Science vs. religion : what scientists really think - File PDF

74Society and Broader Publicssome of the more vocal proponents of Christianity today. And you are playingthe opposite battle, willing to take these ideas seriously despite the fact that theyare religious.Joel spends time thinking about how best to equip students with a scholarlylanguage to talk about matters of faith. He has considerable difficulty trying topresent the ideas of Christian thinkers in his classroom, but he feels obligatedto do so because religious and ethical questions are central to the topics heteaches: “In that context I always have to talk about the ideas of original sin andredemption.”If some scientists and members of the religious public are in a battle, thenuniversity classrooms are the front lines, where even the scientists who aremost opposed to religious interference are forced to deal with the religiousstudents in their classrooms. In his controversial 2005 state of the universityaddress, Cornell University president Hunter Rawlings expressed the need toaddress a matter of “great significance to Cornell and to the country as a whole.”Rawlings said that “religiously based opposition to evolution . . . raises profoundquestions about the nature of public discourse and what we teach inuniversities, and it has a profound effect on public policy.” 3 Later, several universities(including some in this study) began refusing to give incoming studentscredit for high school science courses in which accounts of earth originsemphasizing intelligent design were taught. Evangelical Christians were notquiet and took their concerns to the courts. In 2005 an association of Christianschools challenged the rejection of courses that teach intelligent design bybringing a lawsuit against the University of California system. A ruling lateroccurred in favor of the University of California. 4 Meanwhile, frustrated collegescience professors are clinging to what they see as already deficient Americanstandards for science education.Enter the religious students. Their presence in science classrooms oftenpushes their professors to engage with religious challenges to science. Somescientists respond to this pressure by tapping into public debates and involvingtheir students in dialogue about the connections between religion and science.Other scientists decide to retreat from the front lines and become moreentrenched in their view that religion is a threat to science. The need for academicscientists to engage with religion for the sake of science has never beenmore pressing.Providing a religious student with a better understanding of science is vitallyimportant, because undergraduate students at elite universities are the futureleaders of our society. And as a whole, they are much more religious than the