Trauma

[foodchain]

I don’t know if this is the right place for it, so if the admins disagree that is fine of course.

 

Over my lifetime I never knew that theology was so widely held. I grew up with an interest in life and at eight years of age I was making field journals and drawings of various life forms such as birds or slugs for instance. Dinosaurs and the entire variety of scientific knowledge was my normal reality. I was sadly wrong.

 

As I have come into contact with more and more people I have found that science and its endeavors don’t have that much of a sway on culture as say theology. Not to say this is wrong but I do follow that a fact based reality is the best reality.

 

I never knew until around my twenties really that evolution was so contested giving all of its scientific support, and going from this I have noticed that such has a damaging effect on science and of course biologists.

 

I have attempted to debate people on evolution before, and I quickly come to find that such people typically never have a clue of what they are talking about, such as the misuse of entropy for example, I typically ask them if they have ever bought sunscreen before or what they think about a breeze, but such is a sad reminder and a bad joke.

 

What I would like to get at is how much do you think this damages scientists that work in biology, do you think it leaves a form of trauma that puts a unneeded amount of stress on even talking hypothetically about biological science? Moreover is such ultimately creating a negative situation overall for biologists to attempt to relate what they learn to general intelligence?

 

How would you deal with such issues while attempting to maintain a positive environment for all?

 

Lastly should this be a prime area of focus for science writers?

[Cyanide]

I'm a fairly young character, and I just ran into the same wall. My parents are apart of this theological union. Although I'm more of a Chemist myself, I overall love the sciences....but I guess science has a bad rep.

 

Evolution for example. I've heard countless 'theologists' condemn the thought of evolution (to this very day) as lies. I discussed evolution and such with a priest at a local chapter, and he said it is merely a theory. No. I wasn't talking about the Theory of Evolution which includes the mechanisms,etc. Just Evolution as the fact.

 

Back to others I've debated. Everytime they say, "I most definitely didn't evolve from an ape." You're right. You didn't. They don't understand that our primate relatives branched off long ago.

 

Evolution is only one huge gap that creationists spit at. Just about everything dealing with science is viewed from skeptically. As a woman of science, you're supposed to be skeptical AND open-minded...which most of the population is not.

 

Basically, this situation deals not only with biological science, but just about every science. I'm not sure how to alleviate the tension between theology and science...maybe it never will..

 

Perhaps one should start at the school level. I was fortunate that my high school had an exceptional science program, but most do not. And to me, science is the key. Or somehow scientists could try to mainstream moreso than they do.

 

However, this is (I believe) what separates the science geeks from the English buffs and History lovers, etc.

 

As my idol Richard P. Feynman once said,

"If I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn't have been worth the Nobel Prize. "

 

So it's possible that society will always disagree with science. Science will persevere. Science has alwas been condemned. Ask Galileo.

[foodchain]

I agree. See to me even on this site which I imagine for the most part is somewhat past all that turbulence its still difficult for people to talk about it really. You post something in a topic and deals with evolution and its a lockdown. It does not need to be like that and for that most part I think it hurts science somewhat. I mean if people were afraid to question anything the earth might still be flat and of course at the center of a very small universe.

 

What if you wanted to start your education in biochemistry, then into molecular biology then natural history and environmental science attempting to track down the mechanisms behind chromosome appearance, function and existence. You have to make a hypothesis, tests, then maybe if you are lucky something to add to existing theory, the problem is you have to ask questions that may have not been asked yet. To me if people are so burnt because some people don’t like the idea that dinosaurs walked the planet and a few generations ago our ancestors lost the ability to produce vitamin C internally, something that matches to us perfectly like many other Homologies, well then the science of it all will not grow and I think most likely it will die.

 

Not to attempt to sound to spiritual at all, but science needs to keep its sprit alive and well overall.