I am surprised that nearly everyone takes umbrage with the word
"indoctrinate." Its primary definition in Webster's Ninth is "to instruct,
esp. in fundamentals or rudiments: TEACH." And, a relatively old earth is
one of the fundamentals taught in most modern science courses.
But everyone seems to miss my original point...a statistic was posted that
99% of today's scientists are more willing to accept a flat earth rather
than a young earth, and it would seem to me that that should cause some to
consider the secondary meaning of the word, also.
Speaking of stats: there seems to be a question on how many YECs would not
accept an OE evolutionist as a Christian. I suspect that it would be about
as many as there are evolutionists who would not accept a creationist as a
scientist.
Cheers,
Norm
-----Original Message-----
From: Dawsonzhu@aol.com [mailto:Dawsonzhu@aol.com]
Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2002 12:25 PM
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: ASA Perspective
Norm.Woodward wrote:
But then a much more horrific thought occurred to me...have our scientists
been so well indoctrinated that they are more willing to accept an old earth
concept, which can only substantiated through indirect measurement or, in
most cases, "authoritative literature" versus a round earth concept, which
can be substantiated through direct observation.
When I decided to pursue science, I was already in something like
my third year of college studying liberal arts (specifically music).
I knew very little math, never took high school physics, had lost
interest in the first week of high school biology. In short, I began
from near absolute zero.
I was possessed with an ambition to learn it all, and did not
believe anything that I could not convince myself of without
some reasonable validation. My textbooks are often scribbled
with notes and comments, and workings through of the textbook
descriptions. I couldn't conquer it all, but I certainly made
no small attempt at checking things for myself. Most clearly,
in graduate school, I found sometimes the work load to evaluation
of truth became more and more difficult to keep in sync. That
level of disbelief in what is written in some stupid book has
proven to be wiser than I thought now that I am as a research
scientist in fact.
I have certainly fallen far short of my original goals, and
mainly what I have learned in all of that intense scramble to
gain understanding is how little I know and how vastly bigger
the world becomes with each infinitesimally small grasp of
understanding I achieve.
Whereas I never began with a YEC picture of the world in my
study of science, I never felt for a moment that my instructors
(who included geology, chemistry and physics) were trying to
pull the wool over my eyes. Their goals were generally to
educate, and my goal was to learn and gain understanding. I
do not always feel that way. For example, recent claims that
our universe simply popped into existence certainly raise some
objections I never felt inclined to direct at most of my
instructors.
Was I indoctrinated? Whereas my grade point average was
fairly high, there were at least a few instructors I did
have it out with, and I didn't consider the grade a
sufficient motivation for me keeping quite if I disagreed
with something fundamentally. If this amounts to indoctrination,
well then fine, so it is.
It wouldn't surprise me if there are other people on this
list who can say similar things at some period of their
life (not necessary starting from the beginning of their
science education but somewhere either in-between or even
after graduating).
In short, as adults, trained in some level of skepticism,
I suspect you are pushing your luck to say that the majority
of us were "indoctrinated" to this view of science. Most
of us are probably willing to revise our views IF we see
some truly convincing evidence. I don't expect that most of
people on this list would find their world view shaken if
they found out that the earth was actually created in 144
hours. I suspect the reason why they accept evolution and
an old earth is because they were convinced by the evidence.
by Grace we do proceed,
Wayne
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