Comfortable in the middle

This is the third post in the What my decade long foray into the creation-evolution debate taught me about the human condition (and how it applies today) series .  This post ended up somewhat longer than I hoped.  Explaining my thoughts on complexity is a bit complex! Science as a way of knowing I loved being able to teach introductory college biology – it was a staple course I taught for 19 years.  I taught it to a lot of students – usually three sections a year, each with 60-118 students.  Lots of enrolled students were not interested in science, and were only there to check-off one of their two required science electives.  Lots of college freshmen came in with a negative impression of science – many did not have good experiences with their high school science classes.  For this reason, I felt it important to convince them from the beginning that the course was worth their while, and presented them with value beyond a checkmark on a list, and nothing...

This is the second post in this series.  Here is a link to the first post (an overview of the series). Integrating faith and learning I really had not given any thought to any potential issues between Christian belief and evolutionary theory until I began my career as a biology professor at a Christian university in North Carolina.  I took the position because I was specifically looking for a way to blend my Christian belief within a profession, and I felt that taking a faculty position at a Christian university was a great way to do this.  There wasn’t a single event which got me interested in the creation-evolution debate - it was a series of events and experiences.  First, I began teaching a basic biology course, which included typical introductory-level coverage of evolutionary theory.  The textbook was a commonly used one at many universities, and it  very briefly acknowledged there was some controversy concerning evolutionary theory.  I had many...

This is the first in a series of posts intended to share insights I learned about how people end up believing the things they do. It feels like a good topic to discuss, given all what happened in 2020, and the information overload we are exposed to and the large number of voices competing for attention, clicks, followers, influence and even power. You might think as you read on, that this is about the creation-evolution debate, but it really isn't. This debate is how I learned what I did, but I have no intent to defend one side or the other, nor persuade readers towards a particular position in this debate. A few recent circumstances got me reminiscing about a period of time in my life when I chased the tireless rabbit of the modern creation-evolution debate.  One was the unfortunate death of a former college student of mine to COVID-19.  It got me thinking of my time as a college professor, and the memories I had of not only this student, but some of my favorite moments as...

 I chased a rabbit today, and learned something very interesting.  I received a pro Thom Tillis political flyer in the mail.  Here is a photo of part of the flyer.   I’m always curious about the Political Action Committees which send out mailers and fund television commercials, and more recently, Youtube advertisements.  Fortunately, the website OpenSecrets.org , which is run by the non-partisan, independent, non-profit Center For Responsive Politics, tracks money in politics, so that anyone can know who supports these PACs financially, and how the PACs are spending their money.  I decided to learn more about Americans For Prosperity Action . I may as well say this upfront:  I’m voting against Thom Tillis, not because he is a Republican (I’m a moderate independent), but because of his longstanding support of internet provider monopolies by large cable TV and telecom companies, in rural areas of North Carolina, where NC citizens have very limited...