09.05.08
The evolution of creationism
sciftp mail
The evolution of creationism
By Christopher Caldwell
update: I have posted some commentary (from another post, yesterday) on this in a comment
Published: September 5 2008 18:59 | Last updated: September 5 2008 18:59
(from Financial Times)
The address by Sarah Palin, the vice-presidential nominee, to the Republican convention on Wednesday was hailed by both supporters and detractors as marking an epoch in US politics. The Alaska governor introduced herself as a representative of the small-town Americans “who do some of the hardest work . . . who grow our food, run our factories and fight our warsâ€, and warned that she was not coming to Washington to seek the good opinion of the press. For Republicans, it was the most electrifying oratorical moment in a generation, when the authentic voice of middle America made itself heard again after decades of silence. For Democrats, it was a rant unprecedented in its boorishness and effrontery.
Leaving aside Alaskan regional exotica, from moose stew to snow-machine racing, the great novelty of Ms Palin’s candidacy is that she is the first national nominee since William Jennings Bryan a century ago to be called a “creationist†– a disbeliever in the theory of evolution. This is unfair. Those who describe Ms Palin that way are latching on to one exchange during the Alaska governor’s race two years ago when she said she had no objection if teachers questioned Darwin. “I say this as the daughter of a science teacher,†she said. “Don’t be afraid of information, and let kids debate both sides.†She explicitly ruled out putting creationism on school curriculums.
But she is not exactly shouting her mainstream views from the rooftops, either. A new kind of opposition to the theory of evolution has stirred small-town America in recent years. From the 1960s until the 1980s, believers in the Biblical account of creation managed to stymie the teaching of Darwin in Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana. But only briefly – they were drubbed in the courts, on the grounds that their teachings violated the separation of church and state. Outright creationists, of the sort who date the Creation to 4004BC, are today few, disorganised and weak. What the US does have, though, is an active community of campaigners for “intelligent designâ€, the belief that nature is too complex to be understood without reference to a “designer†– presumably one with a capital D. Intelligent design, too, has fared badly in the courts, but the political questions it raises are live. They tell us a bit about why populism made such a thundering return to US politics this week.
Many intelligent design advocates believe in separation of church and state, and even in evolution itself. They claim they are promoting not theology but “critical analysisâ€, their own kind of science. It certainly does not look like science. They complain about “gaps in Darwin’s theory†but have few suggestions about how those gaps might be plugged. They say they want only to create a “level playing fieldâ€.
It is hard to say whether they have been successful. A 2005 Gallup poll found 53 per cent of Americans thought God created humans pretty much as they are, versus 43 per cent who took an evolutionist view. Maybe that seems shocking, but the numbers are quite similar in the UK, where a Mori poll for the BBC in 2006 found 48 per cent believe in evolutionism of some kind, versus 39 per cent who believe in creationism.
Given these numbers, anti-evolution sentiment is strangely toothless. Intelligent design legislation was debated (not necessarily passed) in 14 states in 2005, but a federal ruling in Dover, Pennsylvania, the following year took the wind out of the movement’s sails. Politicians have campaigned on intelligent design – notably Dick DeVos, Michigan’s last Republican candidate for governor – but they tend to get drubbed. Sometimes intelligent design enthusiasts take over educational bodies, to the delight of leader writers and Democratic party fundraisers, but voters tend to boot them out of office post-haste. That happened to several members of the Kansas school board that passed a much-discussed anti-evolution curriculum in 1999. It happened to seven of the eight incumbents on the Dover school board. Sentiment for the teaching of intelligent design lags far behind sympathy for the creation story. The questioners of evolution aim not to change policy but to make some kind of point. What is it?
The point of intelligent design is to take science down a peg. To warn enthusiasts that they risk “discrediting science itself†is a bit dense. For them, evolution is a potent symbol of the way “scientific materialism†leaves people feeling demeaned, disenfranchised, stripped of prerogatives and less free. This feeling is not groundless. Dostoyevsky and Marx said similar things. The scientific world-view poses challenges to religion only in the course of posing challenges to a whole lot besides. To take one obvious example: fewer offices permit smoking today, but it is a stretch to call this a choice. In the US, at least, there was little democratic participation in the decision. There was scientific research and then there were mandates from health boards and courts. Maybe these mandates were “all to the goodâ€. That does not make them democratic.
The anti-evolution activists in America’s small towns are wrong on the science – but wrong in a way that is of absolutely no consequence to them unless they choose a career in horse-breeding or molecular biochemistry. Their feelings of disenfranchisement, on the other hand, are real and consequential. Experts control an ever larger share of decisions about where roads can be built, what people can ingest, what can be taught and whether the decisions of democratic bodies pass constitutional muster. Like so much else in US public life, the battle over evolution is a class conflict disguised as a religious or moral conflict. It is comforting to look at the fight over evolution as one that pits the educated against the ignorant. It is that. But it is also a fight that pits technocrats against democrats.
The writer is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard
nemo said,
September 5, 2008 at 5:55 pm
I am reposting this from yesterday, since it is directly relevant to the article above, which deserves a similar response.
09.04.08
Pigliucci takes on PalinPosted in Science & Religion, Evolution at 5:14 pm by nemo
Is Sarah Palin a Creationist?
By Massimo Pigliucci, Scientific Blogging posted: 01 September
There is something completely inadequate here in Pigliucci’s response on the question of Palin and the conservative take on education in evolution. I can understand the sense of alarm that arises from this religious/conservative assault on the shools. But before scientists so complacently address this issue with the cliches of Big Science, they might stop to consider that they can’t defend themselves against Darwin critics if their stance on Darwinism is wrong, poor science, and the tenacity with which it is defended a sign of the wrong education in science the religious right itself is protesting.
A kind of arrogance against religion is thus preposterous if scientists are involved in their own ‘Darwin superstition’.
In fairness, ‘teaching both sides’ isn’t likely to work: both sides are wrong, and are excluding multiple alternate viewpoints that might actually resolve the difficulties of evolutionary theory. The conservative/ID gambit has cleverly sold this idea of ‘two sides’, as they marginalize the real critics of Darwin, who have mostly been scientists.
In general the fight against religion cannot succeed with the perspective of reductionist science, it is simply inadequate on too many fronts.
The question of consciousness, the evolution of ethics, the paranormal, the evolution of religion and culture, and the latent social darwinism of the current paradigm, flunk the reigning orthodoxy on the spot.
That’s that. Creationists are religiously entangled, and the scientists are talking through their hat.
Not a recipe for clarity, or for winning the culture war on evolution against religionists.
Pigliucci is being disingenuous here: he has just returned this summer from a conference at Altenberg in Germany where the problems with Neo-Darwinism were laid out with some proposals for moving on.
To be untruthful about the status of the Darwin paradigm in arguing with critics is thus worse than bad tactics.