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...sleepily skimming my biology text a few weeks ago when something I read startled me into full consciousness...
...blinked, thought for a moment, and then checked the cover of the book to make sure I hadn't accidentally opened one of my roommate's philosophy texts. But the book I was holding was indeed my biology text, and I had been reading about excretion in marine bony fishes. At least, that is, until this sermon suddenly appeared out of nowhere...
Relax, I'm not going to rehash the moribund evolution vs. creationism debate. Evolutionary theory is based on empiricism, and thus there can be no argument that it belongs in a science class. Assertions of the type made in the text book, though, go beyond facts. In describing the development of life as "unplanned" and without purposeful design, the book tries to explain the forces ultimately behind evolution. It thus exceeds the bounds of observation and objectivity, and falls into the realm of subjective truth. By implying that no higher consciousness was behind the design of the universe, the book...
...that fundamental existential questions are beyond the pale of academic discussion. That's what the Philosophy department is for, after all. What I found unsettling about this particular statement, however, was less its content than where I ran across it--in a science text. In a philosophy class one is prepared to be fed mataphysical must. But I have always been under the impression that the sciences were the bastion of objectivity Evangelism, I thought, had been relegated to the humanities...
Even if it is inadvertent, implying that the non-existence of God is a scientific fact constitutes preaching. Such a statement has no more foundation than one maintaining the divine origin of the universe. Imagine reading in a biology text: "The intricacies of nature are a clear sign that the universe was designed by some superior intellect." Any science professor arguing such a notion would probably be laughed out of Bio 2. Yet this statement is no less substantiated than the actual assertion made in the biology text. Each view simply reflects a different method of interpreting the same natural...