From: Dawsonzhu@aol.com
Date: Mon Oct 20 2003 - 14:53:47 EDT
Burgy wrote:
> Thorne passed the test, but his teacher pulled him aside a few days later
> and suggested that he try to avoid taking science classes in the future.
> He took her advice. Today he is a tour guide (in a white lab coat) with
> Denver's B.C. Tours. The B.C. stands for "Biblically Correct;" they
> conduct about 150 tours of major Colorado attractions every year.
This is exactly what bothers me most. People who may
be potentially good scientists end up scrapping that career at an early
age, spending countless years defending shocking notions that
border on the edge of anti-science, and/or remaining scientifically
illiterate their entire life. All to maintain a narrow view.
Then they even turn to home schooling, which means they are not
even engaging the world.
Sometimes scientists are a bit on the border somewhere. There was
one guy I remember who was trying to promote his idea of a positron
lattice. Well, fine I suppose, as long as positrons live (about 10^(-9) s),
but kind of hard (and futile) to build something like that, since for at
least
hydrogen, you need very very high pressures to make a hydrogen lattice.
It seemed like the problem for him was why people didn't take him seriously.
I don't think it is so much that he was wrong, but just off. Or another
guy who was a digrammatician who had "the answer" to superconductivity.
I would try desperately to find some way to connect with him, but he simply
had "the answer", so I found it basically impossible. So I guess these kind
of peculiarities exist in science.
What bothers me is the institutionalization of this notion. One scientist
with a questionable idea is still one scientist making his/her own choice
on the matter. But transforming this on to what the group will believe,
this becomes a societal issue.
We live in a pluralistic society, but I guess this comes down to the issue
of whether we allow evolution to be taught to "minors".
But then even
if we settle the matter that way, when some of the scientifically gifted
kids get to college, they run into a very different world. The either will
avoid science, or they will engage and find that they come into conflict
with their earlier notions, quite likely rejecting Christianity as a backward
religion of the superstitious.
>
> Friends, the YEC movement continues to prosper and grow. as home
> schooling, of which I generally approve, increases, the YEC movement is
> feeding on it. At what point will the YEC movement be able to declare
> victory? I suggest that that day is only a few years off. How will we
> know it has arrived? Perhaps when we have a presidential candidate
> directly and forcefully argue for it, and all over this country millions
> of poorly informed citizens rise as one to "establish God" (their god) in
> the White House.
>
>
I'm frightened by some of the anti-science coming out of the mouths
of Islamic fundamentalists, some of whom seem to have no reserve about
using the benefits of sound science and engineering to carry out their
schemes in almost the next breath. Could Americans actually become as
bent as that?
By Grace alone we proceed,
Wayne
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