ONE:
According to a November CBS poll, nearly two thirds of Americans - yes, two thirds - believe that students should be taught creationism along with evolution. I am dumbfounded, literally. What is there to say? Who are these people who take Genesis so literally? People who are so willing to toss out piles and piles and piles of evidence supporting a theory that so far explains everything pretty damn well in favor of a nonsensical story? Oh, you have a problem with the word, "theory"? Well, gravity is a theory, too, folks. I personally don't see questioning that as a good use of anyone's time.
TWO:
The nasty cold has been reborn. Z and I both have sore throats (again), body aches (again), and coughs (again). Perhaps it is in response to me shunning the Word of the Lord. If that's the case, I request an exorcism.
THREE:
Tomorrow, I leave for Catalina Island on the last of my fish collection trips. I've been undertaking dive trips to Southern California since April 2003 - seems like an awful long time ago. In 2004, I made 68 dives despite the fact that I took three months off. All this is coming to a close. I am both sad and relieved: I'm not looking forward to spending the next six months in a lab devoid of sun and dolphins and garibaldi; I am relieved to not spend days at a time alternating between shivering underwater and shivering in a boat. I'm happy in a sad kind of way to complete this adventure at Catalina, which remains the most beautiful place I've ever been diving. Like with so many things in my life at the moment, I'm turning a page, simultaneously closing one chapter and opening another.
3 comments:
are we talking peter gabriel genesis or phil collins genesis? because i'm ok with them teaching peter gabriel genesis in school.
i agree with e...
i also heard an interesting comment on the radio the other day regarding this topic. The man commented that the problem with teaching Creationism in school is that it is Christian focused. If it were taught in a way that allowed for the possibility of *any* creation- for example, that there could be some "other" force that had a hand in creating the world as we know it, then it would be far more palatable (aka not tied specifically to any religion at all). And, it could be taught alongside of evolution. I'd be interested to see someone actually come up with some unit plans on this, but I don't see it happening. the more right-wing Christians get involved in politics, the more freak out at any breach of separation of church and state.
While I agree that teaching a variety of creation stories would be less Christian, I still have a problem with this being taught in a science classroom. I think that such stories have a place in social studies or literature or even history. But not science. Such stories are inherently unscientific because they propose untestable hypotheses; there's no way to ever discover if they are true or not. However, the science community overwhelmingly (I think the stat is that 99% of scientists believe in evolution) supports Darwin's theory of evolution as explaining the evidence we have so far gathered. Graduate students and professors bicker about the relative occurence of different mechanisms of the theory, but theory itself is backed by so much evidence that it is not called into question.
Like Keldog commented a few posts ago, I see my soapbox and I'm clambering down...
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