Bringing Creationsim Into The Science Classroom

This blog post by a Penn State educated Professor of Biological Anthropology at the University of Rhode Island really intrigued me. Holly Dunsworth, the professor, is proposing teaching about creationism in her biological anthropology class. Before I get into my thoughts, here's a bit of where she is coming from:

See, those of us who teach from an epistemological perspective try our best to convey to students not just what we know but more importantly how we know what we know. This is an eye-opening and empowering way to learn which is why we try to create this experience for students. The only way to do that is to teach about evolution now--how scientists have come to understand it--compared to how people used to explain the natural world, which greatly influenced unscientific beliefs about nature that people still hold today. This epistemological approach means that we strive for a non-dogmatic and non-indoctrinating presentation of the material, upholding prized scientific ideals that aren't shared by many of those who support creationism. 

Dunsworth is suggesting using the whole history of humans' attempts to understand and explain the natural world to show how we got to where we are today in terms of scientific evolutionary theory. Without being insulting to the Bible as religious text, the story of creation can be used to show the evolution of evolutionary science. Here's Dunsworth again:

But given all those scientific theories, creation theory is the most effective way to put evolution in scientific context. It's a perfect foil for evolution, illuminating the scientific nature of evolutionary theory by demonstrating what science is not and what the scientific method cannot address.

This is a large part of what drew me to anthropology classes in college. Science to me is a whole lot more interesting, and valuable, when looked at in a human context. The biological anthropologist is not only interested in understanding what made us who we are, but how we as a society and as a species have come to understand and deal with the gaining of that understanding. History, religion, psychology and genetics all tell a story, and using all of them together makes that story much richer.

I respect the biologist who stands on his science, with genome models and  DNA strands and genetic drift and mutation, to understand the world around him. I also respect the theologian who stands on his religion, with the bible and faith and centuries of tradition and philosophy, to understand the world around him. But I try to follow a path both between and amongst the two. I don't think religion means much if you don't try your best to understand the facts of the world we all inhabit. I think understanding the world as it is brings us closer to appreciating the enormity of God's gift to us. I also believe science is empty if you limit your thinking to what you are capable of seeing and measuring and grasping with our technology and methods as they stand today. Appreciating that there is always more that we don't understand than that which we do is at the very heart of the scientific method at its best.

For me, anthropology helps us to walk that line between thought and belief. It helps us to see as much of the world as we can and to appreciate it in the context of our human experience. I am really happy to see someone like Holly Dunsworth teaching young people. I hope she is the inspiration to them that my professors were to me.