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Op-ed: what it's like to teach evolution at the University of Kentucky

Underseer said:
http://www.slate.com/articles/healt..._kentucky_there_are_some_students.single.html

Why do some of these people bother going to college? I mean, if they know more about biology than a biology professor, don't they already know everything they need to know to get any career they would like?
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I think some of them think they are doing battle with you know who
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Ah, the south-of-I-70 lifestyle. I have a friend who taught 6th grade in Marietta, Ohio. On her first day on the job, a student told her, 'My dad says if you try to tell us the earth is more than 6000 years old and dinosaurs are from millions of years ago, I can get you fired.'
 
ideologyhunter said:
Ah, the south-of-I-70 lifestyle. I have a friend who taught 6th grade in Marietta, Ohio. On her first day on the job, a student told her, 'My dad says if you try to tell us the earth is more than 6000 years old and dinosaurs are from millions of years ago, I can get you fired.'
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Wow, that's just breathtaking.
 
She should teach that "The earth appears to be billions of years old, and dinosaurs fossils appear to be from an era tens of millions of years in the past. Of course it is possible that all this was created by a god 6000 years ago with that appearance. It's equally possible that a god created all this with all this appearance an hour ago."
 
I apologize, students. The earth samples, fossils, radioactive decay and speed of light from >99.9% of stars visible through optic telescopes alone, are all misleading, and therefore your god is an awful prankster and an amazingly callous sunovabitch who wants to make it exceedingly hard for anyone with half a brain to ever get saved through belief. Happy now?

Now that we all have insulted your deity much more than any evolutionary biologist could ever dream to do, can we continue with the class?
 
That would actually be a good lesson. Not for a science class, but more like philosophy.

Ask the class, "How do we know the Earth is older than 100 years?"

The students will naturally try to rebut by citing old photographs and written records and antique objects, etc.

The teacher can reply, "Ah, but how do we know an old photograph is older than 100 years?"

This will spur the students to find methods, such as the record of the photograph matches the records of the photographer, proving that this older-than-100 man took this photo, etc. In other words, teach them about converging lines of evidence.

Then, the teacher can trump them with, "Ah, but perhaps God planted both the photograph and the records of the photographer. Would we be able to tell the difference?"

In short, get students to think how a magical trickster God can make any historical claim dubious, not just the ones about dinosaurs.
 
i had some serious conflict with my evo-bio prof. the only word for his stance is 'reactionary'. i honestly expected to learn about dinosaurs......not darwin's personal life. he did an intro lecture about theories that can't be tested, meaning most things involving the bible, then tacked panspermia on the list. i objected, 'we've been throwing bacteria laden meteorites at dead worlds for decades....give it a few million years'. i thought that was funny - hell no. after that i could not convince the man i'm not a creationist, and as the class progressed it came to me that he was sanctifying darwin. in my religion, we have a saying: if you see the buddha come walking down the road, hit him with a stick. meaning that when you want to learn a body of knowledge, the last thing you need is hero worship. i thought i was imagining it, so i did random word sampling from our required reading, then the bible and yes, our reading mentioned darwin more than the bible did god. wtf? i had three semesters of calculus, and no one every mentioned newton, because he's irrelevant. when i finally got to talk to him, trying to explain that i thought the science stood for itself, he said he was trying to make the class more politically relevant.

now i read this, and i understand why he taught the class as he did, and why he was feeling a might persecuted. but i don't think his response was the right way - science is science and it's never been dull to me. but i was 30something taking the class as post-bac, not a 20yo junior. would this bother anyone else? there was this day when he spoke about inbreeding, and showed picture of famous men who'd married their cousin. i ID'd all but one, just a generic greek looking work....which he said was mohammed. now, i'm not about catering to people's weird religious ideas, but wow....to show an image of mohammed, clearing not a real image, which is just why you're not supposed to show him, and throw around incest? that's just rude. then again, i feel that way when i see TV commercials showing buddhist monks selling tic-tacs, so maybe i'm over sensitive.
 
Underseer said:
http://www.slate.com/articles/healt..._kentucky_there_are_some_students.single.html

Why do some of these people bother going to college? I mean, if they know more about biology than a biology professor, don't they already know everything they need to know to get any career they would like?
Click to expand...

Well, from the article, few are actually evangelistic fundamentalists one rung up from a terrorist. Most sit through his classes and don't storm out after a tearful or angry protest that he's ruining their religious fantasies.
 
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