Happy Birthday, Stephen!
As you creep ever closer to your late twenties, keep in mind some of the people who died at twenty-seven (Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain) and get everything you can out of twenty-six. Suck life from the marrow bones.
Sake wa doko desko.
and then there's this...
Friday, February 16, 2007
Monday, February 12, 2007
Believing Scripture but Playing by Science's Rules
Today’s New York Times has an interesting article about Marcus Ross, a paleontologist who earned his degree at the University of Rhode Island, Believing Scripture but Playing by Science’s Rules. There’s nothing particularly interesting about his dissertation (at least to me), but what is generating some controversy is his methodology—you see, he wrote a perfectly normal thesis about paleontology, separated from his religious beliefs. Or, as the NYT tagline puts it: “As a paleontologist and a creationist, Marcus R. Ross has produced academic work that contradicts his own beliefs.” I wonder if this article raises any thoughts for us about the ethics of positioning ourselves in academic discourses, of “passing,” to borrow a term from critical race studies, in order to get degrees, jobs, grants, promotions, etc. when we know that full disclosure (i.e. “I graduated from Wheaton College”) would be, as they say, the kiss of death.
Some excerpts:
“Dr. Ross is hardly a conventional paleontologist. He is a “young earth creationist” — he believes that the Bible is a literally true account of the creation of the universe, and that the earth is at most 10,000 years old.
“For him, Dr. Ross said, the methods and theories of paleontology are one “paradigm” for studying the past, and Scripture is another. In the paleontological paradigm, he said, the dates in his dissertation are entirely appropriate. The fact that as a young earth creationist he has a different view just means, he said, “that I am separating the different paradigms.”
“He likened his situation to that of a socialist studying economics in a department with a supply-side bent. “People hold all sorts of opinions different from the department in which they graduate,” he said. “What’s that to anybody else?””
Some excerpts:
“Dr. Ross is hardly a conventional paleontologist. He is a “young earth creationist” — he believes that the Bible is a literally true account of the creation of the universe, and that the earth is at most 10,000 years old.
“For him, Dr. Ross said, the methods and theories of paleontology are one “paradigm” for studying the past, and Scripture is another. In the paleontological paradigm, he said, the dates in his dissertation are entirely appropriate. The fact that as a young earth creationist he has a different view just means, he said, “that I am separating the different paradigms.”
“He likened his situation to that of a socialist studying economics in a department with a supply-side bent. “People hold all sorts of opinions different from the department in which they graduate,” he said. “What’s that to anybody else?””
Saturday, February 03, 2007
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