How does a science teacher handle a kid with the “were you there?” argument? Like a champ.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
How does a science teacher handle a kid with the “were you there?” argument? Like a champ.
It’s possible to turn this argument back on the fundies. When they spout stuff from the bible that they say is the word of god, just ask “were you there?” If they weren’t how do they know it was not just the ramblings of some dottering old fool?
Oh, that was a lovely read. Way to go, Biology Teacher!
Yes, way to go, but I fear that in far too many schools in this country the brave Biology teacher would be called into the principal’s office and reprimanded for challenging the child’s beliefs.
congenital cynic
Ah but the good folks at answers in a book of bronze-age mythology have already thought of that. According to them…
It really is quite sickening.
Oh, and is that someone still around to answer some basic questions? Or, if they aren’t who wrote it down at the time it happened????
I hope that is true and accurate because it is so funny.
Nerd
Apparently this person went to ground, or rather the reverse, some two thousand years ago. Rumours of his impending return remain just that: rumours.
I like the sentiment, but “Observation and deduction”?
Nope.
As a very occasional commenter, has the comic Shortpacked! ever been mentioned here? Because this reminded me of it.
I had a similar experience while presenting at the outreach at our archaeology lab. We frequently had public school, private schools and homeschooled kids in groups. Once, in a public school class that was visiting, I mentioned entirely incidentally about something that evolved, a girl (approximately 10) glared at me and spouted “Evolution! I don’t believe in evolution.”
Teachers and students froze. Teacher started to speak, but I said, “That is fine. You don’t have to believe in evolution. This is a free country. However, archaeology is a science (okay, it can be argued it’s not, but can we at least say it uses science and get on?) and so we deal with science here. I’m going to talk about what science tells us about the people who lived in the past. I have good reasons for saying the things I say, but if you chose to disbelieve me, I can not stop you. I wouldn’t want to stop you.”
And that brings up my favorite single encounter in all the years I did that outreach. After I talked about the people who lived in San Antonio in the past, one little girl, about the same age as the one above, from an “at risk*” program, said, “How do you know all that? You weren’t there. You’re not that old.”
Do you see the difference? She wasn’t parroting what her parents/pastor/conman had taught her. She was just having trouble understanding how anyone could know what I claimed to know.
She stood there, defiant, looking me in the eye. Her teacher tried to silence her and apologize to me at the same time, so I had time to go to her and crouch down to her level and said, “That is a GREAT question. How do I know that stuff? You should always ask that question. We don’t have time for me to explain all the different ways we figure these things out right now. But you can read about archaeology at the library and the books will explain it in more detail. I’m not just making this stuff up. But you have every right to ask that question, and I hope you keep asking that question.”
Later the teacher tried again to apologize. I told her the girl had absolutely delighted me and no apology was needed. I remember her with fondness. She’s probably in college now, if she managed to get past all the barriers that surrounded her. I hope she did.
*My experience of “at risk” kids was that they were smarter as well as less submissive, that the average kid in the poorer schools.
Oh really?
Who. What is his name? Where is he now?
In point of fact, they don’t know jesus, Paul, Mark, John, Matthew, or Luke at all. They have some of their alleged sayings and writings. It’s no different from saying you know Frodo, Bilbo, and Gandolph or Harry Potter.
Nah. They’re way better documented.
About what I figured. The original “being” did not leave a document. It was written down latter by some people “who weren’t there”. Making it hearsay at best, fiction most likely.
My answer to “Were you there?” would be: “I don’t need to have been there.” Just like we can work out the world is made of atoms even though they are too small too see and we can work out the Earth has an iron core without having gone there scientists can work out the history of life without having seen it directly.
Unless I’m very much mistaken (a situation not altogether rare), even if Christ was for real, he wouldn’t have been witness to ‘Creation’ unless Christ is God, but that’s a Catholic thing and Catholics pretty much accept evolution ‘cos JPII told them to (though they insist God nipped in at some stage with a delivery of soul, ‘cos he told them that too). So if non-Catholic Fundie Christians, the ones who believe Christ was son of, rather than another incarnation of the big G, are saying they know someone who was there at creation, they have to be talking about the father, not the son.
Of course you can turn the tables: “Were you there when Jesus raised himself from the dead?”
That’s not “a Catholic thing.” It’s a trinitarian thing. All kinds of Christians believe Jesus is God.
Okay, not exactly all kinds believe it in exactly that sense: nontrinitarians have a (still incoherent) slightly different view (a bunch of different ones I’ll take no time trying to sort through now). Here’s a short list from wikipedia:
Those are not mostly “mainstream” protestants (or Orthodox or others for that matter). A lot of oddballs right there.
Would they really say “Jesus was there” instead of “God was there”? I don’t know. I bet most would use the word “god,” if you hadn’t prepped them with this garbage. And it doesn’t have to make sense. It’s just what it is, and not making sense is probably a big reason why you never hear them talk about it.
I used the word “mainstream” there and was really thinking “mainline.” But then I thought … wikipedia has all of the answers:
So I guess (depending on your location?) I was accidentally right the first time. But it just goes to show that having tens of thousands of sects, and schisms left and right about every damned thing, is confusing as fuck.
“Good — glad to hear it. In fact, I’d be pleased to welcome him to the class tomorrow as a guest lecturer. Have him sign in at the office in the morning.”
I have not quite run into the situation described here in my biology classes, but I have come close on a couple occasions. My experiences are fortunately too few for me to get used to them, but that is in a way unfortunate as well b/c I am not yet able to deal with these situations is with calmness and a steady heart rate. I can always hear a pin drop when someone basically announces that they are a creationist, and one who is so far off the bend that they basically think the earth was made after dogs were domesticated. I am now supposed to convince them otherwise with a quick sound bite. Well, all I can say is I do my best to soberly answer their question, give them something to think about, and then ask them to see me later if they really want to talk. That rarely happens.
i am definitely filing this for later use. i’m an English guy, but i still run into tough questions from students here in the Bible Belt, plus i have a habit of defending our Biology teachers in absentia when the students bring up evolution in class. This is going into my repertoire…
A very cruel way to handle such situations:
Do you know who your parents are? Were you there?
Children should never be disabused in such a way, though. Their parents, on the other hand…….
You might want to be careful about ridculing kid’s religious beliefs. Even if they bring the subject up and are ridiculing you and your subject matter.
IIRC, some teachers have gotten in trouble for it. Fundies are vicious.Never, ever turn your back on them.
According to this source, it might be legal. I certainly wouldn’t try it in a fundie area. They don’t much care about legalities. And just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should do something.
I’ll try to find more later.
Poor kid, probably thought he was going to be a hero, just like what happened in that Chick tract.
Told you to be careful.
This case contradicts the one I just posted but is older. I don’t see why calling creationism supersitious nonsense is wrong. That is exactly what it is.
Evidently one court didn’t agree.
There must be some rules and guidelines somewhere but I haven’t found them yet. They must start with fundies are vicious though but you probably shouldn’t say that in your classroom either.
OK, apparently the original case was overruled by the 9th circuit court and the US Supreme court.
Do know the law and rules though before getting into religion in a classroom. Even if one of the kids starts it. They are kids and don’t have much on the line. A teacher has a lot more, including their job.
More. Know the law. Know the rules. Watch your back!!! Fundies are not nice people.
I had a student go through a melt-down after I asked the class to consider the statement “Petroleum is a finite resource”. He ended up storming out of the classroom in a rage. Mind you I didn’t ask for an agreement, but a discussion.
I would take the “Where you there” question to the extreme.
“Where you there when Jesus taught his disciples?”
“No, but we have eyewitnesses.”
“Where you there when those eyewitnesses wrote down their stories?”
Etc.
Then quickly becomes clear how important it is to ask the right questions, like @10. The right question here is of course “how do you know”?
As a result there will be a reasonable chance that said pupil will start thinking for his/her own instead of storm out of class. If possible a teacher should avoid a fight for power like this.
Note: I have been teaching Surinamese kids from 12-16 years myself for 20 years or so, albeit math and physics. My pupils generally are religious but I don’t hide my atheism.
otrame #10,
I prefer your approach. I want my children to have teachers with this approach. I can also see it being helpful for the other children not directly involved.
@cactuswren #19:
That strikes at the irony at the core. Out of a pretense to a devotion to truth they require direct personal eyewitness testimony on a past event, yet that Certain Someone isn’t even here in the present to corroborate that he exists.
Its a real knee-slapper how creationists pretend to place such a premium on evidence – as a challenge posed in the form of an impertinent question* – then bomb so spectacularly on being called out on providing a smidgen of it for their own claims.
When an astronomer obtains a spectrograph through a telescope trained on M 87, the dominant member of the Virgo cluster of galaxies, they are looking directly at evidence that those galaxies emitted the light some 54 million years ago, delivering that information to the astronomer in the present, which indicates that the cluster is centered about 54 million light-years away as the photon flies.
It may be a long-range observation, but the astronomer very definitely is ‘there’. She’s looking right at it.
Similarly, when I hold a fossil of a fish I obtained years ago from the Green River formation of Fossil Butte in my hand, I am looking directly at evidence that has survived all that time in the rock (dated by various methods) since that fish was alive during the Eocene (Diplomystus), not very far removed from the time those photons leaped off the stars within M87.
It may be a long-range observation, but I am, in effect, ‘there’. The evidence – the fish and the rock material that forms the fossil – was most definitely there, and I am looking right at it.
That’s the neat thing about science. It can identify lines of evidence that link us to distant events in space or time. With science we can see far indeed.
By comparison, religion is worse than myopia. Its tantamount to near total blindness.
—
*Whenever I come across that idiotic challenge I immediately flash on hearing Richard Burton’s voice call out, “WERE YOU OUT THERE???”. It cracks me up every time.
And there was I thinking ‘mainlining’ was common vernacular for taking drugs (usually class A) intravenously, thereby filling the system with shite that makes the user suffer strange, ethereal experiences, talk utter garbage, show signs of diminished intelligence and loss of personal resposi…….oh, just like religion.
Seconded. In fact, this is pretty much what I taught my own kids, and am now telling my grandchildren, namely “If you’re told (or read, etc) something that you don’t understand, or doesn’t seem to make sense, or disagrees with what you think is right, never be afraid to ask for clarification, irrespective of who”s doing the telling”.
My response us usually ‘yes I was.in the sense that every single particle if my body was around then. I also breathed in the ash at Pompeii, saw the flash of the first atom bomb and felt the birth pangs of a million mothers. If you’re happy with the simplistic just-so story taught to you, that’s your choice, I’m more interested in finding out what these particles have’experienced’
I’m afraid I have to identify with the kid in this example. I never did what my teachers ordered me to do, so I can’t side with the teacher exerting his authority over this kid (althought the rational part of it, pushing the kid’s faux skepticism to its limit, was good).
Matthew – asking questions should of course be encouraged. However, let the questions be sensible and intelligent. “Were you there?” is meaningless because nobody can provide a meaningful answer. It’s not even intended to provoke a meaningful response.. And the teacher had every right to assert his authority in this case.
you know, in a classroom where a teacher is nearly desperate to cover all the material in the short time allotted, sometimes being a contrarian for its own sake is rather selfish. Not just to the teacher, but to all your fellow students as well.
nobody gives a shit about your personal opinions in a classroom. you, and everyone else, are there to LEARN.
this is especially so in primary and secondary education, where you as a student are still just scratching the surface of current human knowledge.
there’s a REASON teachers tell kids to sit down and shut up in class.
anti authoritarianism is fine, but not for its own sake.
Kid was wrong, and so are you.
I thought this teacher’s response was disappointing. He’s written off this kid instead of trying to open his mind.
You disrupt class for twenty or thirty other people to feed your own ego? Get over yourself.
I would think a reasonable riposte to “were you there?” is “no but we’ve found plenty of animals that were” and the go into a discourse about fossil bones and footprints.
I don’t work with kids, and haven’t been asked this question, but I have thought about how I would handle it if one of the Fundies in my family ever asked me.
“If you came home and found a hole in the front window, and broken glass and a baseball on the floor inside, do you really have to have been there to know what happened?”
Hopefully that would get a kid to think!
Ibis3 @38:
I am not certain there was ample time to open the kids eyes. There was a class to teach.
I do wonder if the teacher is hoping that over the course of the schoolyear, the kid will open his eyes.
Tony @42
If ever there was an opportune moment to put the curriculum on the back burner for half an hour this would be it: Engage the entire class in a lesson about how we figure out stuff.
Ibis3, according to the teacher, the kid should already have covered that. And far from writing the kid off, the teacher offered to explain it on a one-to-one after class to avoid disrupting the whole class to explain what the silly little sod should already have read.
From linked article (highlights mine)