[Hac-announce] God in the Great Hall

[Thomas Platt]

Below is a copy of an e-mail I sent yesterday to my boss in the  
Public Education Department plus an associated paleontologist at the  
Peabody  Museum.  I am a volunteer docent and teach "Dinosaurs &  
More" to early grade school classes, who are accompanied by their  
teacher and usually other adults, sometimes many.  To make a war  
analogy, it is important to realize what I am fighting for in this  
theater is Darwinian evolution and more generally, methodological  
naturalism, which you may wish to Google.  Here of course there is  
another, but informal, interfaith alliance of those who are in  
agreement::

Hi _______,

Leading into the extinction, I asked my first grade class today why  
the dinosaurs disappeared.  One boy answered that maybe God decided  
it was time that the dinosaurs gave way to make room for humans.  Not  
wanting to get into a theological debate, but wishing to make a  
robust defense of science, I answered

"You may be right, but scientists don't think that way even though  
some of them are very religious.  They try to give answers in terms  
of everyday events, even if they happened a long time ago. After all,  
if your car isn't working right, most people don't ask 'What did God  
do to my car?' "   (Well they might, but I didn't add that "You don't  
take your ailing car to a church!")  And so forth.

Well I suppose a huge meteor impact or massive volcanism aren't  
everyday events, but they ultimately can be interpreted in terms of  
cause and effect naturalism.

Overall, it seemed that the class went well including for the teacher  
and the parents who were present.  I don't know how my explanation  
will go over with the parents of this particular boy, but I do feel I  
have to be fair to both science and the other students in this public  
school.

Curiously the last time I taught a class for a private Christian  
fundamentalist school, things went very smoothly.  The teacher had  
asked me to leave out any reference to a long ago great age of the  
dinosaurs.  Figuring that such a school held all the strong cards, I  
complied as best I could.  The teacher, the kids, and I all seemed  
very happy with the results.  For my part, I hoped that some of the  
kids were sufficiently turned on by dinosaurs that it would help  
inspire them to turn away from Creationism some day.

The church school thing might not have turned out so well if the  
class had been brought to the Peabody expressly to debate  
evolutionists, like you have said has happened.


		Tom