Teaching Trouble

YEARS AGO I made the mistake of telling a high school American history class that Thomas Jefferson was an atheist, which he technically was not, but actually was, he having been a "deist", for whom the terms "God", "nature", and "universe" are essentially synonymous. Jefferson, I said, truthfully, believed in science, and considered all religion to be, as he put it "superstition." The good Christian kids got of the bus after school with an attitude, ran home to mommy, and told the unfortunate lady that their weird old improper teacher was an atheist, and was trying to convert the entire class to godlessness, using of all people one of our great founding fathers as a role model, without his (Jefferson's) or the principle's permission. This happened in Arkansas. Yes, the principle called me in, and asked i I had really said all that, and why. I suggested that he take a wild guess, which I sense did not please him. So much for my tenure at that particular high school. I got out of town just in time, just ahead of a white clad righteous mob. Then, there was the time when I was teaching western civ at a junior college, again in Arkansas, and lecturing on European intellectual history, in particular Copernicus and Galileo. I described how they both got in trouble for telling the truth, that the Earth revolves around the sun, not vice versa. Yes, Christ lived on Earth, but, alas that fact does not cause the sun to orbit the Earth. Copernicus was smart enough to withhold publication until his death in 1543, thus escaping the wrath of Rome. Galileo wasn't. He stood ecumenical trial, was convicted of blasphemy, forced to take it all back, and placed under house arrest in Italy, close enough to the Vatican to be closely monitored. He may have even been forced to wear an ankle bracelet; (just kidding). Supposedly, as he left the building after receiving sentence, he muttered something to the effect: "I still know what I saw". For the sake of the sacred spirit of resistance to unreasoning religious tyranny, let's hope he said those exact words, but we'll never know. I once had a tennis buddy, a good friend who liked to go around the country digging for dinosaur bones for the purpose of proving, somehow, that the actual age of the Earth is not four point five billion years, but rather six thousand, four years, three months, two weeks, three days, and a few hours, give or take several several minutes and seconds. The exact details of his methodology eluded me then, as they do now. He still teaches at a bible college, if that tells you anything, which it certainly should. I was able to restrain myself, when this happened forty years ago, from suggesting to him that the very act of looking for dinosaur bones would seem to be an attempt to defeat his own purpose, unless he was hoping that by not finding any his method of calculating the exact age of the earth, presumably by adding up days and events in the Bible, would be vindicated. Its anyone's guess. These days, most Christian conservative republican types consider two alleged, presumed realities to be liberal hoaxes; man made climate change, and evolution by natural selection. So, things really haven't changed that much. Fast forwarding back to the recent past, in my Juco western civ class, I suggested, rather strongly, that the Christian, in particular the Roman Catholic church for centuries stymied the progress of science by refusing to allow science to progress or even engage in any meaningful research, which would seem to be self evident, a fact almost universally accepted in academia, except, I suppose, at Bible colleges. I lectured on this topic emphatically, stalking around the classroom while pounding my right fist repeatedly into my left palm, for emphasis, lamenting the baleful effect of dogma on human progress. The thirty students all had their laptops up and open on their little plastic desks, and were gazing at their screens and furiously hunting and pecking, seemingly oblivious to my behavior, or even to my presence among them. Someone, however, must have been listening, because the next day i got a few too many emails, all stating in no uncertain terms that it should be possible to teach a history class factually accurately and appropriately without showing personal bias against religion, or denigrating that most important pillar of western civilization, which, as you might guess, is the Christian faith. I replied that this is indeed so, but that, well, facts are facts, and its not as if the christian has been a traditional bulwark of uninhibited free inquiry. Nowadays, however, the Roman Catholic church owns and operates several large telescopes all over the world, and does exactly that; does research, perhaps as a way of doing penance for past crimes against the spirit of free inquiry, perhaps as a way of digging up dinosaur bones, figuratively speaking, to prove that modern astronomy is all wrong, a secular hoax, and that the Earth's sky, like the Bible strongly hints, is the full extent of the universe, with the earth being surrounded by a solid dome, through which the light of God shineth through those numerous little holes we like to call "stars". for the sake of truth and knowledge, I'll go with the penance for past crimes against the spirit of intellectual inquiry theory, bu, as they say, who knows? All I know is this; in the future if I ever teach again, I shall strenuously avoid making mention of either Thomas Jefferson's religiosity, Copernicus, Galileo, or even imply that there are any serious flaws with traditional religious beliefs. Whether I like it or not (not), I still live in a nation of bone digging, science bashing Christian conservatives, for whom the universe is quite young, and quite small.