Teaching Evolution in Indiana

When I was a graduate student in archaeology at Indiana University, I supported myself through a variety of different jobs that more or less related to the area I was studying. One of my first jobs was as an Associate Instructor (other schools call them Teaching Assistants) for a large lecture class called A105--Human Origins and Prehistory. This course was IU's intro to living primates, Human Evolution, and the very beginnings of prehistory, if there was time and the professor was so inclined. While the course was not exactly in my wheel house--I was studying the Greek Bronze Age at the time and had only taken one Human Evolution course as an undergraduate--the position came with money and, more importantly, tuition remission, so I took it. How hard could it be?

Harder than I expected. Teaching is a skill that must be learned, but beyond that, I was surprised by the amount of resistance some of the students had to learning about human evolution. Every semester, I had at least a couple of students tell me that they were taking the course to test their faith. Often, when I read my course evaluations at the end of the semester, I would find one that said that I was very nice, but that they still didn't believe it. One student gave me a Bible when the class was over. Most of these students were polite, listened, and even learned the information I presented well enough that they did well on the exams.

I have been reminded of all this because of a new bill that recently passed in the Indiana State Senate that would make it possible to teach creationism alongside evolution in public school science classes. You can read a brief discussion here: Indiana creationism bill passes the Senate.

There are a number of reasons why this is a terrible idea. Teaching creationism as an alternative to evolution has been ruled unconstitutional under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which says in part: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Because creationism, creation science, and intelligent design are based on a religious (Christian) worldview, they may not be established as government-sanctioned explanations. An attempt to add intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in science classrooms in Pennsylvania  wound up in court (Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District 2004). In this case, the judge ruled that, in addition to violating the establishment clause of the Bill of Rights, intelligent design was creationism dressed up and it was therefore unconstitutional to teach it in the public schools. The settlement of the court case ultimately cost the school district $1 million in damages and legal fees.

Why? The fact remains that a creationist account of the origins of the earth is not a scientific explanation! It does not use the scientific method, which is the hallmark of science. Scientific explanations are testable, replicable, and falsifiable. Religious explanations are none of the above, because they are based on faith.

Denying the fact of evolution or teaching students that it is "just another creation story" in high school science classes puts students at a huge disadvantage. Evolution is the underlying concept that unifies all of the life sciences. It guides research in medicine, marine biology, epidemiology, and many other crucial fields. Not understanding evolutionary biology makes it hugely difficult for students to succeed in these fields.

The Indiana Bill


The text of the original bill presented to the Senate read in its entirety:

 The governing body of a school corporation may require the teaching of various theories concerning the origin of life, including creation science, within the school corporation.

Like most bills that attempt to mandate the teaching of creationism in schools, this one says more-or-less explicitly, that the "various theories concerning the origin of life" really means the Biblical account of creation. This opens up all kinds of opportunities for lawsuits by people from non-Christian religious backgrounds, in addition to the objections that can be raised under the First Amendment. Interestingly, the bill that passed the Indiana State Senate was amended to say:

The governing body of a school corporation may offer instruction on various theories of the origin of life. The curriculum for the course must include theories from multiple religions, which may include, but is not limited to, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Scientology.

This is clearly designed to sidestep the objections that might be raised against just presenting the Christian version of creation and might be expected to appeal to creationists of other faiths. There are, after all, as many creation stories as there are religious groups; more, even, because we know a variety of myths from religions that have no present-day followers. A selection of non-Christian origin stories can be found here.


It is clear that creationists take evolution as a threat to the faith of their children. Scientists like Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) have argued that the fact of evolution disproves the existence of God, which is a position designed to make creationists nervous. If their children learn about evolution in school, won't that make them atheists? That is not a facetious question, it is a real one that faces creationist families. Evolution does, in fact, contradict a literal reading of creation as portrayed in the Bible and in most (but not all) other creation stories.


However, not all evolutionary scientists are atheists or agnostics and not all religious believe that evolution and religious beliefs are incompatible. Indeed, in 2009, Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture of the Catholic Church, said that the idea of evolution could be traced to St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas.


The Indiana bill is unlikely to pass the State House, in part because of the precedent of the Kitzmiller, et al. v Dover Area School District decision, but the issue is not closed. I don't think I will ever present creationist accounts of the origins of life as equal to evolution in my classes, but, like the professor I taught with that first semester, I always start by talking about the difference between science and religion. I'm not sure it has any impact.


If you want to learn more about the theory of evolution, I suggest the University of California--Berkeley "Understanding Evolution" website: http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/home.php and the National Center for Science Education website: http://ncse.com/

NaNoWriMo

I've always wanted to really sit down and write something. I've had an idea for a novel or a series of novels for probably ten or fifteen years, and I've written bits and pieces down, but I've never really sat down and just tried to write it from beginning to end. I heard about National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), which, according to the website is:

a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing on November1. The goal is to write a 50,000 word (approximately 175 page) novel by 11:59:59, November 30.

The girlfriend thought it was a great idea. So I started. With a focus on output, rather than quality, I think I wrote a ton of crap. Like really, a lot of crap. But some of it seemed pretty okay as I was writing it. Maybe even better than okay. And, while the writing part of the novel is not done, I did manage to write 50,709 words so far this month. Not too shabby, especially considering the fact that I missed two days over Thanksgiving. I'm hoping I can keep the writing up until I come to the end of this story (or at least, the beginning of the next one).

Anyway, I "won", so here's my winner's badge. :)

Also...

My dissertation was accepted by the University Graduate School as of 8:38 am PDT today. I'm a doctor!

Only in California

I lived in Indiana for a long time and I've had both Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses come to my door. I've also had random people hand me copies of the New Testament on the street. Today, though, I was walking down a one-way street by the park near our house and a white BMW approached from in front of me. An older woman with short gray hair stuck her head out the window. She said, "Hey, girlfriend. I don't usually do this, but this changed my life." She held this out:

"If you're not interested, pass it on to someone who might like it. It's from the Great White Eagle."

It was a first for me. California.

California Knows How to Party

It will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me at all to hear that the move to California has been difficult for me.  If you read some of the back posts on this blog, you'll probably find me bemoaning my fate in one way or another in a lot of them.  I hope that I don't come across as too whiny or negative in them, but the cross-country move to a city I'd never been to has been way harder than even I imagined it would be.  I have some ideas about why this is true.

First, I still don't really have a job.  I have a couple of part-time gigs, including the Bay Area Anthropology Examiner job I mentioned in the previous post (go to my page! Read my articles!), but none of them bring in enough money to live on.  The girlfriend does, in fact, have a full-time job (with benefits!  Yay, health insurance!), which means that we're probably not in any danger of living on the street anytime soon, but she hates the job.  Really hates it.  Comes home every day saying how much she hates it.  But she can't quit it.  How would we live if she did?  It is one of the most frustrating things in the world to not be able to pull my own weight with household expenses and it's even worse because she doesn't even like the job.

Now, my girlfriend is an amazing woman and so she has been amazing about me not having a real job.  I know that she wishes I did have one and I know that she's jealous that I get to stay home all day with the cats, but she is wonderful and supportive and understanding.  I couldn't ask for anyone better, and that's the truth.  So that makes things a little better.

The second thing that is really hard about this is how lonely it is.  We don't really have any friends.  Or, rather, we have two friends who live in Walnut Creek and a few more scattered throughout the Bay Area, but we don't have very many and they're mostly not available to hang out with.  This is a completely different situation than any I have experienced my entire life.  In college and grad school, I had bunches of friends.  So many, in grad school in particular, that I would sometimes find myself with 3 or 4 options as to what to do on any given night.  The girlfriend used to have to force me to stay home and hang out with her.  Now, a busy weekend is seeing one friend.  I haven't been to a party in months.

We haven't exactly been busting our butts to try to find new friends, I'll admit that, but I also think it's just way harder to find them out in the real world.  In grad school, we were constantly surrounded by people who more-or-less shared our worldview, interests, and commitment to learning.  Out of an academic context, those people have to be sought out, and the pool of people we interact with on a regular basis is much, much smaller.  By the time the girlfriend gets home in the evenings, she's mostly too beat to want to go out and we can't really afford to do it on a regular basis, either.  And so we aren't really meeting people and we are continuing to be pretty lonely.

This is not a woe-is-me moment, although it may sound like one.  It took me a long time to understand why I was so miserable, so now I can start doing something about it.  I am trying to make a little money doing freelance writing (if you know anyone who's looking for a writer, editor, or proofreader, send them my way!) and I'm finally getting a few students to tutor, so I'm feeling a little bit better.  And, if I haven't said it loudly enough yet, my girlfriend really is the best in the world, which makes everything much better.  With any luck, I'll have better news soon.  Fingers crossed.

Updates

I have decided that to go along with the rebirth of my blog, I should do a makeover.  This includes everything about the physical presentation of the blog, including the name.  You'll note that I added the name of our second cat, Maeby, to the title, but I left Guliko in there, too, as a sort of memorial to an amazing cat.
The colors, fonts, background, and everything else look different, too, so if you're using an RSS feed like Google Reader, make sure you click through at some point and take a look.
Finally, I added the RSS feed of my Bay Area Anthropology Examiner feed to the right-hand column.  This is a shameless attempt to drive up readership on that page and make me more money.  I write about all kinds of interesting anthropology things that happen in the bay area and try to pull in national news now and then, so check it out.
I hope to be a little more consistent with updating the blog from now on, so come back and check it out!

I'm baaaaack!

I began this blog with the ambition to write on it 2 or 3 times a week.  I should have known that I would lose momentum.  So that's what happened.  We got involved in everyday life and I got tired, I guess.  So here's the update on what's been going on, for the 2 or 3 of you out there who might still be listening.
1.  The kittens came home.  They are adorable.  They're 6 months old now and getting huge, teething, yelling at us when we don't play with them every second of every day, and also sitting on our laps and sleeping on our feet and doing all kinds of cute stuff.
2.  The girlfriend got a job at a start-up in the city.  She was a temp for a long time and got hired on full-time in mid January.  She does not like the job, but the pay is good and she (and I) got health insurance, including vision and dental.  So you don't need to worry that we're going to be on the streets any time soon.
3.  I got the job with the SAT prep company.  It has not been a particularly successful thing for me, as I have only taught one weekend class and had one student to tutor.  Not much money.  I have had interviews for two different jobs, neither of which I got.  I have another job interview on Friday, so keep your fingers crossed.  I got the interview in one of those my girlfriend's friend's sister works for the company sort of scenarios.  Okay, not "sort of" scenarios.  That is the situation.  Hopefully they'll hire me.  I really want a job and money.  And to leave the house on a more regular basis.
4.  We have a lot more furniture now.  Most of it was free, but there was the excitement of my first trip to IKEA to purchase a few things.  Still, I would say that roughly 85% of the things we have in our house we got either from outside the dumpster in our apartment building or on freecycle, which is this mailing list where people offer things they're trying to get rid of and you can have them if you come and get them.
5.  Actually, those are the highlights.  We haven't made any friends or done anything particularly exciting, but we have had a few visitors and we are planning a trip to Boulder in two weeks to see some friends.  Also, I'm hoping to defend my dissertation in April, so keep your fingers crossed on that...