A Secular Voice in the Valley

It was a full house at the California State University, Fresno Satellite Student Union.

Dr. Eugenie Scott was there Wednesday, December 2 to present her talk, “Why all the fuss about Evolution?”. CVAAS President Mark Boyd and Vice President David Costa were invited to attend the pre-talk reception for Dr. Scott, and we had a chance to talk to her one on one. We were both impressed with her intelligence and kindness. She’s a very easy person to talk with.

The Satellite Student Union sits 800 people. By the time Dr. Scott started with her talk, more chairs had to be brought in to bring the theater to it’s full capacity, and then perhaps a little more. There were still people standing in the back when she started.

Dr. Scott’s talk explained many different items, including the basics of how the evolutionary process works, common fallacies used to attack evolution, and how multiple lines of evidence from many different scientific disciplines support the theory of evolution. And yes, she explained the difference between the scientific versus the common usage of the word “theory”.

One of the points that Dr. Scott expressed several times is that many Christians have no problem accepting both evolution and God. She also made it clear that a more literal view of the Bible or a Christian viewpoint based on fundamentalism was probably not compatible with evolution. “When you filter evolution through a strict literal interpretation of the Bible, the two are incompatible.” The same is true of other religious texts, such as the Koran.

After the talk Dr. Scott accepted several questions from the audience. A couple of Young Earth Creationists were given the mic, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that all but one were very gracious.  I was a little upset to hear that one gentleman was a science teacher – but I gathered he still taught to the State standard.

The last Creationist tried to ask several questions right from the talking points given by the Answers in Genesis website.  He tried to mention more than one “problem” with evolution, but Dr. Scott saw right through it, forced him to stop with only one, then answered that question clearly and completely.  She then pointed out (as she had many times that night) that a good resource for these questions is the website Talk Origins.  The Talk Origin “Index to Creationist Claims” is an exhaustive list of answers to the so-called “problems” with evolution commonly given by creationists.

Overall, this talk was a success.  Dr. Scott is wonderful and very gracious.  The audience was calm and respectful.  There were lots of students and I saw that the majority of them took notes.

If you would like to learn more about Dr. Scott and the National Center for Science Education, please visit the NCSE website.  I also recommend that you download the NCSE book, “Voices for Evolution“.

A video was made of Dr. Scott’s talk.  CVAAS will post a link to it when it becomes available.