David Perks said:

>Quite frankly if you wont
>defend science against religious mysticism and quackery you have got a
>problem. Bowing down before the altar of public opinion is frankly
>cowardice.

What I personally want to defend is effective science communication. Far
from bowing down before public opinion, it is the duty of a science
communicator to understand it in order to respond to it more effectively. I
am arguing for more sensitivity, not mere political correctness.

Some of the "fruitcakes" you refer to so unhelpfully are sensitive,
thoughtful, caring people trying their best to make sense of a very mixed
bag of journalism claiming to represent science. When, as a spokesman for
science, you write of the "long over due decline" of "religious thinkers",
can't you see this is the very thing militant creationism feeds on?

Militant creationist propaganda has had more influence than you might
think. A high percentage of non-religious people, including well-educated
people, have unwittingly absorbed a feeling that evolution by natural
selection, for example, is "just a theory" on a par with a whole zoo of
alternative theories. I also sense a very real uneasiness about human
evolution among non-religious people: a suspicion that it is somehow a
threat to morality and human dignity. We can't dismiss the issue lightly.

"Young-earth" creationism is rooted in a belief, reinforced by a few
anti-faith science communicators, that mainstream science represents a
deliberate attack on the Christian Bible. As a movement, it has been
staggeringly successful in re-writing its own history. It actually only
became prominent following publication in 1960 of a popular (and
scientifically unsound) book called The Genesis Flood. Countless similar
publications followed. The movement became seen by many as a representative
of traditional Christian theology, which it never was. Even Hollywood
versions of the 1925 "Tennessee Monkey Trial" cast the litigant as a
young-earth creationist, though in historical fact he was nothing of the
kind. Writing in the fourth century, St Augustine specifically taught that
the six Biblical "days" of creation represented longer, indefinite periods
of time, not literal days. The brief and recent history of young-earth
dogma is a real eye-opener, fully documented in a small section of "Reason,
Science and Faith" by Marston and Forster 1999. ISBN 1 85424 441 8

Young-earth creationism currently seems to be losing followers, its place
being taken by the "Intelligent Design" movement. Following publication of
"Darwin on Trial" by law professor Philip Johnson in 1991, this is a
potentially more damaging retrenchment. It seems to be based on a
non-traditional "God-of-the-gaps" view of theology, in which "chance",
"natural" events and anything explicable by science lie outside an
"intervening" God's control. The emotional needs of Intelligent Design
activists simply require them to promote data which Darwinism, they say,
cannot ever explain, or merely to hint, with the skill of a barrister, at
shadowy, undefined doubts over evolutionary science in general. This runs
contrary to the doctrine of providence believed by Christians down the
ages: that chance represents the hand of God as do all other natural
events, from the direction of the wind to the growth of an embryo (or the
evolution of a species?).

1. Science communicators should be sensitive to irrational fears and
insecurities underlying anti-science creationism, including related
misgivings shared by non-religious people.

2. It is essential to differentiate between militant creationism and more
intellectually-sound mainstream religious faith.

3. More sensitive science communication, separated from personal,
anti-faith agendas could reach more people.


Ian Russell * [log in to unmask]
* Hands-on, minds-on, + hearts-on. *
* Exploratory, explanatory, emotive. *
** http://www.interactives.co.uk **

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