RE: A teacher's view of Dover decision

Hi Anne, you wrote:

With our country's current conflicts between faith
and governance and with America's rich tradition of
religious pluralism, how should our public school teachers
talk about subjects, like origins of life, that are interwoven with
traditions of faith?

Ultimate origins is tricky. Science doesn't know the answer to that.
We can't get much past the Cambrian even though it is believed that life
began about 3.8 billion years ago with simple bacteria. Where that came
from is anybody's guess. But I think it is important to teach what we
can verify with data and evidence, and when it gets murky just leave it
open for further exploration. Educated guesses are okay as long as we
identify them as precisely that.

After the Cambrian Period the picture of life unfolding is fairly
straightforward and no "traditions of faith" need to be invoked to
arrive at data-driven answers.

~Dick Fischer~ Genesis Proclaimed Association
Finding Harmony in Bible, Science, and History
www.genesisproclaimed.org.
Received on Fri Dec 23 15:49:30 2005