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Unhelpful class ...whaaat!!

Qidus_MichaelQidus_Michael
edited January 2012 in Personal Issues
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Hello all

I attended my Bioanthropology class today- the main subject of the class is EVOLUTION. The teacher was discussing how we evolved from Apes and giving us dates about when man began to become "bipedal' and be able to walk on 2 feet and all this stuff...I don't feel comfortable but it is a mandatory class for my major.

What should I do?  How do we handle this information?
God Bless

Comments

  • RemnkemiRemnkemi
    It depends. We need a little more information.

    If the class is mandatory for your degree, then learn the material and move on. No need to feel like you're being attacked. The long term goal is to have a certain degree of competence in this class for you to receive the degree.

    If on the other hand, this is a math class and your teacher went off on a tangent, then report him/her to his/her boss. It's illegal for teachers to deviate to such a degree because it will be construed as forced religion, not education.

    Don't feel that all information that is apparently contradictory to your belief system is necessarily useless and evil ("crap" as you put it).  Even if you don't believe that homo sapiens became bipedal on "Date X" (let's assume 1,000,000,000 years ago), you'll at least know enough about it so that you can rebut the next person who claims homo sapiens became bipedal in 2011 (or some nonsense like that). You never know when information like this can benefit you.

    In the mean time, make sure you are secure in your faith. If not, talk to your father of confession and start reading the Church fathers. You'll soon realize that these bits of information are not new and the Church fathers already discussed how and why they do or don't believe them.
  • Qidus_MichaelQidus_Michael
    Okay I changed around some information, thanks for your reply.

    The class is about evolution and that is the basis for all the things we will be learning this semester. I guess I could learn from what the teacher says but they are teaching this as "facts" and making the Bible seem like a fairy tale. That offended me and made me feel that I didn't want to be there any longer.

  • RemnkemiRemnkemi
    Spend enough time on internet forums and talk to enough people and you will see that everybody believes his opinion or argument is fact, even if there is absolutely no evidence to substantiate it. The typical way to make a questionable datum or piece of information seem like "fact" is to discredit opposing views. This doesn't mean it is fact but only that they don't know how to prove it without discrediting their opponents.

    One way to respond to this teacher is to throw the ball back into his/her court. Make them give substantiating evidence without discrediting the Bible. If you do it right, the teacher may give you a good grade, not because you believe in the infallibility of the material but you believed in the fallibility of the material and you were able to challenge the material and show you have a good understanding of what is and isn't fact. This is not a skill you can learn overnight. I only bring it up because there are many ways to deal with unpleasant situations. One of them is to learn how to challenge questionable information. It will make you a better person in the end.
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