Dann Siems holds a Bachelor’s degree in Aquatic Biology and a Master’s in Biology from Bemidji State University After a brief stint in a Lutheran seminary, he completed doctoral coursework in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior as well as additional graduate work in Science Education at the University of Minnesota. In 1995 he returned to Bemidji State University where he is an Assistant Professor of Biology and Integrative Studies. As an academic “utility infielder” he has taught more than 35 different courses over the past decade. He served terms as interim director of the Aquatic Biology and Honors Programs and has worked a coordinator for People and the Environment, an innovative required component of Liberal Education at BSU. His current research interests focus on ways in which student worldviews constrain learning in undergraduate science courses. He is also in the late stages of a collaborative book project on Darwin that will be part of the Reacting to the Past series being published by Longman.

      Charles Darwin regarded himself a biologist and student of religion and I aspire to the same. While I find naturalistic explanations wholly sufficient to account for my experiences in the world, I nonetheless remain fascinated by the origins and functions (for better and for worse) of the religious impulses pervasive across cultures.

      I grew up in rural Minnesota around farms, forests, and fishing and came to academic biology almost by accident. While working as a summertime fishing guide and wintertime natural resources field technician in the early 1980s, I happened across Richard Dawkins’ wonderfully provocative ‘Selfish Gene’ and that experience sent me first to seminary and then on to graduate school.

      My diverse research interests have centered on the role of behavioral choices in evolution and on constraints on those choices imposed by genetics, environment, and individual experiences. For example, my work with embryo-larval fish shows that patterns of life history are strongly influenced by thermal environments experienced during sensitive periods of development. Similarly, my more recent work on teaching and learning reveals interesting epistemological predispositions shaped by both biological “luck-of-the-draw” and individual experience.

      I believe that rigorous science education is critically important as an antidote to misleading and dangerous nonsense. Students need to develop a will and an ability to put their own pet hypotheses (and even cherished beliefs!) at maximum risk in order to avoid self-delusion. Psychologists have documented well our propensity for confirmation bias, the tendency to look for evidence supporting our own positions. While such an approach appeals to common sense, it is the antithesis of sound science. Because we don’t come to a scientific approach naturally, it is therefore essential that we instill and nurture such a ruthlessly self-critical stance in our students.

      Regrettably, much of my energy in recent years has necessarily been channeled into combating well-orchestrated attempts to impose a Christian fundamentalist theocracy in the United States. My own work in this area has focused on exposing the true motives and affiliations of organizations promoting so-called “intelligent design,” a travesty that is at once bad science and bad theology (see Concept Map of recent Honors Council lecture). Under the guise of preserving religious freedom, a band of well-funded charlatans has created an illusion of controversy where none exists in order to further a reactionary political agenda rooted in a perverse and repressive variety of dominion theology. Their attacks on science in general and evolutionary biology in particular, are, as they have openly acknowledged, but the thin edge of a wedge intended to impose tyranny in God’s name. Students well-educated in science will see through the scam that is “intelligent design” and thus foster democracy, liberty, and justice for all.

Dann Siems
August 31, 2006