The World Extra section of a recent edition of the
Waikato Times (September 3) leads with an article taken from
The Times of London concerning the situation of academic staff at some American universities (religious foundations) who have lost their jobs because they have challenged the literal truth of certain articles of faith. Specifically, some faculty staff were having difficulty in maintaining their support for the creation story, in general, and, specifically, for the notion that humanity is descended from a single couple, namely Adam and Eve; this in the light of the enormous amount of knowledge, now available, about the evolution of the planet and of life on it.
Behind the Times discussion was the widely-shared assumption, that university scholars should be free to challenge knowledge claims, in whatever domain, and that it is dubious scholarship to attempt to maintain these kinds of myth in the face of overwhelming evidence that they cannot be literally true.
