A few years ago I had the chance to do a 9-day white-water/calm-eddy river raft of the Colorado River, in the company of a group of various scientists (geneticists, biologists, anthropologists and physicists included).

It was an amazing and educating experience.

We camped out at night on the Colorado's sandbars and during the day--launching from a point in the Grand Canyon where the rocks, sediments and fossils were the oldest--steadily made our way along the river, examining the observable evidence for the long-term evolution of the Canyon.

What was particularly interesting was to have compare-and-contrast presentations made by scientists along the way regarding the real-science evolutionary vs. the pseudo-science creationary explanations for how the Grand Canyon physically came to be.

Among those on the rafting trip was Eugenie Scott, physical anthropologist and director of the National Center for Science Education (the group that organized the river expedition).

Eugenie has made it a point then and since that when educating supporters of evolution on how to deal with an remarkably uninformed and illiterate public, it is very important to "watch your language," so to speak.

In efforts to defend and explain the realities of evolution to novices and (in particular) to anti-science religious believer types, language is a critically important tactical device for use in the delivery of facts.

For an interview with her:

"Watch your language! It’s a common message from Eugenie Scott, a physical anthropologist and director of the National Center for Science Education (www.ncseweb.org), an organization dedicated to promoting and defending the teaching of evolution in public schools. Scott recently spoke with Science News writer Susan Milius.

"[Question to Scott]: 'So you urge scientists not to say that they 'believe' in evolution?!'

"[Scott's answer]: 'Right. What your audience hears is more important than what you say. . . .What [people] hear is that evolution is a belief, it’s an opinion, it’s not well-substantiated science. And that is something that scientists need to avoid communicating.

"'You believe in God. You believe your sports team is going to win. But you don’t believe in cell division. You don’t believe in thermodynamics. Instead, you might say you 'accept evolution.'

"Q: 'How does the language used to discuss new discoveries add to the problem?'

"Scott: 'To put it mildly, it doesn’t help when evolutionary biologists say things like, “This completely revolutionizes our view of X.” Because hardly anything we come up with is going to completely revolutionize our view of the core ideas of science. . . . An insight into the early ape-men of East and South Africa is not going to completely change our understanding of Neandertals, for example. So the statement is just wrong. Worse, it’s miseducating the public as to the soundness of our understanding of evolution.

"'You can say that this fossil or this new bit of data 'sheds new light on this part of evolution.'

"Q: 'So people get confused when scientists discover things and change ideas?'

"Scott: 'Yes, all the time. This is one of the real confusions about evolution. Creationists have done a splendid job of convincing the public that evolution is weak science because scientists are always changing their minds about things.'

"Q: 'So how do you explain what science is?'

"Scott: 'An idea that I stole from [physicist] James Trefil visualizes the content of science as three concentric circles: the core ideas in the center, the frontier ideas in the next ring out and the fringe ideas in the outermost ring. . . .

"'[We need to] help the public understand that the nature of scientific explanations is to change with new information or new theory — this is a strength of science — but that science is still reliable. And the core ideas of science do not change much, if at all.

"'The core idea of evolution is common ancestry, and we’re not likely to change our minds about that. But we argue a lot about … how the tree of life is branched and what mechanisms bring evolutionary change about. That’s the frontier area of science.

"'And then of course you have areas that claim to be science, like "creation science" and "intelligent design,” that are off in the fringe. Scientists don’t spend much time here because the ideas haven’t proven useful in understanding the natural world.

"Q: 'You’ve been on talk radio a lot. What’s your sense of what the public understands about evolutionary biology?'

"Scott: 'The public has a very poor understanding of evolution. People don’t recognize evolution as referring to the common ancestry of living things. Even those who accept evolution often don’t understand it well. They think it’s a great chain . . . of gradual increases in complexity of forms through time, which is certainly an impoverished view of evolutionary biology. That view is the source, in my opinion, of: “If man evolved from monkeys, then why are there still monkeys?” ... That’s probably the second most common question I get on talk radio.

"'It’s like saying, "If you evolved from your cousins, why are your cousins still here?" And of course the answer is, well, in fact, I didn’t evolve from my cousins. My cousins and I shared common ancestors, in our grandparents.'

"Q: 'What’s the current state of the effort to keep schools teaching evolution?'

"Scott: 'Sometimes it feels like the Red Queen around here, where we’re running as hard as we can to stay in the same place. The thing is, creationism evolves. And for every victory we have, there’s pressure on the creationists to change their approach. We constantly have to shift our response. Ultimately the solution to this problem is not going to come from pouring more science on it."

"Q: 'What should scientists and people who care about science do?'

"Scott: 'I’m calling on scientists to be citizens. American education is decentralized. Which means it’s politicized. To make a change . . . you have to be a citizen who pays attention to local elections and votes [for] the right people. You can’t just sit back and expect that the magnificence of science will reveal itself and everybody will . . . accept the science."

(Eugenie Scott, "Accept It: Talk about Evolution Needs to Evolve," in "Science News: Magazine for the Society for Science and the Public," vol. 176, #3, 1 August 2009, p. 32, at: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/45594/title/Comment__Accept_it_Talk_about_evolution_needs_to_evolve_)
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For a related thread, see: "Why I hate the phrase 'I don't believe in god.'" posted by "kolobian," on "Recovery from Mormonism" bulletin board, 5 December 2011, at: http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,357373



Edited 8 time(s). Last edit at 12/05/2011 04:08PM by steve benson.

...so we can dispense with geology, astronomy, archaeology, paleontology, biology and all those other scientistic frauds.

Call it that and here's what you get:

"But we're experiencing one of the coldest winters on record."

Call it "Global Climate Change" and it suddenly explains why we're experiencing one of the coldest winters on record.

Religionists and creationists are very skillful at reducing substantiated facts to mere beliefs, particularly when their livelihood is threatened.

Don't even get me started on the "Most scholars and historians agree!" thang.

The "fact" that we (humans) communicate via the world wide web which wasn't even a pipe dream thirty-years ago is a clear demonstration of evolution in action.

Some folks just can't see the forest for the trees.

Timothy

It's an excellent background on U.S. and British creationism up to about the 1980s.

There is an entire section on the involvement of Mormons in creationism. George McCready Price gave assistance to Joseph Fielding Smith in his debates with James Talmage. Later, creationist Henry Morris helps Joseph Fielding Smith with his "Man's Origin and Destiny".

Much of the wacky "scientific creationism" seems to come out of the Seventh Day Adventist subculture. There are many parallels between Mormons and SDAs that I won't go into here, but an outstanding commonality between the two is their ability to withstand the most intense cognitive dissonance. In other words, they live happily with the most absurd contradictions and celebrate irrationality in the service of faith.

Accept vs Believe.

I appreciate the preciseness of language.

What I've been pondering lately is how I could believe in the 6000 yr old earth while simultaneously being aware of, and accepting, the undisputed evidence that the earth is ancient.

I think it is a case of at least the JW dogma that was my first detailed exposure to religion teaching that humans were created 6000 yrs ago but the earth much earlier. I accepted that, not knowing much about the science on it. Then it just kind of morphed into accepting the whole 6000 yr thing as including the creation of Adam and a young earth vs believing in an ancient earth and slow evolution.

I would say it is true that many, many people are not well informed scientifically. I can understand that as for many of us our science ed stops at high school level. In the flurry of life, why would you revisit it unless it's a particular interest of yours? For example, astronomy was hell on earth for me in jr high (I just couldn't grasp the concepts or remember all the numbers and names) but now much later I'm developing an interest. I despised several of my Biology and Chem teachers through the years so unfortunately that turned me off those subjects. Fortunately for me, I had to revisit all of it in nursing studies and so at least learned the basics of good research, the scientific method, and an appreciation of the value of fact checking, among other things.

I can see, though, how between moving on from school science and not looking back (or keeping up) and having firmly held religious beliefs that contend with "science" many people have minds already made up on these topics and see no need to even become more familiar with the science. I think that for some, once they have a firm religious belief it is less likely they will revisit it than it is that science-lovers will accept new information as science discovers more as time goes on. Something in the mindset has to change, from accepting a religious tenet and believing it wholeheartedly, to being open to change.

One of the most difficult things for many religious or formerly religious people, especially if more on the fundamentalist scale, in my observation, is to accept that things change and that that is a good thing. Note how "chaotic" mainstream Christianity can seem to exmos and exxies from other similar sects (such as JW, my first foray into religious belief) merely because there are many ideas and differences and even disputes and it can be hard to isolate the common ground in the mix. I think this is the same mechanism at least partly at play in believers who see changing scientific information as an indication of error and indecision and they are happy to cling to their unchanging beliefs. Indeed, one of the most appreciated attributes of the Christian God is His immutability. Change can be seen as a sign of instability and lack of truth.

I can see it from both sides. I just can't explain it very well. Still thinking it all over...

Not believing in evolution, as a process, is about the logical equivalent to not believing in gravity. How do we have so many different breeds of dogs, all descended from wolves? Does anyone seriously believe that God created Labradoodles in the Garden of Eden?