To deny, or to not to deny?

After reading Welcome to the Age of Denial I have many questions and comments for its author, Adam Frank. Perhaps I need to check the statistics, but to me it seems odd that the fraction of the population who are creationists rose from 44 percent to 46 percent over the last thirty years. Maybe I am wrong, but living in the world I do today, every person is constantly questioning and making skeptical remarks now, whether it be over social media sites or in person.

While everyone is entitled to their own opinions I also found it interesting that Frank was so assertive in his views of creationism. Frank refers to creationism as “silliness.” His quick judgment and assertions can definitely dismiss readers who do believe in such a thing—hurting his credibility or reputation he wished to build and maintain. He needs to be less quick to connect science and religion and more open to generally asking if people believe in science in general. The biases he creates in his article could dismiss more than a few people. Frank also is quick to say that in public education teacher’s focus on teaching creationism: when in fact they do not. I was never formally taught about creationism in public school because it was biased to a religion and that was against public school regulations. He seems more concerned to inform the public that science is on its way to becoming “broken and lost” because people are not informing students of its significance and its history.

Maybe science is not as prominent today as it once was. I know its harder to point out famous scientists, but that does not mean that people are any less involved in the field as they used to be. Social media dedicates pages to science, and even popular television shows such as The Big Bang Theory help spark interest in the science field for people of several different ages. Nothing should ever be forced upon someone, but I do not think encouraging younger children during the early stages of their child development would not hurt in any way. Psychologist find that exposing a human to anything will increase their liking of it; they refer to it as the “mere exposure effect.” Frank brings many valid points in his article and I do think that science is a field that more people tend to dismiss if it is not heavily publicized. However, I think he is wrong to assert his religious views in such an assertive way.