There have been repeated threats in the US to limit the teaching of evolution in state schools. Three leading Florida state legislators are preparing to challenge new state science education standards that will make the teaching of evolution compulsory for the first time in Florida’s history.
According to Paul Sims writing in the New Humanist Blog:
The standards, set to be approved by Florida’s Board of Education on 19 February, will ensure all middle and high school students are taught about evolution and natural selection in science classes.
Three Republican legislators are unhappy with these guidelines, as they believe evolution should be explicitly referred to as a “theory” and not fact. One of the three, state Senator Stephen Wise, believes creationism should be taught alongside evolution. State Representative Marti Coley, who believes in intelligent design, told the Miami Herald that evolution “is technically a theory. Let’s present it for what it is.”
This religious challenge to science education has alarmed the man who carried out the review of Florida’s standards. Professor Joseph Travis, dean of Florida State University’s Arts and Sciences College, told the Herald: “If you use the word theory to imply that scientists think evolution is just a hypothesis and is not real, that gives an incorrect impression.”
Of course, in science, ‘theory’ means that it is a testable idea that many people believe to be true. It doesn’t mean that it is the opposite of ‘fact’. Scientists talk about the ‘theory’ of gravity. They use it, test it, and believe it because it is the best explanation of the data that they have. Evolution is a testable hypothesis that most scientists and educated people believe. So please, Florida legislators, by all means, use the word ‘theory’ - just don’t use it to imply that it’s in any way less certain than the ‘fact’.
Damian Thompson, in his book Counterknowledge, laments American theme parks showing baby dinosaurs romping with children, and the fact the proportion of Americans rejecting evolution has not fallen in twenty years. However, he accepts that America is a relatively soft target for concern. The nation that put men on the moon has a strong scientific pedigree that will act as a counter-ballast to any fundamentalist naivety.
The bigger problem lies in the Muslim world. Islamonline.net is a widely read Islamic website issues calls to action asking readers to spread the message of Intelligent Design and warns Muslim parents of the dangers of indoctrination in biology lessons. Thanks to Muslim influence, Darwinism in Turkey is virtually dead, with less than 5 per cent of the population in Indonesia, Pakistan, and Egypt accepting the theory.
And the influence in now beginning to be felt in the UK. According to a report in The Guardian, at one London sixth-form college, most biology students were thought to be creationists. London Pakistani Muslim students taking ‘A’ level biology en route to becoming dentists and doctors virtually all reject evolution. A 2006 poll of UK Higher Education students showed that less than 10 per cent of Muslims accepted the theory of evolution. Professors of medicine and biology are expressing concern that people who are soon to be doctors are rejecting fundamental discoveries of biological science.
In developed countries those who reject evolution are at least coming into some form of contact with scientific ideas developed from a thriving scientific community, and in the long-term, that may have some moderating effect. However in many Islamic countries such mingling of enlightened ideas and facts are rare.
In recognizing the top 50 scientific breakthroughs of 2007, Scientific American cites advancements in alternative fuels, treatment of Parkinson’s disease and technology that would make consumer electronics easier to use. Among those honored are researchers in Japan, Italy and the Netherlands, a country with a population of just 16-million. Yet the list does not include a single noteworthy breakthrough in any of the world’s 56 Muslim nations, encompassing more than 1-billion people. Most schools and universities in Muslim countries emphasize rote learning over debate and analysis.
Despite Islam’s early days when the prophet Mohammed said “the ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of martyrs,” and the Golden Age of Islam, spanning the 8th through 13th centuries, which saw major advances in mathematics, optics, chemistry, astronomy and medicine while Europe slept through centuries of intellectual darkness, the present situation is very depressing. Susan Taylor Martin, writing in the St. Petersburg Times sums up the situation:
There is no doubt that the Muslim world lags far behind in scientific achievement and research:
- Muslim countries contribute less than 2 percent of the world’s scientific literature. Spain alone produces almost as many scientific papers.
- In countries with substantial Muslim populations, the average number of scientists, engineers and technicians per 1,000 people is 8.5. The world average is 40.
- Muslim countries get so few patents that they don’t even register on a bar graph comparison with other countries. Of the more than 3-million foreign inventions patented in the United States between 1977 and 2004, only 1,500 were developed in Muslim nations.
- In a survey by the Times of London, just two Muslim universities - both in cosmopolitan Malaysia - ranked among the top 200 universities worldwide.
Against such a depressing backdrop the influence of learning will take a long-time to spread, and America really does seem a much softer target to tackle. However, whether it be Christians or Muslims, it is important to go on holding a candle up against the darkness.
See also: Blind Faith
I think I recounted in one of the posts on my blog that I had found a very good dentist and that he always liked to have a chat with me before setting to work. Maybe that was a way of putting the client at ease. Anyway, the day came when he vouchsafed that he believed in God because, he said, he could not accept that something as wonderful as the eye had come about “by chance”.
The fact remains that, despite this eccentric belief, he is a first-class dentist in whom, coward that I am, I have every confidence.
We would, of course, wish that most people on the globe had some passing understanding of the best scientifically supported theories of how the world came to be and how everything in it works but this is, I fear, nothing more than a dream. It was never the case, even if a few culturally advanced communities shone here and there like lamps in a sea of darkness and, probably never will be, unless some profound cultural revolution occurs. At present, the probability of that is vanishingly small.
We cannot expect to conquer the world, whether militarily or pedagogically. Our most important task is to educate as many people as we can. That is an important project and politicians and educators jointly share a huge responsibility to see that this is done.
The paradox is that the same people who deny science quite cheerfully use its products, such as mobile phones, TV and digital cameras. They use the Internet and video to propagate their dogma that science is a set of lies. The fact that they do not make the connection shows that there is a fault at the heart of our education system. We teach people facts but we don’t teach them to think. When a course in thinking was proposed a while back, the media ridiculed it, showing how little even supposedly intelligent people understand about the art and science of thought.
You can teach people facts until you are blue in the face and whatever dogma they embrace will deny them; but if you teach them to think they cannot but accept those facts that are beyond refutation.
As well as fighting ignorance and superstition, therefore, we also need to fight the deceit, obfuscation and “spin” which are currently prevalent in our society. How can we expect people to listen to politicians preaching the virtues of science when we know those same politicians routinely lie through their teeth? We cannot have it both ways. People will only listen and learn from those they respect and trust.
The problem is not that there are cohorts of people whose religion tells them lies but that the few who tell the truth are cursed, like Cassandra, not to be believed.
A couple of decades ago, the religious right in the USA recognized that the schools would be fertile places in which to wage their battles against evolution. Only about 5% of eligible voters bother voting in school board elections and most school candidates run unopposed. In politically astute, well-organized areas, religious right candidates have been running for and winning school board positions. Once there, they create all sorts of havoc, such as what we’re seeing in Florida these days. Your post focused on the state legislature, which is one battleground. There are several school districts in Florida in which school boards are making similar local curriculum proposals to what you’ve written about here. The battles are being waged on many levels.
the chaplain
Thanks for the information. Let’s hope there will be more people at district level willing to take up the challenge for science.
SilverTiger
Just for the record, I agree that what a person believes about evolution doesn’t necessarily make them a bad dentist, or doctor, anymore than I believe that a teacher who takes part in porn-movies is a bad teacher. It is their professional skill that counts. However, what does worry me is a mindset that is immune to the conventions of scientific discourse in certain areas. In a group of otherwise educated professionals, this blindness does concern me.
It’s just more evidence that thought has been detroyed by this strange rise in hard right churches peddiling there, quite clearly, wrong research to people who are too dumb or too uncaring to question it.
Where are the days when science was held as a great thing to be admired and aspired to? Gone. Long gone.
People who accept creationism at face value are plain thick, plain and simple.
[...] that the doctor treating me might literally believe that the earth was formed 1000 years ago - see America - The Soft Target - (assuming I ever got to see a doctor - this happens in medical soap operas, but apparently rarely [...]