Encyclopedia of Evolution.pdf - Online Reading Center

creationism
• In the early 21st century, creationists in several states attempted
to require stickers, containing an antievolution statement,
to be affixed to science textbooks. In all cases, these attempts
have failed or were reversed upon legal challenge (as of
2006). In one case, the stickers had to be manually removed.
• Also in the early 21st century, creationists in several states
attempted to require the teaching of Intelligent Design, either
at the state or local levels. As of 2006, all of these attempts
have failed. The most famous case was in Dover, Pennsylvania,
in which a 2005 lawsuit (Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School
District) not only ended the attempt of the school board to
require the teaching of Intelligent Design but also resulted
in a published opinion, from judge John Jones, that became
instantly famous in discrediting Intelligent Design. Many state
and local governing bodies took this federal decision as clear
evidence that any attempt to introduce Intelligent Design
would result in costly litigation that they would almost certainly
lose. The school board that lost the lawsuit in Dover
was quickly replaced, in the next election, by another that did
not support the required teaching of Intelligent Design.
In some cases, the creationist controversy is almost
entirely political, rather than religious or scientific. Creationism
is overwhelmingly a component of Republican or other
conservative agendas. Votes concerning a 2003 proposal in the
Oklahoma House of Representatives to require antievolution
stickers were almost precisely down party lines: Republicans
for it, Democrats against it. The Oklahoma representative who
proposed the antievolution disclaimer in 2003 also created
controversy by announcing that Oklahoma had too many Hispanic
people. Former Congressman Tom Delay (R-TX) blamed
the Columbine High School shootings on children being taught
that humans are “...nothing but glorified apes who are evolutionized
out of some primordial soup of mud...” Republican
commentator Ann Coulter extensively attacks evolution as
being part of a “godless society.” This situation has persisted
for a long time. Rousas Rushdoony, who defended creationism
in the 20th century, started an organization that continues
to promote the institution of an Old Testament style of
government in the United States. There are exceptions to this
pattern. Judge John Jones, who issued the Kitzmiller decision,
is a Republican appointee of President George W. Bush, and
the new Dover school board, united in its opposition to Intelligent
Design, consisted equally of Republicans and Democrats.
According to research by Jon D. Miller, about half of Americans
are uncertain about evolution. Nevertheless, the close
association between creationism and a conservative political
agenda led Miller and colleagues to say that there was an era
when science could avoid open partisanship. They concluded,
however, “That era appears to have closed.”
Scientists generally oppose any movement the primary
motivation of which is political. For example, most scientists
strongly defend environmental science and an environmental
political agenda, but not fringe environmentalism that has no
scientific basis.
Today, as in William Jennings Bryan’s day, many creationists
are motivated not so much by a pure zeal of scientific
research as by the concern that the decay of religion is leading
to the breakdown of society. They make the assumption that
the evolutionary process cannot produce minds or behavior
patterns other than utter and ruthless selfishness and sexual
chaos. However, evolutionary scientists have explained how
the evolutionary process could produce, and has produced,
many instances of cooperation (see altruism) and even
monogamy (see reproductive systems), in many animal
species and, almost certainly, in the human species as well (see
evolutionary ethics; sociobiology).
Some creationists have claimed not so much that creationism
is a science as that evolution is a religion, the teaching
of which is not legal under the Establishment Clause of
the U.S. Constitution. One tract, which was popular in the
1970s and is still available, used cartoons to present the idea
that evolution, as taught in college classrooms, was nothing
but a religion. The professor asked the students if they
“believed in” evolution. Most of the students, who looked
like hippies, waved their arms and said “We do!” But one
student, who had noticeably Aryan features, stood up and
said he did not, and stated his beliefs calmly and respectfully.
The professor proceeded to yell at him with the kind
of vehemence historically associated with bishops denouncing
heretics. The author of this encyclopedia, through numerous
years of contacts with educators across the country, has never
heard of an instance in which a professor displayed this level
of anger and abuse toward creationist students. It is safe to
label this tract as propaganda.
Many of the scientists who oppose creationism are
Christians, and they oppose it for several reasons. First, as
described above, creationism is not, strictly speaking, Christianity,
but is something of a cult religion based upon highly
idiosyncratic Bible interpretations and even wild imagination.
Second, creationism (as here described) is so extreme that it
brings embarrassment upon all of Christianity. The secondcentury
c.e. Christian theologian St. Augustine wrote, “It is a
disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian
… talking nonsense on these topics … we should take all
means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which
people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to
scorn.” Thomas Burnet, a 17th-century theologian, wrote,
“ ‘Tis a dangerous thing to engage the authority of scripture in
disputes about the natural world, in opposition to reason; lest
time, which brings all things to light, should discover that to
be evidently false which we had made scripture assert.” Third,
the Christian scientific opponents of creationism believe that
scientific inquiry, if it is to be of any use to the human race,
must be independent of ideology and religion. If it is merely
another version of religion, then why even have it? Either let
science be science, they say, or else do not bother with it (see
scientific method).
Creationism, then, can be summarized as: (1) a product
of the 20th century rather than a holdout of pre-Darwinian
Christianity; (2) based upon highly imaginative Bible interpretation;
(3) supported by bad science; and (4) often politically
motivated. Creationism contradicts nearly every article
in this Encyclopedia; refer to any or all of them for further
information.