Along with that copy of Imprint that I was sent yesterday, someone at the Bell (Scott? Was that you?) slipped in a copy of … oh, it was horrifying … a comic book. Not just any comic book, though, a Crusader Comic, one of Jack Chick’s line of full sized comic book style propaganda pamphlets (unlike the usual smaller sized tracts we usually see). This one was called “Primal Man?”. Yikes. It’s basically a colorized version of “Big Daddy?”, only instead of an evilutionist college professor getting outsmarted by a wise Christian student, it’s an evilutionist movie producer getting outsmarted by a Christian anti-evolutionist anthropologist. There aren’t many of those around, I can tell you, but since Chick is unconstrained by reality, he could just invent one.

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In my mail today, I received a copy of the Bell Museum’s quarterly, Imprint, which contained a fine article on the Bell’s strategy for addressing the creationists. After summarizing some of the museum’s efforts and recent national events, it concludes this way:

Bell Museum programs are one way that University of Minnesota scientists are reaching the public–not through spin, but through thoughtful presentations about science and research, such as the lively Café Scientifique discussion held recently on the subject of evolution. To support science educators, Borrello, Lanyon, and several other scientists have teamed up with local parents to found Minnesota Citizens for Science Education (www.mnscience.org), which provides resources for teachers, students, and parents. “As a society,” says Lanyon, “we can’t afford to let a religious argument dominate the critical subject of how we teach science in our schools. The fact is, life evolves. We ignore–or choose to deny–this scientific fact at our own peril.”

After all this discussion of “framing”, I find that so refreshing and reassuring. There is a slow change occurring in the scientific community, a growing recognition that stepping out of the lab and engaging the public in open and entertaining discussions about their research is an important activity. We don’t need to spin the story, we don’t need to dumb things down or hide the troubling implications — what we can do instead is meet with people and talk and explain. Not just lecture at them, but take questions on the spot and try to deal interactively with their concerns. That’s what Café Scientifique is about, for instance: informal discussions in a casual setting where people can just ask any question that pops into their head. Citizens for Science Education groups are also organizations that aren’t about dunning people with facts, but about outreach and providing resources to concerned teachers and parents.

We don’t need any new jargon or buzzwords to do that. Just talking. Informing. Educating. Being honest about our positions and letting people say what they think, too. That’s an approach that will feel natural to scientists, far better than artificially hedging our words and trying to say what other people want to hear, rather than stating what we actually think.

That’s what I want to do, and that’s what I will do. If others want to practice spinning and pandering, feel free. I doubt that you’ll find many scientists who want to join in that game, though.

I’m willing to read books by Simon Conway Morris, Ken Miller, and Francis Collins. I think they’re dead wrong on the religion issue, but they are smart guys who contribute positively to the debate in other ways. I will also read Behe and Dembski and <gack, hack> Wells; they are not smart people, and they’re wrong all across the board, but at least they’re not trying to pretend they’re my friend and are trying to help me, and I think it’s a good idea that we should know the enemy. One fellow who infuriates me, though, and whose point of view I find difficult to comprehend, is Michael Ruse (he’s pulled some weird stunts before, too). I can’t read any of his work anymore without feeling extreme exasperation.

Larry Moran explains why. Ruse is not a friend of science, not someone who wants to improve people’s understanding of the real world; instead he poses as our pal while accusing us of “evolutionism”. He pretends to be a fair and neutral broker mediating a conflict while obligingly demanding a complete surrender of anyone who advocates godlessness. He continues to promote this schism between “Chamberlain appeasers” and “Churchillian atheists” (ugh, but I detest those terms) because it suits his ends, which is to use the division to demand that the atheists sit down and STFU. That’s plainly his strategy in a recent article in the Skeptical Inquirer, which Moran rebuts.

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The BBC has another article on Ken Ham’s creationism museum, and guess what they say?

Petersburg, Kentucky, is in the middle of North America. It is supposedly within a day’s drive of two-thirds of the US population.

Aaargh, no. Kentucky is way over on the eastern side of the US. It is not within a day’s drive of two-thirds of the US population. Is Ham telling everyone this nonsense as a test of how credulous the media might be? Because he’s doing a good job of demonstrating that journalists will swallow anything.

At least this time they included the modifier “supposedly”. It’s progress, I suppose.