Georgia Southern University has a history professor teaching creationism. This is absurd; no serious academic in any discipline should be misinforming students about the state of knowledge today. That Emerson McMullen is in a history, rather than biology, department, is no excuse at all — I should think that we ought to defer to a significant degree to our colleagues’ expertise, so McMullen ought to be paying attention to what more knowledgeable people are saying, and striving to give his students better representation of what we actually know.
What he’s doing is the equivalent of me using a cell biology lecture to preach holocaust denial at my students. It’s not only factually wrong, but it’s a misuse of class time. Really, I don’t teach atheism, for instance, in any of my classes, because that’s not what my responsibilities in that class entail. Similarly, I don’t rant about Republicans, MRAs, goofy alien conspiracy theories, or how beautiful squid are, even when my opinions on those subjects are totally correct, because, as I’m supposed to do this afternoon, I’m lecturing on cell cycle regulation. Does Dr McMullen have so little interest or knowledge about the subjects assigned to his class that he can’t even focus on them for an hour?
There are good reasons to teach creationism in a history class — just as there are good reasons to teach about holocaust denial in a history class. These things happened and are happening. I can point to Ron Numbers as an excellent example of how to properly teach the history of religious thought in a secular and fact based way, and it’s also easy to see that he has a lot of expertise in the history of the subject.
But this McMullen character knows nothing about the biology.
For example, one essay question asked students to
Discuss the pros and cons of Darwin’s idea of evolution,and McMullen’s suggested reply was,Darwin had no proof of evolution, only of adaptation (basically, change within a being’s genetic code). There was (and is) no solid evidence for descent from a common ancestor, and for the multitude of predicted transitional forms from one species to another.
That’s a fine question, especially for a history class — I’ve asked similar questions on exams in my introductory biology and genetics classes (which do have a significant historical component). The biggest, most obvious flaw in Darwin’s theory, which he recognized and struggled with, was that he had no theory of inheritance at first, and later came up with an incorrect hypothesis. So it’s really bizarre to come up with the claim that the guy with no theory of genetics could “only” explain “change within a being’s genetic code”. He had no knowledge of genetics, but one thing he did have was evidence for common descent, and also for transitional forms!
I would have expected a history professor to bring up historical issues: the conflict between evolution and blending inheritance, brought up by Fleeming Jenkin; the dead-end of recapitulation theory, and how Haeckel led developmental biologists into a reaction against evolution; the eclipse of Darwinism, the doldrums the field fell into until the discovery of a useful theory of inheritance revitalized it. I could easily write pages of stuff about the problems with Darwin’s theory.
Of course, I could also write pages of stuff off the top of my head about how Mendelian genetics answered most of the problems (Not all! We’re still wrestling with that.)
But McMullen’s answer tells me that he really isn’t competent to be teaching that material, and that he’s just parroting modern creationist nonsense. I would hope that GSU would recognize that they’ve got a serious problem and correct it.
Seems like he confuses scientific theory with religious dogma. It’s the literal reading of religious texts that fall apart if you find one flaw in them. Darwin was not secular Moses.
Thank you. It always boggles my mind that there’s so little awareness that people had plenty of evidence of evolution occurring and of the deep time necessary for it to have occurred — they simply lacked mechanisms to explain why it was happening. Darwin and Wallace provided a partial answer, based on ecology and competition for energy.
It’s as absurd to blame Darwin for not getting the whole answer as it is to blame him for not designing jet planes when all he knew of were steam engines. We have had over 150 years to improve on his solution and thousands of scientists have used them well.
You’re forgetting – according to some, if you’re not spending your entire class praising GAWD for creating all the biology you’re teaching, that’s teaching atheism.
I can’t decide who is probably more disheartened by this – the science professors at that school, or all of the history Ph.D.s who can’t find a tenure-track job because guys like this are sitting in the few that are left.
(I should have said “while”, not “because” , sorry)
And the point is, science improves it’s explanations with each new bit of information. Religion never does.
Again blithely ignoring that the general tenets of evolution were common among academia before Darwin was born; that some of that work was by his grandfather, that his fundamental contribution was adaption through natural selection, that much of their (and our) thinking was guided by geology and paleontology . . . .
McMullen is what is known i the trade as an idiot.
squid are objectively beautiful!
but that’s also true of any life form.
The truth doesn’t change from department to department but the expectation that a professor in an entirely different field should have any expectation of what the truth is in the first field might. I would imagine a creationist history professor would teach history from a creationist perspective; that all human civilization began somewhere in the middle-east 6,000 years ago and all people radiate from a single family some 4,000 years ago. And such teaching would be utterly *wrong*. I’m not sure how universities distinguish controversial theories from out-right wrong theories, but I would assume a history professor teaching such would be presumed to be simply wrong in the same way any biology professor teaching creationism would be.
Of course, if the *history* professor is teaching *biology* … well, I did have a music professor make a mathematical declaration but he had the decency to admit he was out of his area.
Maybe it is a sophisticated philosophical performance about how if you repeat the same lie over and over…and over…. it eventually becomes truth.
Or, you know, it’s just another fucking idiot lying for Jesus….
If he is so sure of his material, why isn’t he in the biology department?
He’s misrepresenting himself because he knows he is lying.
In this case, there are two assertions being conflated into one:
1. That the Bible and certain other ancient documents assert that all humans descended from Noah (scientifically supported by evidence), and,
2. That all humans are in fact descended from Noah (scientifically disproved by evidence).
A creationist history professor could teach assertion #1 as a fact for his whole life and no one would have a problem with that, but if he tries to use assertion #1 to support assertion #2, then he is failing to do his job and must be stopped.
In this case, the scientific evidence is so overwhelming that to deny it would be perverse, so there is no controversy, except to people who prefer perverse theology to scientifically established reality.
One of the key words that demonstrates his incompetence “proof”. I daresay he would rarely if ever use the word “proof” when discussing a historical idea, but naively believes that science deals in proof, rather than in evidence.
@12
My point was that literal creationism (not the history of creationism; the assertions of creationism themselves as assertions) is equally wrong whether it is creationist biology or creationist history or creationist music, creationist phys-ed or any damned discipline. Human culture did *not* radiate from a single family in the middle-east 4,000 years ago. It just plain didn’t and creationism in history just will not fly. I don’t know what creationism in music or phys-ed would be (Men have an odd number of ribs?) but they’d be wrong too.
My comment of wrong vs. controversial? I just meant that universities probably don’t have a “no junk DNA” biology policy or a “no determinism” philosophy policy so they probably don’t have a specific “no creationism” policy either. But I assume there are pressures for no absolutely wrong incompetent ignorantly illiterate bullshit policy.
Numbers won the “1999 Templeton Foundation Prize for Outstanding Book in Theology and the Natural Sciences.”, which is suspicious.
I’m really curious about his book now.
So the link goes to RD’s site:
Dear Richard Dawkins……
>:-)
@8 astro — you don’t know my friend Jake.
What would you say to a humanities professor who doesn’t acknowledge evolution because it has resulted from culturally-biased hypotheses? I.e. hypotheses are biased because we live in a culture that biases the questions that we ask. The hypotheses are hopelessly subjective, so the theories are hopelessly subjective, so evolution doesn’t exist. In short, the extreme post-modern professor?
This is not a hypothetical. I’ve had conversations with profs like this. One example, I was trying to have a discussion with such a prof and I eventually asked whether he thought evolution was true. He said no. In another example, I had a prof tell me that biology was currently very biased, i.e. there are something around six or eight sexes – not just two – and the only reason we act as though there are two is because we are a hopelessly culturally biased bunch of scientists and we are oppressive for not recognizing other sexes. This was a specific discussion about sex, not gender. I have no idea what he was talking about because it wasn’t some version of sex on a continuum, like XXY individuals, etc. This was at a very good university.
So basically, you have the same thing, profs telling students that some very basic science is wrong. I know PZ is very humanities friendly, but there are more than a handful of extreme ones out there. So why just pick on the creationists?
Probably because this guy just attracted the attention of the Freedom From Religion Foundation and is therefore in the spotlight at the moment.
In biological terms, “sex” is defined by the type of gamete made. There are organisms that have many sexes. Humans are not one of them.
In a broader sense, “sex” is often defined in humans as encompassing not just gametes, but the suite of sexual organs and secondary sex characteristics. We don’t have the best of terminology to cover the variations, but “intersex” is the catch-all term usually used.
If they want to talk about identity and attraction and such, then it’s most definitely getting into the concepts usually covered as “gender” identity and presentation.
In short, that person is trying to make a point without understanding the language and how scientists use it.
This is truly frightening: http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=563679#
Extra credit for parroting creationist crap??
However, it IS Georgia, so I shouldn’t expect better. . .
grouperfish #18
I’d be interested to see what this person’s arguments are. Self-deception is something all science-friendly people need to watch out for, so if he/she has decent non-scripture based reasons, they would be fun for me to see.
However, she/he still has to account for fossil deposition in specific layers, genetic similarities across species, and geographic distribution of species if she/he is going to reject darwinian evolution. Just waving all this evidence away because it has been interpreted by people who have a culture is hardly acceptable.
Yeah, science is an effort to cut through all the cultural biases, to truly look at the world as it is. If you are going to chuck that out as being a cultural bias, where are you going to go, instead?
The arguments against evolution were basically all I told you:
Culture is biased (and racist and sexist, etc) and so all hypothesis are biased and therefore not “true”. Science is no more than any other cultural myth. All the questions scientists ask are a product of culture and if we were a different culture we would ask different questions and have a different science. Here is a direct quote: “Data are not real”.
I don’t remember everything, but there was a particular question about whether chimpanzees are violent are not. They can be pretty aggressive with each, I think, in the spectrum of animal behavior. But this particular humanities professor wanted to argue that they weren’t (having never seen them in the wild) and that the description of chimpanzees as aggressive was only a product of (sexist, oppressive) biases and scientists wanting to see them as aggressive so as to align scientific knowledge and hypothesis with desired world views. The data weren’t “real” because they were collected in a biased way. etc.
I once responded to this professor, ” I feel like you would try to argue the chair I’m sitting in right out from under me!”
I’m just putting this out there to make a point. I’ve met more than one humanities professor that thinks like this. d never say they are all like that. But there are more than a few. And they teach classes.
When I attended Georgia Perimeter College, I had a history class taught by a Christian Young-Earth Creationist. I was only 21 at the time (this was around 2008)… not quite yet an atheist, but pretty much on my way there. He and I had very interesting discussions, and ironically he gave me the last little push I needed to admit my atheism and become a staunch defender of evolution and science in general.
But it never occurred to me then that this was hugely problematic.
Wish I could remember his name…
I had a psych teacher who believed that humans were pure blank slates with no instincts- every reaction we display was a learned response, emotions were choices, free will, ect.
Useless class, but watching the inevitable decision by one of the smart-ass 19 year olds in the class to start trolling was pretty funny.
grouperfish – in a way, a small kernel of a way, that person is right – we all have biases, and there are lots of examples where the cultural bias of scientists kept them from seeing the reality in front of their faces (hi, female choice selection!). However, this person is taking it too far. Of course we have some data that are “real” – computers work, and rocket ships work (mostly), and when we put organisms in particular environments and make predictions about what will happen, usually we’re right, and when we open up someone and cut out parts and put in parts, usually that works ok too. If they get to the point that they’re arguing that we live in a Matrix-like world where reality doesn’t really exist, that’s the time when the conversation has gone entirely off the rails and there’s no point in talking about anything, because then even the culture and its biases aren’t real either.
I think that’s the first time I’ve heard about someone claiming such an absolute version of the blank slate. The thing I’d like to know is how would such a blank slate would learn anything at all. If there’s no built-in preference for certain outcomes or sensations over others, why would such an entity bother learning which choices have which outcomes, since they’re all effectively equal?
How long has he been doing it without interference from the Uni?
Let us know when he is stopped. (It’s an American Uni so I’m guessing he’ll be allowed to continue for a long time yet.)
You’re applying a great deal more critical thinking to the issue than that teacher did.
I teach a course on Creationism in a secular university…in a Religious Studies dept. A big disclaimer on the sylabus:
“This course is NOT intended to argue whether science, “Intelligent Design”, or the Bible is correct about the origins of the universe, life, and speciation. Throughout the course we will assume the primacy of the secular sciences to speak to these matters. Our subject matter is ancient Israelite and biblical creation mythology and the mythology of modern Christian creationists as humanly constructed models of and for the societies espousing these myths.”
Jim Linville #31
I, for one, would be interested to hear about the people who take your class.
[with all identifiers concealed, of course]
Chigau (31),
I really don’t know the make up the class religion wise. We don’t ask. Of those who decided to tell (or imply) or smile at key parts of lectures, I suspect that many are rather secular with a few vocal atheists. I know there are some rather conservative Christians but there has been no resistance to anything in the class. One student is a bit unnerved by the proceedings (she is a proponent of ID), but no protests or outbursts, always in class and rather cheery. I’m really pleased the way the class is going. I think most are humanities or social science studies, with a few science students thrown in. I try to keep it pretty light-hearted in class, that seems to diffuse a lot of tension.
carlie @ 27
No, that professor can’t possibly be right at all because his theory of biases is biased. It’s an unfortunate position for one who likes to argue to be in, to have invalidated every argument they would like to make by their own premises. ;)
I can’t decide who is probably more disheartened by this – the science professors at that school, or all of the history Ph.D.s who can’t find a tenure-track job because guys like this are sitting in the few that are left. Essayteria.com