God, Darwin and My College Biology Class

[cbayer]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/28/opinion/sunday/god-darwin-and-my-college-biology-class.html?_r=0

By DAVID P. BARASH
SEPT. 27, 2014


Credit Mike McQuade

EVERY year around this time, with the college year starting, I give my students The Talk. It isn’t, as you might expect, about sex, but about evolution and religion, and how they get along. More to the point, how they don’t.

I’m a biologist, in fact an evolutionary biologist, although no biologist, and no biology course, can help being “evolutionary.” My animal behavior class, with 200 undergraduates, is built on a scaffolding of evolutionary biology.

And that’s where The Talk comes in. It’s irresponsible to teach biology without evolution, and yet many students worry about reconciling their beliefs with evolutionary science. Just as many Americans don’t grasp the fact that evolution is not merely a “theory,” but the underpinning of all biological science, a substantial minority of my students are troubled to discover that their beliefs conflict with the course material.

Until recently, I had pretty much ignored such discomfort, assuming that it was their problem, not mine. Teaching biology without evolution would be like teaching chemistry without molecules, or physics without mass and energy. But instead of students’ growing more comfortable with the tension between evolution and religion over time, the opposite seems to have happened. Thus, The Talk.

more at link

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Some 40 years ago, when I took biology, evolution was taught

as fact, and nobody raised a fuss about it. It wasn't controversial. Nobody complained that their religious beliefs were being insulted. How have we regressed so far that now biology teachers feel like they have to justify teaching evolution in order to prevent some students from thinking their religion has been disrespected?

[cbayer]

2. If there was any problem among students in my biology classes, I

was totally unaware of it.

But there wasn't a lot of strong religion at my college at all.

That may not be true at the University of Washington, as there are a significant number of evangelicals and fundamentalists in the state.

So, I don't know if things have changed or whether there has always been a conflict at certain colleges.

[2naSalit]

4. In the state

where I attended college (ID) the dominant, local religion was also dominant in the classroom in many areas, where I noticed it most was in the political science and performing arts areas, and it was hard to be of a different world view than many of my classmates and faculty. I think it depends on what cultural influence dominates the location of the school and where much of the faculty and staff workforce originate. The rest, I think, depends on the local influence of state and municipality governing bodies and what their value set looks like. The entire state is tightly controlled and the U campuses sort of seemed like tiny oases in a rw rhetoric as dogma environment.

[cbayer]

5. That's good information.

I suspect this issue varies a lot depending on region and local culture.

[2naSalit]

12. Agree

I grew up around college towns in the NE and to actually attend college in a very different region where there is little cultural diversity made it obvious just how tightly controlled an institute of higher education can be in a state that uses a religion to guide it through its legislative processes and who controls just who can succeed in locations they control.

[cbayer]

13. We occasionally see stories about the type

of religious controls used by some colleges and universities, but I am personally unfamiliar with them.

Things really do appear to be different in the NE.

[2naSalit]

14. As I

came from New England, where there's plenty of diversity to go around, I knew that Catholic universities were based on religion, and a few others I suppose, but nothing compares with the jingoism that is prevalent in the LDS dominated places... like Idaho. At the one (advertised as) LDS university, half the buildings built in the last decade seem to have the name "Romney" attached to them... for instance. The State University system is not far behind in religious domination thanks to the one denominational legislature, etc..

[cbayer]

15. Yes BYU and the Ivy Leagues are light years away when it comes to this stuff,

even though many of the IL's aren't as culturally diverse as they could be.

I have lived in heavily catholic areas, but never in a heavily fundamentalist one.

It stil shocks me to hear talk radio on my drives across the country.

[AtheistCrusader]

11. Ascendant reactionary evangelical christianity in the United States.

Trace the growth of their political power since the 50's, and therein lies your answer.

[Tikki]

3. This is basically the 'TALK' my first year Physical Anthropology professor gave..then we dug...

right into the study of genetics.

I think seeing and working the Science helps take the sting out of facing reality for those students.

Tikki

[cbayer]

6. That's good to know. I hope a lot of professors take this approach.

[libodem]

7. Such an Interesting read

Thanks for sharing this cbayer.

[cbayer]

8. I thought so as well. Glad you enjoyed it.

[libodem]

9. I did

VERY much.

[yortsed snacilbuper]

10. Dave Lampe-Associate Professor of Biological Sciences

Lampe is an Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. He has been teaching evolutionary biology to undergraduates and graduate students for 15 years. He founded and still organizes Duquesne’s annual Darwin Day, now in it’s 12th year. When he’s not in the lab he’s randonneuring.

http://www.duq.edu/academics/faculty/david-lampe

[gcomeau]

16. So refreshing...

...to see a professor who knows how the subject needs to be treated.