I don’t think there is much debate about evolution as an overarching concept at major research universities. Neither is there a lot of debate about whether the earth is round.
And personally, if I saw Liberty University listed on a job applicant’s resume, I’d be unlikely to select that applicant for an interview. Others might preferentially choose to interview that person. And with many others it might not matter at all.
OP: What do you see as the purpose of a college education? If you want your son exposed to other points of view, and he has been taught conservative fundamentalist Christian beliefs, that will be easy. Will your son be comfortable in an environment where not many subscribe to such beliefs? Do you imagine him spending his time “debating” the values he has been taught and that will be a part of his education? I am not sure how many students will be interested in that debate. I doubt professors at most colleges will be interested in these debates. This doesn’t mean they are bad or disrespectful… They have a lot of other things they think are more important to discuss.
Where do other families in your church send their kids for college? What has been their experience? That would seem to me a good starting point for you.
I am speaking less about the interaction between student and professor in a classroom setting. There are different styles of teaching. In a intro science class, I am speaking more about an openness on the part of the faculty to present an intelligent designer as the most plausible explanation to questions in cases when no natural solution seems to be satisfactory.
I believe there are huge gaps in what we know today regarding questions of origin. In most settings, only naturalistic causes are allowed to be considered, even when any rational person looking at the evidence would see design. It results in so much conjecture that it becomes ridiculous and irrational. I believe there should be a lot more humility than what exists on this subject.
If this is what you are really asking, yes I do believe in a Creator. In this decision though I am not focused on what I believe or what I want my son to believe. I want him to be able to make up his own mind and for him to be able to live with how he works this out for himself.
You aren’t describing any college science class with which I’m familiar. My experience is limited to top privates and some state flagships.
ETA: Most colleges have catalogs with course descriptions online. That should give you a starting point.
It seems a little arrogant to call the vast majority of educated expert biologists “irrational” because they don’t agree with you. An eagerness to resort to non-natural explanations for observed phenomena is actually irrational.
In the sciences, intelligent design is a non-starter just about anywhere except at a place like Liberty, because in the sciences, what is testable is what matters. A model that requires an intelligent designer is not testable. A model that allows for natural selection is testable.
Stephen Jay Gould developed a formal argument for considering science and religion to have non-overlapping magisteria. Your son might like to start with that when considering his college search. Faculty and institutions that favor the concept of NOMA might be more along his line than faculty and institutions that don’t. http://www.colorado.edu/physics/phys3000/phys3000_fa11/StevenJGoulldNOMA.pdf
Wow. LOUKYDAD, I have sent you a private message.
I think that starting from the premise “…even when any rational person looking at the evidence would see design” means that you are in fact not open to what the vast majority of working scientists see as self-evident. I believe you chastised me in another thread for saying “google it”. I said that (cheekily, and for that I apologize) not because I was being lazy, it was more along the lines of “this is easy to look up”. The stories about things which “can’t be explained” actually can be explained, or are at least not the huge gaping holes that some claim they are.
sorghum - I am sorry if I seemed less than humble. I don’t always deliberate a great deal on the specific language I am using before I push “Post Comment”.
Maybe an example would help. When I attended my local state U back in the early nineties, directed panspermia was proposed to be me by both my biology and my geology professor in my intro science classes as one of best theories for understanding primitive life on earth. It was in the books in fact.
I understand that for some portion of you, the idea that an advanced alien civilization seeded the earth may be the best we can do. I would most humbly and most respectfully ask that my son and I be allowed to consider other possibilities that seem more plausible to us. If conjecture like this is allowed and encouraged, it seems rational to me that we be allowed to also discuss the possibility of a designer. In science class we can stay away from any considerations of theology and who that designer is, and any considerations of whether the designer is moral or not. That seems fair. But to admit the possibility seems about as testable as panspermia.
I think you will find that in most intro college science classes, no mention of the possibility of intelligent design will be made at all. If a student raises the issue, the professor is most likely to say that the question is more appropriate for a philosophy class. If the student wants to go talk to the professor about it during office hours, some professors will probably be willing to discuss it, but how exactly they will engage on the issue will vary a lot. Some will be patronizing, some will simply attempt to debunk the student’s views, and others will simply say that to the extent intelligent design and evolution are consistent, the latter is a philosophical and religious issue. The vast majority of them will simply not agree that there is any scientific evidence for intelligent design at all–although, of course, it can never be disproved.
You are certainly allowed to entertain the possibility of alternative hypotheses about the origins of the Earth.
I am someone who seriously considers the possibility of aliens seeding the earth.
However, I would never want that taught in a science class because there is no definitive proof. The fact that you’re going, as a scientist, to a university that forcefully teaches creationism is going to give a lot of medical schools and post-grad scientific jobs pause.
Med school admission is very, very competitive. Last thing your son needs is another hurdle to overcome. My advice would be to put your own beliefs aside, and encourage your son to go to a school that doesn’t raise academics’ eyebrows.
Let me just add that I also don’t think most intro science classes will spend any time trying to debunk a philosophical form of intelligent design that believes that the world exists for a purpose, that evolution may have been directed, etc. They may debunk ideas like young-Earth creationism (if they are deemed worth discussion). There may be challenges to religious faith in philosophy or religion classes, but those will be electives for a science student, and such classes can be avoided.
I remember that interaction. No need to apologize. I have a very thick skin. I apologize to you for my retort.
I wanted to add that I chose the eye as my example primarily because I was hoping you would “google it”, because I know how much there is out there using the eye as an example of irreducible complexity.
I would ask one favor of you, and you can ask the same of me. If you would consider watching Dr. David Menton’s (Brown PhD, anatomy professor at Wash U Medical) presentation on The See Eye, and/or The Hearing Ear, and then let me know the most compelling reasons why you remain unconvinced, I will gladly repeat the favor for you. I think you can find it online, youtube or somewhere, pretty easily. Then you can ask me to look at anything you want online, and I will return the favor. I think this would allow us to have a more productive discussion about it. I would consider it a privilege.
In our situation it is my son who doesn’t see these hurdles you are speaking of. I am perhaps a little more aware (the benefit of life experience) and I am trying to assess how high they really are.
happymomof1 - I really appreciated your perspective, because this was something I was really curious about. You sound like someone who has close knowledge of the process.
Is a student at Liberty, or even a Wheaton or a Baylor, going to have significantly less opportunity to participate in undergrad research opportunities like this one, because they just don’t get the funding? Perhaps this is obvious to some, but I truly have no idea of the realities, only intuition. Is this something important I should consider in your opinion?
Liberty and Baylor would not be in the same category here, even though they are both Southern Baptist. Unlike Liberty, Baylor does not view religion as requiring a belief in young-earth-creationism, and otherwise teaches evolutionary biology like most other schools: http://www.baylor.edu/biology/index.php?id=77368
Dr. Menton seems to be employed at the Creation Ministries, not Wash U (currently) and quite frankly every reference to him on the first two pages of google are from creationist sources. I’m sorry, but that does not give me much of a reason to watch a thirty minute video, when the basic aspects of the “eye issue” can be explained here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3143066/ or here: http://www.nyas.org/publications/detail.aspx?cid=93b487b2-153a-4630-9fb2-5679a061fff7 or here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nwew5gHoh3E . You may say I’m “closed minded” but as he is a “young earth” scientist, I have no further reason to be interested in what he has to say. Young earth is simply not true. Period. There is no serious debate about that.
from their website, “Who We Are”
Speaking personally, I would not take seriously any -biology- class with the following description: ““presenting the evidence and arguments for creation and against evolution. This course is required for all Liberty students.”” I’d find it hard to take a degree from such an institution seriously in general.
There is no such argument, and any such argument is not related to biology. People try to make this into a debate, but I assure you that it is not being debated (with any degree of seriousness) within the field of biology. Evolution is a thing. That’s not being questioned. Evolution is one of the most successful theories of science in the history of our species, and it is the foundation of ALL of biology. There is literally NO situation in the study of biology where an intelligent designer becomes a more plausible explanation than the actual biology. Creationism or intelligent design has absolutely NO place in a science class. It is, by definition, just not science. It is philosophy at best. It will not be mentioned in any real science class.