My college level biology professor doesn't believe in evolution.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Seriously. I’m so full of confusion and WTF? that I can’t even make this close to pit worthy, so here it will have to be.

Just got back from my first day of Biology - introductory level class. I can deal with the fact that there was no syllabus, the teacher wasn’t the teacher on the schedule and there was obviously no lecture planned for the six hour class. The fact that he was using disparate Power Point presentations that were obviously created by different people, not him, was just a bonus, as was the several moments of silence when he turned to each slide while he read it for what was obviously the first time and tried to work out what to say about it. Together, they all pretty clearly support my hypothesis that he is a very last minute replacement for whomever was actually supposed to teach the class, so I can cut him a lot of slack this once. Once.

But throughout the “lecture”, he kept making weird comments about “nature’s design” and “the design of things” and things “created to” do things. OK, I thought. He seems fond of teaching through analogy, so maybe he’s using these words metaphorically.

Nope. When he got to a PP slide on Darwin’s observations, he paused, rolled his eyes and dutifully read them (I’m paraphrasing from memory, it didn’t seem worthy of writing down):

And then he rolled his eyes again and said, “Right. I haven’t noticed humans evolving, have you? 10,000 years ago we had wars - we still have wars.”

:eek:

Seriously.

:eek:

Then he said, “Well, “evolution” does have **one **thing that does support it - the proteins inside a bacteria are almost like those in a human cell. There are a few differences, but they’re almost the same. But if you look at the proteins in the cell from two humans, whether they’re from North America or Australia or Africa or Europe, their proteins will be identical. Absolutely identical, you can’t tell them apart. Bacteria and human, close, almost the same, humans, completely the same.”

I have not a clue how that’s supposed to “support” evolution as a theory, but…uh…okay.

I’m really hoping there’s a language barrier here. After all, we as a class had to have him repeat “micronutrient” and “macronutrient” dozens of times, because they sounded identical, even when he was trying to emphasize the difference. And he kept referring to everything as “molecules”. You know, those “molecules” like birds and trees. WTF?

But how the hell do you become not only a biologist, but a biology *professor *at a fairly decent college (not my college - he usually teaches at UIC) and NOT BELIEVE IN EVOLUTION?!?!?!

2

I always loved the response of telling the person to go to the nearest hospital and ask the doctor about drug-resistant bacteria.

Or, as a shirt I would love to buy says,

“Evolution is a fact.
Natural Selection is the theory.”

3

I’m speechless. Really.

4

Oh, I know! And he spent, like 20 minutes telling us all about antibiotic-resistant bacteria, so it’s not a foreign concept to him! That’s what I can’t get my head around! I can understand how people who just don’t know about biology can buy into Intelligent Design. What I don’t understand is how someone who just told me that if you put a bunch of bacteria in a dish with some penicillin, the bacteria that are resistant to penicillin will live and reproduce while the others die, so that in short order you’ll have a whole dish full of penicillin resistant bacteria can then turn around and say that populations don’t change! WHAT?!

Unless, through some torturous logic, he thinks everything BUT humans evolved? Like maybe evolution can account for everything on earth but us, and God dropped us out of spaceships intact or something?

Good God…could my biology teacher be a Scientologist? :eek:

5

A six-hour class?

You sat through six hours of this?

6

Just wait till he is fired or denied tenure due to his own ineptitude, then claims it’s due to discrimination over his religious views.

This is happening at my school with an astronomy professor, and he doesn’t realize that when he submits his insipid intelligent design book as material to be reviewed for his tenure consideration, the real scientists aren’t going to see it as much of an achievement.

The department head summed it up nicely: “The fact that Dr. Gonzalez does not understand what constitutes both science and a scientific theory disqualifies him from serving as a science educator.”

7

Are you sure he’s on the faculty at UIC? Or could he be an adjuct or staff instructor there? I’ve had some pretty bad adjuncts at some pretty good universities … they show up to class (usually) and turn in a grade sheet, the department cashes the tuition checks.

8

That does support evolution, because of bacteria and people were separately created there would be no reason we’d have the same proteins. It’s far from proof, or even strong support, but he’s not wrong. He is wrong about there being only one thing.

What level of professor is he? What did he teach before? Is he really a professor, or a lecturer? Does he have tenure? He’s at least incompetent. I’ve lectured from other people’s notes (I had 3 new classes to teach) but I at least read them first.

My suggestion is to write down all the stupid things he says and does, and if he keeps it up go to the department head or dean with data. I’m not as sure as you he doesn’t accept evolution - his comment about people not evolving might be pure cynicism.

9

Yeah, parts of that sounded like “I’m having the shittiest day ever” ranting. Understandable if he had to cover for another prof and was suddenly shoved in front of a class unprepared.

10

I’m still amused by the notion of something going by the name of Scientology having no real basis in actual science.

11

Can you drop the course? You are being shortchanged here. Regardless of your final grade, you will not have received college level instruction in biology.

12

This isn’t an incredibly common viewpoint, but it’s not all that rare either.

13

My non-evolution-believing biology teacher (so there’s at least **two ** of them out there) said that microevolution was real, but macroevolution was impossible.

He also told us that the health of the mother was not an appropriate reason for abortion (because there were no appropriate reasons). Loose quote: “She lived her life and should be thankful for the amount of time she had.”

14

Uh-huh. My brain hurts. I think he broke it.

The UIC online Phonebook query lists him as “Instructor”, but doesn’t give any more detail. He told us that he doesn’t normally teach at the community college we attend, but that he “teaches at UIC”.

I just googled him and got over 900 hits on scientific papers he’s authored or co-authored (although I’m sure many of those hits are different places citing the same papers). Mostly cellular biology, it looks like - a lot of stuff with macrophages and prostaglandins and inflammatory processes.

See, when you say it, it makes so much more sense. Want a job? :smiley: I figured that’s where he was going with it, but he never actually said that. And yeah, he did emphasize the “one” and repeated it several times and even stuck an index finger in the air, leaving the strong impression that he was conceding this single point in evolution’s favor.

I really am hoping I’m wrong about him not accepting evolution. But at the very least, he left 30+ students very confused and with the strong impression that he thinks evolution is not true, based on our after class hallway mutterings - no matter what he personally thinks, I think that’s a bad thing for a teacher to do.

If I drop this, I put myself back another year before I can apply for the nursing program, so I’m loathe to do that. The thing is, besides a few refresher points which I can get from the book (for example: I remembered the name of every cellular structure he wants us to know, but forgot whether it was the lysosome or the vacuole that surrounds and excretes cellular garbage), I’ve got a pretty good grasp of Bio - I took it years ago in college, but too long ago to transfer for the Nursing Program prerequisites. I’m really only there for the credit to satisfy the school. Anything more detailed and actually useful will be covered in excruciating depth in the nursing classes themselves.

15

If it says “Instructor,” he’s probably just an adjunct.

The quality of instructors teaching at Chicago city colleges varies widely, mostly because the system is disorganized and the instructors are pretty much left to their own devices. The dedicated instructors will do a good job regardless; the lazy ones just do the bare minimum they need to not get fired. Which, really, isn’t much. Sounds like this guy might be the latter.

16

Well, WhyNot that sounds appropriately confusing. If you decide you need a hand with understanding any of this, though, I’d be happy to give you an hour or more a week tutoring (no charge ;)) since I’ve got intro level biology down pat. I had to be able to explain it to non-majors fairly regularly as a TA, so I even have experience explaining confusing things. But not a Bio instructor who doesn’t believe in evolution.

It reminds me of the article on the wall of the grad office late in my MS program. It was creepy, and talked about how one of the foremost new hot-shot names in paleontology is a Young Earth Creationist, and how that’s becoming more common across sciences somehow. I cannot imagine the cognitive dissonance required to do really fabulous paleontology AND be a YEC.

17

Heh, I had a geology professor that was a young earth creationist.

WhyNot, I feel your pain.

18

But if he normally teaches at UIC, shouldn’t he be at least up to the usual teaching quality of that school? I got my degree at Champaign, but took classes in the summer at UIC. I would have been flabbergasted if I had a bio teacher there who didn’t believe in evolution!

19

Are you sure he wasn’t trying to make “a funny”?

20

Eh, I dunno about the evolution part; I was commenting more on the lack of preparation. My guess is that he was lazy about preparing because he could get away with it. That doesn’t necessarily mean he does the same for his UIC classes.

I teach at two schools right now, and I prep for both of them, of course, but one school is very well organized and the other is in shambles. I tend to be more meticulous about prepping for classes for the former as a result. I still do more work than other instructors at the latter school (a lot of them admit to not assigning a lot of writing assignments - for a composition class - because they don’t want to spend all that time grading them :rolleyes: ) but not as much as the time I spend prepping for the former. It’s just a result of the work enviroment, and instructors are but human. :slight_smile: