Putting Darwin Back in the Dock

By Kenneth M. Pierce

"Scientific" creationists challenge the theory of evolution

Housewife Marian Finger, 44, was startled to hear her son Eric, a seventh-grader at the Emma C. Smith Elementary School in Livermore, Calif., describe what he learned in school. "Mom," he said, "evolutionists don't believe in God."

His mother, a practicing Presbyterian married to a chemist, began reading some of Eric's textbooks--and took some notes. "Just listen to this," she says angrily: " 'Evolutionary philosophy is the philosophy of ethical relativism, racism, military aggression.' " Says Mrs. Finger: "I just don't understand it. What's going on?"

Over opposition from 90% of the local senior high school science teachers, the seven-member Hillsborough County school board in Tampa, Fla., decided to require science classroom time for theories that challenge evolution. Says John Betz, associate professor of biology at the University of South Florida: "These people think evolution is essentially an immoral idea that gives rise to immoral conduct." Tampa's teachers "are incredulous," says Betz. "They can't believe it is happening."

Indeed, it is happening. More than a century after Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species in 1859, more than half a century after the Scopes "monkey trial" in 1925 in Dayton, Tenn., the argument between evolution and divine creation has been revived.

Just last week, in Sacramento, Superior Court Judge Irving Perluss heard arguments in Segraves vs. the State of California, a case brought by Kelly Segraves, 38, director of the San Diego-based Creation-Science Research Center. Like most creationists, Segraves maintains that evolution as taught in U.S. schools is a secular religion. Because it is California policy to teach evolution in biology classes without competing views about the divine origin of the universe, Segraves claimed that the religious freedom of his children was violated.

Judge Perluss swiftly rejected that claim. But he gave some aid to Segraves' cause. He ordered statewide distribution of an earlier school board statement cautioning that textbooks avoid "dogmatism" in dealing with speculation about the origins of man. Segraves hailed the judge's ruling as a victory for creationism, claiming it "will stop the dogmatic teaching of evolution and protect the rights of the Christian child." The trial was notable publicity for creationists. Similar trials at state and perhaps federal levels are likely. As California Deputy Attorney General Robert Tyler puts it: "The battle is not really an intellectual one. What has me worried is the emotional fight ahead." Tyler is not the only one who is worried. For decades after the Scopes trial, evolution became a missing link in some state school curriculums and there are signs that teachers are shying away from it again. Says Iowa School Science Consultant George Magrane: "Teachers in Iowa are being intimidated by the controversy. Rather than teach both creationism and evolution, they teach neither one. It's almost a regression in history."

In its new "scientific" form, creationism is the brainchild of Christian fundamentalists all across the U.S. Over the past 15 months fundamentalist groups have persuaded legislators in 14 states to introduce laws requiring creationist views in science classes; none has passed. During a presidential campaign swing through Texas, Ronald Reagan was asked his view on the teaching of evolution. His answer (an almost verbatim quotation of positions taken by the Moral Majority and the Rev. Jerry Falwell): "It is a scientific theory only, and it is not believed in the scientific community to be as infallible as it once was believed. But if it is going to be taught in the schools, then I think the biblical story of creation should also be taught."

Reagan was wrong about the beliefs of most scientists, but his political instincts were more right. Particularly at the local level, the creationists represent strong popular feeling. In Dallas, school officials recommended that teachers use books that teach "two models" of the origin of life and the earth, Darwinian and creationist. In Anchorage, ninth-grade teachers have been ordered to skip the sections in history texts dealing with evolution, at least until the school board can provide additional material on divine creation.

To preserve sales, textbook publishers are beating a none too stately retreat from evolution after giving it strong emphasis in the post-Sputnik editions of the 1960s, which aimed at more and better science teaching. To enter the lucrative Texas market, many biology textbook publishers now bow to a requirement by the state's school board and include a statement that evolution is clearly presented as theory rather than fact. More significant, according to Gerald Skoog, 45, professor of education at Tex as Tech University, textbooks now say less about evolution. Between 1974 and 1977, the section on Darwin's life in Biology, a text published by Silver Burdett, was cut from 1,373 words to 45. Discus sion of the origins of life went from 2,023 words to 322. Text devoted to Darwin's view of evolution shrank from 2,750 words to 296. Sections on fossil formation and geologic eras were deleted entirely.

Many other publishers have made cautious changes in wording. The 1973 edition of Modern Biology, published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, stated: "Scientists do not doubt that organisms living today descended from species of previous ages." That sentence was omitted in the 1977 revision. The 1969 text said, "Modern man has probably evolved from primitive, more generalized ancestors." The 1977 version: "Darwin was suggesting that humans may also have evolved from less specialized ancestors." A Holt, Rinehart editor says: "If you're not listed in a state, you can't sell books in a state. And as a publisher, if you take an ideological viewpoint, you may find yourself not listed."

Another New York-based biology textbook editor reports that book salesmen have urged him to delete pictures of some fossils entirely to appease creationists. "The truth is that the most magnificent pattern in biology is evolution," says he, but we don't spell it out for the students. We talk about 'change' a lot, but we try not to say the word 'evolution' very much. So we have a chapter on birds, and one on amphibians. But we don't say how they are connected." Observes Frank Spica, a biology teacher in Evanston, Ill.: "If you ask me, I think the creationists have won. They've not passed any legislation, but they've got the text books changed."

Their success is due in part to a new tactic. After the Scopes trial, creationists sought equal time for the Bible. But in 1975, a Tennessee law requiring text book discussion of Genesis was struck down by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals as an un constitutional violation of the separation between church and state. Changing their approach, the creationists began promoting "scientific creationism," trying to challenge evolution on scientific grounds. Proponents say scientific creationism is suitable for public school use because it does not mention the Bible. "This isn't an effort to introduce religion into the school," says Georgia State Representative Tommy Smith, who for two years running has sponsored a creationist bill in the legislature, "but I do feel all available scientific data should be presented." The question, though, is, do creationists have scientific data? The basic tenets of scientific creationism closely parallel Genesis: the earth is roughly 10,000 years old (prevailing estimates are that its age is about 4.6 billion years); the planets, stars and all living things were literally created in six days by a "Designer"; the different species of plants and animals were created, they did not evolve from any other species; a great flood was the chief force that shaped the face of the earth, in the process drowning the creatures now found as fossils.

The creationist movement boasts a number of adherents who have been trained in science. Significantly, few are biologists. Creationists have done almost no original research. In launching their attacks on evolution they tend to pick over data accumulated by science. Among their most frequent points:

> Because various dating methods used by geologists, astronomers and paleontologists occasionally produce results that disagree, the whole system of dating the past is unreliable. Radioactive dating, they note, is based on the present rate of radioactive decay, but how do we know that the rate has always been the same?

The fact is, though, that carbon 14 dating, for example, has been verified against historical records going back to ancient Egypt and the known ages of 2,000-year-old trees. Other radioactive methods have been used to date earlier epochs, like the age of the earth, and in a variety of trials they have produced a consistent pattern. The creationist argument is a bit like claiming that because some trains are canceled or run way off schedule, the basic timetable is totally inaccurate.

> Creationists argue that the second law of thermodynamics proves the impossibility of evolution. The law, formulated by European physicists more than a century ago, says that the universe is running down, dispersing its energy, its natural movement is from order to disorder.

Since evolution is a process that led to higher and more complex forms, it could not have occurred. In 1977 Ilya Prigogine, a Russian-born professor at the Free University of Brussels, won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for proving that the second law does not apply to "open systems" such as living creatures, because living things can acquire new energy. Plants grow healthy by soaking up sunlight, even though the sun, the source of the solar sys tem's energy, is slowly burning out.

> We know that stars die. But because we have never seen stars being born, creationists argue that science cannot know how they originate. Says David Schramm, an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago: "In fact, we can observe stars forming right now: in the Orion Nebula stars are visible by telescope, forming out of gas clouds. Of course, the process takes 10 million years. Obviously, none of us has watched it for 10 million years. What we do see is a series of different stars in various stages of formation. The creation ists are picking up a grain of truth and totally distorting it."

> Again and again creationist debaters attack the "fossil record" of evolution, claiming that though there are fossils by the millions, none so far has been found showing transitions between distinct lifeforms-- no creatures, for example, that are half reptile and half mammal. Scientists correctly point out that though there are real fossil gaps among the higher orders, there are tens of thousands of fossils that record the transition, sometimes over millions of years, among such life forms as hard-shelled clams, rhinoceroses and apes. As reptiles became mammals, the fossil record shows that bones in the jaw joint became smaller and evolved into part of the mammalian ear. Most scientists believe that the fossil gaps between major groups (such as fish, amphibians and reptiles) will gradually be filled in by new finds. But Paleontologists Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge think that in some cases transitions occurred so quickly and in such small populations of creatures that there is virtually no chance of finding fossil evidence to fill these gaps. Evolution may occur in sudden fits and starts, they say, not in the agonizingly slow and regular process Darwin postulated in Origin of Species. Gould, whose remarks about fossil gaps are cited by creationists, says flatly: "They are confusing the methods by which evolution occurs with evolution itself. That evolution occurred is a fact. People evolved from ape ancestors even though we can argue about how it happened. Scientists are debating mechanism, not fact."

Creationist arguments about evolution are scientifically flimsy, to say the least. But they are based on a sincere, though often appallingly distorted and overstated, conviction that evolutionary doctrine, as it has come to affect modern society, deprives man of a sense of individual and moral responsibility for his own acts. Says Georgia Judge Braswell Been: "This monkey mythology of Darwin is the cause of permissiveness, promiscuity, pills, prophylactics, perversions, pregnancies, abortions, pornotherapy, pollution, poisoning and proliferation of crimes of all types." Behind the rhetoric lies a basic question that touches the ultimate reaches of science and the most ancient source of faith. Creationists tend to put it as follows: The existence of a clock implies a clockmaker; the existence of creation implies a creator. The infinite complexity and design of the universe, they claim, could not simply have evolved through blind trial and error.

Put in that way, however, the question is one of theology, not science. Though the growth of scientific knowledge has unquestionably undercut faith, creationists tend to ignore the fact that the awe-inspiring complexity of the universe, its grand design, has been made known to man mainly through the free inquiry of science. The true study of evolution, moreover, is a humbling experience that gives man only a tiny niche in the vast scheme of the universe. "Never lose a holy curiosity," Einstein once wrote. Says Astrophysicist Robert Jastrow: "Astronomers have proven that the creation of the universe is the result of forces beyond the reach of scientific inquiry, but the rest of the story, leading from the creation to man, is explained very well by the scientific evidence in the fossil record."

At least half a dozen top scientific organizations have issued statements warning that scientific creationism is not scientific. Should school boards and legislatures yield to the creationists' innocuous-sounding request for equal time? The answer seems to be no--not if they want pupils to learn biology, as the subject is understood today. The relation of science and morality is an important matter. Creationism may belong in social studies or the history of religion, but it should not be pushed into biology classes or textbooks, especially not by legislative fiat. As celebrated Geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky put it: "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution."

Some scientists and science educators are beginning to blame themselves for the present popularity of pseudo science --including astrology and medical quackery, as well as the "science" of creationism. Says Wayne Moyer, executive director of the National Association of Biology Teachers: "We have done a botched job of teaching evolutionary theory, and we had better accept the creationist challenge to clean up our act." Adds Chemist Russell Doolittle: "At first I couldn't understand the gullibility of people. It took me a while to understand that the average American is not equipped to combat this sort of thing. The tragedy of it all is the state of science education in the country--it's simply, sadly, awful."

--By Kenneth M. Pierce. Reported by D.L. Coutu/Los Angeles and J. Madeleine Nash/Chicago

With reporting by D.L. Coutu/Los Angeles, J. Madeleine Nash/Chicago

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