To show how long the religious right has been trying to sneak religion into the science classroom, here’s a column I wrote 20 years ago. Just substitute “Intelligent Design” for “Creationism” and it still applies:
In 1925, a high school teacher named John Scopes was convicted and fined $100 for breaking a Tennessee law against teaching the Theory of Evolution. The state supreme court reversed the decision on the grounds that he had been fined excessively, but the “Monkey Trial” as it came to be called, captured the world’s attention as the long awaited showdown between modernism and fundamentalism.
William Jennings Bryan and the Bible literalists won the battle, but in the court of public opinion, Clarence Darrow and modernism triumphed.
After the Scopes trial, fundamentalism backed off from Darwin?#34;until recently, when it tried disguising theological beliefs as a “scientific theory” called Creationism and demanding equal time in the classroom. One has to admire the fundamentalists’ doggedness and imagination, if not their science.
Creationism may be a theory in the popular sense of the word, but it certainly isn’t a “scientific theory.” Pure science, I’m told, is based on a strictly limited methodology. The first step is “hypothesis,” a function of imagination and intuition, which must be subjected to testing, i.e. careful sensory observation and measurement of natural phenomena in a controlled setting. If testing supports the hypothesis, it still must be confirmed by others testing inedependently.
Even an accepted theory must stand the test of time. New information from advancing techology might poke black holes in a tried-and-true theory. If it survives, say, a century or two, it becomes a law. Even fundamentalists accept the Law of Gravity.
But the scientific method can’t confirm whether a supernatural phenomenon (God) created the universe. In scientific terms, Creationism is, at best, an interesting hypothesis that can never be tested or proven. That’s not to say it isn’t true. Just as science can’t prove the existence of God, it can’t deny it either?#34;at least not without overstepping its bounds.
God knows I’m no scientist (not disciplined enough), and I’m certainly no creationist (not imaginative enough). You might call me a “creative agnostic.” God is just as easy (or difficult) for me to believe in as the Big Bang. Maybe they’re one and the same. I suspect we’ll never know for sure.
Some seem threatened by the possibility that something might exist beyond the ken of science. For those folks, science has become a kind of religion. Others insist that the existence of God can be “proven.” For them, religion has become a kind of science.
A few months back, I watched (religiously) The Living Planet, a PBS series that explored the astounding variety of life forms on this fertile planet. One episode (“The Forests”) discussed a species of beetle which appears by the hundreds after a forest fire to lay eggs in the cracks of charred logs. Because newly damaged trees are so important to their survival, these beetles have developed infrared-sensitive sensors on the backs of their legs, which can detect a slight rise in temperature from miles away.
Evolution explains this through “selective adaptation.” Over millions of years, mutations occur randomly in every species. A few are actually beneficial and give the species a better chance of survival. But infrared sensors are an astonishing adaptation. It makes me think some mysterious intelligence is at work in nature, call it what you will.
You can’t blame people for wanting to find God. Who wouldn’t feel better knowing the universe is governed by an all-powerful, benevolent oversoul? If you’re waiting for the Supreme Being to make a grand stage entrance, I wouldn’t hold my breath. But if fundamentalists can’t see an infinitely subtle intelligence at work in evolution, maybe they’re not giving God enough credit.
