17 Responses to “Evolution vs. religion: 1 school’s dilemma”

1. marko Says:
   June 17th, 2009 at 10:47 am

   There is not enough information in this story to comment properly. I cannot understand what she was objecting too ? The statement “there are thousands of scientists who are devoutly religious and also accept evolution.” is certainly true – what is the problem ? Hopefully she was not objecting to the teaching of evolution in schools. That mind-set is just so mind-bogglingly inane, untenable and just plane sad in the present day.

2. Lee Stout Says:
   June 17th, 2009 at 11:31 am

   I agree with the court. The statements do not promote the practice of religion, they are simply stating facts which are easily be derived through survey research. The statements are sociology, not theology.

3. Shatzie Says:
   June 17th, 2009 at 11:49 am

   I feel the parent could have objected but not demanded without the support of the majority of other parents.

   If I had a dime for every time I told my child “we don’t belive that”, I’d be a millionaire. In my humble opinion, a parent’s job is to instill the values he/she hold true. But it is not the parent’s job to direct school policy espcially when the majority of parents were not in agreement. If they had agreed, then a cooperative effort would have caused a change and a different ruling. It does not appear that this happened.

   Years ago, a few people pushed our government to remove “Under God” from the pledge. Efforts like this are still going on but do not reflect the opinions of the majority. I thought that government and in this case school are designed to serve the majority. Let’s not let that happen again.

   “WE DON”T BELIEVE THAT” are still strong words to deliver to a child. Eventually, the child will decide on his/her own any way. And it might not be alignment with the parent. Anyone who has had a teenager will attest to that.

   To the parent, I respect your right to object. Simply move your child to a school that aligns it’s beliefs close to yours. But don’t expect your child to be your clone.

   I went to Catholic school in the ’50s to align with my parent’s beliefs. Even though I share most of my parent’s views, there are still so many on which we differ. And my fully-grown children do not share all of my beliefs.

4. BoonMan Says:
   June 17th, 2009 at 12:18 pm

   The Museum’s posting was, indeed a statement of sociological fact, not an endorsement of religion. Of course, it would have been fairer if it had also included a statement that 1) many more evolutionary biologists are atheistic or agnostic than are “believers” in a personal God and 2) the higher the biologist’s qualifications and standing in the field, the less likely it is that he or she confesses a religious belief… My understanding is that these are also “sociological facts”, and equally relevant…

   But in the end, what’s new? Freethinkers are used to facts being presented in a biased way in order to placate the “faith-based”!

5. SeaTech Barbi Says:
   June 17th, 2009 at 12:39 pm

   People readily believe the story of a rib women standing in a garden listening to a talking snake, but can’t grasp the logic in the evolutional theory. They both could be taught as two different theories or How about God said, “Let there be fish”, “let there be monkeys”, and then “I can do better than that… let there be humans”??????

6. Silouan Thompson Says:
   June 17th, 2009 at 1:46 pm

   This wasn’t a “government-endorsed religious messages.” It was a statement of fact. A given reader may find religion laughable, but the museum’s statement is not an opinion – it’s a statement of fact about some people’s documented opinion. It’s as constitutionally permissible as saying “The religious establishment did not agree with Galileo.”

   And, as with Galileo, the sociological aspects of paleontological research are as valid a field of study as the fossil data themselves. Science doesn’t happen in a social vacuum. A scientist who has no idea how his research is perceived by laymen will be unable to communicate his findings in an accessible way. That will come back to bite him when he looks for funding!

7. Stand4God Says:
   June 17th, 2009 at 2:14 pm

   I don’t understand why the “hypothesis” of evolution is being taught alone as a theory of how life began anyways. Certainly to people who believe in it, it is their “Faith” .Faith is the belief in things not seen. I think many so called evolutionist lay belief on “Micro” evolution which is, Adaptation within a species. The hypothesis of “Macro”evolution has not been established in any science journal, only alluded to. Now if we take the root of the word Allude, “to casually make an indirect reference”. That’s not really science, it’s imagination….So if the evolutionist can have faith in their imagination, why can’t a BELIEVER?

   And i have to add Galileo Galilei was a BELEIVER…too!

8. Harry Shipman Says:
   June 17th, 2009 at 2:14 pm

   I agree totally with the court. The page in question is one page out of hundreds and not particularly easy to find. It generally mentions the rather timid position that evolution and religion are totally separate things. There’s nothing wrong with this position, but some thinkers (for example, Owen Gingerich, Keith Ward, Kenneth Miller, Francis Collins) have demonstrated how their understandings of religion are enriched by science, and vice versa.

   The compatibility of evolution and many religions is also mentioned on the website of the National Association of Biology Teachers.

   So the government has not endorsed anything.

9. Carlisle Willard Says:
   June 17th, 2009 at 2:47 pm

   It is interesting that the anti-evolution side gets up in arms at the thought of a government institution controlling what they see on an Internet site but has no problem whatsoever in trying to control what goes there. The court’s ruling was exactly right. Separation of church and state is true for both: church should not be able to tell state what to do any more than the opposite is true. For an example of why, read about the events in Iran these days. This woman clearly wanted there to be no public statement other than what she wanted to hear. People with rigid, doctrinaire, unbending, and inviolable opinions fear anything but their own. One wonders if the reason is that the more the issue is discussed openly, the less their position makes sense.

10. Friend of Liberty Says:
    June 17th, 2009 at 3:44 pm

    I do not agree with the court decision. Parents should have all the rights to choose what ideas, religions, or philosophies their children are taught in schools. This is a great drawback of modern day school system that parents have no saying in setting the teaching directions of their children. The state controlled schools indoctrinate children with all kinds of alien ideas and frequently take from kinds basic liberties such as free speech and freedom of expression. This is unacceptable and should be changed. The students should have freedom to express their beliefs in any religion or philosophy they want.

11. Cuz from Alabama Says:
    June 18th, 2009 at 9:07 am

    My experience is that scientist like theologians, biblical scholars (rather than those who often quote verse fragments out of the bible but haven’t studied the texts and can not read Greek and Hebrew) and philosophers, take the time to inquire in depth on any subject that interests them. That there are six different creation stories in the Hebrew Scriptures would suggest that those who canonized the texts as scripture were not fools who thought each one was a report. And not one of those stories is a scientific hypothesis. Evolutionary theories are not simply intellectual yarn spinning, but are testable scientific hypotheses which are constantly questioned and tested. Philosophers of science and academic theologians, question the relation of testable fact claims, generalization and inference making in the construction of a theory. Scientist also are concerned with these tasks but have an added advantage of testing the data which supports the hypothesis. As regards God, there are many faithful Christians in the pews who keep the faith with enormous doubt about the existence, nature and quality of God, but are faithful in their “belief” and “practice”. I only add that a God defined is no god at all.

    As regards the phrase “under God,” it took me less than a minute to google under god added to pledge to find out that the phrase was added to the Pledge in 1954 (during the cold war) in part to differentiate the USA from the Soviet Union’s official stand on religion and God. I suspect that the addition of the phrase was more a political decision to counter the Soviet threat than a deep seated commitment by law makers to declare the USA as having worked out the proper relationship of a nation with God. Of course one might muse that the USA is only united from the perspective of God.

12. Rick Froman Says:
    June 18th, 2009 at 9:55 am

    Since neither the story nor the comments so far have provided the actual text, I think it is important to see the full text. It is not long. It can be found at:

    http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq.php#d1

    Let me say first that I don’t have a problem with this from a constitutional perspective. I don’t think the school should be forced to take it down by the government but the statement is not a great example of logic or reasonable argumentation.

    The first statement is a statement about religion. To say that it is a misconception that “evolution and religion are incompatible” has to be a statement about religion. It takes a stand on what religious belief is. You can’t say that evolution and religion are compatible without defining the religious beliefs.

    Their response to this misconception (which I think many paleontologists and biologists might share) starts then with the idea of non-overlapping magisteria.

    “Religion and science (evolution) are very different things. In science, only natural causes are used to explain natural phenomena, while religion deals with beliefs that are beyond the natural world.”

    Later, they seem to endorse the opposite by saying that “many religious people, including theologians, feel that a deeper understanding of nature actually enriches their faith.” How does that work if they are totally non-overlapping?

    The statement that has received the most comment here is that “in the scientific community there are thousands of scientists who are devoutly religious and also accept evolution” doesn’t really speak to the issue at all. It says only that there are some people who see no conflict and others who do. It could be that the individuals compartmentalize their private and work lives or they may have found some way to find a commonality between them. In any case, personal beliefs of scientists aren’t really useful evidence to support that science is compatible with religious belief but, if it is taken as good evidence, it seems to contradict their initial foundational argument for non-overlapping magisteria.

13. Mel--- Says:
    June 18th, 2009 at 10:35 am

    It’s unfortunate there is a large number of people who believe as “Friend of Liberty” where religion should be taught in schools. It appears the so-called ‘christians’ of today are so much less tolerant today than they were just 40 or 50 years ago. I was raised in a christian home – went to Sunday School every Sunday and learned about Adam and Eve. The next day I’d be in elementary school learning about evolution. I vividly remember asking my mom, “Which came first, Adam and Eve or the dinosaurs?”. She never answered my question and allowed me to decide for myself what to believe. I believe in both! I believe God CREATED our world through evolution. We have so much proof as in fossils and skeletal remains of dinosaurs. How can some people deny this?

    I stopped going to church many years ago after realizing the so-called ‘christians’ are hypocrits, mean-spirited (if you don’t agree with them), and extremely close-minded and judgmental. How tragic they’ve evolved into people who think they’re above the rest of us. Don’t get me wrong, there are many good, caring christians who would do anything to help someone in need. But there are many more who believe but opt not to attend religious services who care, too.

    My job is in the biology department of a large midwest university and there are many of our faculty who attend regular religious services. Some of them teach evolution and we have a strong program here. But they are able to leave their personal feelings aside in the name of providing a good, fair and balanced education to their students.

    If you wish for your children to learn about Adam and Eve and the other adventures found in the Bible, have them go to Sunday School/church – like I did. But don’t try to force schools to have the same beliefs as you – let them teach science. Kids should be exposed to both concepts but not in school. It should be up to the parents to see they are educated to their religious beliefs in their own environment – as I did.

    ‘Friend of Liberty’ – I don’t understand how you can justify using this ‘name’ when our own constitution clearly states the separation of church and state. Where’s the liberty if schools are told they must teach a ‘christian’ theory of ‘science’. The bible has long been a book of interpretations and most often is ‘interpreted’ to fit personal agendas. Please, open your minds!

14. Bearistotle Says:
    June 25th, 2009 at 2:33 pm

    I’ve never had a problem reconciling the scientific theories of evolution with by belief in God. I wonder why this remains a problem. A literal intepretation of the Bible would indeed run counter to a scientist’s rendition of how we all got here. But anyone familiar with the Bible knows that it is a collection of inspired writings, some possibly lost or mis-translated over the years, or edited to be politically correct for the particular times of their being written. Therefore, simply accept the scienctific facts as facts known today (with the hopes that further scientific research may reveal some changes on down the line) and then accept a belief in God. Don’t pretend to know all the answers. The scientists don’t have all the answers and neither do the theologians. Have a little faith in both fields.

15. Robert G. Brown Says:
    June 25th, 2009 at 2:53 pm

    I think that the parent was quite right to object. There are two very simple reasons to object to this display. The first and foremost is that, as a science display, there was no need to mention God. God is irrelevant to science. It adds nothing whatsoever to the explanation in even the most harmless, general (deist) case. In the case of theistic Gods that are invariably linked to a scriptural mythology, it simply confuses people. That is, quite simply, because it does conflict, very much, with pretty much every mythology.

    God is not a testable hypothesis. God is not an explanation. God is a statement of ignorance. One invokes something as “God’s Will” when the correct answer is “I don’t know”. God has been “I don’t know” from primitive times, that made up elaborate mythologies and religious rituals intended to explain what they didn’t know. Get sick? God’s will, helped out by demons. Lightning and Thunder? God. Where did the Sun come from? God made it an hung it on the heavens (which were a “firmament” — a solid dome overhead). How did we get here? God made us out of clay just as we make clay figures ourselves, but breathed life on us.

    All of physics, chemistry, biology, geology — all of the hard sciences — leave no room whatsoever for a God of the Gaps. There are no gaps, or where there are, we don’t seek to fill them with God but by adjusting the explanation, with new hypotheses and more experiments. If I tell you that the earth goes around the sun due to gravity that follows Newton’s Law of Gravitation, and I tell you that the earth goes around the sun due to God’s Will, which one permits you to compute the orbital period, understand why all the other planets go around the Sun too, why the moon goes around the earth, and why mundane things fall to the ground? Which one helps you understand the formation of the stars, the structure of the galaxies, the importance of the Hubble Constant and the question of whether or not the Universe is open or closed? Which one predicts neutron stars and black holes? And, given all of these things, how is our explanation improved, how is something more understood, if we add God to gravity?

    A publicly funded museum has absolutely no business adding a silly comment like this, any more than it should add “Evolution is compatible with the notion that invisible fairies were responsible for the great extinctions”. Go on, prove that they weren’t! After all, they were invisible! We can only know that they were there because the extinctions happened.

    God is even more pernicious as an explanation in this specific context than invisible fairies, because adding God to evolution implies that evolution had a purpose, that it was guided. This, in turn, is “intelligent design”, which is utterly unsupported by a shred of evidence, and is incompatible with the theory of evolution, which clearly states that sexual reproduction together with random mutation, followed by natural selection, is the mechanism leading to just the fossil progression being shown in that very museum.

    So not only is it bad science, not only is it constitutionally forbidden, but it is incorrect. The two are not compatible, not as explanations, not for any theistic view of an active participant creator deity. If they modified the statement to include only pandeist “the Universe is God” type Gods, it would no longer be technically incorrect, but then it would still be irrelevant and unnecessary.

    rgb

16. Jo Aelfwine Says:
    August 5th, 2009 at 11:47 am

    Must Xtian fundies get way out of hand in demanding that only their view be presented. This is just one more case. The majority of parents and intelligent people in the country better get more involved in the educational and political systems or we will continue to drop down the worlds education list and end up with students who know nothing that is not in the Old Testament.

17. Anonymous Says:
    November 11th, 2009 at 6:33 pm

    We cannot expect the school to teach all our beliefs and no one else’s. This is ridiculous and impossible. We need to teach many different things to our children, teach them to critically evaluate what they are taught, and allow them to create their own set of beliefs.

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