Educators may bring upon themselves unnecessary travail by taking a tactless and unjustifiable position about the relation between scientific and religious narratives. We see this, of course, in the conflict concerning creation science. Some educators representing, as they think, the conscience of science act much like those legislators who in 1925 prohibited by law the teaching of evolution in Tennessee. In that case, anti-evolutionists were fearful that a scientific idea would undermine religious belief. Today, pro-evolutionists are fearful that a religious idea will undermine scientific belief. The former had insufficient confidence in religion; the latter insufficient confidence in science. The point is that profound but contradictory ideas may exist side by side, if they are constructed from different materials and methods and have different purposes. Each tells us something important about where we stand in the universe, and it is foolish to insist that they must despise each other.
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About Neil Postman
Neil Postman was a 20th-century American media theorist and cultural critic. Neil Postman was an American author, educator, media theorist and cultural critic, who eschewed digital technology, including personal computers and mobile devices, and was critical of the use of personal computers in schools. He is best known for twenty books regarding technology and education, including Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1970), The Disappearance of Childhood (1982), Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), Conscientious Objections (1988), Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992) and The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School (1995). Read more on Wikipedia →