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Bias: I'm Christian. This is probably the best contribution anyone made to the conversation. The role of faith in a person's life cannot be diminished, especia

Bias: I'm Christian. This is probably the best contribution anyone made to the conversation. The role of faith in a person's life cannot be diminished, especially where the scientific option is contested. I belong to a Christian denomination that doesn't believe in The Trinity. I never answered questions about it that implied that it was the belief I held. I didn't mind writing essays on it though when the question started with "According to the trinity doctrine, ..."

crazydoggers 7y ago
> especially where the scientific option is contested There’s no contention on evolution. That’s like saying the equivalent... “According to the theory of gravity, apples fall to earth...” Couching all these questions as if they are not facts does nothing but ease people’s minds who don’t want to deal with reality, and does a disservice to students.
- phy6 7y ago
  I used to feel this way, until I read the book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn. The author points out correctly that too often the arrival of our current state of scientific beliefs from the past is drawn out as a straight line, and that the history of what was 'scientific truth' for a time was altogether forgotten or not taught. The easiest(), most respectful and accurate solution is to always couch a belief from the context and ontology of where it came from, including religious, scientific and personal beliefs. As I become more learned with age, I find no greater delight than being humbled by how little we can actually claim to know. In my opinion this humility should be used for our advantage: by the small burden of contextualizing the origins and boundaries of a [scientific] belief, I think we prime ourselves for accelerating cross domain scientific revolutions. Referencing the origins of belief systems is a practice we can employ to benefit future understanding. I'd argue the same is true for someone who studies multiple religions and their various interpretations. How would they arrive at any greater understanding without having references to the origins of groups of belief? easiest from a strategic perspective of increasing the rate of scientific revolution. There is of course a short term burden of contextualizing beliefs.
  - davvolun 7y ago
    This is generally true, but also completely irrelevant to the ""debate"" on evolution. Scientific humility is an important quality, but it's misleading to young kids; and fundamentally works against understanding the "cross domain scientific revolutions." Until you're prepared with the ground work to understand why Newtonian physics isn't quite right (at really small or really big sizes), a rigorous introduction to relativity is just confusing. Just like we don't have elementary kids read Kant despite the eventual value (when they're prepared for the intellectual rigor), evolution questions should not be given to 14-17 year old kids as qualified "according to the theory of evolution." Maybe 18 -- it's a tough question that depends on individual kids' capabilities.

crazydoggers 7y ago

> especially where the scientific option is contested There’s no contention on evolution. That’s like saying the equivalent... “According to the theory of gravity, apples fall to earth...” Couching all these questions as if they are not facts does nothing but ease people’s minds who don’t want to deal with reality, and does a disservice to students.

phy6 7y ago
I used to feel this way, until I read the book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn. The author points out correctly that too often the arrival of our current state of scientific beliefs from the past is drawn out as a straight line, and that the history of what was 'scientific truth' for a time was altogether forgotten or not taught. The easiest(), most respectful and accurate solution is to always couch a belief from the context and ontology of where it came from, including religious, scientific and personal beliefs. As I become more learned with age, I find no greater delight than being humbled by how little we can actually claim to know. In my opinion this humility should be used for our advantage: by the small burden of contextualizing the origins and boundaries of a [scientific] belief, I think we prime ourselves for accelerating cross domain scientific revolutions. Referencing the origins of belief systems is a practice we can employ to benefit future understanding. I'd argue the same is true for someone who studies multiple religions and their various interpretations. How would they arrive at any greater understanding without having references to the origins of groups of belief? easiest from a strategic perspective of increasing the rate of scientific revolution. There is of course a short term burden of contextualizing beliefs.
- davvolun 7y ago
  This is generally true, but also completely irrelevant to the ""debate"" on evolution. Scientific humility is an important quality, but it's misleading to young kids; and fundamentally works against understanding the "cross domain scientific revolutions." Until you're prepared with the ground work to understand why Newtonian physics isn't quite right (at really small or really big sizes), a rigorous introduction to relativity is just confusing. Just like we don't have elementary kids read Kant despite the eventual value (when they're prepared for the intellectual rigor), evolution questions should not be given to 14-17 year old kids as qualified "according to the theory of evolution." Maybe 18 -- it's a tough question that depends on individual kids' capabilities.