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The struggle
by some religiously-minded people to deny evolution continues to cause annoyance
to scientists around the world. The problem began with the confusion
of Church and State that led to the famous
'Monkey
Trial' of 1925, when John Scopes, a high school biology teacher in Tennessee,
was placed on trial for daring to teach the facts of evolution in his
classes.
William Jennings Bryan, a failed USA presidential candidate, sought to force
Godless evolution from the classroom, and came unstuck when Clarence Darrow
showed that the sort of narrow interpretation of the Bible that was required,
in order to rule out evolution, also proved all sorts of inconsistencies
in the Bible itself, if it was subjected to the same narrow considerations.
Darrow, it should be remembered, was an outstanding agnostic in his day.
The trial itself was fomented by a largely Christian group in Dayton, Tennessee,
people who recognized that evolution is a central part, not just of biology,
but of science, and their aim was not to test the Bible, but to test the
law. In particular, the strategy was to get a superior US court to rule the
Tennessee legislation that barred teaching evolution as unconstitutional.
That attempt failed at the time, and it was not until 1968 that the case
of Epperson v Arkansas drew such a ruling, barring the imposition of religious
assumptions in science. Before long, though, the opponents of evolution were
back, and with a new ploy. They claimed that science could be approached
from many angles, that they saw science slightly differently, and they were
using a form of science that showed evolution was impossible.
Very occasionally. they could even find somebody to support their case who
had some
sort of scientific qualifications, generally in electrical engineering, or
something far removed from the central areas of evolutionary science, biology
and geology. The trick was a form of scientific
sleight-of-hand,
to assert that evolution was contrary to the second law of thermodynamics,
and so therefore could not have happened.
The problem with this was that the same argument could be used to prove that
any supreme being was equally impossible, but that did not occur. Nonetheless,
the hard-core 'creationists' tried very hard (and some of them still try
hard) to show that they can use science to prove that evolution could never
have happened.
Overtime, the lack of intellectual rigor in this sort of posture became apparent,
even to the opponents of evolution, and so they tried a return to a line
of argument that was popular around 1800,
the notion of
the intelligent watchmaker.
In this line, one assumes that if a watch was found, the person finding it
would look at it, think how clever it was, and assume that an intelligent
watchmaker had planned it and made it. The modern version, called
'intelligent design', purports to accept that evolution
has happened and is happening, but insists that it could only take place
because some oversight from an intelligent designer is taking place.
The current center of the dispute is Ohio, but this is a proxy for the rest
of the USA, and possibly even large parts of the world, and so the battle
is being fought with all of the fervor and intellectual dishonesty that
characterised the Scopes trial and the creation science ploy.
Now it ought properly to be noted here that your reporter is a trained biologist,
and cannot even begin to accept any of the arguments put forward by the
'intelligent design' crowd. At the same time, it is fair to note that your
reporter is one of a very large number of scientists who have firm religious
convictions, and have no problem reconciling their religion with the science
that underlies evolution. Your reporter is very much in the middle ground
here, trying to give an even-handed account of a situation where one side
is playing distnctly dirty pool.
A debate sponsored by the Ohio education board pitted two members of a
conservative 'think tank' in Seattle against Laurence Krauss, a physicist,
and Kenneth Miller, a biologist. Jonathan Wells, one of the conservatives,
argued the 'In' case by brandishing a list of 40 peer-reviewed papers which
he claimed revealed scientists criticizing 'Darwinism', arguing that writing
ID into the curriculum would free teachers to teach the evolution
controversy.
The problem is that nobody would support the original 1859 version of Darwinism
100% today, because we know a great deal more than Charles Darwin ever could
have done. We understand about genetics, we understand a lot about genomics,
and even proteomics - and it all points at the continuing operations of evolution
over prolonged periods. There may be minor disagreements about rates, and
whether or not it is continuous or not, but that is as far as it goes.
Depicting scientists as in turmoil about evolution is as valid assaying that
people are in turmoil about the motor vehicle, because some of them drive
diesel vehicles and others drive cars powered by gasoline (and to heighten
the controversy, some of them call it gas, or petrol). March has seen an
article on the ID movement in Nature
and a book review in Science, neither of them particularly enthusiastic
about ID.
The Science book review, in particular, points to the wedge strategy being
used by the Discovery Institute, and notes that. . . the ID proponents
have not made even a token effort at scientific research. They prefer instead
the "creation-science" approach of distorting and attacking evolution and
related fields. These advocates carry out their business in popular books
and the proceedings of their own conferences; no article demonstrating ID
has appeared in a peer-reviewed journal.
The ID problem has been around in one form or another for a very long time,
and is not likely to go away quickly. but qiven the effort which is now being
brought to bear on it,perhaps it will soon change its spots.
©WebsterWorld Pty Ltd/contributors 2002