ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
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Hello All:  I have been reading the many e-mail messages about science and 
evolution.  It is very clear that people who know about the scientific 
process and how powerful it is should not back away from the truths that 
science revealswhen confronted with ideas on evolution put forth by people 
who are illiterate of that process.  to do so is to deny hundreds of years 
of hard-earned scientific investigation by incredibly dedicated people, some 
of whom lost their lives to bring our knowledge to where it is today.

To ask whether science should state what it knows, and whether science 
museums should state what science knows, is acquiescing to the old notion of 
it's rude to question another's religious viewpoints.  Creationists have 
every right to their beliefs, but they are not behaving intelligently when 
they step mentally into a world (science) that they obviously have not 
studied, and say it holds no truth about such-and-such a subject.  As one 
responder to this topic (I hope it isn't a debate) stated, it is OK  to tell 
people they are wrong when they make statements based on ignorance.

What this debate in the larger citizenship points to is how weak the U.S. 
educational standards are; people are not being taught about subjects 
(science is just one) they need to become informed citizens in a political 
system (democracy--such as it is) that requires a good knowledge base to 
make decisions which influence the direction of this country.  We cannot 
acquesce to ignorance--it will take us back down a road where no informed 
person would want to go.


Shelly Ryan
Museum Studies Graduate Student
Bay Area, California

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