Danger, Will Robinson!

Ok, so I’ve been very careful on this blog. Given that it is read by so many of my old friends and I want to keep up with them (rather than royally piss them off) I have been censoring myself on certain topics like religion, politics, and global warming. But I had an experience this week with a student of mine that has really gotten me thinking.

So, I beg you a favor… if you are a creationist and don’t like being challenged on that or hearing evaluation of your theories, please, skip this post and know that I love you and that we must agree to disagree.

The story begins with one of my favorite students this year. Yes, teachers have favorite students. No, we don’t admit it to them.

This kid took all my electives last year (astronomy, cosmology, conservation biology). He is signed up for KJAS (Kansas Junior Academy of Science) this year which only 5 other students have… two of them 6th graders who can’t even compete. Last year he had some serious issues on which I will not elaborate, but has grown up so much since then and matured past them. It’s been wonderful to watch. All his teachers are proud of him but none more than I because he is such a talented science student.

A few weeks ago the kids wrote their first lab reports, and an awful lot of them used the phrase “the hypothesis was proven correct” during their data analyses. The day I gave them back, I decided I needed to nip that in the bud. See, you can’t prove anything in science. You can disprove something, but you can never prove it. You can only support a hypothesis with evidence. Given overwhelming evidence, the hypothesis becomes theory. Given more overwhelming evidence (and a mathematical equation doesn’t hurt), the theory becomes a law. But the beauty of science is that we are all open to being proven wrong. Any law, no matter how deeply rooted in the scientific community, can be overthrown with one repeatable, elegant, expertly executed experiment. One verifiable measurement of light bending around a massive star toppled the Newtonian concept of gravity. It would take only one mammalian skull lodged in demonstrably Precambrian rock and the whole theory of evolution would topple down. General relativity, evolution, thermodynamics, the electron cloud model… all these theories are supported by massive amounts of evidence. But it would only take one.

Anyway… I was ranting on and on to my students in this manner and after class this kid came up to me and shocked my socks off. He said, “Miss K, evolution is just religion.” I blinked for a few minutes trying to remember if, of all the criticisms of evolution I had heard from non-scientists over the years, I had ever heard it called religion. Most creationists, I thought, would be highly offended by this invasion of their personal space. But he was insistent. I told him that I would not argue with him about the correctness of evolution and creationism, but that I had to firmly disagree with the assertion that evolutionary biology is religion and not science. If for no other reason than the fact that I studied it as a scientist for seven years!

He would not relent. He asked me to watch a video he had on the age of the earth by a dude named Kent Hovind. I told him I would be glad to watch the video in order to take in his perspective but that he would need to read a book of mine in return. (Later, Kent Hovind informed me that this act of asking my student to read would send me to hell… but what the heck, I was headed there anyway.) I then e-mailed his parents to inform them of the exchange. The response I got back was nothing like what I thought, and I wish I could clone these parents and give them to all my other students. What they said boiled down to: my son is old enough to read anything he chooses and to make up his own mind about what he thinks about it. Would you mind reading a book of mine as well?

Dr. Kent Hovind

I said sure. So I have this book and this video on creation science. The book will have to wait until I’m done reading about the 2012 Mayan apocalypse. But nonetheless, I will read it. I did, however, start watching the video. It’s 2.5 hours long and I am about 1.5 hours in. It has taken me about 4 hours to watch the first 90 minutes as I pause every few moments to make notes. I now have 7 pages of objections. For instance, he claims that the star Sirius was red during the time of Jesus and is now a white dwarf. Well, that’s not entirely true, no. Sirius is actually a star system composed of, yes, a white dwarf, but also a white main sequence star. It is this latter star and its proximity to Earth that makes Sirius so bright, not the dwarf.

There are scores of examples… the use of the moon’s escape from earth as a timeline and the expert use of the inverse square law to calculate the gravitational force of the moon on the tides but the complete disregard of the same law to calculate the gravitational pull of the earth on the moon slowing its escape. It really goes on and on… for 7 pages. So far.




The point that really stood out to me was the one that my student kept repeating over and over again: evolution is just religion. Dr. Hovind made this point about 30 minutes into the program. He says that cosmological science and the theory of evolution are religion because even though there is evidence for the Big Bang, and for the timing of the Big Bang, nobody can say where all the matter came from.

This latter point, I concede. Science can answer some amazing questions these days. It can tell us that we are one of trillions of galaxies in the Universe. It can tell us what the temperature of the Universe was at only 10^-30 seconds! It can tell us that all that we see and all that we are was once in an area so tiny that it had no dimension whatsoever, and that that singularity burst into being around 13.7 billion years ago. But it can’t tell you why. As a scientist I can’t even tell you what triggered this event. And that’s where this all breaks down. The moment of the beginning.

Dr. Hovind says that because science cannot explain the moment of the beginning then it can’t explain anything. And that I find both logically unsound and incredibly ignorant.

There’s a lot that science can’t explain.

A lot.



A lot.




There are plenty more questions than there are answers. But that doesn’t mean that none of our answers are correct. For instance, no scientist can tell you what causes gravity. Is it an exchange of particles between objects? Is it intrinsic to all mass? Who knows! But that doesn’t mean that we throw out the theory of gravity altogether.

I have no problem with creationists. If you look intelligently at both ideas but you sincerely decide to believe in the literal translation of the bible instead… then that is your choice and I respect it. But you must, as I must, recognize that the literal translation of the bible and the understanding of modern science are in opposition.

But I dislike a man with a Ph.D. in Christian Eduction telling me what science is and is not. Study science. Learn science. Do science. Then, when you can critically evaluate data and analyze statistics and develop sound experimental design… then you can discuss what is and is not science. But of course, most everyone who does study science for 10 or more years becomes convinced of it.

Why, why is it so offensive to understand the bible as an analogy to a people who would not at the time have understood the genetics, biology, and chemistry of evolution? Why is it so hard to imagine that god gave the creation story in the way that best suited the time in which it was given? Why is it offensive to imagine that maybe now god is speaking to us through the intellect that he gave us? Why is it so frightening to so many people to think that god created the Universe, the Earth, and life itself through the mechanisms we are now uncovering??

I always say I don’t believe in god. But as I said to Jeff last night, I guess if you really whittled me down I would probably be better classified as an agnostic. Because while I don’t think there is a god, I cannot say for sure. I do not discount the possibility but nor do I believe it to be true just because it might be. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t thousands of faithful scientists out there. There are, and I have known plenty. In fact, as a member of the scientific community, I would say that I am probably in the minority even as an agnostic, let alone an atheist.

While you should never practice them in tandem, science and religion can coexist. As Einstein said, “the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it can be comprehended.” If you believe in god, you believe that he endowed us with intelligence. Why then would he be offended by its use?

Oh, and by the way, Dr. Kent Hovind is currently serving 10 years in federal prison.