I know these people who were once curious, probably as children, but now they got saved and found antievolutionist churches, they are no longer curious about nature.
Plus, science is at best a tertiary concern that is touched only in the discipleship process, not as a salvation issue.
Some of these guys are 70-year old men part of fundamentalist churches for decades.
Their lack of curiosity drives a trained intellectual like me crazy.
What would Asa Gray do?
Help me, evolutionary creationists of America!
1 Like
There could be a lot of factors that contribute to a person’s (or population’s) perceived lack of curiosity: aspects of public education, years in the workforce, lack of contact with nature, or plenty of other circumstantial or relational events that take precedent over scientific curiosity – it just isn’t on the radar for many people. People who live in very different communities can come to value different things.
Many people were also artistic once, probably as children, and gradually grew to value other things more than making art. Some come back to it later on, some don’t. I imagine these are the kinds of things that are more easily “caught than taught” – if intellectual curiosity isn’t modeled consistently to someone, they will probably be less likely to pursue it themselves. Your enthusiasm and desire to pursue science with and among others can make a difference, though I’m sure it’s frustrating when people don’t seem to respond to that.
2 Likes
I remember many jobs where I worked among the heathen and curiosity was no more in evidence than in many a church.
Not all science need be focused on origins. If church associates are interested in conservation, medical insights, space travel, bird watching, technology, we can engage with and honor those interests as far as they go.
3 Likes
I find that excitement and child-like fascination with creation is contagious. The stories of how scientists figured out what we know are really captivating as well as it helps walk people through the logical progression of the testing of ideas. For many people, the idea that our universe was once very dense, with the distance between locations in space so close that the entire universe was effectively the size of a dime - but at the same time, this idea has won over the cosmological community. How is it that experts in the field can believe an idea so farfetched? Well, the evidence! It’s a journey of walking through Einstein’s equations and the dramatic 1919 eclipse, to the bizarre yet mathematically predicted redshift and all the alternative hypotheses we considered, to the steady state theory, to the cosmic microwave background and that white dialectric material - and more…
It’s not a matter of here’s 1000 reasons why everything you ever learned about creation is wrong but a matter of the real thing is so much better!
2 Likes
You can’t. Time is a precious commodity which everyone must decide for themselves how to employ. Making such choices has nothing to do with a lack of curiosity. You will NEVER convince me to be interested in reality tv shows. Others will never be convinced to spend their time exploring religion. And yet others will never be convinced to spend any of their precious time considering the evidence for evolution.
Yeah. That!
And I think Mitchell captures some truth to with …
…in the sense that any curiosity that is merely imported (such as a teacher hoping / demanding that their students start being curious) will usually fail to be their own native curiosity.
Although there is hope, as Laura notes with it being more …
Teachers can at least model that enthusiastic curiosity in front of the classrooms, and there can be some contagion from that … and perhaps even more importantly: planted seeds even if they don’t germinate until long after students have moved on from that classroom. It at least got them to, even if grudgingly, plow a fresh furrow through a little-used part of their brain that may then become a little less hostile to (or more amenable to) traversal when a similar opportunity for wonder presents itself in the future.
1 Like