Update 2016: This month, this post edged out my previously most popular post, "Do you ever use your education," to be the most popular. Mind you, it's pretty much nothing so far as internet traffic is concerned -- 77 all-time pageviews! LOL. But I stand by it, pretty much, I don't think I need to change it.
Original post - 2011: For a decade or more, I’ve had a quiet passion about teaching evolution. I’ve tried to explain why I still believe in a loving, intervening God who created the universe while I also accept the theory of evolution. But perhaps I’ve been a bit meiopic in my quiet passion, a bit too confined. All my arguments about God coexisting with evolution don’t seem to change anyone’s mind if they really think Evolution is Evil. And that’s been confusing to me. But is it really important? It’s hard to say it out loud to myself, but maybe it’s not really important. I’m typing this while sitting next to my 3-month old baby, to whom I am passionately attached, so the following reasons are strongly skewed towards child health.
Original post - 2011: For a decade or more, I’ve had a quiet passion about teaching evolution. I’ve tried to explain why I still believe in a loving, intervening God who created the universe while I also accept the theory of evolution. But perhaps I’ve been a bit meiopic in my quiet passion, a bit too confined. All my arguments about God coexisting with evolution don’t seem to change anyone’s mind if they really think Evolution is Evil. And that’s been confusing to me. But is it really important? It’s hard to say it out loud to myself, but maybe it’s not really important. I’m typing this while sitting next to my 3-month old baby, to whom I am passionately attached, so the following reasons are strongly skewed towards child health.
Why teaching evolution is not the most important educational focus:
First reason: Infant mortality rates are (probably) not related to people’s understanding of evolution
Second reason: Education of women is closely related to infant survival, and therefore more important
Third reason: Teaching critical thinking, or the ability to ask questions and evaluate potential answers, would help a lot more things than infant mortality. And why focus only on women? Maybe if the whole society thinks more critically, women's education would rise too. Though maybe if you focus on women, the whole society would naturally think more critically...OK, now I'm going in circles...
Helping people learn to ask questions, and to ask questions about the answers, and to evaluate answers more objectively, and to appreciate ambiguity in those answers, would help SO many problems! If we support a Culture of Curiosity rather than a Culture of Instant Reaction, a lot of things would be better. Objective critical thinking could actually make a democracy work well. It could help build better infrastructure, equalize access to health care and higher educational facilities, and lower the political effects of flaming rhetoric. It helps, of course, when we have access to the internet and can evaluate whether a website is authentic or not. And if we can recognize the biases supported by various websites/newspapers etc.
And...critical thinking is crucial in science. So teaching people that figuring things out is fun, and that objective thinking can lead to greater insight, would help people understand science better, and feel less threatened by it. Happily, it might also potentially decrease the gut-wrenching disgust some people feel when they hear the word "evolution."
So next time someone says something about how evolution is of Satan, instead of focusing on the logical inconsistencies of such a statement, I'll focus on how critical thinking would clarify whatever real issue is at hand.
The End.
PS I wrote this rather quickly in the heat of the Ah-Ha!, so it's not written very well. But I'm posting it anyway.
And...critical thinking is crucial in science. So teaching people that figuring things out is fun, and that objective thinking can lead to greater insight, would help people understand science better, and feel less threatened by it. Happily, it might also potentially decrease the gut-wrenching disgust some people feel when they hear the word "evolution."
So next time someone says something about how evolution is of Satan, instead of focusing on the logical inconsistencies of such a statement, I'll focus on how critical thinking would clarify whatever real issue is at hand.
The End.
PS I wrote this rather quickly in the heat of the Ah-Ha!, so it's not written very well. But I'm posting it anyway.
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