I am going to be teaching at a Catholic High(Religion) school this September. I have a degree in Theology and History and have spent 10 years in the public school system teaching history.
This year will be my first at a Catholic school and I am very excited because I am going to be teaching Religion.
Ok here is my question. Do you think this is a good idea? When dealing with creation/evolution I was planning on presenting both sides. I was also planning on explaining what a Catholic may believe about evolution. However, I was also planning on telling the students about evolution’s “weak spots.” I think it is important to talk about the seemingly lack of transitional fossils that should be in existence if evolution is true. Ok what do you say? Is that evolution’s “achilies heal?” Let’s keep it real simple—THANKS!!
If anything, I’d follow a bit in line with VociMike from post #3. I might just try to defuse the whole thing. We are not all knowing. If anything as a Catholic trying to teach the religion, you really can’t do a good job of that unless you also let them know that some things will be left a mystery. With work some of those mysteries could be solved, but many won’t. They will be there regardless of if you acknowledge them or not.
Genesis gives us a testimony, we can get a feel for what it means, but to know it with utterly complete precision I think is beyond us. I’m sure you can pray on the verses your whole life and still learn something new in your old age.
Science is not Truth. It is a method. It takes are God given ability to reason, and helps us try to understand the natural world. While it may not be Truth, it is not nonsense. It does give us a certain perspective, that should not be brushed off. I don’t think it is a good idea to become too inflexible in your thinking, though you certainly should remain grounded. If you disregard one explanation over the other, just out of a reaction against the other, I think you chose a poor reason.
Along with being inflexible, I’m sure many looked to the messiah as one who would bring a certain power of a warlord who would bring Israel to glory, well if that was the case, they may have gotten the idea of the messiah right, but how exactly he would act would have been misinterpreted.
I guess if we are going to deal with a concept like the eternal, perhaps it might have all started with God acting in roughly the way of Genesis. Then with respect to the eternal there was a split at an instant that then filled that moment in with a complete past and complete future. Then with our perspective the is a fork in the past making both accounts true, although any study of the past would make the primary past nearly impossible to study today. The secondary past is more or less filled in as to give us an ability to give us a better understanding of the Truth, and allow us ways to better care for others.
If anything in this debate, it seems like you have rather small minority of people who are reacting against each other. While certainly you can have your preference one way or another, in day to day life, in most cases it isn’t that important. In religion there are much more important issues. In science, especially biology, you ought not disregard it, you don’t exactly though have to make it dictate your whole metaphysical or theological outlook (granted you still have to respect it). Things are not always as they seem though. There is still much mystery left in who it relates to Truth.
The point I think you should try to get across is to not make this an issue, where you set up a false dichotomy of either religion or science. You should not disregard the other, to bolster support for your preferences. There is so much mystery left, we couldn’t possible have a large amount of certainly. Don’t be stiff-necked and obstinate with regard to the subject.
