A judge’s decision in Cobb County, Ga., to remove stickers from textbooks advising students “evolution is a theory” to be “critically considered” perpetuates the fallacious status quo that evolution is science and creationism is religion.
In a conflicted Jan. 13 verdict, U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper concluded that though the labels have a “secular purpose,” they violate the separation of church and state.
Some underlying assumptions need to be exposed to understand this culture war.
The debate does not pit religion against science. Rather, it is between two models used to interpret the same facts to determine origins. Both are religious worldviews in that they are assumed a priori, according to Answers in Genesis (www.answersingenesis.org), a creation science organization.
On this point, “literalists are absolutely right,” professor Michael Ruse of Florida State University said in a May 2000 National Post article. His arguments led to an early ‘80s ruling against “balanced treatment” of creation and evolution in Arkansas schools.
“Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion — a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality,” Ruse said in the article. “This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.”
In his book Refuting Evolution, Jonathan Sarfati, who holds a doctorate in physical chemistry, concludes, “It’s not really a question of who is biased, but which bias is the correct bias with which to be biased.”
He lets leading evolutionists shed their mythical lab coats of neutrality:
“The fact is most scientists are not really as objective and dispassionate in their work as they would like you to think,” reveals Boyce Rensberger, an anticreationist writer. “Most scientists first get their ideas about how the world works not through rigorously logical processes but through hunches and wild guesses.”
Indeed, evolutionary biologists such as Richard Dickerson believe that “science is fundamentally a game” with one rule: “Let us see how far and to what extent we can explain the behavior of the physical and material universe in terms of purely physical and material causes, without invoking the supernatural.”
Moreover, neo-Darwinian geneticist Richard Lewontin admits being forced by a commitment to materialism to “create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive” because “we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
What is the motivation for preaching evolution with such fervency “in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories,” as Lewontin puts it?
In The Blind Watchmaker, a classic college text, evolutionary evangelist Richard Dawkins of Oxford University credits Charles Darwin with allowing him to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.
Atheists correctly realize that teaching intelligent design concepts alongside evolution or merely pointing to weaknesses in evolution are severe threats to the humanistic religion, which has a firm foothold in schools.
Not surprisingly, humanistic-leaning organizations lead the pack in squelching dialog.
Before the Georgia decision, the National Academy of Sciences mass-mailed teachers to contact the school board and write newspaper articles to fight discussion of disputes surrounding evolution. The plea, posted on the NAS Web site, even warned against debating opponents of evolution.
After the verdict, Eugenie Scott, recipient of the American Humanists Association’s 1998 Isaac Asimov Science Award and — not coincidentally — the president of the National Center for Science Education, praised the “unanimous decision to not present creationism in science classes in Cobb County.”
Bruce Chapman, president of the Discovery Institute, a think tank that includes many professors from leading universities, thinks the subterfuge by evolutionists needs to cease so both views can be freely broached by educators.
“Why should evolution be the only controversial topic immune from critical examination in the classroom?” Chapman asked.
The answer, of course, is fear: fear that the truth, which in Thomas Jefferson’s “marketplace of ideas,” always prevails.
Contact Doug Waters at uspinnak@unf.edu.
