“Class, we are going to study evolution over the next while. Now, please understand, this is not only a requirement but the state of the science. You need to know that I disagree with it, but on purely religious grounds. I’ll do my best not to let my bias show or enter into my teaching but keep it in mind. This is science, and important.”

That’s the reason why I disagree vehemently when people say that one can’t be religious and scientific at the same time; I’ve seen it done. It takes a lot of responsibility, introspection, and self-management, but people are fully capable of going “I believe this because it is true, I believe this because I want it to be true but this other is the accepted scientific truth.” Mostly people choose not to do it (or never even realize they have the choice and power to do it) because they are not taught to.

What my teacher believes, as long as he or she is honest about it, is irrelevant compared to what he or she teaches. Sadly, one is all too often identical to the other, but there are people out there who we should be applauding because they do their jobs and to them well despite their perhaps backwards beliefs.

I used to be an advisor for seniors in the Ole Miss Engineering School, typically guiding a group through their graduate projects. In such a role I got to meet a lot of the staff of the engineering and science departments. It was (and is) a hotbed for creationists and IDers.

It always struck me as peculiar when, for example, I’d be talking to a geology professor, and we happened to venture into a topic such as the age of the Earth, you could see him blink, shift gears, and put on his dogma hat as he pronounced with rapt, blank eyes that the Earth and the Universe were really 6000 years old.

Then he’d return to reality and talk about what he was supposed to be teaching the students. But there’d always be more than a hint of insincerity.

How such persons manage to exist with such dual/multiple personalities is beyond my ken. That they’re in positions where they’re “educating” our youth is ludicrous.

If the creationists wanted to explain G-d starting things, they should look at the Big Bang 14 GYA. But that’d require more math and hard science than they are comfortable with I reckon.

Everything you remember before that came factory installed for you.
You & Col. Tigh.

I found that the Ninth Grade Earth Science teacher had a small table in the front of the classroom covered in Young Earth Creationist tracts. They were never referred to in class, as far as I heard. But they were there!

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