MODERN TIMES
by Art Hobson
ahobson@uark.edu
NWA Times 28 May 2005
CREATIONISM
The
18th-century "Enlightenment" was a time when the supremacy of
religious dogma, and such practices as executing religious heretics, were
replaced by experience and reason as the best guides to reliable
knowledge. Enlightenment values
guided the founding of our nation and are part and parcel of science,
technology, education, and indeed modern culture itself.
But
experience and reason often reveal new truths, and religious
fundamentalists--those who regard a literal reading of ancient religious texts
as the most reliable guide to knowledge--are increasingly uncomfortable with
those new truths. Thus we witness
today a cultural clash between Enlightenment and pre-Enlightenment values. Fundamentalists of all
persuasions--Moslem, Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant--seek to turn back the
clock. It is not yet
twilight for the Enlightenment, but in America the forces of darkness are
gathering around two key institutions:
science and education. This
cultural clash is most evident in fundamentalist efforts to replace our
understanding of biological evolution with creationist dogma.
Scientifically, there is no debate at all. Scientists don't debate or even discuss
creationist ideas in the scientific literature, except as an example of a
dangerous pseudoscience (conclusions masquerading as science but not supported
by evidence or reason). As
President Bush's Director of Science and Technology Policy, Dr. John Marburger,
puts it, "Evolution is a cornerstone of modern biology." An overwhelming scientific
consensus supports the interconnectedness and evolution of all life on
Earth. The evidence for the
evolution of humans is especially impressive, stretching back over six million
years and including over 20 different species of two-legged human ancestors
since we branched off from the other apes. The evidence for evolution is broad and deep, and comes from
biology, physics, chemistry, geology, anthropology, paleontology, archeology,
and astronomy. The creationist
campaign thus threatens all these sciences. In my own field, physics, creationism challenges radioactive
dating, many other dating techniques, the big bang, the age of the universe,
and the age of Earth, while distorting the laws of thermodynamics.
The
fundamentalist assault on science and education has been winning. School boards are eliminating evolution
or requiring teachers to teach creationism alongside of evolution--which is
just like requiring teachers to give the flat-Earth theory equal time with the
spherical-Earth theory. School
boards order that anti-evolution messages be attached to biology
textbooks. Science films that
mention evolution are being banned from science museums. A state-supported creationist museum
has been established in Eureka Springs.
An estimated 50 percent of Arkansas science teachers do not teach
evolution at all because of creationist pressures. Over half of all Americans
do not believe that humans evolved from other animals.
How
can creationists be winning when their scientific ideas have no merit? The answer is propaganda, politics, and
perseverance. Creationists'
religious fervor goes into fiery sermons, political activism, influencing and
electing school boards, and writing popular books and magazine articles that
can appear to be scientific but that are based on rigid ideology rather than
experience and reason.
If
creationists have a theory to replace evolution, they should follow the normal
scientific process of presenting this theory in peer-reviewed journals. Except for a single paper, since
repudiated by the journal that accepted it, creationists have not done
this Creationists would like
to believe that they are repressed by a dogmatic evolutionary establishment, but
there is no repression; the problem is that creationist ideas are not backed by
either evidence or reason. Many
revolutionary theories have been published in the scientific literature and
accepted. Examples include
Darwin's evolution, the special theory of relativity, the general theory of
relativity, quantum physics, neutrinos, the big bang, plate tectonics, dark
matter, dark energy, and the accelerating universe.
The
latest creationist ploy is "intelligent design," according to which life is too complex to have evolved by Darwinian
processes. This is a rerun of the
old "watchmaker" argument first proposed by William Paley in 1802 and
discredited long ago by biologists.
As Marburger puts it, "Intelligent design is not a scientific
theory" because it
offers nothing to replace evolution.
If complex structures did not originate through evolution, then how did
they originate? Arguing that God
did it explains nothing, stifles further scientific research, and is beside the
point because it doesn't tell us how a complex structure came to be
complex. For example, did complex
biological cells spring into existence suddenly, from nothing, and if so does
this have implicatons for the accepted principles of physics?
The
irony is that fundamentalists surely acknowledge that nature, the human brain,
and reason are among God's gifts.
What could be more Godly, for example, than the attempt by contemporary
scientists to understand the creation of the universe by observing the heavens
themselves? Did sacred revelation
suddenly cease 2000 years ago?
Indeed, it seems egotistical and presumptuous to allow creationist dogma
to trump the evidence from both God's universe and our God-given brains. Why do fundamentalists so despise the
notion that we are connected through evolution to the rest of God's Earthly
creations, that indeed God created humans and evolution is the way he/she did
it?
Creationism promotes the worst form of pollution, namely pollution of minds. A person who is convinced that eternal damnation is a possible consequence of rational thinking is likely to shun rationality, and thus forfeit the very faculty that most makes us human. As the Enlightenment forerunner Galileo put it, "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." America's future will be dim if fundamentalists win their home-grown holy war.