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November 24, 2004
Warning labels
JWZ linked in his blog to some warning labels for textbooks. Here's as a thumbnail of the stickers:
Colin Purrington, the guy who posted the stickers, apparently teaches evolutionary biology at Swarthmore. If you go to the page where he posts the stickers, you'll notice at the bottom the links to some organizations of folks who don't agree that theories of evolution should be the only explanation of life on earth taught in schools.
The strange thing about this issue is that if you observe it from one angle, you see opposition between scientists arguing that we proceed from observations and religious believers (mainly Christians?) arguing that we not ignore the word of God, which plainly explains that God created the world and everything in it. If you observe it from another angle, you see scientists arguing that we apply the scientific method and don't leap to conclusions, and religious believers arguing that we apply the scientific method and don't leap to conclusions. From still another angle, we see people who believe the succinct explanation and official dogma of evolution without themselves being able to show how observations support the theory, and other scientists who happen to be religious believers suggesting that we not rule things out just because they're out of line with the official dogma. Yet another angle has people who cannot explain evolution but believe in science arguing with people who cannot explain creationism but believe literally in the Biblical account of creation.
What role should belief play in our lives? What role should the scientific method play?
Posted by Mark at November 24, 2004 08:42 AM