Many thanks to DJ SupplyGuy for hosting a talk yesterday on his radio show “EVoS & You.” DJSG presented some interesting questions and our short half-hour talk ranged from pen-dropping to ham-and-cheese sandwiches.
Some of the questions we wrestled with:
Check out the show: Evos and You~2012_10_16_17_00_08.
Posted by Adam Laats on October 17, 2012
https://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/2012/10/17/adam-laats-on-evos-you/
For those who care about creationism, evolution, and America’s schools, stop reading this shine-ola and go get your hands on a copy of Michael Berkman’s and Eric Plutzer’s Evolution, Creationism, and the Battle to Control America’s Classrooms (New York: Cambridge Univ Press, 2010). Not only is this the best “street-level” analysis about the way real teachers teach evolution and creationism, but the authors’ approach sheds light on schooling and culture far beyond the bounds of biology instruction.
Image source: Cambridge University Press
The same authors released some of their survey data in an article in Science in January 2011. That National Science Foundation-funded survey of 926 high-school biology teachers from across the United States offered dramatic results. A full 13% of respondents taught creationism or intelligent design in their public-school biology classrooms. Twenty-eight percent taught recognizably evolutionary biology. The rest, roughly 60%, muddled through in the middle, teaching neither or both evolution and creationism. This book is built around the same survey responses, but it contains much more.
The authors argue compellingly that the evolution/creation deadlock involves three moving parts. Berkman and Plutzer label these the procedural issues, the substantive issues, and the issues concerning the autonomy of teachers. In other words, the tangle of evolution includes issues of who decides what gets taught, the science and religion involved, and the final decisions of teachers themselves.
Not surprisingly, these political scientists conclude that the real question here is political. More than simply science, more than just religion, the contest is at heart “a political struggle over who decides, a question central to democratic politics” (31).
Perhaps the most attention-grabbing part of the authors’ Science article in January 2011 was the sheer volume of anti-evolution education that went on in American public-school biology classes. As they argue in the pages of the book, their 13% number as a mark for the number of teachers who actively teach creationism or intelligent design is actually a lowball. The real number may surge more toward 21% (138).
For those like me who want more evolution taught in America’s schools, Berkman and Plutzer’s findings may be profoundly disheartening. For instance, in addition to the very high numbers of teachers who omit evolution, teach both ideas, or teach explicit creationism, the authors conclude that teachers don’t care too much about changing state standards in science (160). Thus, while evolution promoters may work hard to improve those standards, the authors here suggest that actual classroom practice will likely not be much affected.
The most important factor in teachers’ choices about evolution education, Berkman and Plutzer conclude, remains teachers’ personal opinions. Although some factors, such as a full-semester college course devoted to evolutionary biology, may tend to improve the quality and amount of evolution education offered by teachers, such changes pale in significance compared to teachers’ beliefs. Dwarfing every other factor, if teachers don’t believe evolution, they don’t teach it (186).
Another powerful contribution of the book is the authors’ application of the notion that teachers function as what political scientists call “street-level bureaucrats” (149). Like other such functionaries, teachers often teach what their communities want them to teach. In the United States, despite the chagrin this causes among evolutionary scientists, large majorities want their public schools to teach both evolution and creationism, or even creationism alone (49). This is true even among those American adults who agree that mainstream scientists have agreed on the veracity of evolution. Berkman and Plutzer analyze a fistful of polls and surveys to conclude that, even among the 52% of adults who agree that mainstream science has embraced evolution, only 20% want only evolution taught in their local public schools. You read that right. Even when Americans acknowledge the scientific consensus in favor of evolution, they still favor teaching both evolution and creationism, or even creationism alone.
As “street-level bureaucrats,” teachers tend to fit in with their local communities. Among the 926 teachers who responded to Berkman and Plutzer’s survey, most agree with the attitudes in their area. For instance, among the 136 “most cosmopolitan” school districts, only 4% of teachers taught young-earth creationism. On the flip side, among the 139 “most traditional” school districts, a whopping 37% of teachers taught young-earth creationism (198).
The book contains chapter after chapter of survey analyses like these. If you’re like me, you’ll want to buy a copy to keep on your desk as a reference for all the different surveys and multivariate regression charts the authors include. But the survey and polling data are not the only strength of the book. Also extremely helpful is the authors’ sketch of the structure of the durable evolution/creation controversy. As they point out, we will never make heads or tails of it if we understand it as mainly a scientific or religious dispute. Those “substantive” issues are very important, but they are not the whole problem. This is why, for instance, many mainstream scientists will insist that there is no controversy over the teaching of evolution. They mean, of course, that the scientific community does not dispute whether or not evolution should be taught. If we end there, however, we will remain hopelessly flummoxed over the nature of the continuing controversy. Because, of course, there is a controversy.
The authors suggest two other important dimensions. First, we need to get our heads around the “procedural” elements at play. Where do decisions about teaching get made? By courts, to protect minorities? By legislatures, to represent majorities? By professional bodies such as the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, to ensure superior expertise? If we ignore these crucial questions we’ll never understand the nature of the impasse.
Also, Berkman and Plutzer inject a new element into these discussions. Unlike the generations of historians, scientists, theologians, and political scientists that have preceded them, the authors emphasize the critical importance of the “autonomy of teachers” (29). Teachers can and do consistently make daily decisions about the kind of instruction that goes on in America’s public schools. Without looking at the impact of those decisions, we will never be able to wrap our heads around the true contours of this culture-war debate.
The authors conclude that these questions remain, at root, a fundamental “political struggle over who decides” (31). This insight alone makes a significant contribution to stale discussions over the nature of evolution/creation. Some of our brightest minds have foundered over this simple truth. In a recent book, for instance, philosopher Philip Kitcher implies that the conflict has lasted so long primarily because the two sides have not adequately understood one another. In Living with Darwin (2007), Kitcher writes, “detailed replies” to creationist challenges have calmed the controversy temporarily (3). Yet, due to lack of understanding by creationists, Kitcher suggests “we shall not escape the cycle of controversy until it is completely clear what lies at the bottom of it all” (xi). Clearly, Kitcher knows the science involved. He knows the theology involved. But his implication that a clear enough explanation will somehow clear the air ignores Berkman and Plutzer’s convincing point: this is not about understanding, this is about power.
No matter how brilliant and erudite Kitcher’s explanations of evolution, no matter how clear and cogent his arguments, Kitcher and his ilk will ultimately have little effect on the course of the creation/evolution debates. Of the teachers who teach creationism in Berkman and Plutzer’s survey, 32% had completed a college-level semester-long course devoted entirely to evolutionary science, 55% held a bachelor’s degree in science, 13% held a graduate degree in science, and 49% had earned 40 or more college credits in biology courses. It is not that teachers of creationism don’t know the evidence for evolution. They simply reject it (186). After all, how clear and convincing would an argument based on the Old and New Testament have to be to convince Kitcher of the truths of creationism?
For all its explanatory power, Evolution, Creationism, and the Battle to Control America’s Classrooms includes a few minor hiccups. First of all, the authors insightfully note that the essence of the evolution/creation struggle has been a struggle for control of educational decisions. But among the groups involved–“Federal judges, scientists, education policy makers, and teachers” (13)—the authors curiously omit parents as direct curricular decision-makers. Since at least the 1920s, activists have insisted on the rights of parents to control the curriculum for their own children. Recently, in places such as New Hampshire and Missouri, as I’ve argued in these pages and in the Washington Post’s Answer Sheet, state laws have changed the playing field. These new laws have finally introduced what Berkman and Plutzer might call direct curricular democracy. Not only can judges, scientists, policy makers, and teachers take part in this durable battle, but parents can and have successfully exerted their significant political influence. The authors’ failure to include parents as interested and influential parties is a puzzling omission.
In addition, as political scientists, the authors overlook some simple historical errors. They date the end of the American Civil War, for instance, to 1869 (66). In a similar slip, they refer to the leading creationist Seventh-day Adventist Church as the Seventh Adventist Church (91).
But such minor quibbles do not detract from the overall argument.
The authors will likely continue to attract the most attention for their original survey data of biology teachers. And those data are indeed compelling. But far more important to understanding the nature of the creation/evolution debates are the authors’ arguments about the inherently political and deeply local nature of those debates. They are not decided in state houses, but in school houses. They are not decided in courtrooms, but in classrooms.
Posted by Adam Laats on October 14, 2012
https://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/2012/10/14/required-reading-evolution-creationism-and-the-battle-to-control-americas-classrooms/
I don’t like Bruce Springsteen. Nothing personal. He may be a wonderful guy. But I’ve never been a fan of his music or his careful no-sleeves New Jersey populism.
So I may be the last person to find out about Springsteen’s 1988 creation/evolution ditty, “Part Man, Part Monkey.”
Springsteen argues that the best evidence for evolution lies in his carnal, bestial sexual desires. As far as I know, Springsteen’s lyrics may be the most popular comment on the 1925 Scopes Trial ever. As he sings:
They prosecuted some poor sucker in these United States
For teachin’ that man descended from the apes
They coulda settled that case without a fuss or fight
If they’d seen me chasin’ you sugar
Thru the jungle last night
They’d a called in that jury and a one two three said
‘Part man part monkey, definitely’
Springsteen, I’m sure, can get along just fine without my endorsement. But his lyrics endorse a particular vision of the meaning of evolution that will make evolution educators howl. In this song, evolution means that humanity came straight out of monkeys. Evolution means, in this interpretation, that humans will remain animal-like. As any evolution educator will tell you, this has been one of the most enduring popular misunderstandings of neo-Darwinian evolution. Since Darwin’s Origin emerged in 1859, an understanding that “evolution” meant that humans had monkey grandparents has proven surprisingly difficult for evolution educators to overcome.
The Boss both embodies and promotes this vision of the meanings of evolution. As he proclaims,
Well did God make man in a breath of holy fire
Or did he crawl on up out of the muck and mire
Well the man on the street
Believes what the Bible tells him so
But you can ask me mister because I know
Tell them soul-suckin’ preachers to come on down and see
Part man part monkey, baby that’s me
Posted by Adam Laats on October 13, 2012
https://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/2012/10/13/the-boss-on-evolution/
I don’t think I’d like to be Richard Dawkins in a dunk tank. The provocative and prolific New Atheist, though, seems to relish his role as cultural provocateur. Dawkins is well known for his biting and vicious jabs against faith. One of his most famous books derides “The God Delusion.” In 1996, Dawkins told one audience, “faith is one of the world’s great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.” Elsewhere, Dawkins opined, “I think there’s really something very evil about faith.”
A recent article by philosopher of science and anti-creationist Michael Ruse takes Dawkins to task for being so fanatically religious in his atheism. Ruse argues that the virulent anti-religion of Dawkins and his followers awkwardly conceals “the enthusiasm of the true believer, and this encourages a set of unnerving attributes: intolerance, hero-worship, moral certainty and the self-righteous condemnation of unbelievers.”
Ruse himself claims to be more atheist than Dawkins, more Darwinian. Ruse has fought tirelessly against creationism in schools and culture. Yet he insists that Dawkins’ brand of in-your-face atheism misses the point. Instead of condemning religion as fit only for the ignorant or insane, as Dawkins likes to do, Ruse insists, “I think my religious friends are mistaken, but I don’t think they are stupid or crazy or ill or evil simply because they are religious.”
Though Ruse claims this is not a personal issue, his feelings have clearly been hurt. Dawkins and allies such as Jerry Coyne have made it personal. As Ruse complains,
“I, and others of my ilk, am reviled in terms far harsher than those kept for the real opponents like the Creationists. We are labelled ‘accommodationists’ for our willingness to give religion a space not occupied by science.”
Ruse makes a powerful argument that the “enthusiasm” of the New Atheists resembles nothing so much as religious sectarianism. But he strangely conflates the New Atheism of Dawkins and his allies with a far broader Humanist movement. There are certainly connections, but it does not make sense to use the two terms interchangeably.
And, as Ruse must certainly be aware, his diatribe will likely be most celebrated by the very creationists he and Dawkins both condemn. The notion that humanism itself is a religion has long been a central strategic point of conservative religious activists. For example, in the early 1980s, evangelical Protestant theologian Francis Schaeffer condemned “humanism” as a set of ideas that placed humanity at the center of all things, and made humans the “measure of all things.” Fundamentalist school activists Mel and Norma Gabler similarly denounced humanism as “a religion with an anti-biblical, anti-God bent.” And as blockbuster fundamentalist author Tim LaHaye insisted in his 1983 book The Battle for the Public Schools:
“Don’t be deceived into thinking that humanism is merely a philosophy. That is a masquerade humanists have utilized for over three centuries to deceive millions in the Western world. And don’t be duped into thinking that because religious people believe in God, those who do not believe in God are not religious.”(pg. 75).
My hunch is that Ruse would not relish the intellectual company. All the more since such arguments about the essential religiosity of humanism have long been at the core of conservative strategies to transform public schooling. Most famously in the 1980s case Mozert v. Hawkins County, religious conservatives had initial strategic success portraying humanism as a religion.
If humanism counts as religion, the argument went, then public schools have no Constitutional business promoting it. Textbooks with an evolutionary perspective, books that promote a notion of material origins of humanity, schoolbooks that teach the primary importance of human reason, such things smack of government instruction in the religion of humanism.
Strange bedfellows.
As Professor Ruse notes in his essay, his anti-creationist credentials are impeccable. Yet just as sectarian disputes among religious folks have provided some of the most profound and influential arguments against religion in general, so the clash between these atheistic Darwinists will likely provide the very best reasons to include more creationist-friendly ideas in public schools.
Posted by Adam Laats on October 4, 2012
https://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/2012/10/04/awash-with-the-intolerance-of-enthusiasm-michael-ruse-takes-on-the-new-atheists/
Can Pentecostals embrace science? Can they find a way to love both God and Gould?
For those of us trying to understand the conservative vision of education from the outside, the newest edition of the Assemblies of God’s Enrichment Journal is a treasure trove. This edition offers a series of articles for the denomination’s readers about the proper relationship between faith and science. As General Superintendent George O. Wood explains, the dangers for young people in the church are stark. He quotes “Mike,” who declared, “I knew from church that I couldn’t believe in both science and God, so that was it. I didn’t believe in God anymore.” Wood hopes that this volume will help Assemblies of God members negotiate a more profound and religious relationship between science and faith.
For those unaware of the distinctions among conservative Bible-based Protestant groups, the Assemblies of God, very briefly, is the largest denomination of Pentecostal believers, claiming 65 million members worldwide. Pentecostalism, also very briefly, is a form of conservative evangelical Protestant belief that came into existence in the early 20th century. It combines conservative Bible-based theology with an emphasis on baptism by the Holy Spirit. Pentecostal services are typically vibrant, dramatic events that can include speaking in tongues and divine healing. As historian Grant Wacker argued in Heaven Below (2001), the attraction of early Pentecostal churches derived from their combination of a powerful “primitivist” theology with a comfortable cultural “pragmatism.”
In an opening piece, Amos Yong of Regent University encourages Pentecostal readers to “work to overcome the history and culture of anti-intellectualism that persists in some segments of the Pentecostal church.”
Perhaps the most interesting section of this issue for those of us outside the conservative tradition is its forum on the variety of evangelical positions for the age of the earth. Kurt P. Wise makes the case for a young earth, Hugh Ross for six long ages, and Davis A. Young for an old earth.
With each article, we see the very different intellectual playing field for evangelical intellectuals. Among mainstream scientists, the first question is usually whether any new approach offers better insight into the natural world. Among evangelical thinkers, the first question is whether any scientific approach offers better insight into the natural world while allowing Christians to maintain an authentic faith.
As Kurt Wise argues in his pitch for a young earth, “believers” enjoy a more promising guide to the natural world. Wise insists, “We should look at the eyewitness account from God before we begin inferring the meaning of circumstantial evidence.”
Everyone interested in the creation/evolution debate will be well served by reading through these articles. Some of the most fervent young-earth creationists such as Answers in Genesis’ Ken Ham have condemned such forums. Any consideration of an old earth, Ham blasted in a blog post, results in a “dogmatic, intolerant stand against those who take the position we do at AiG.”
But for those of us outside of evangelical circles, an understanding of both the different evangelical views of science and the ways evangelicals construct their scientific arguments will go a long way to decoding the stubborn controversy over evolution and creationism.
Posted by Adam Laats on September 24, 2012
https://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/2012/09/24/required-reading-assemblies-of-god-on-faithscience/
We’ve been hearing a lot in the last few days about 47% of Americans: Governor Romney’s comments about the 47% who don’t pay federal income taxes, or the 47% whom he assumes won’t vote for him.
I’m more interested in the 46% of adult Americans who believe humans were created in “pretty much their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.” For believers in evolution like me, that number is hard to understand. How can so many adults–almost half of whom hold college degrees–believe in this kind of young-earth creationism?
As we’ve discussed here recently, this is not merely a question of shoddy science education. Mere exposure to evolutionary science does not promise to increase the number of believers in evolution. The important element seems to be the messenger of evolutionary science, not just the message.
A brief autobiography this morning by evolutionary creationist educational writer Abigail McFarthing seems to confirm this notion. McFarthing describes her upbringing as a youngster homeschooled into the tenets of young-earth creationism. As she writes,
“In ninth grade, I went to public high school armed and ready for the fight I had been trained to expect. When my biology teacher taught evolution and required us to write an essay, I hi-jacked the essay topic and turned it into an apologetic for six-day creation. Because I was in ‘conflict mode,’ I was not ready to consider the arguments for evolution, or the possibility that Christians could actually accept it.”
It was not until McFarthing attended the evangelical Wheaton College that she was brought out of conflict mode. As she studied to become a high-school teacher, one of her evangelical Christian professors insisted, “‘Jesus is not going to be standing at the gateway of heaven . . . holding a clipboard in his hand and asking, “Did you believe in six-day creation? Did you believe in evolution?” He’s going to be asking the one question that matters: “Did you believe in ME?”‘”
The goal of McFarthing’s new homeschooling curriculum is not to train students away from their conservative evangelical faith. Rather, she describes her goal as “resilience.” She wants young people to realize that they can be Christian and accept the evidence for evolution.
I’m not advocating McFarthing’s curriculum. I do not think that her evolutionary creationism will fit in public schools, nor does she suggest that it should. The interesting point here is McFarthing’s story. It seems to add one more bit of evidence to a growing pile. The way to educate people about evolution is not simply to bash them over the head with scientific evidence. As we noted recently, evidence alone does not convince. Rather, for people like McFarthing, the messenger is more important than the message.
Posted by Adam Laats on September 20, 2012
https://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/2012/09/20/jesus-teaching-evolution/
Cass Sunstein argues in this morning’s New York Times that balanced reporting will lead to more, not less, polarization. When people read both sides of an argument, Sunstein points out, they tend to dismiss the other side and only accept the facts that bolster their previously held opinions.
This does not seem like a ground-breaking insight into human nature. Anyone who has had an argument in a bar–or in school, or at church, or at a Thanksgiving dinner–knows that facts don’t make much impact on people’s thinking. Sunstein, a law professor at Harvard, a university in Massachusetts, vaguely cites unnamed “studies” that confirm this tendency to “biased assimilation.” When we hear information that confirms our beliefs, we absorb it. When we hear information that challenges our beliefs, we dismiss it.
The implications of these notions for our entrenched culture wars in education are obvious. To cite just one example, mainstream science educators tend to take a public-health approach to evolution education. If we can just expose enough creationist students to the overwhelming evidence for evolution, such scientists usually assume, the students surely will be convinced.
Yet generations of effort have yielded very little result in this direction. These days, according to Gallup polls at least, Americans are just as fervently creationist as ever, despite nearly a century of crusading evolution education.
The answer can’t be simply more of the same. Perhaps science educators such as Lee Meadows have a better solution. Instead of assuming that the profoundly impressive scientific evidence for evolution will do the job on its own, what if we consider packaging that information in a way that will be sensitive to the cultural background of creationist students?
As Meadows argues, educators have long tried to make other kinds of education culturally sensitive. Why not do the same with evolution? As Sunstein concludes in this morning’s op-ed, “What matters most may be not what is said, but who, exactly, is saying it.”
Posted by Adam Laats on September 18, 2012
https://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/2012/09/18/keep-your-facts-i-know-the-truth/
What does it mean to be a “secular” university? Despite the name, it clearly does not mean a lack of religion on campus.
A recent essay by David Vosburg on the BioLogos Forum discusses some of what it can be like to share religious and creationist ideas in a “secular” university. Vosburg is a chemist at the decidedly non-religious Harvey Mudd College in California. He earned his PhD at the similarly non-religious Scripps Research Institute. He is also an evangelical Christian and an admirer of Darrel Falk’s evolutionary creationism.
So what does being at a “secular” college mean for Vosburg’s faith? As he notes, “Christian faculty at secular colleges and universities often do not feel safe publicly revealing their faith (due to a real or imagined hostile campus climate) or feel ill-equipped to tackle intimidating and controversial topics.” Yet he also has found a variety of ways to remain actively involved in students’ faith lives. As a pilot program, he directed a program for students in which they viewed the BioLogos film From the Dust. Vosburg asked them to pair this viewing with readings from Genesis. How did they react? According to Vosburg,
“My students, several of whom I did not know prior to our science & faith study, were from both Protestant and Catholic backgrounds. Many had not deeply engaged the intersection of science and faith previously, but were dissatisfied with what they had been taught at church or at Christian primary or secondary schools. While individual responses at each session varied, the group was overwhelmingly positive about the content and the process of our study together. Many of the questions we discussed were difficult and emotional, and having the space to wrestle with the ideas together in a supportive group was incredibly helpful.”
When Vosburg calls his school “secular,” he means it in the sense that the school is not explicitly religious. But clearly his own activism demonstrates that students do not study in an environment free from religion.
As David E. Long has argued in his book Evolution and Religion in American Education: An Ethnography, “secular” college campuses are usually teeming with religion. Protestant Fundamentalist evangelists were a common feature on the campus he studied. Students crossing the quad were often warned, “all sinners are going to hell” (97).
More intriguing, Long described a number of creationist faculty at several “secular” public universities, including his alma mater University of Kentucky.
Clearly, when we talk about a “secular” university, public or private, we don’t mean it lacks religion. Anyone who has spent any time at a “secular” school can attest to the lively religion among both students and faculty. The difference, clearly, is that “secular” schools do not sponsor any particular religion, but promise to welcome all voices within their quads.
In this sense, the “secular” part of life at a non-religious university seems perfectly to embody Charles Taylor’s “secularity 3.” In A Secular Age (2007), Taylor pointed out that our secular society actually teems with vibrant religion. Unlike earlier societies in which religion formed part of state and society, in “secularity 3,” society “contains different milieux, within each of which the default option may be different from others, although the dwellers within each are very aware of the options favored by the others, and cannot just dismiss them as inexplicable exotic error” (21).
For Vosburg at Harvey Mudd, or Long’s creationist faculty at the University Kentucky, or the innumerable evangelists who spread the gospel on college quads nationwide, Taylor’s definition fits to a T. A “secular” university is not free of religion. But each of the enthusiastic religious groups and individuals on campus are keenly aware that they are one voice among many. Like Vosburg, they can lead discussions that hope to persuade students to see their points of view. Like Long’s creationist faculty at public universities, they can propound their religious views outside of the classroom. But they cannot rest on institutional support, nor can they dismiss other worldviews simply as “inexplicable exotic error.”
Posted by Adam Laats on September 16, 2012
https://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/2012/09/16/faith-creation-and-the-secular-university/
What does it mean to believe in something beyond reason? How can we know the truth if we cannot trust our emotional responses?
A few days back The American Reader posted a remarkable letter from Flannery O’Connor to Betty Hester. It seems the novelist in 1955 began a long correspondence with Hester. Hester, a clerk in an Atlanta office, had written to O’Connor out of the blue.
Flannery O’Connor in 1955. Image source: The American Reader
The letter from September 6, 1955 reveals that Hester was no sycophantic fan. She had apparently accused O’Connor of fascism. As O’Connor defends in her letter,
“A higher paradox confounds emotion as well as reason and there are long periods in the lives of all of us, and of the saints, when the truth as revealed by faith is hideous, emotionally disturbing, downright repulsive. Witness the dark night of the soul in individual saints. Right now the whole world seems to be going through a dark night of the soul.”
For those of us outsiders trying to understand Fundamentalist America, these brief sentences can help. The cultural divide seems deepest when it comes to the origins of truth. For citizens of what we’re calling Fundamentalist America, truth can come from something beyond and above ourselves. As O’Connor explained to Hester, “the thought of everyone lolling about in an emotionally satisfying faith is repugnant to me.” In other words, for many religious conservatives–even those without O’Connor’s gift for expression–truth is not simply a result of our own feelings and cogitations. Truth exists outside of us. Our job is to submit to truth, not merely to quest for our own individual explanations.
This vision of truth sits hard with folks like me. I was always taught to question, to doubt, to inquire skeptically into every notion. Truth, the way I was raised, came from tearing down the accumulations of irrational tradition to get at the core of what is real. You’ll know you’ve found the truth, the nostrum went, when you feel it deep down inside.
O’Connor offers a very different vision. Her prescription for truth and truth-seeking help explain to us outsiders how someone can be intelligent and yet believe in things beyond reason. How, for instance, can someone who knows the scientific evidence for evolution continue to believe in a young-earth creation? For folks like me, such things seem outlandish. And skeptics such as Richard Dawkins can only conclude that creationists must be “ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that).”
O’Connor’s letter gives us a different explanation. The truth, for O’Connor, does not derive first from our reason. It does not need to satisfy our feelings or our desires. Rather, the truth might be “hideous,” but truth nonetheless.
Posted by Adam Laats on September 11, 2012
https://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/2012/09/11/a-hideous-truth-flannery-oconnor-on-fascism-and-fundamental-belief/
Gallup polls are what they are. The numbers can be misleading from time to time. As Homer Simpson scornfully concluded, “Facts!. . . pffft. Facts can be used to prove anything that’s even remotely true.”
Image source: Dead Homer Society
But when polls keep saying the same thing, it makes sense to listen. According to Gallup, from the mid-1980s through today, nearly half of American adults agree that the earth was created in “pretty much its present form within the last ten thousand years or so.”
Evolutionists like me tend to be shocked by this number. How is this possible?
As David E. Long argues in his book Evolution and Religion in American Education: An Ethnography (Springer, 2011), the old evolutionists’ answers don’t hold up anymore. Some evolutionists tend to assume that creationism, especially young-earth creationism, is similar to a public-health problem. As soon as enough people are exposed to the saving truth of evolution, this argument goes, creationists will quickly realize the errors of their ways. This assumption doesn’t match the historical facts, but it still has its share of true believers. As we noted here recently, Bill Nye “The Science Guy” attracted a lot of attention when he endorsed this sort of fallacy.
Another problem, Long argues, is an implicit “deficiency model” among evolution educators. These educators, Long asserts, would not be likely to blame students from households without a lot of books for being somewhat behind in their reading skills. Yet they do blame students from creationist households for resisting evolution.
Long hopes to challenge these approaches to understanding creationism in America. As he puts it, too many educators act as if learning evolution were a simple matter of “being shown discrete points of Truth and adding these bits to our respective Truth-piles” (14, emphasis in original). If this were the case, Long argues, “there simply would be no societal issue over evolution.” Obviously the deadlock over such issues as evolution, scientific creationism, and intelligent design proves that much more is going on here.
Long’s study joins others in offering a new approach. As did Michael Berkman and Eric Plutzer in their study of biology education, Long hopes to get inside the heads of those who are somehow avoiding evolution education. Berkman and Plutzer found that anti-evolutionists had not necessarily been isolated from the truths of evolution. Instead, many anti-evolutionists “choose to ignore scientific arguments demonstrating evolution.”[*] Knowledge of evolution, according to their large study funded by the National Science Foundation, is often relatively high among those who dispute it most fervently. This does not match the fantasies of science fans such as Bill Nye. Long’s study, like that of Berkman and Plutzer, promises to unravel this apparent mystery.
Instead of asking, even implicitly, “what’s wrong with these creationist students?”, Long wants to ask, “what in fact do Creationists have that makes the study of evolution troublesome or even dangerous?” (15, emphasis in original.)
Long himself grew up in a conservative Protestant family. He remembers his mother telling him sadly that he was going to hell (11). But this book is neither an apology for creationism nor an attack on creationists. Instead, Long offers an ethnography of creationism in action. He conducted interviews with thirty-one students at a state university along the Ohio River. The results make for arresting reading.
One student, a non-traditional student who grew up as a child of missionaries, reported that she had not learned any evolution before she got to college. Sitting in the large lecture halls, she told Long that a professor made her feel distinctly inferior. She remembered the lecturer’s attitude: “If you believe in God creating the earth, then pretty much you’re an idiot. And he obviously didn’t use those words, but that’s pretty much what he said. And I remember thinking . . . What is he talking about?. . . like, he should just go around and ask people to raise their hands ‘who believes in this and who doesn’t’!” (36).
This student, “Esther,” told Long that she had no problem with the academic challenge of evolution. In her words, “I take those really big classes, because it’s really easy to excel in those huge classes. I mean, I got like a hundred on every test. You have to be an idiot pretty much not to. If you just sit, and you listen to what they’re saying, and you know how to take tests, it’s very easy to do well in those classes” (36). Long wrestles with the important questions this sort of testimony evokes. For students like Esther, what does it mean to “know” evolution? What does it mean to feel belittled for one’s background, even if it is done unintentionally?
Another thoughtful creationist interviewee told Long that accepting the truth of evolution would mean “a lot of work for me to change my worldview, a lot of time, a lot of alienation from friends” (41). Long asked what it would mean if somehow this student—who had been homeschooled into his creationist views—what it would mean if somehow this student found out that humans had really evolved. The student replied, “It would be a complete crisis. It would be really tough” (41). As Long notes, this is more than a scientific situation. This is an entire life wrapped up in creationism.
Long argues that evolution educators have not sufficiently wrestled with the existential anxiety at stake for some creationist students. Accepting the truth of evolution, for some, would be more than simply changing one’s mind. It would be a radical change, and more often, the “positive, commonsensical, and affirmed” path is to simply reject evolution (47).
In most cases, Long concludes that no amount of education really threatens to change students’ worldviews. Of his batch, only three experienced any sort of profound change, including in their attitudes toward evolution. These three cases form the basis of Long’s fifth chapter, a chapter that’s worth the price of admission all by itself. Long describes the case of “Cindy,” a student from a staunchly anti-evolution small town. Cindy ended up open to the notion of human evolution, but only because she challenged her entire upbringing. It was not the eye-opening scientific evidence for evolution that convinced her. Rather, Cindy got pregnant and had an abortion in high school. The gossipy and cruel reaction of her church drove her away from that worldview. The entire experience left Cindy open to the idea of human evolution.
Equally fascinating is the case of Renee. Renee came from a non-religious family, sort of. She was a biology major with plans on graduate work in pharmacology. Her non-religious worldview was shattered not by the saving words of Jesus, but rather by pair of bitter divorces. Renee herself divorced her husband, and her father divorced her mother. Partly as a result, Renee’s father embraced the creationist-centered conservative Protestantism of his youth. Though Renee’s mother continued to insist on the family’s atheism, Renee embraced creationist Christianity during a trip with her father to the Creation Museum outside of Cincinnati.
These brief summaries can’t do justice to the fascinating case studies Long explores in this book. The book itself is a must-read for any outsiders who really want to understand the evolution/creation stalemate in America. Long’s interviews and analyses offer unmatched insight into the reasons why evolution and creation both create such durable and impermeable worldviews.
Unfortunately, unless and until a paperback edition comes out, Long’s publisher has priced this out of range for most non-institutional buyers. At $140, it is targeted more at university libraries than interested lay readers. Hopefully, that will not restrict the number of readers this book attracts. Joining other nuanced studies like Berkman’s and Plutzer’s, Long’s book promises to make an end run around some of the conceptual difficulties that have stymied so many efforts to understand the durability of creationism in the United States.
[*] Michael Berkman and Eric Plutzer, Evolution, Creationism, and the Battle to Control America’s Classrooms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 78. Emphasis in original.
Posted by Adam Laats on September 7, 2012
https://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/2012/09/07/required-reading-david-long-and-an-ethnography-of-creationism/
Available now from Harvard University Press.
Available now from University of Chicago Press!
I Love You but You're Going to Hell 