More Evolution

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From 1982 until 1985, Mr. Lapp was my science teacher.

Mr. Lapp was an aging hipster with gold chains and a shirt unbuttoned a button or two more than most would in a teaching environment. He had cut his hair and behaved pretty professionally, but he would slip now and again and you could see he spent the 70s inviting women back to his hottub.

Mr. Lapp taught us sex ed without a hint of uncomfortableness. He’d break the air of tension now and again with a joke.

A man and a woman go to visit a fertility doctor. Because both of them have very long hair, the doctor could not tell which was the man and which was the woman. He tentatively asks, “Which one of you has the menstrual cycle?”, to which the man replies, “Not me, man, I got a Harley.”

After Mr. Lapp would deliver a joke or a one-liner, he would strut in front of the blackboard with a half-grin, snapping his fingers and hitting the palm of one hand against his cupped other hand, making a *snap* *pop*, *snap* *pop* sound. It was our cue to laugh, like when George Burns would take a puff of his cigar.

The point is that Mr. Lapp was cool, as in calm and collected (though he considered himself the other type of cool as well). Very little phased him. When Kurt Loy was mixing a batch of gunpowder during Independant Project Fridays1 and it exploded accidentally, burning off one and a half of his eyebrows, Mr. Lapp just said “far out.”

When we got to the chapter on evolution, Mr. Lapp’s hands shook. He stammered and explained in a faltering voice full of hedges that we wouldn’t be covering it, though he couldn’t explain why, and he hoped no one got offended at the chapter’s presence in the book.

This made no sense to me at the time. And now it just seems outrageous and sad that 57 years after the Scopes trial, a hipster science teacher was still afraid to even discuss the fact that he wasn’t going to teach evolution.

Just a little depressing memory for a cold Monday.

1Every Friday we got to do anything we wanted, as long as it was a project, and as long as it could be loosely tied to science. Developing pictures, for instance, counted because there were chemical reactions involved. I mostly wrote computer programs out by hand on graph paper, later getting in line to type them into the class Apple II+.

Shut. Up.

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I thought galbinous_caeli was pretty clear when he said SHUT UP!

But no.

http://www.ajc.com/tuesday/content/epaper/editions/tuesday/news_1409c6849421611600e3.html

There was a part of my barber visit yesterday that I forgot to include, and this article forwarded by reminded me of it.

There was a news report on the tv about this asinine lawsuit over labeling science textbooks. Actually, the lawsuit is not asinine, it is asinine that we have to have the lawsuit. The lawsuit is trying to correct some stupidity, whereby they single out evolution as questionable science with a sticker on science textbooks.

Anyway, the receptionist was watching the same program on her TV, and she came over to us and gave a rant about evolution. “If it’s a theory, then why are we teaching it?! We should only teach facts!”

I looked over at the book I had brought with me, Stephen Jay Gould’s last book, Full House. And I looked back at her. A feeling of extreme tiredness came over me, as the enormity of trying to teach a receptionist in a barber shop the meaning of science in the space of the last half of a haircut hit me full in the face.

And then the scissors jammed, so I was spared the pressure of creating an impromptu persuasive lecture.

In hindsight, I could have simply said “Because most of science is a theory. Gravity is a theory.”

But there’s more to it. I would have felt compelled to go into what makes up a scientific theory.

“In science there are facts, and there are theories devised by looking at the facts and hypothesizing what would explain the facts. A good, robust theory, like evolution, explains the facts without contradiction. The Theory of Evolution is supported by facts from paleontology, biology, archaeology, physics, and a host of other disciplines. It is a very, very robust theory, and gets more robust with every passing year.

“Creationism, and that semantic abomination Creation-Science, are not science. Two of the reasons they are not science are a) it is not a theory that was hypothesized based upon looking at facts, it is a belief based upon a collection of writings written several thousand years ago by men who claim to be acting on behalf of a supernatural being and b) the idea of a supernatural creator is by definition outside of the realm of science, which studies the natural world.”

Folks, it is possible that a omnipotent, supernatural being created the universe twenty seconds ago exactly as it is. But Science Doesn’t Care. Unless there’s evidence for it, something we can look at in the natural world that shows that the universe was created 20 seconds ago, then Science leaves it to Religion or Spiritualists to investigate, or believe in, or commit mass suicide over.

“We believe in creation, first of all, not because of scientific evidence, but because of our faith in Jesus Christ and in His Word the Bible.”
-From The Creation-Science Research Center website.

“God put the dinosaur bones in the earth to test our faith.”
-Matt Horgan, during a performance of Improvolution at Dad’s Garage.

I could go on and on. Other people have. Piles of books exist.

Religious people, stop attacking the theory of evolution. It’s rude. It has nothing to do with you. It is just an idea. Don’t be scared of ideas. You don’t have to give up your own. You can keep them. I swear.

It’s discriminatory to attack evolution. There are plenty of other theories that contradict the Bible. Why not pick on them for a change? How about physics! Physics says you couldn’t fit a pair of each animal on an ark! Attack PHYSICS! Put a sticker on a PHYSICS TEXTBOOK!

“This textbook contains material on Matter. That objects with a volume larger than the interior volume of a container cannot fit in a container is a theory, not a fact, regarding the properties of matter. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered.”

*sigh*

I’m going to go back to designing circuits now.