Nova's latest episode was a two-hour documentary of the court case in Dover, Pennsylvania about teaching Intelligent Design as an alternative to evolutionary theory. I used to teach science in middle school - biology- and this issue came up for me then. I taught at a school with a good portion of its clientele being Christians who believe that Earth is a few thousand years old, fossils were put into the Earth as they are and were never living creatures, and that other galaxies cannot be billions of light years away because the universe is also only a few thousand years old. I'm a religious person myself and also a lover of science and the pursuit of Truth, and like many other people, I think that if both religion and science are accurate on a certain point that they both happen to speak about in some way, then there will be no conflict. But some people thrive on creating fitna and conflict. On this and many other issues, I have experienced that first hand and yet I am still always a bit shocked by it, and deeply saddened.
Anyway, I watched the episode and found it to be very interesting. I've always been a fan of NOVA - I was one of those lucky kids who grew up with much of her early years in the absence of cable TV so we watched PBS instead. But, now that I have cable I still watch the same kind of shows I did then for the most part. I do find it interesting how there are a lot of science-light or pseudo-science shows out there that present as science but aren't really quite there, because ultimately they're about entertainment. And the same thing for shows on religion - I see the same phenomenon in that arena, too.
No comments:
Post a Comment