Suppose a public school teacher should teach that there exists a Supreme Being, a being that most of us call ‘God’ and that this Supreme Being is important to us. That teacher would be warned by the school’s principal to stop teaching religion. If he continued to teach that God is real, he would lose his job. Yet the existence of a Supreme Being is a well-established, widely accepted truth. Not only do the great majority of Americans accept it, but our civilization’s cultural and intellectual leaders – from Plato and Aristotle to Louis Pasteur and Martin Luther King, Jr. – have believed that a God exists and that we can know it. The great American phi-losopher Charles S. Peirce said that the reality of God is the conclusion to which any fair-minded, thorough scholar will come to after considering the evidence thoroughly. Nevertheless, to teach the existence of God in public school is deemed wrong, because it may offend the religious sensibilities of some non-believing students.
Every school year, across the country, biology teachers offend the religious sensibilities of many students (and their parents) by teaching Darwinian evolution of species. They do so because evolution is a cornerstone of modern biological science. Just recently the Kansas state education authorities have raised alarm – and drawn a good deal of ridicule – within the scientific and educational communities by ruling that Darwinian evolution is no longer required as part of high school science curricula. The issue is left to local school boards and teachers. The specter of the infamous Scopes "Monkey Trial" is raised: intolerant biblical fundamentalists blinding themselves and their children to the truths of science. In fact, the issue is not so simple.
The issue is not one of biblical literalism on one side versus established scientific fact on the other. On the religious side more is at stake than biblical fundamentalism. Darwinian evolution threatens not only a literal interpretation of the Genesis creation account, but also the very notion of a creator. And contrary to popular impression, on the scientific side we are not speaking of one solidly established, well justified scientific theory. "Evolution" applies to a wide variety of phenomena. In some cases evolution has been well established by data and observa-tion. We know that certain species have changed to adapt to new environmental conditions. Certain kinds of moth have changed colors in urban environments. Contemporary horses are pretty clearly evolved from much smaller forebears. According to this theory of evolution, chance variations (such as in the moth’s coloring) are preserved in subsequent generations if they confer a survival advantage (e.g. birds have a harder time seeing the new color and therefore do not eat as many moths). Such evolution has been observed and it happens pretty much the way Darwin described. So far the theory of evolution is well established.
When we turn, however, to the question of the evolution of species – descent of mod-ern felines from saber-tooth cats or of human beings from prehistoric non-human hominids – then we are not speaking of a well established theory. The evolution of a new species has never been observed. The Darwinian mechanism has not been shown capable of giving rise to a new species. There is a host of scientifically recognized difficulties that current theories cannot overcome. In this sense, we can accurately say that there is no theory of the evolution of species.
When scientists speak of the ‘theory of evolution’ in the context of the evolution of spe-cies, they are actually speaking of a working hypothesis. The hypothesis is this: that the presence on earth of species that have not existed in eons past (such as elephants and human beings) can be explained by a blind, undirected mechanism that originates and preserves new biological structures. The name of this hypothesis is mechanistic (or quasi-mechanistic), materialist evolu-tion. According to this hypothesis, life arose from the chance combination of organic com-pounds under volatile conditions. Human life arose from the survival advantage conferred by the ability to communicate information for war, hunting, and avoiding bad weather. None of this evolution, however, reflects any plan or direction or meaning. It all just happened by the blind working out of impersonal forces. This is the evolutionary hypothesis that is proposed for our acceptance and which forms the basis of the research conducted by the leading figures in scientific research today.
Again, this is not an established scientific theory but only a hypothesis. As a hypothesis it has serious scientific shortcomings. But if it is right, then not only is the Genesis account of creation literally false, but there is no sense at all in which God can be said to be creator. If scientific materialism (as expressed in Darwinian evolution) is correct, then human life is mean-ingless. There is no point to our being here.
The point of public schools is to pass our knowledge on to the young, to give them what they need to live wisely and well. Yet we refuse to teach them a vitally important truth (that God exists), which has formed our culture and civilization. Instead we teach them an unsubstan-tiated hypothesis whose implication is that our religions are collectively false and our hopes delusions. To accept uncritically materialist dogma from the scientific community is foolish, as foolish as to pretend no belief in God simply because our beliefs about him often differ.
I welcome your responses to this article and will be happy to post them, along with my ansers to your comments.
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