.
Ask yourself why it took a 188 years for blacks to finally get the inalienable rights they’d been promised in the Declaration of Independence.
Maybe it took that long for enough Americans to stand up and insist that the country do the right thing.
Barton can write whatever fantasy version of American history he likes but don’t expect the rest of us to buy it on his say-so.
He’s already had one book pulled from the shelves by the publisher because of serious inaccuracies.
He claimed that in the letter to the Danbury Baptists, Jefferson had written that the wall of separation was “one-sided”, that it was intended only to prevent government meddling in religion. There is no such language in the letter. Either Barton is an incompetent historian or he’s a bald-faced liar.
As for the Constitutional Convention, yes, Franklin tabled a motion for a call to prayer. It never even came to a vote because of an almost complete lack of interest – and money. There were no formal morning prayers at the opening of each session It’s all in the minutes. Any competent historian would know that. Again, Barton is either incompetent or a liar.
In a radio interview, Barton claimed that the clause in Article II of the constitution which stipulates that only a born citizen of the United States can become President was lifted verbatim from Deuteronomy 17:15.
This is the relevant clause from Article II:
This is Deuteronomy 17:15
I rest my case.
Seversky,
The fact that there is an organized world full of consistent rules, begging for an explanation as to why, is pretty darn good evidence that we have a organized world full of rules.
I wonder how you miss that each day.
Teachers here are being warned that their students might take advantage of their ‘limited understanding of evolution’ and end up fostering doubt about the science. As mentioned above, if evolution had the level of certainty that is claimed for it by its defenders, students simply wouldn’t be able to challenge the facts.
Here you equate evolution with religious faith. In government schools in the US, however, one subject is required and the other forbidden.
For theists, God is the ground and source of rationality itself. God is necessary – evolution is not.
I think many faith schools serve the most disadvantaged.
In my opinion, many government schools create disadvantaged families and thus perpetuate the cycle of poverty.