Evolution vs. Critical Thinking

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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.

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.

Whoa, I'm behind! Here's the whirlwind update

I'm not even going to use a text editor.

I got more and more pregnant from Jan-April. My PhD advisor finally OK-ed the final version of a manuscript I was working on, and we submitted it. I tried to submit it, but was having trouble with vmware on my mac, so my advisor submitted it. Wonderful thing for him to do. It was the last chapter of my dissertation, by the way, so I've almost fulfilled my obligation to publish all my research! I still want to help write up some interesting greenhouse work done by our postdoc, but I don't know when that's gonna happen. Sigh.

Our baby girl was born April 11, scheduled c-section. We couldn't think of a name for her! We were thinking Anika, but we didn't quite feel right about it. We wanted a musical name. Q's mom came to visit the first week of April, and suggested the name of Q's dad's favorite raag/raga http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms3wV8bhZ6M. Awesome! Thanks, Q's mom :). From now on her blog nickname is CH, for various obscure reasons.

She was born a healthy happy adorable baby. She's almost 2mo old now, and is doing well. Breastfeeding is hard at times, but I figure I only have to make it to 4mo. If I make it further than that, yay me!

Meanwhile, I have to finish revising an encyclopedia chapter on gametic disequilibrium for an encyclopedia. Yikes. And I've been trying to be touristy for Q's mom. We've done the aquarium, a Hindu temple (it was closed...), various dollar stores, beaches (brr), a BigBus tour of Vancouver courtesy of some friends (thanks!), the planetarium, an aboriginal village in Stanley Park, Q took her to Walmart in Burnaby, and up to Mount Seymour to see the snow. I want to take a ferry across the bay, but that depends on weather and on my visiting teaching and on Q's work schedule. Ack.

Luckily, CH is a sweet baby. She gives me a couple 3-hour stretches every night, and sometimes a 4-hr stretch! Amazing. She hardly complains, and adores her older sister TM. TM loves her back. We do have some trouble with bedtimes, and I'm not sure how we'll handle it once Q's mom goes back to India next week, but.

The crib is in the garage somewhere.

The cat is NOT to be trusted around the baby, especially when it's rainy and the cat's antsy.

The baby rocker is also in the garage somewhere.

My bike seat is also in the garage somewhere. I have the rest...

I'll probably give Q the car for work, and I'll just walk TM to preschool (30min) with the stroller instead of getting a bike trailer. I think CH is still a little too young for the trailer. So walking is the goal.

Everyone's complaining about the rainy rainy rainy spring. I'm sorry everyone else has to suffer, but I really appreciate the weather. It's rather heavenly for me. I consider it a personal blessing :). My British Isles ancestry must be coming on strong lately.

We had friends over last night and all were up too late. CH is sleeping right now, and so should I be. I hope I don't pay too much for updating my blog! But come on, four months hiatus is almost unforgivable.