Well, the semester is officially over, and I managed
to complete a 44 page final paper, a 20 minute presentation, and a 41 page log
of all the work I completed. With all that sheer output, it would be easy for
me to say now that I was too busy to blog, but that really wasn't the case. I
spent a good amount of time lounging around, playing video games, and generally
procrastinating. It’s amazing what you can get done in a week and a half when
you have a deadline and only one thing to work on! What’s done is done, and I’m
happy with the final product.
I got to work with a federally funded project specifically
studying the perceptions and values of Great Barrier Reef users (tourists,
commercial fisherman, traditional owners, etc.). Brief summary: The goal is the
conservation of Australia’s, and perhaps the world’s, greatest natural
resource, but its aim is to learn about the people
affecting the reef rather than the ecological system itself. Basically,
exactly what I wanted to do coming in J.
Essentially, it was a short-term internship with the Commonwealth Scientific
and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) as an internal advisor to their
Social and Economic Long-Term Monitoring Program (SELTMP). Said project is in
the midst of a three-and-a-half year planning phase, after which it will be
initiated and employed by policymakers and natural resource managers. These
people can be thought of as those who make long-term and short-term decisions,
respectively, regarding who uses the reef.
My task was to interview each member of the design team and
use their insights to summarize the overall purpose of the project, the current
state of governmental policy in Australia, and the ways in which the project
could be used to inform future policies. For those of you who don’t know,
policies are sort of like a plan of action that a political group or department
sets, saying, more or less, “This is what is important to us; what we will be
working toward in the future.” Environmental
policy has a long history of placing biological concerns firmly above social
and economic concerns. This appears to be a simple prioritizing of competing
interests, but upon closer analysis, such policies are detrimental to all
parties involved. A wide range of factors play into how people view the
environment and the decisions they make as a result. A failure to account for
these factors will prohibit actual change from occurring. For example, you can
tell a fisherman not to fish in a certain area, but if he doesn’t understand
why, and you don’t have the resources to enforce it, not much is going to
change. Presently, there has been little effort to comprehensively document
what people are doing, let alone hypothesizing why they are and what might be
done to change it. This project seeks to accomplish substantial advances in
these areas.
Over the course of the month, I got to talk with some
incredibly intelligent, caring people, most of whom were social scientists.
Social science has a bit of a bad reputation within the greater academic
community, probably due to its abstract and somewhat sensitive nature. Indeed,
my first impression of the project was something along the lines of, “Wow that
sounds so cool! And yet also virtually impossible…” Thankfully, many safeguards
are in place to ensure the project’s success. The design team is not working in
a vacuum; they are continually cooperating with each other and with prospective
users of the information. Furthermore, roles are well-defined, and a full half
of the members are responsible for keeping everybody on the same page with
various aspects of the project. Accountability, transparency, and organization…good
principles for life in general, not just social and economic monitoring
programs :)
I could
go on and on about my experience, but I’ll end there and start a summary of
what I’ve learned (both practically and ideologically) over the course of the
semester in relation to the central questions addressed in the blog. Coming
into the semester, I had a basic knowledge of what the theory of evolution
means biologically. If you truly understand what it is saying and look closely
at the world around you, the evidence for it is simply undeniable. Separate
lines of reasoning across multiple academic disciplines (biochemistry,
paleontology, biology) affirm its validity for scientifically evaluating relationships between living species. As
for counterarguments such as irreducible complexity and gaps in the fossil
record, this website does a more thorough job refuting them than I would ever
hope to be able to accomplish: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html . Also, this page provides a more succinct summary: http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-qa.html . Suffice to say that most of the
scientific “problems” with the theory of evolution have been put forth by
people with non-scientific agendas and conspicuous misunderstandings about the
scientific method or the theory itself. In the last 4 months or so, I’ve had a lot
more time to reflect on what all of this means with respect to my worldview and
my role with the church and society as a whole.
As
discussed earlier, I simultaneously support the ideas that Jesus Christ is the
light of the world and that the theory of evolution is a scientifically valid.
While personally I don’t perceive a conflict between these two positions, I
admit here that supporting both requires somewhat moderate interpretations and
applications of each. I think the main reason for this is not the concepts
themselves, but rather the ways in which they have been applied and portrayed
in recent years.
Before
the rise of modern science in the 16th century, human beings viewed
the world in a distinctly different way from the way that they view it today. The
scientific method has given us a lens by which to understand and unlock the inner
workings of nature, and the knowledge of these inner workings enables us to
more efficiently and successfully work for the long term good of living things.
Both the early scientific pioneers and many modern Christians view science as a
gift from God, and I can’t help but agree. In short, there is nothing
inherently “unchristian” about science.
Where
then, does all this gol’ darn creation vs. evolution conflict come from? Here’s
a bit of history for you: Before the 1800’s, anybody who was anybody (read:
rich/white/powerful) believed that the Bible was 100 percent historically
accurate and that the earth was roughly 6000 years old. There was little reason
to doubt this, so science, including biology, was done accordingly. Naturally,
it took a naturalist (haha, see what I did there?), namely Charles Darwin, to
break free from that box. Since Origin of
Species was published in 1859, it has been atrociously misunderstood and
misused by just about everybody: religious and irreligious, liberals and
conservatives, you name it. These follies can be grouped into two categories:
denial and obsession.
For
religious extremists, the easiest way to deal with evolution is to explain it
away. This is done primarily through creation “science,” which involves a
strange concoction common sense arguments, pen-pushing, and misplaced arguments;
ironically the exact things that the scientific method filters out. A
quick word on so-called “intelligent design.” As originally conceived by
biochemist Michael Behe, this idea was never intended to overthrow the basic
tenants of the theory of evolution, but rather to provide a framework for
direct, divine intervention within a biologically honest framework. In particular, he cited the
astoundingly complex biochemical pathways as too detailed to have been
constructed by natural selection, genetic drift, and the other factors commonly
cited as drivers of evolutionary change.
Irreligious
extremists (think Richard Dawkins), on the other hand, tend to “do away with”
religion by describing it in evolutionary terms. In doing so, they make some
incredibly bold leaps in logic. Even if we had a complete working knowledge of
how human brains function (which we don’t), it would still be preposterous to think we could fully understand the
origins of human spirituality. The funny thing is that in misapplying what they
consider to be common sense, they make a strikingly similar mistake to that of
the religious extremists.
Hopefully
by now, you’ve gathered that I don’t fall into either category. For the record,
there a lot of people who disagree
with me. Extreme academics would argue that I am letting sentiments get in the way of
simple logic, i.e. extrapolation of evolutionary thought into the disciplines
of philosophy, sociology, or psychology. Likewise, fundamentalist Christians
would argue that I have been “corrupted” by liberal thought. In a way, it’s a
bit like straddling a fence, but it’s not out of indecision. I’ve thought about
it, decided upon my current position, and will remain there for the foreseeable
future. In doing so, I expose myself to ideological mudslinging from both
sides, but hey, someone has to take it, right? Maybe, just maybe, I can take
enough of it to convince a few people from both sides that the fence is, in
actuality, an arbitrary mental construction that really isn’t worth anyone’s
time. In my next and final post, I’ll explain how this situation has opened my
eyes to see God’s will for me as a peacemaker in a range of contexts. Thanks
for reading!
