Eugenie Scott, Executive Director of the National Center for Science
Education, to speak on "Politics, Education, and Evolution" at JCCC.
Saturday, November 4 at 7:30 PM
Johnson County Community College, Carlsen Center Room 211
Many topics in the curriculum of American schools are controversial,
but perhaps the one with the longest tenure is evolution. Politics
plays a role in this controversy in a number of ways. Politicians
have keen antennae for cultural values, and the "fairness" argument
(i.e., it is only "fair" to "balance" evolution with creationism)
regularly is exploited, regardless of the appropriateness of its
application to science education. Variants of the fairness argument
such as balancing evolution with "scientific alternatives to
evolution" or balancing evolution with "arguments against evolution"
have in fact become the current predominant antievolutionist
strategy. In addition, legislators and school board members may take
advantage of public interest in the creationism/evolution controversy
to pander to voting blocks -- whether or not the legislation or
policy ever is passed, or even is intended to be seriously considered.
2 comments:
Eugenie is not an evolutionary biologist, so I don't really care.
But she is an ahtheist, as is Dick Dawkins, praised by you KU professors as the "greated evolutionary biologist on the planet".
Funny, then, that he didn't talk about his great discoveries (hehehe) and instead propandized for atheism at his KU talk.
Like Eugenie Scott, this is no longer about science. Its about your atheistic agenda.
Of course Dawkins WAS talking about atheism or at least what HE views as the improbability of God, hence the title of his talk "The God Delusion". Now you may think of that as propaganda-personally I think he raised a number of points(better made in his book) that religious people ought to address as part of the "difficult dialogue. Calling his comments propaganda is the rhetorical equivalent of burying your head....in the sand.
Eugenie Scott IS trained in the basics of evolutionary biology and from what I saw last night, understands the basics quite well which is a lot more than I can say about the creationists and ID advocates that I have encountered.
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