Last week I saw a recent survey of US doctors asking them their views on evolution and intelligent design. Now I always knew that Americans had a soft spot for "creationism", but I had assumed that this faith based, ignore the facts approach was somehow confined to the less educated folks.
Well imagine my surprise when I saw that only 63% of doctors surveyed agreed more with evolution than with intelligent design. There were 34% of doctors that agreed more with intelligent design! We are talking doctors here, you know those folks that are supposed to have had a bit of education, that know about medicine, human bodies, and that kind of scientific stuff. Yeah right.
What does this have to do with the road to the White House... Well if the Dems are going to retake the White House they are going to have to win over some of these "faith-based" voters as they make up a big chunk of the electorate. It should be painfully obvious by now that talking from a facts based perspective is NOT the way to go. This diary will look at a couple of interesting approaches, including an excellent one outlined in a recent speech by Bill Moyers.
Doctor Survey full results
here
The reason I found the doctor survey so interesting is that it clearly highlights how "faith based" a large segment of the population is and therefore how unlikely they are to be swayed by FACTS, at least as they are presented by members of the "reality" based community.
The full survey results are here but the key numbers are mentioned above - over 1/3 of doctors believe more in intelligent design! What is also interesting is that when you break down the results by religious groups the results are even more stark (some selected results). That's right, more than half of Protestant doctors believe more in intelligent design! Maybe we need to be asking the religion of our doctor.
. More with evolution More with intelligent design
Jewish 86% 12%
Catholic 60% 35%
Protestant 42% 55%
Muslim 20% 73%
Athiest 95% 3%
The Key Issue:
Just as there are battles over the separation of Church and State there are battles over the separation of Science and Religion (witness the current Pennsylvania court case). Just as it is important to keep the Church out of the State, it is at least as important to keep religion out of Science. We now live in a world that is driven by Science and Scientific innovation. If the education system turns out students who can not handle "facts based analysis", America will be at a serious disadvantage going forward.
In the last week or so I have come across a number of articles on these issues that look at different approaches to solving the problem. Below I will look at several of these to give a flavor of some of the interesting ideas floating around.
Can Science and Religion co-exist?
This author seeks to explain part of the evolution/intelligent design battle as a reaction to the broader implications of evolution that eliminate the "need" for religion. That is, it is not necessarily that folks dispute evolution it is just that by accepting evolution they fear they would somehow be buying into a system that would deny them their own faith.
For some religious fundamentalists, this may indeed be a way of making room for God in science classes. But for many parents, who are legitimately concerned about what their children are being taught, I suspect that it is a way of countering those proponents of evolution - and particularly of evolutionary biology - who go well beyond science to claim that evolution both manifests and requires a materialistic philosophy that leaves no room for God, the soul or the presence of divine grace in human life.
In the Economist - How should evolution be taught?
HALF of all Americans either don't know or don't believe that living creatures evolved. And now a Pennsylvania school board is trying to keep its pupils ignorant. It is the kind of story about America that makes secular Europeans chortle smugly before turning to the horoscope page.
The article points out an interesting approach to the coexistence of science and religion which seeks to address the notion above that believing in evolution means giving up religion. I think it is vitally important that this approach be used - it is much easier to get someone to accept an idea if it does not mean them totally giving up something that they have invested a lot of Faith in.
To illustrate the difference between scientific and religious "levels of understanding", Mr Haught asked a simple question. What causes a kettle to boil? One could answer, he said, that it is the rapid vibration of water molecules. Or that it is because one has asked one's spouse to switch on the stove. Or that it is "because I want a cup of tea." None of these explanations conflicts with the others. In the same way, belief in evolution is compatible with religious faith: an omnipotent God could have created a universe in which life subsequently evolved.
It makes no sense, argued the professor, to confuse the study of molecular movements by bringing in the "I want tea" explanation. That, he argued, is what the proponents of intelligent design are trying to do when they seek to air their theory--which he called "appalling theology"--in science classes.
WaPo what is not evolving is public opinion
The Washington Post summarizes some polls over the years on evolution/intelligent design/creationism. The interesting point is the one below. It shows again this seeming desire for balance even amongst proponents of evolution, to be able to believe in religion, but also to be able to believe in evolution. Very few seem to be able to handle evolution as an independent idea separate from religion.
But here's the kicker: Although neither evolution nor creationism is accepted by a sizable majority, upwards of two-thirds of the public over the past 20 years has supported teaching both accounts of the origins of life. Even among proponents of natural selection, a majority wants students to be exposed to creationism. And a large minority of Americans -- around 40 percent in both the Gallup and Pew polls -- says that creationism should be taught instead of evolution.
Crisis in evolution teaching
This is a very interesting article that argues that at least some of the problem is due to how science itself teaches evolution. Sampsontalks about the disconnects within science itself, especially between ecology and evolution. He goes on to discuss how we need to make changes in how we teach science if we are to truly ingrain the concepts of evolution into our children.
How, then, might we communicate a synthesis of ecology and evolution to a broad audience, given that both concepts are admittedly complex? Environmental educator David Orr has advocated that, rather than fragmenting the natural world into semi-arbitrary disciplines that are largely human constructs, we should instead organize education around the categories suggested by Nature itself: for example, seashores, forests, and rivers. In such endeavors, narrative has continually demonstrated its effectiveness in communicating science to a broad audience. Most importantly, we need to tell stories of place, stories in which all lifeforms (including humans) are intimately connected to one another by energy flow (ecology) and kinship (evolution). In many cases, effective communication will take the form of multiple, layered stories. The layered-story approach allows educators to weave together several narratives and make non-intuitive connections about the workings of natural systems, as well as the role of humans within them.
Bill Moyers
Moyers's speech is primarily about environmentalism (after all it was give to environmetal journalists) but it includes valuable ideas on tools that can be used to reach the conservative Christians. Please read the whole speech - it is excellent
But we can't expect to engage this vast conservative Christian audience with our standard style of reporting. Environmental journalism has always spoken in the language of environmental science. But fundamentalists and Pentecostals typically speak and think in a different language. Theirs is a poetic and metaphorical language: a speech that is anchored in the truth of the Bible as they read it. Their moral actions are guided not by the newest IPCC report but by the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
So if I were a free-lance journalist looking to offer a major piece on global warming to these people, how would I go about it? I wouldn't give up fact-based analysis, of course - the ethical obligation of journalists is to ground what we report in evidence. But I would tell some of my stories with an ear for spiritual language, the language of parable, for that is the language of faith.
Let's say I wanted to write a piece about the millions of species that might be put on the road to extinction by global warming. Reporting that story to a scientific audience, I would talk science: tell how a species decimated by climate change could reach a point of no return when its gene pool becomes too depleted to maintain its evolutionary adaptability. That genetic impoverishment can eventually lead to extinction.
But how to reach fundamentalist Christians who doubt evolution? How would I get them to hear me? I might interview a scientist who is also a person of faith and ask how he or she might frame the subject in a way to catch the attention of other believers. I might interview a minister who would couch the work of today's climate and biodiversity scientists in a biblical metaphor: the story of Noah and the flood, for example. The parallels of this parable are wonderful to behold. Both scientists and Noah possess knowledge of a potentially impending global catastrophe. They try to spread the word, to warn the world, but are laughed at, ridiculed. You can almost hear some philistine telling old Noah he is nothing but a "gloom and doom" environmentalist," spreading his tale of abrupt climate change, of a great flood that will drown the world, of the impending extinction of humanity and animals, if no one acts.
But no one does act, and Noah continues hearing the word of God: "You are to bring into the Ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you." Noah does as God commands. He agrees to save not only his own family but to take on the daunting task of rescuing all the biodiversity of the earth. He builds the Ark and is ridiculed as mad. He gathers two of every species, the climate does change, the deluge comes as predicted. Everyone not safely aboard drowns. But Noah and the complete complement of Earth's animals live on. You've seen depictions of them disembarking the Ark beneath a rainbow, two by two, the giraffes and hippos, horses and zebras. Noah, then, can be seen as the first great preservationist, preventing the first great extinction. He did exactly what wildlife biologists and climatologists are trying to do today: to act on their moral convictions to conserve diversity, to protect God's creation in the face of a flood of consumerism and indifference by a materialistic world.
Some of you are probably uncomfortable with my parable. You may be ready to scoff or laugh. And now you know exactly how a fundamentalist Christian who believes devoutly in creationism feels when we journalists write about the genetics born of Darwin. If we don't understand how they see the world, if we can't empathize with each person's need to grasp a human problem in language of his or her worldview, then we will likely fail to reach many Christian conservatives who have a sense of morality and justice as strong as our own. And we will have done little to head off the sixth great extinction.
Conclusion:
It may sound simplistic but if you want to reach those conservative Christians who really should be supporters of the democratic ideas of fairness, compassion, and respect for the environment you need to talk in a language that they understand. It should be painfully obvious by now that talking from a facts based perspective is NOT the way to go. The ideas presented above of talking in "stories" and weaving "narratives" fit much better with the language that conservative Christians speak. We would do well to learn this language.