The real battle over creationism

Originally published 6 March 1995

Here’s a sta­tis­tic that may sur­prise you.

Accord­ing to a 1993 Gallup poll, 47 per­cent of all Amer­i­cans believe that God cre­at­ed human beings pret­ty much in their present form some­time dur­ing the past 10,000 years.

Only 46 per­cent believe that humans evolved over mil­lions of years from less-advanced forms, either with or with­out divine intervention.

A decade ago, these num­bers were reversed, with cre­ation­ists a minority.

And the debate over begin­nings is draw­ing still clos­er to home.

Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ists in Mer­ri­mack, N.H., want the bib­li­cal sto­ry of cre­ation taught in the schools as a viable sci­en­tif­ic alter­na­tive to evolution.

The key word here is “sci­en­tif­ic.”

In a Globe sto­ry, elec­tri­cal engi­neer David Ham is quot­ed as say­ing: “Cre­ation sci­ence can be taught with­out quot­ing the Bible if we just go with the facts.”

Nor­man Phillips, a for­mer MIT pro­fes­sor, coun­ters with: “We don’t teach astrol­o­gy with astron­o­my. We don’t teach witch­craft with med­i­cine. We don’t teach the sci­ence of the world with the first chap­ter of Genesis.”

I grew up in the Bible Belt, not far from Day­ton, Ten­nessee, the site of the famous Scopes Mon­key Tri­al. Ear­ly on I came to New Eng­land so that my chil­dren could be raised in the thought­ful tra­di­tion of the Adamses, Emer­son, Thore­au, Agas­siz, and Gray. Now the Bible Belt has been loos­ened to encom­pass the expand­ing girth of fun­da­men­tal­ism, just in time for my grand­chil­dren to hear in sci­ence class that the world is 10,000 years old.

My first reac­tion to the Mer­ri­mack sto­ry was to rehearse once again why “cre­ation sci­ence” is not science.

Sci­ence is not a col­lec­tion of state­ments about the world (e.g., “mat­ter is made of atoms,” “light trav­els at 186,000 miles per sec­ond,” “all com­plex forms of life evolved from sim­ple begin­nings”). Rather, sci­ence is a web of rela­tion­ships. Our con­fi­dence in any sci­en­tif­ic state­ment derives entire­ly from the resilience of its con­nec­tions with the rest of knowledge.

Sci­ence is not a smor­gas­bord of truths from which we pick and choose. Sci­ence is the ensem­ble. Start snip­ping away what­ev­er bits don’t agree with one’s par­tic­u­lar reli­gion and soon the whole fab­ric is in tatters.

If the world is less than 10,000 years old, as cre­ation­ists say, then vir­tu­al­ly every­thing we know about astron­o­my, physics, chem­istry, geol­o­gy, and biol­o­gy is called into ques­tion. To be replaced by — what? A few ques­tion­able “foot­prints” down in Texas where men sup­pos­ed­ly walked with dinosaurs?

But why am I say­ing this here? Most read­ers of the Globe sci­ence pages won’t need con­vinc­ing. And peo­ple who accept a lit­er­al inter­pre­ta­tion of Gen­e­sis believe in a sur­er path to truth than sci­ence — which is of course their right.

Mean­while, a half-baked scam called “cre­ation sci­ence” attracts increas­ing num­bers of believ­ers. School boards are tak­en over by folks who learned their sci­ence from super­mar­ket tabloids and radio talk shows. Text­book pub­lish­ers back away from teach­ing evo­lu­tion and human pre-his­to­ry for fear of los­ing sales.

Even in New Eng­land the pres­sure is on to bring Gen­e­sis into the pub­lic schools.

My sec­ond reac­tion to the Mer­ri­mack sto­ry was to say: Let’s call their bluff.

Let the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences and the Chris­t­ian Coali­tion each pro­duce a series of high-school-lev­el videos, pre­sent­ing the sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence for evo­lu­tion and bib­li­cal cre­ation respec­tive­ly. No quot­ing scrip­tures. No recourse to rev­e­la­tion. Just go with the facts.

Com­par­ing the sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence for a lit­er­al Gen­e­sis to the sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence for evo­lu­tion would be like com­par­ing a child’s non­sense rhyme to the works of Shake­speare, or like com­par­ing an almost emp­ty spool of thread to the Bayeux Tapestry.

It would be a won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty to show the kids what sci­ence is.

And isn’t.

And while we’re at it, we could con­vey the spir­it that moti­vat­ed Dar­win him­self, as expressed in the first edi­tion of The Ori­gin of Species:

“There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its sev­er­al pow­ers, hav­ing been orig­i­nal­ly breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst the plan­et has gone cycling on accord­ing to the fixed law of grav­i­ty, from so sim­ple a begin­ning end­less forms most beau­ti­ful and won­der­ful have been, and are being, evolved.”

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, call­ing the cre­ation­ists’ bluff would con­fer an unwar­rant­ed legit­i­ma­cy upon “cre­ation sci­ence,” and open the door for adher­ents of oth­er pseu­do­sciences (astrol­o­gy, para­psy­chol­o­gy, UFOl­o­gy) to ask for a place in the cur­ricu­lum. For the time being, enlight­ened com­mu­ni­ties should con­tin­ue to fight the con­sti­tu­tion­al bat­tle in the courts.

The bat­tle is not between sci­ence and reli­gion. It is not between evo­lu­tion and the­ism. It is between sci­ence and a rav­el of dis­con­nect­ed reli­gious asser­tions claim­ing to be science.

If the bat­tle is lost, all of Amer­i­ca may become the Day­ton, Ten­nessee, of the 21st century.