KANSAS!
SEPTEMBER 1999
KansOZ
Close your eyes, click your heels together three times, and repeat, "There's no place like home. . . there's no place like home. . . there's no place. . ." and Presto! You're back home in Kansas! Home of the rugged farmer, the fields of corn and the most asinine school board in the civilized world. Welcome to Oz. KANSOZ.
The line between the mythical Land of Oz and the real land of Kansas has been officially blurred. Oz may have had talking scarecrows, wicked witches and Munchkins. But Kansas has no evolution, meaning nothing in its history is older than around 6,000 years, meaning it must be….the Garden of Eden! So that means Kansas has a wicked Satan, talking snakes, and two adult human beings with no belly buttons. Take that, Dorothy!
On August 11, 1999 (not 1899, as some early reports had it) the Kansas School Board voted six-to-four to remove the science of evolution from the teaching curricula of all public grammar, middle and high schools. What a powerful group of ten people that is! Just think. By a show of hands the board undid an entire century of science and discovery. That is power. Rumor has it they are entertaining the idea of repealing the law of gravity next year. Just for the hell of it.
Marching doggedly backward, apparently destined for the Dark Ages, the board demonstrated the very real dangers of allowing religious beliefs to force their way into public policy. The result is, as it always has been, and always will be, chaos. Making it even harder to stomach (and it ruined a full hour and a half of my day) was the wording of the Reuters news story (no byline) that covered the event. In a brief background paragraph, the story said the "theory" of evolution of species included "for instance the evolution of primates into homo sapiens." Ouch! While good reporting must be understandable by the majority of us, such inaccurate statements betray a serious misperception of evolution. We are Primates. Now. Today. Still. We share a common ancestor with the Great Apes, but we did not evolve from them, as so many ill-informed people think evolution teaches. We truly are a nation of scientific illiterates.
Compounding the already sorry state of affairs is the continual juxtaposition of evolution and "creationism," (creationism meaning as understood in the Judeo-Christian Bible) as if those two options were all that were available. Reuters of course has a great deal of company on this one. But when we allow our opponents to frame a debate, we've already half lost it. I am constantly surprised at the number of debates that are labeled "Creationism vs. Evolution" and even more surprised at the number of evolutionists who are willing to take part in such a rigged debate. Scientists and philosophers alike, not to mention laypeople, fall into this trap. But look at the premise.
Before anyone even utters the first word in a debate like this, there is the tacit assumption that if evolution were somehow to be proven false, then the story of creation in the Judeo-Christian Bible would automatically be proven correct. This is the height of sophistry.
There is a plethora of fundamentalist Christian publications that deals solely with finding flaws in the sciences of evolution and natural selection. They pound away at it with righteous zeal. And if they find any tiny discrepancy or any two biologists disagreeing over any minutiae, they pounce on it and claim it a "victory" for biblical creation. This is pure poppycock. But far too often we take the bait and go on the defensive. We try to minimize any apparent inconsistencies, playing right into their hands, and looking like fools in the process. The burden of proof should be volleyed right back where it belongs---squarely on their shoulders.
A good way to do this is to take the position, for argument's sake, that the science of evolution is false. Evolution never happened. (Pretend you're in Kansas.) We have not found all those thousands of fossils; there is no archaeopteryx; Lucy has not been found; the fossil record of the horse is unknown; and so on. Assume we don't know where the hell we came from.
Now. How in the world does this validate the six-day creation story in the Bible?! How does this make Adam and Eve and talking snakes historical facts? Perhaps the Mayan version of creation is correct. The Mayas believed that the universe had been, and would continue to be, created and destroyed multiple times, and that each such cycle lasted somewhat longer than 5000 years. By their estimate, the current universe had begun in the equivalent of the year 3114 BC and would be destroyed in the equivalent of the year AD 2012. (Oops! We're due!) Evidently the Mayas believed that the cycle of creation and destruction would repeat itself forever, with each successive universe being an exact duplicate of the previous one.
Or how about Brahma, the Hindu God, who is said to be the creator of the universe? In the Manu Smriti or Laws of Manu, Brahma is described as self-existent and as evolving the world from an egg---the doctrine of the cosmic egg---and his existence endures for an eon that is practically eternal. Perhaps we came from an egg.
There's so much more, but---point made. If the science of evolution were to crumble to dust tomorrow (and it surely won't---it gets stronger daily) that still would not establish the validity of the Judeo-Christian Bible. The debate is not Biblical Creationism vs. Evolution. It is Biblical Creationism vs. Every Other Creation Story in the History of Humanity. The Hebrew Bible has no more claim to fame than…..the Cosmic Egg.
A group called the "Creation Science Association for Mid-America" helped write Kansas' curriculum proposal. (The sound you just heard was a battering ram punching a gaping hole in the wall of separation of Church and State.) The association's director, Tom Willis, said of evolution, "It's deception. You can't go into the laboratory or the field and make the first fish. When you tell students that science has determined (evolution to be true), you're deceiving them." Hmmm. But wait a minute. You can't go into the laboratory and make my (long-deceased) mother either. Does that mean she wasn't real?! Didn't exist? Wasn't true?
Nor have I ever heard any reputable scientist even suggest that such an outlandish thing should ever be possible. They would tell you that such a strawman is pure bunk. I would call it pure bullshit.
As if to explain something, the Reuters article goes on to say that "Dozens of books have been published in the past two decades challenging the validity of evolution." So? Dozens of books have been published in the past two decades about Channeling into past lives, Crystal Power, Flying Saucers, Psychics and Astrology. Does being published establish validity?! Again, I'm very disturbed to read such naïve (or disingenuous) comments from a supposedly first rate news service. Mein Kampf was published. So what?
In the July/August 1999 issue of Skeptical Inquirer, Stephen Jay Gould assures us all that there is no conflict between science and religion, since they are "Non-overlapping Magisteria." Non-overlapping? Really? Well, Stephen Jay Gould, I would strongly suggest you go to Kansas and visit your fellow educators, and have a chat about the meaning of "non-overlapping." If ever magisteria overlapped, it was in our Heartland on August 11, 1999.
Welcome to the Emerald City.
© 1999 Judith Hayes
Email: totalscorn@hotmail.com
