FASTLY - Faith & Science Teaching

Understanding Adaptation

In Brief

This activity focuses on parts of evolutionary theory that are not controversial for most creationists, helping students to see that one can establish a relationship within areas of agreement. It engages students in simulating a realistic, but noncontroversial, evolutionary change.

Goals

Students will understand how adaptation and natural selection affect a specific animal population, and how observation of such processes is related to larger questions about creation and evolution.

Thinking Ahead

The purpose of this unit is not to teach details about evolutionary science, but to offer an example of how learning more about particular scientific claims related to origins relates to approaching the larger debate with a “virtue lens” focused on loving others as well as pursuing truth. This activity focuses on genetic variation and adaptation. If you have time to teach a full inquiry-based lesson on this topic, you could adapt this activity accordingly.

A common student misunderstanding is that evolution means individual creatures change into something new. Students also sometimes wrongly assume that evolution is supposed to be automatic, so if God made amphibians from fish, there should no longer be fish. This activity can help students process those misconceptions, regardless of how much or how little they think God used evolution. This in turn may contribute to more charitable engagement with others around origins by reducing the number of false assumptions about what others in fact hold to be the case.

This activity explores a simplified example of the kind of evolutionary change that is accepted by most Christians, regardless of their views about how and when God created. This level of change is often called adaptation, which is part of microevolution, and results in a different variety of the same basic kind of creature. The modern debate about evolution focuses on larger changes that are thought to operate much like adaptation, but over much longer time periods, and resulting in radically new kinds of creatures, such as the first birds developing from reptiles. Young Earth Creationists and Old Earth Creationists point to most differences between creatures as evidence of God’s wise design and provision for His creatures through miraculous, special creation, yet the possibility of adaptive change is not in itself the point of controversy.

Remind students before, during, and after the activity that various views of origins could accept the level of change in the simulation, and that the simulation will teach them how the larger changes, which are controversial between different views of origins, are claimed to happen. There is much more to evolutionary theory than this one element, and to why Christians are so divided about it, but this activity may help students understand how studying microevolution can help one understand macroevolution.

Preparing the Activity

Needed:

• Activity handout How Does Evolution Work and the Answer Key

• Calculator

• Ruler

• Graph paper

• If enough computers are available, have students do the graphing on Excel or another graphing program

Teaching the Activity

Begin by reading aloud the following four statements and asking students to write down whether or not they think creationists and proponents of evolution disagree about them.

• New traits appear in creatures by genetic variation and are spread through a population if they provide a reproductive benefit.
• Populations of particular creatures evolve over time as traits that are better adapted to the environment prove more successful.
• Most differences that we see between creatures are due to miraculous special creation.
• Major changes take place through evolution from one type of creature to another, such as reptiles evolving into birds.

Tell students that only the third and fourth of these statements are controversial and that scientists with various views about origins accept the first two. Ask students if this is surprising to them and what their assumptions were based on. Even if they are not able to articulate a specific basis for their assumptions, the question may help them realize that they were making assumptions.

Introduce students to the idea that small-scale evolutionary changes, called adaptation, are not the key issue in origins debates so much as larger scale changes. Stress that the activity they are about to do simulates adaptation, but will help them understand evolution in general.

Hand out copies of How Does Evolution Work and read the background story at the top of the handout. Ensure students have calculators, rulers, and graph paper before they begin. Check student work, especially their first few numbers. To get students started, it might be helpful to calculate the first number in each data table column as a class.

At the end of the activity, emphasize this “take-home” message: No individual snake got darker; the population got darker. Evolution of any kind is not about individual creatures changing into something new; it is about populations changing as better-adapted individuals survive and reproduce more than the others. Conclude by discussing:

• Did this activity improve your understanding of adaptation and how it works?
• If we know that this kind of adaptation happens, what is the real disagreement among proponents of different views of origins?
• How might understanding adaptation accurately help you love others in the context of debates about origins?
• How might misconceptions you may have about other aspects of and positions in origins debates affect the way you view and interact with others? What might this imply for how you should approach such debates?

Why Do They Think That?

In Brief

When making decisions about faith and science issues, Christians use reason, which is our ability to think, and tradition, which is our theological perspective, to interpret two sources of information: nature (God’s world) and the Bible (God’s Word), both of which are God’s gifts. This activity engages students in reflecting on how differences in interpreting these two gifts influence the positions Christians take regarding how and when God created.

Goals

Students will understand that positions on specific origins questions are grounded in differing views about how we should interpret different kinds of evidence.

Students will understand that differing views on origins may cluster differently in relation to different specific questions.

Thinking Ahead

The reasons we take certain positions on science and faith issues are complex. Christians with deep backgrounds in both the relevant sciences and theology study the same Bible and the same world yet adopt opposite positions regarding the age of creation and the degree to which God uses evolution. Teaching FASTly invites an exploration of the differing views that seeks understanding rather than quick victory. A useful way to explain the differences to students is that these scientists agree that both nature and the Bible must be taken seriously, but disagree about which is easier to misunderstand. Individuals might also have different opinions about what is at stake spiritually.

In his 1996 book, The Battle of Beginnings: Why Neither Side is Winning the Creation-Evolution Debate, Del Ratzsch observes that some Christians feel their souls are at stake if they embrace evolutionary ideas, while others see no such danger. This activity should not be approached as a way of pressuring students to change their views, but rather as a way of thinking about why others come to different conclusions. Even when we continue to disagree with someone, understanding more clearly how they may be thinking can help us engage more lovingly with them. It aims to help students see that specific beliefs are embedded in larger practices of interpretation. An activity such as this will make most sense if in your wider science teaching you encourage students to see science in terms of models and interpretations, rather than as facts to memorize.

Related Book Review: The Lost World of Adam and Eve by John H. Walton

Preparing the Activity

Needed:

• Slips of paper for each student

• Why Do They Think That 1 handouts

• Why Do They Think That 2 handouts

• Presentation slides from Why Do They Think That

Teaching the Activity

Display the question on the first slide of the Why Do They Think That slides:

• How can scientists who are Christians believe the same Bible and study the same world yet wind up disagreeing so much about creation?

Give students a few minutes to silently write down thoughts in response to this question. Then display the second slide and ask the following questions of the class:

• Is it possible for the first two categories, Scripture and Nature, to disagree if both are authored by God? (Christians would say no: the debates are between science and how we understand the world, and faith, how we understand Scripture, not between nature and the Bible. If God is the author of all truth, then science and Scripture, if properly understood, will not conflict.
• Can the second two categories, Human understanding of Scripture and Human understanding of Nature, disagree? (Yes).
• Why might the second two disagree? Let students figure out that one or both could be incorrect because of the fallibility of human understanding. If they do not get there on their own you could ask: if there seems to be a conflict, is it necessarily the case that one of the second two categories must be correct? If you have time and a thoughtful class, you could also mention the possibility that at this second level there could be agreement and yet both could be mistaken, as when both science and theology once believed that the sun circled the earth.
• What might cause us to make mistakes interpreting the Bible? Or interpreting nature? Let students generate ideas. Suggestions might include traditions, ideologies, fears, carelessness, assumptions, other agendas, things we think we know from other sources, mistakes, willful ignoring of evidence we are not comfortable with, and so on.
• Are we more likely to make a mistake in one area than the other? Why? This implies a further question that you may wish to explore: in cases of conflict should we always assume that a particular one of the two categories is the area where this is error?
• Assume two Christians disagree about their interpretations of the Bible, or nature, or both. Even though they obviously disagree about something, what important things do they probably agree about regarding the Bible and nature? Let students wrestle with this, but eventually circle back to the Great Commandment, that as Christians we trust that the Bible and nature are intended to lead us into loving God more deeply and sharing his love with one another.

After this discussion, distribute the handouts and allow students to complete the worksheet with one or two partners. After the handouts are completed and collected, redirect student attention to the question that began the lesson and solicit responses.

Ask students if what they learned makes it easier to disagree about these issues in ways that promote love of God and neighbor.