Expelling Adolescence

Darren and I have done a lot of talking about adulthood lately. More specifically, we've been discussing what it means to leave adolescence and enter adulthood. Even more specifically, we're considering what it means to leave behind an adolescent faith.

Someday Darren's going to write a book on the topic, but it's years away, so I don't feel like I'm stealing his thunder by writing a little blog post.

This afternoon we watched Ben Stein's documentary "EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed". It's failry new, with a release date of April 2008. In it Stein discusses the following issue (taken from the documentary's official web page):

The freedom to legitimately challenge “Big Science’s” orthodoxy…without persecution.

He interviews scientists who have faced persectution for publishing or attempting to publish research that points to the possibility of Intelligent Design. He also interviews scientists who hold firmly to Darwinism - one adamently calling it a fact.

Stein's bias was quite clear and Darren and I agreed the documentary was too emotional, but he raised some very good points, the foremost of which is this: If Americans value freedom so much, why is there no Academic Freedom in this one particular area? Why are academics who try to talk about Intelligent Design ostracized from academia? While they are allowed to conduct research about ID, why can they not publish it?

One interviewee in particular (Richard Dawkins, biologist and author of The God Delusion) referred to the war between science and religion. But I ask: What war? What makes these two mortal enemies? Are science and religion irreconcileable?

When the two sides (science and faith/religion) are pitted against each other as diametrically opposed, it becomes a "one or the other" situation. That's when atheists fear the science classroom will turn into an evangelistic crusade, and when religious folk fear the science classroom with turn their kids away from God. But if we all were to seek truth, apart from political motivation or manipulation, I think it would work itself out.

That's where the spiritual adulthood part fits in. It seems to me (and to Darren; gotta give him credit as he was part of this discussion!) that as one grows, he/she loses the need for black and white answers and becomes comfortable with a bit of ambiguity and lack of clarity. This in turn allows a person to examine data and come to a conclusion based on it, rather than the adolescent method of allowing one's worldview to bias the data (thereby coming to a conclusion before looking at the data).

In the film, people on both sides of the debate were guilty of this worldview-informing-truth mentality, although many of these were well-respected, educated adults. No one, for example, mentioned the possiblity of an Intelligent Designer being involved in the process of evolution. I should not have been suprised though because, of course, that would mean that science and faith were both right, and opposing ideas cannot both be right.

If I were to design a science curriculum for a public secondary school which was not affiliated with any particular faith group, I would propose the following regarding the Origin of Man:

1. Present the evidence for the theory of evolution.
   
2. Present the holes in the theory.
   
3. Leave it at that.

As the evidence is weighed, students can come up with their own conclusions. Why can we not train our adolescents to think in adult ways...especially when the answer is not immediately evident?

Asking questions and seeking answers to them is good science. It's also good faith-building.