Project Summary

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 16^th 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!