evolution or...?

Well, today was "evolution day" in my non-majors class. I always hate teaching this section.

I hate it for a couple of reasons:

1. It's very complex topic - and there's lots we're just now learning on it, like the Evo Devo stuff. I can't go in very much depth because I've found that doing stuff that's "not in the textbook!" often blows the students minds and they have a real hard time because they can't go back and look it up. And the most interesting stuff about it is the hardest stuff for beginners. Heck, I don't understand Evo Devo and I just finished reading a couple books on the topic. (And it did not help that one of the authors dismissed the typical way of teaching evolution - starting with natural selection - as "dead and boring." I have a real inferiority complex on the Boring issue, I know I'm kind of boring but don't know how to break through it, so to be told I'm doing something the "boring" way - it makes me all uncomfortable.

2. I don't have enough time. They make us cram SO MUCH into this class - cells, and biochemistry, and ecology, and human physiology, and diversity of life, and more - that you get a week per topic, tops. I'm already behind in the syllabus as it is and even though I not-so-merrily jettison some of the more nuanced topics, I still keep getting behind.

3. It's midsemester. Everyone hates everyone else right now. The students hate me. I hate the students. I hate my colleagues. My colleagues hate me. The administration hates us, we hate the administration, they hate the students, the students hate them. We all need a time-out. So everyone's grumpy and non-responsive.

4. I teach in the Bible Belt. Which means that in any given class, 30% will no nothing scientific about evolution, about 40% will refuse to accept it as even a possibility, and 10% are super-apprehensive because this is the kind of "secular humanism" their pastors have warned them against. I've never had anyone up and walk out of my class but I'm braced for it; colleagues have had it happen.

5. I'm not as "in your face" about it as I could be. I'm too mealy mouthed and fearful of offending. The truth of the matter is? I feel about creationism kind of like how I feel about gayness. I'm not a creationist (nor am I gay). It doesn't matter to me if you are a creationist (or if you're gay*). But. I do ask that you listen to my side of the story on matters. I also ask that you not be offensive in asserting your right to be what you are (that means telling me I "must" be an atheist if I accept evolution; that also means making me a party to listening to your bedroom adventures if you're gay. I don't mind open and frank discussion but I do have boundaries, and one of those boundaries is that I don't like people to say offensive things to me.).

So: I don't care if you would rather believe each species was separately formed by God and placed here on the earth. However - please listen to what I have to say politely. And please don't petition that your particular view be taught in the schools; you can teach it at home. Somewhere between 95 and 99 percent of serious biologists accept evolution; I tend to think "majority of experts rule" for things like science classes.

Okay...that maybe sounds a bit hypocritical. But remember: I'm not asking to come and talk about evolution in church, I'd ask the same courtesy be extended to me about religion and science class.

(*With the one possible exception of if you're a chap I'm about to ask out on a date. Then it would save both of us some embarrassment. And no, I'm not convinced gay-dar exists. I know I don't have it.)

6. I had a bad experience the first semester I taught; a girl got all up in my face and told me I was a wicked atheist because I taught evolution. Now, I'd probably smack her down, show her my little "God keeps his promises" keyfob, and say, "Would an atheist carry that? Huh? Do NOT be telling me what I do and do not believe!" But it was my first semester and I was scared.

(heh...or maybe I should have said, "You seem to have a lot of anger. May I pray for you?" and have seen how she responded.)

So anyway - the whole thing is fraught with discomfort. I'd much rather - and I know this is me being typically avoidant - find a good educational video about the topic, maybe with nice Darwin's finches in it or with a good animation of bacterial antibiotic resistance evolution, and show it to them. Sort of a "see? It's not just ME saying this" thing. But I don't know of one, so I bang through lecture and a short predator-effects-on-cryptic-coloration class activity.

And as we're setting up, I get the Question. The Dreaded Question. Oh, it's phrased different ways. But this semester, it was more open and more in-my-face than I've ever heard it. A student came up to me and said, "So...you believe in Creation then?" (they know I go to church). I said -again, being mealy mouthed so as not to offend and not risk those precious precious evaluationtime comments - "Well...I accept that evolution is the best scientific explanation for life on earth and it's changes" (being a Good Scientist and using Eugenie Scott's suggested term of "accept" rather than "believe"). I did go on and add..."But that doesn't mean that there can't be a Divine Being in the universe, and that that Divine Being might even have used evolution as a way to let life be self-correcting." Ugh. Made a hash of it, as usual.

I have had good discussions, most of them outside of class. I honestly don't have a conflict with Genesis and with evolution. The way I look at it is this: either Genesis is a story - kind of like the parables Jesus told - or it's an accretion from another religion (it's a lot like some creation myths from Sumeria and other places). Or it's an allegory, something pre-scientific people used to explain where they came from. (I've even gone so far as to suggest to a questioning student that maybe the account was "given to" them as a way of not blowing their minds with information they were not ready for...). Or it's an account of what happened after humans got souls...I've read of some theologian, and I wish I remember who it was, who suggested that our physical parts evolved by natural evolutionary processes; the special creation spoken of in the Bible was our souls. And that you can re-read Adam and Eve in that light.

I don't know. Any of those, or even "that part of the Old Testament is mostly myth" works for me. I wouldn't come out and say "myth" to my class, though - to them, "myth" equates with "lie" rather than being "story that has meaning beyond the issue of literal truth" and I don't want people calling me a wicked atheist again.