Posted on 09/20/2005 7:02:45 AM PDT by Right Wing Professor
ITHACA, N.Y. - Lenore Durkee, a retired biology professor, was volunteering as a docent at the Museum of the Earth here when she was confronted by a group of seven or eight people, creationists eager to challenge the museum exhibitions on evolution.
They peppered Dr. Durkee with questions about everything from techniques for dating fossils to the second law of thermodynamics, their queries coming so thick and fast that she found it hard to reply.
After about 45 minutes, "I told them I needed to take a break," she recalled. "My mouth was dry."
That encounter and others like it provided the impetus for a training session here in August. Dr. Durkee and scores of other volunteers and staff members from the museum and elsewhere crowded into a meeting room to hear advice from the museum director, Warren D. Allmon, on ways to deal with visitors who reject settled precepts of science on religious grounds.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Are they from Jersey?
Gotta do some work, else the taxpayer will be mad. Later, y'all.
I am arguing that, to some extent. They're dealing with the public. They can expect some to be hostile or rude. It's a peril of the job. Just a tough day's work.
"Personally, I liked the university. They gave us money and facilities, we didn't have to produce anything! You've never been out of college! You don't know what it's like out there! I've *worked* in the private sector. They expect *results*." -- Ghostbusters
I know hecklers by their behavior. Asking questions, not listening to the answers.
If you want to know about my behavior on these threads, search my last 500 posts or so. I generally stay on topic.
Yep.
We want as many people educated as possible. Sometime read up on why that's a good idea.
So it's by design? :-)
Absolutely untrue. I have no idea what the other side of the story is. And until I find that out, I have drawn no conclusions from this story.
You have admitted to "challenging" docents on museum tours yourself; could it be that even if you are not guilty of the extreme behavior that the article describes, you are in ideological agreement with it?
Absolutely untrue as well. I have never 'challenged' a museum curator, nor would I 'admit' to doing so when I have never done anything even remotely like it. I brought my family up as a hypothetical situation to disprove your bias that a group of people asking questions would necessarily be rude.
Please do not make false charges, and destroy a legitimate conversation.
I think the Wedge Document deserves its own thread.
"Big difference between partially regurgitating food to re-chew it and eating cecal pellets (they're completely different from fecal pellets, or "poop"). "
Poop is poop. If it exits the anus, it's poop, in my book.
Seriously, I do know the difference, but it's a pretty hard one to explain to a 5-year-old the first time she sees her guinea pig pulling pellets out of its butt and eating them. I quote: "Ewwwww! Porky's eating his poop!"
Actually, this discussion has some relevance. The typical museum visitor in a major natural history museum has a lot in common with the 5-year-old mentioned above. The docent's task is to help them make some sense of the exhibits by explaining what they represent.
While the retired biology teacher in this article might well have been able to answer the questions posed by this argumentative group of visitors, that was not her job at the time.
In the same way, it was not my job to explain the bunny or guinea pig's cecal pellet ingestion to the 5-year-old. To her, the guinea pig was eating it's poop. The correct explanation for a 5-year-old is that it's doing that to get more nutrients out of its food, and that rabbits and guinea pigs do that, but people don't. More explanation is not needed for the audience and less is avoidance.
The kid goes away satisfied, and may (or may not) learn about the digestive process of lagomorphs later in life. The Bible's a lot like that, as I see it. It offers a simple explanation to a bunch of nomadic shepherds. It's OK for them to eat rabbits because rabbits are like the other animals it's OK to eat, since they "chew their cud." How'd we get here? God created us in his image.
Simple explanations, and adequate for the purpose.
Point taken.
And yet it's the creationists who are always accused of forcing their beliefs on others. Again, very telling.
..It's obvious. beaver evolving into duck.
Quite so. Just your standard-issue, run-of-the-mill, Trinity-denying Christianity.
They will be when the creationists bring forth supportable, meaningful scientific arguments. The article states someone was using the "2nd Law of Thermodynamics" argument. Even prominent creationist/IDers say not to use that argument anymore. It has been thoroughly debunked. Yet IDers persist.
IOW, scientists aren't always polite to people who are wasting their time.
But you've repeatedly told us that the NY Times is "leftist" thus strongly impying that what they write is not to be trusted. That's a conclusion in and of itself.
Simply an ongoing speciation process and you're a lumper rather than a splitter.
Of course they can be questioned. If you're actually trying to mount a serious challenge to the presentation, though, the questions should be directed toward the scientists who established the veracity of the museum's various facts, they're the ones in a position to answer, not a museum tour guide. And your questions better have more substance than "Doesn't evolution break the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics?" if you expect your challenge to be taken as serious.
(Good to see ya around again, by the way.)
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