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Tuesday, September 29, 2009
COMMENTS OF THE DAY »
Will Holland, opinion editor dailyopinion@ou.edu • phone: 325-7630 • fax: 325-6051
In response to Tarrant Carter’s Friday column, “‘God is probably not pro-life’” YOU CAN COMMENT AT OUDAILY.COM
“This article struck me as uninformed and callous. I would encourage Mr. Carter to actually interview some Christians and look in the Bible himself before making so many assumptions. I was very offended by many of the points he makes here.” -b00mer
“If a soul needs to get here, it will find a womb to come through. In the meantime, women have a right to control their own bodies.” -Sartia
STAFF COLUMN
OUR VIEW
Quality trumps quantity when it comes to education No matter where each of us came from, one thing is true of all OU students: they all graduated from some form of high school. And although students at OU have already passed that step, education should remain important to them. After all, some students are the teachers of tomorrow, and even those who aren’t going into the field of education are likely to have kids, many of whom will be directly affected by America’s academic system in the future. According to a Sunday AP story, President Barack Obama said he is in favor of longer school days and academic years for children in grades K through 12 because he believes it will make America’s children better qualified to compete will children from other countries, many of which already have longer school days and years. While we are in favor of improving America’s educational system, we are not sure making the school days longer is the answer. Sure, longer days may allow students and teachers to have more time
together to go over lessons and clarify unclear information. But we think the U.S. should focus on making the educational system better, as opposed to simply making kids stay in the classroom for more time. We realize this is not an easy thing to do, but if everyone does their part, improvements to education could be made. Teachers have a responsibility to inspire their students and convey their lessons better. Colleges of education, therefore, must train prospective teachers better. Students must be engaged learners, and parents must make sure their kids are keeping up with their schoolwork. We think back on the time we spent in high school, and remember instances of uninvolved teachers, parents and students. This may not have been the norm, but if we could eliminate these instances, maybe all students would have better high school experiences and get a better education, or at least a better shot.
STAFF CARTOON
AJ Stafford is a psychology senior.
Message of hope emerges following family’s hardship It is difficult not to notice the sad state of news in this country. Lately it has been the source of endless frustration for me and for all who care about the causes of objectivity and information, on which any real democracy must rely. Traditional forms of journalism are dying. Every paper is downsizing, and many are folding. The cable news networks are appealing to ever-narrower demographics, and so-called news programs are spiraling toward opinion. Opinions, half-truths and lies pervade the media, and with every SLATER increase in their presence, serious RHEA journalists and guardians of reason and understanding in our society are more compelled to taint their own coverage, all in the name of the dwindling objectivity they strive to protect. That is why I take great pains - and any person who shares his or her words must - to articulate something vital, clear and uncorrupted by the swirling deluge. What can anyone say to lift the level of sanity in our discourse? How can I convey what I believe? And what can I say of truth and any importance, without simply adding to the gross glut of our public commentary? I spent my summer in Europe, mainly as a volunteer teaching orphan children in rural Bulgaria. And as anyone who has spent much time abroad knows, America’s political and cultural presence is constant and pervasive. I found myself the subject of constant projections. American culture, it would seem, is pervaded by violent films and music, our leaders full of bluster and owned by dark and malevolent interests. Many, however, shared with me an instant and deep feeling of hope and gratitude. An old man I encountered on a dark side-street in Istanbul shared a cup of tea, and in broken English, said we were brothers. And I came, through constant interaction with those of other cultures, to better understand our own, to define myself and to know for myself what was most essential in my American identity. That though we love free enterprise, we know we must protect those whose enterprises would be infringed. Though we strive for liberty, it must be matched with justice. My last night in Europe, I was up late packing in my London hotel room, and I watched twice with morbid curiosity a BBC interview with Dr. James Lovelock, the 90-year-old earth scientist, member of the
Royal Society and Knight-Commander of the Order of the British Empire. His words have haunted me desperately for every day of the last month. He said we have no hope – that global heating is beyond helping and bound to do us in and that in the next century there will be a hellish dwindling of humanity from a population of nearly seven billion to no more than one. And my Prius, and all of the work being done around this world by people who care all of a sudden, seemed more an exercise in futility – a petty, humiliating afterthought next to the vast waste we all have on our hands – the world hamstrung by gridlock and corruption of the powerful. Indeed, my whole summer was a drop in the ocean of need that is swallowing our world. The health care debate in recent weeks seemed to die with Ted Kennedy, left to languor in petty political gamesmanship and timidity. Two years ago this fall, my brother was diagnosed with brain cancer, and a tumor the size of a lemon was removed from his brain. Anyone who knows me well knows that the days have been long and difficult for our family. It has been my highest priority to spend time with my family and to forge a stronger friendship with my brother. It has been a powerfully moving time for me, and I have grown to understand my brother deeply and to better know myself. It has been a Herculean struggle for our family. The financial burden of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy could break a family of any less means. Two years ago, my brother’s doctor told him he would be taking chemotherapy for the rest of his life. And now, after many months of excruciating treatment and despite odds giving him weeks or few months, he is cancer free. That is why I am hopeful - that amid an ignorant and acrimonious debate, reason may still hold sway; that in a world of desperate need, service is still vital and welcomed; that in a season of nightmarish problems and the most difficult gridlocks, people will, in spite of the odds, understand each other.
Slater Rhea is an English literary and cultural studies and letters senior.
STAFF COLUMN
Students should keep an open mind about evolution debate How do we evaluate what someone thinks? What is the goal of the academic community and experience? How do we meaningfully communicate about reality and ourselves? Many questions have come to my mind when thinking about my collegiate experience thus far. My studies have been limited. I teach English to international students. I study the topic that I teach. I don’t understand fully the complexities of an architecJON tural design or the steps to a MALONE complicated dance. I don’t comprehend the manner in which electronics are engineered or the numerous computer languages. I most definitely don’t understand molecular biology or biochemistry in their complexities, but there are those who do. And on the issue of the origins of life, sometimes they even disagree. Case in point are the lectures on campus Monday and Tuesday regarding Darwinian natural selection and the idea of intelligent design. Regardless of the irritated blustering of the naturalists populating OU’s Sam Noble Museum of Natural History, the
“pseudoscience” of what the members of the Discovery Institute are engaging in seems to be what actually falls under a historical definition of science, observing natural phenomena (e.g. the Cambrian Explosion or the human cell) and making inferences from that data. Even if rejected initially (ask Copernicus about scientific consensus), eventually more evidence will surface about the origins of mass amounts of information. The information itself is irrespective of religious conviction. If popular biologists like Richard Dawkins can study what he himself describes in his book “The God Delusion” as “apparent design” in nature and then reject it, making the inference that God does not exist because Darwinian natural selection can explain all human complexity, this is a troubling dichotomy. On one hand, the naturalist biologists are asserting that science has proven the “truth” of the macroevolution of species. They conclude that no non-natural cause could have caused it. But who is making the truth statement here? Science itself has no grounds for making truth statements, only hypothesizing on what reality appears to be. As such, if opposing ideas about the interpretation of information
surface (some by the religiously-driven, others certainly not), I think I should at least listen to them. On the other hand, we have the intelligent design proponents advocating that observable information in nature comes from a mind or intelligence rather than purely naturalistic causes. They explain the origin of matter and information itself as having to originate from a mind rather than purely naturalistic explanations previously thought to be law. This comparison is further troubling in statistics on campus. As I try to evaluate the previous events on campus related to science and the overwhelming spirit of the day on campus, I am fascinated to find that while the intelligent design and evolution awareness group has brought in a single event to the OU museum (back in February), there have been or will be 29 campus events championing the cause and findings of Charles Darwin this year alone. Hardly a case of giving dissent an opportunity to speak, eh? And even as another event is planned for Tuesday (the screening of a new film, “Darwin’s Dilemma”), the museum has responded with free admission and a separate lecture prior to the screening titled “The Cambrian Explosion and the Burgess Shale: No Dilemma for Darwin.”
T=: O@A6=DB6 D6>AN Jamie Hughes Editor-in-Chief Meredith Moriak Managing Editor Charles Ward Assistant Managing Editor Ricky Ly Night Editor Will Holland Opinion Editor Michelle Gray, Merrill Jones Photo Editors
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Even for a film screening discussing the possibility that natural selection doesn’t explain the complexity of the Cambrian fossil record, everybody gets up in arms. As such, I am very interested to attend both events on campus. I want to see how the establishment addresses the issue of fossils and human DNA. I want very much to see if the arguments of those in the intelligent design camp are actually “pseudoscience” or not. But perhaps most of all, I want to see how they interact with each other. To have some sort of meaningful discussion of these things requires that we make clear our presuppositions about the nature of reality and life. No one is outside the realm of bias. We’re all influenced, but how we get past that, I think, determines how we can look at the information presented to us. We, as college students, aren’t stupid or ignorant. Even though I don’t understand all of the terminology doesn’t mean I can’t think deeply and discuss meaningfully the implications of scientific findings, be they religious or non. Let’s see how these events go and evaluate from there, not the reverse. I’m an English teacher. You may be an architect. But we all might see our undergirding beliefs surface if we could at least rationally discuss this. Jon Malone is an English education graduate student.
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