Comfortable in the middle

This is the 6th 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 . Truth, misinformation, and literacy This is a tough topic to cover succinctly.  In fact, as I’ve been working on this, I realize it will need to be split into two parts - this post addressing literacy in general, and the second post covering subject literacy. The topic of literacy is hugely important right now.  Right now, American society in particular is being inundated with misinformation, unlike anything I’ve seen previously.  The same sort of situation I witnessed happening in the relatively insignificant sideline battles of the creation-evolution debate a decade ago is now playing prime-time in front of the entire country (and world) and involves real consequences to people, spanning battles involving political power and public health.  Misinformation is certainly not new (there are warnings about misi...

This is the 5th 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 . I still remember the event - it was at a large church in Cary, NC, on a Saturday morning - a special event open to the general public, concerning creation and the origins of life on Earth.  I took the students in my creation/evolution course to the event.  We had just finished an overview of how people think - cognition, biases, and other aspects of social psychology, along with common logical fallacies people commit when arguing for their position.  I tasked the students to watch out for cognitive biases and logical fallacies, and to write about them in their course journal.  The event did not disappoint.  It was an eye-opening experience for the students.  It’s one thing to read about, and discuss the business model and evangelistic efforts of the professional young earth creationists - it’s much...

This is the fourth 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 .   The topic of authority and expertise is certainly not exclusive to the creation/evolution debate.  When a serious issue arises, and good information is needed, most people look to experts who can speak authoritatively on the issue.  Consider the circumstances involving the COVID-19 pandemic.  The unknowns and uncertainties we faced pointed us to the professional opinions of infectious disease experts.  Who else would have sufficient knowledge to give us some sense on how to proceed?  Yet, consultation of experts doesn’t always lead to definitive answers and guidance, does it?  With COVID-19, it got pretty complex, as expert opinions varied, and got entangled with politics, power plays and conspiratorial thinking.  In the end, many people rejected the authority of expe...

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...