July 13, 2006
Addressing the public about science and religion
Murray Peshkin in Physics Today:
I have been speaking to diverse small groups about science and religion in the context of the ongoing national debate about the teaching of evolution in our public schools. The response to my talks has been almost uniformly positive. It would be useful for other physicists to do as I have been doing.
My audiences have been service clubs such as Rotary, high-school and college students of science and science journalism, a school-based community event, a League of Women Voters chapter, a Unitarian church, and a microscopy club. They have ranged from a dozen to some 60 or 70 people. Access is a problem but not an insuperable one, since organizations have program chairs hungry for speakers, and local newspapers, especially small suburban ones, are interested in publicizing such activities.
I am not trying to convert the convinced anti-evolutionist. I am trying to inform people about the issues and their importance. That goal is important for scientists because the integrity of science teaching in our public schools is under serious attack. So far, the courts have mostly come to the rescue, but in the end public opinion will carry the day. Reasonable people need to know what science is about, especially what an established scientific theory is and how scientists know when it's right. Nonscientists are vulnerable to arguments like "Evolution is only a theory" and "What's the harm in teaching alternative theories as well?"
More here.
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So, even non religious people believe in miracles (such as convincing creationists that evolution may be the right track...)
May God help them!...
Posted by: João Carlos | Jul 13, 2006 7:18:04 PM
First regarding the "scold". I have sat through over 300 semester hours of "higher education" and never had a thorough, intelligent, organized, open minded, discussion of evolution. Anything I know about the subject I concluded or read on my own. So it is not surprising that "lay" people do not understand it.
This article is a very good one, very well written, and the efforts of the author are to be commended. And while this author did not acknowledge any personal religion, many academics today do, at least subscribe to various religions. In fact, one stands out among them and one could even make a case for a reverse discrimination in hiring of academics against those who do not suscribe to that particular religion; I won't mention its name lest I be charged with bigotry for being politically incorrect, but everyone knows what religion it is. But since so many academics now do purportedly belong to this religion, and evidently many of them also reconcile this with evolution, should not they explain to the lay public; the Baptists, Mormans, Lutherans, Catholics, Presbyterians, ....etc., how they personally reconcile the issues, if, indeed, they are true believers rather than simply members of a social club?
Few people are genius level persons, who have the intelligence and time to evaluate all dat personally, themselves. This is one of the main problems today. It has always been such a problem to some extent, but today it is even more of a problem. What the author is saying, in so many words, is that you as lay people must believe us, the almighty physicists and geneticists, and biologists because we always form the correct conclusions in our tiny specialities and you must not question us; there is a sort of mob rule mentality not unlike that which prevailed when a majority believed the Earth was flat. The same is true of the quark theory; how many lay citizens, let alone other physicists, even with Ph.D. degrees in physics, are themselves able to go through all the data and verify that that "single error" or contradictory assumption, like the one down deep in the INTEL complex of transistors a few years ago, would "negate", to use the author's word, or contradict the entire threory?
But when citizens, on the other hand, witness the corruption in science in closely related areas, like cancer research, for example, where the failure of the war on cancer for the past 35 years has been caused by a patent collective failure of many with Ph.D degrees, violating the very rules this author claims, implicitly or explicitly, they always follow, obviously people become cynical. Sometimes you can "get the right answer" with the wrong method, or you can arrive at the "right answer" by accident, as with a multiple choice test with four possible outcomes, so there is a 25% chance of obtaining the correct answer without knowing anything at all. Anyone who believes there is no corruption in science, should read the books:
1. "The Cancer Industry" by Ralph W. Moss, PH.D, Equinox Press, N.Y., 1996, first published as "The CAncer Syndrome", 1980.
2. "CancerGate" by SAmuel S. Epstein, M.D., 2005. www.preventcancer.com
3. "The Truth About Hydrazine Sulfate-Dr. Gold Speaks" at www.hydrazinesulfate.org.
4. "The Hidden Story of Cancer" by Brian Peskin, E.E. and Amid Habib, M.D., Pinnacle Press, Houston, 2006.
Just because a majority of "scientists" say something is so, does not make it so. And although it is virtually impossible for any single person to spend a lifetime evaluating a single issue of experimental and theoretical science and come to a proper conclusion, the true failure of education is to teach every student of "higher education" the ability to critically analyze situations and at least conclude when something is wrong even though all the details may not be known to them, as they rarely are.
If we simply revert back to the days of blind obedience of physicists, or biologists or anthropologists is this any different than blind obedience of a diety?
Posted by: Winfield J. Abbe | Jul 14, 2006 9:09:01 AM
As a post script to the above comments, many years ago when I was a young professor in the physics department at the University of Georgia, I visited a number of high schools and junior high school, not to explain evolution, but in attempt to explain and drum up interest in physics and chemistry in an area where there was a great dearth of such interest. This was part of a government funded program and others made visits too. I filled the trunk of my car with demonstration equipment such as a "dunking bird" to demonstrate a heat engine or a "rubber band machine" to demonstrate that rubber contracts rather than expands on heating and others. When I would visit some shools there might be great interest, but others, mostly black, rural ones, the students were like the living dead. It could be very discouraging.
After the funding for this program ended, my wife and I thought this would be a good program to continue permanently, so we offered to donate a brand new van to the University if they would equip the van with similar demonstration equipment and continue the program permanently in Georgia. We did not even receive a reply to our letter.
This illustrates the attude of universities in 1969, and today, 2006, and believe me, nothing has changed. Our so-called "institutions of higher learning" have degenerated into nothing more or less than "money machines", whose sole purpose is to extract money from other sources, especially the United States Government. Education or "Higher" eduation? If any does occur, it is purely by accident. The "scold" in the article above is an understatement to put it mildly. WE have totally failed, largely because most colleges and universities are tyrannically run autocratically, with no, zero, public input required. The public taxpayer be damned. All these disgusting institutions want is taxpayer hardearned money; but without any advice, friendly, or not.
Isn't it amazing how our "leaders" seek to emulate our old "enemies", like Nazi, Germany?
Posted by: Winfield J. Abbe | Jul 14, 2006 9:23:26 AM
Winnie J Abbe , I dont think i'm alone in finding your compulsive attacks on cancer treatment highly offensive as well as completely crackpot. The lives of hundreds of thousands of people have been saved by the work of the wonderful scientists and dedicated physicians whom you vilify in your repetetive ridiculous manner..
Please find some other kind of treatment for your whacky problems. Or if its due to your Alzheimer's , you can forget what I just wrote.
Posted by: aguy109 | Jul 15, 2006 4:25:20 PM
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