Hooray for good days like yesterday!
Most of my days lately have been pretty good, but yesterday was especially good. Got to sit in on a class taught by of one of my dissertation committee members to talk about Intelligent Design versus Evolution (which I will talk more about in a minute, for most of this entry, in fact), had the rest of my day at school slightly better than the average Monday, took a splendid little nap when I got home, and hung out with my favoritest person for the evening since we had the night off from eight ball league. When I got home I was pretty sleepy in spite of the nap earlier, and fell asleep during the beginning part of my prayers where I mentally recount the events of my day and name all the things that were good or that I’m thankful for. I went to sleep on the couch with the balcony door wide open, and an hour or so later woke up to a really great storm. Normally I get kind of irritated if I wake up and can’t go back to sleep, but I really like listening to rain storms, so even that was good.
I really want to talk some about sitting in on the Rhetoric of Science class, because that was about the best start to my day I could have asked for. I’ve been looking forward to this all semester. The back story is this: the person teaching the course was on that job search committee with me, and back in January when the first job candidate was visiting, he mentioned at dinner that he was doing a presentation for the Alabama Academy of Sciences in March about the rhetoric of the discussion of Intelligent Design versus Evolution, and that he would be spending a day or two in his Rhetoric of Science class on the topic. This topic has been one of my big reading hobbies the last few years, and I told him so. He said I would be welcome to come to his class on the day(s) it was discussed.
Let me pause here to give you a little background on my interest. First of all, during high school, I was fairly conflicted between going into science versus going into English when I got to college. Some days I wanted to be a writer. Other days I wanted to be a forensic pathologist (back in the days before CSI made it trendy). I went with English because that was where my heart was, but I remain very interested in science.
Secondly, I don’t like to leave myself uninformed on any issue where there is a great deal of polarization if I’m going to claim to have some position on said issue. Specifically I mean religion and politics. If I’m going to say I believe something, I don’t want to get caught being unable to back up my position with really strong facts. If I can’t back my position up, I end up doing more harm to my side of the argument than good. I’m this way with political issues I’m interested in, and I’m also this way with my religious beliefs. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t with the latter issue. I envy the people who have blind faith and have their Christian beliefs without ever feeling the need to doubt and question. But my brain doesn’t work that way. I can’t turn off the questions, the critical thinking, the need to logic things out.
And so I’ve done tons of research on the authenticity and reliability of the Gospels. Cause, honestly, if you can’t trust them, then that makes the whole thing real shaky. Without recounting years’ worth of reading on my part, I’ll say simply that I know enough that my belief in their reliability is pretty much unshakable. Logic and evidence simply does not allow me to doubt that what they say about Jesus is true. This is the most tangible, provable thing about my faith, and when I’m tempted to question anything else, I go back to my certainty about this and everything is fine. I invite anyone who’s reading this who has questions about this kind of stuff to ask. Chances are I probably have asked the same question before and have a well-researched and logical answer. If you know me, you know I really hate being wrong, so if I’m behind an idea, there’s probably good reason.
And this leads me to the topic of Evolution vs ID. I have been reading a LOT about this in the last few years. As I just said, my faith is on a very solid foundation. I don’t need to know this stuff to be satisfied that God created everything, including us. However, I don’t want to say I subscribe to ID as an explanation without being able to explain why it’s superior, and for reasons beyond the fact that I believe in God (not a good enough reason for someone who doesn’t believe). Faith is my entrance point to my position on the origin of life, but science makes a better entrance point for many others. Lots have scientists have come to have faith in God based on what they’ve learned through their studies of astronomy, physics, biology, and the like. So I learn this stuff so I can explain why the theory of evolution (which I would like to rename “random chance” since both evolution and ID accept almost all the same stuff except for the reason life emerged, either through random chance or the actions of an intelligent designer) is not a sufficient explanation for how life began, nor, really, how we came to have so many different types of living things. The more I learn, the more this becomes a second unshakable foundation for me.
And so I was really excited about my guest appearance in Rhetoric of Science yesterday morning. I didn’t know how things were going to go, how lively (or possibly nasty) a debate it would be, if it would be a debate at all, if it was going to be okay for me to contribute (though I was sure hoping). I was going to get to listen to discussion of and possibly discuss myself this topic that I’ve been so interested in the last few years. And I was not disappointed in my experience.
Discussion of Evolution vs ID was only for the first half of the class (an hour and twenty minutes), and, of course, was supposed to focus on the rhetoric of the ongoing debate about this topic. Mostly, we stuck to the fossil record as evidence, which made sense because it’s the easiest for non-science-people to grasp, but also disappointing, since it’s not really until you look at the facts of biochemistry and molecular biology and stuff that you see how flimsy evolution is as an explanation for how life emerged. I did indeed get to contribute to the discussion. It pretty much ended up being me versus the four students in the class. But they were really respectful, including one person who I was totally expecting loud tirades from, and it was really exciting to me to actually get to share some of the stuff I have learned about this topic. Usually if religion, politics, or this topic come up around someone who disagrees with me, either they do the loud tirade thing and I never get to talk, or they make it clear they’re not willing to listen to what I have to say and change the subject. It was very exciting to be allowed the chance to talk, and to have people listening and seriously considering what I had to say.
The gist of what was concluded, rhetorically speaking, is that if you look honestly at what evidence and support both views have, both are relying on probability as support rather than demonstrative evidence. With both relying on probability, argumentatively speaking they are on equal footing. And this leads to the question of why one is seen as so superior to the other, why one gets included in textbooks while people have to fight tooth and nail to even get a mention of the other. I thought it was a really good way to explain it.
I was also glad to be there because I’m pretty sure the teacher of the course subscribes to ID, but it would have been inappropriate of him to take that position in a class where he’s trying to encourage the students to give fair consideration to both and to the quality of the arguments made by both. I think I brought up a lot of the same points and made a lot of the same arguments he wanted to make, but I was in a better position to do it.
This has also made me a little sad that I’ve already done all my coursework and don’t have enough left on the tuition wavier to take any more classes, even if I really want to. I would have LOVED this class. I’m jealous of the people who are getting to take it.
(Note: for the purposes of the class, we defined creationism and intelligent design as two separate views, with creationism representing those who insist that the fossil record is all a lie and that the earth is only 6000 years old, etc. ID, in general, accepts microevolution as a real process, accepts the date of the earth and the fossil record and the other scientific evidence that comes up in the debate, but essentially says that the cause for it all to happen is an intelligent designer rather than random chance.)
I hope I didn’t piss anybody off or make anyone uncomfortable with this entry. I didn’t see it as too political. I just wanted to explain (though it took quite a while) how great yesterday was. And I really think the main reason I was so happy about the experience in visiting that class was what I just said above: I actually got a chance to explain my point of view on a topic that’s really important to me, to share at least some of the knowledge I’ve accumulated on that topic, and not have people scream at me or change the subject on me. Yay for civility, and for the authority that comes with knowing terminology like microevolution.
I really want to talk some about sitting in on the Rhetoric of Science class, because that was about the best start to my day I could have asked for. I’ve been looking forward to this all semester. The back story is this: the person teaching the course was on that job search committee with me, and back in January when the first job candidate was visiting, he mentioned at dinner that he was doing a presentation for the Alabama Academy of Sciences in March about the rhetoric of the discussion of Intelligent Design versus Evolution, and that he would be spending a day or two in his Rhetoric of Science class on the topic. This topic has been one of my big reading hobbies the last few years, and I told him so. He said I would be welcome to come to his class on the day(s) it was discussed.
Let me pause here to give you a little background on my interest. First of all, during high school, I was fairly conflicted between going into science versus going into English when I got to college. Some days I wanted to be a writer. Other days I wanted to be a forensic pathologist (back in the days before CSI made it trendy). I went with English because that was where my heart was, but I remain very interested in science.
Secondly, I don’t like to leave myself uninformed on any issue where there is a great deal of polarization if I’m going to claim to have some position on said issue. Specifically I mean religion and politics. If I’m going to say I believe something, I don’t want to get caught being unable to back up my position with really strong facts. If I can’t back my position up, I end up doing more harm to my side of the argument than good. I’m this way with political issues I’m interested in, and I’m also this way with my religious beliefs. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t with the latter issue. I envy the people who have blind faith and have their Christian beliefs without ever feeling the need to doubt and question. But my brain doesn’t work that way. I can’t turn off the questions, the critical thinking, the need to logic things out.
And so I’ve done tons of research on the authenticity and reliability of the Gospels. Cause, honestly, if you can’t trust them, then that makes the whole thing real shaky. Without recounting years’ worth of reading on my part, I’ll say simply that I know enough that my belief in their reliability is pretty much unshakable. Logic and evidence simply does not allow me to doubt that what they say about Jesus is true. This is the most tangible, provable thing about my faith, and when I’m tempted to question anything else, I go back to my certainty about this and everything is fine. I invite anyone who’s reading this who has questions about this kind of stuff to ask. Chances are I probably have asked the same question before and have a well-researched and logical answer. If you know me, you know I really hate being wrong, so if I’m behind an idea, there’s probably good reason.
And this leads me to the topic of Evolution vs ID. I have been reading a LOT about this in the last few years. As I just said, my faith is on a very solid foundation. I don’t need to know this stuff to be satisfied that God created everything, including us. However, I don’t want to say I subscribe to ID as an explanation without being able to explain why it’s superior, and for reasons beyond the fact that I believe in God (not a good enough reason for someone who doesn’t believe). Faith is my entrance point to my position on the origin of life, but science makes a better entrance point for many others. Lots have scientists have come to have faith in God based on what they’ve learned through their studies of astronomy, physics, biology, and the like. So I learn this stuff so I can explain why the theory of evolution (which I would like to rename “random chance” since both evolution and ID accept almost all the same stuff except for the reason life emerged, either through random chance or the actions of an intelligent designer) is not a sufficient explanation for how life began, nor, really, how we came to have so many different types of living things. The more I learn, the more this becomes a second unshakable foundation for me.
And so I was really excited about my guest appearance in Rhetoric of Science yesterday morning. I didn’t know how things were going to go, how lively (or possibly nasty) a debate it would be, if it would be a debate at all, if it was going to be okay for me to contribute (though I was sure hoping). I was going to get to listen to discussion of and possibly discuss myself this topic that I’ve been so interested in the last few years. And I was not disappointed in my experience.
Discussion of Evolution vs ID was only for the first half of the class (an hour and twenty minutes), and, of course, was supposed to focus on the rhetoric of the ongoing debate about this topic. Mostly, we stuck to the fossil record as evidence, which made sense because it’s the easiest for non-science-people to grasp, but also disappointing, since it’s not really until you look at the facts of biochemistry and molecular biology and stuff that you see how flimsy evolution is as an explanation for how life emerged. I did indeed get to contribute to the discussion. It pretty much ended up being me versus the four students in the class. But they were really respectful, including one person who I was totally expecting loud tirades from, and it was really exciting to me to actually get to share some of the stuff I have learned about this topic. Usually if religion, politics, or this topic come up around someone who disagrees with me, either they do the loud tirade thing and I never get to talk, or they make it clear they’re not willing to listen to what I have to say and change the subject. It was very exciting to be allowed the chance to talk, and to have people listening and seriously considering what I had to say.
The gist of what was concluded, rhetorically speaking, is that if you look honestly at what evidence and support both views have, both are relying on probability as support rather than demonstrative evidence. With both relying on probability, argumentatively speaking they are on equal footing. And this leads to the question of why one is seen as so superior to the other, why one gets included in textbooks while people have to fight tooth and nail to even get a mention of the other. I thought it was a really good way to explain it.
I was also glad to be there because I’m pretty sure the teacher of the course subscribes to ID, but it would have been inappropriate of him to take that position in a class where he’s trying to encourage the students to give fair consideration to both and to the quality of the arguments made by both. I think I brought up a lot of the same points and made a lot of the same arguments he wanted to make, but I was in a better position to do it.
This has also made me a little sad that I’ve already done all my coursework and don’t have enough left on the tuition wavier to take any more classes, even if I really want to. I would have LOVED this class. I’m jealous of the people who are getting to take it.
(Note: for the purposes of the class, we defined creationism and intelligent design as two separate views, with creationism representing those who insist that the fossil record is all a lie and that the earth is only 6000 years old, etc. ID, in general, accepts microevolution as a real process, accepts the date of the earth and the fossil record and the other scientific evidence that comes up in the debate, but essentially says that the cause for it all to happen is an intelligent designer rather than random chance.)
I hope I didn’t piss anybody off or make anyone uncomfortable with this entry. I didn’t see it as too political. I just wanted to explain (though it took quite a while) how great yesterday was. And I really think the main reason I was so happy about the experience in visiting that class was what I just said above: I actually got a chance to explain my point of view on a topic that’s really important to me, to share at least some of the knowledge I’ve accumulated on that topic, and not have people scream at me or change the subject on me. Yay for civility, and for the authority that comes with knowing terminology like microevolution.