Evolution and the grounds of religious belief

ron.ozrock.net

Originally published as "Evolution can coexist with faith"

Earlier this month, the U.S. District Court in Atlanta struck down a suburban Georgia school district's policy of pasting "evolution is a theory, not a fact" stickers on biology textbooks as an unconstitutional violation of the separation of church and state. In rural Pennsylvania, administrators visited biology classes to read statements telling students not to take evolution as fact, but as just a theory. Not since the battles of the 1980s -- which ended in the Supreme Court's 1987 decision declaring "creation science" a religious view, and thus in violation of church-state separation -- has such a fuss about this matter taken place.

Although the anti-evolution efforts dress up in talk of "keeping an open mind" (as was said on the Georgia stickers), this is a smoke screen. Every responsible scientist and teacher of science favors an open mind and a skeptical disposition. Nobody is suggesting these stickers go on textbooks about physics and economics, although they obviously involve theories -- in some cases, less established than biological evolution.

Of course, being a "theory" isn't incompatible with being a fact; facts are what you get when the theory is true. "Theory" on the sticker is used to suggest that, by contrast with other things in the textbook, evolution is not true.

Why were the stickers put there? Protests about "open-minded inquiry" aside, evolution is not being attacked for lacking empirical support; in the eyes of essentially all accomplished biologists, its support is incontrovertible. Furthermore, theory is inseparable from the astonishing body of knowledge modern biology has produced, especially in the 52 years since the discovery of DNA. Instead, evolution is under fire for its apparent conflict with a particular -- largely American and evangelical -- world view.

But lots of people of faith -- Christians included -- don't see evolution as threatening their faith at all. Pope John Paul II himself, in a 1996 papal letter, said not only that there is no essential conflict between evolutionary science and Catholicism but that the progress in modern scientific knowledge "leads to recognition of the theory of evolution as more than just a hypothesis."

For those of us who accept that evolutionary theory is both central to biology and confirmed by results from paleontology to molecular genetics, the "intelligent design" and "creation science" advocates sound a lot like the 17th-century Church. Then, when Galileo was punished for asserting the Earth's place as one planet orbiting the sun rather than as the stationary center of the heavens, the religious power structure resisted this scientific change with every tool available. But whose faith today would be challenged by a sun-centered planetary system?

There is no explicit contradiction between scientific facts and religious faith. Rather, concern stems from worries about support for a religious perspective. Basing religious belief on such apparent "facts" -- such as a universe with us at the center, or a history that has us occur in our present form out of nothingness within the last few thousand years -- might have seemed like a good idea when those views faced no serious scientific challenges.

But science is a two-edged sword. If you build your metaphysical castles on the "scientific" foundation available, be prepared for the ground to shift.

The textbook-sticker crowd deals with this shifting foundation by trying to prop it up, and to deny that the ground has shifted. Today's "intelligent design," which substitutes design for natural selection in the origins of organisms, is already well on its way to the same pile of discarded pseudo-science that scientific creationism was banished to before it.

But be advised: For better or worse, the most successful of scientists don't tend to see their scientific views as supporting a traditional belief in a personal God. In a 1998 survey of the National Academy of Sciences, only 7 percent of the members said they believed in a personal God.

Science as a path to true knowledge is a powerfully attractive idea. Follow it if you are prepared to follow where it points you. Or alternatively, take the worldly knowledge it provides, but find a different path for your faith. The anti-evolutionists want it both ways: to claim science as support for their religious views, but to try to change the rules when the science starts pointing the wrong way. McClamrock is a professor of philosophy at the University at Albany.

First appeared in the Albany Times-Union, January 29, 2005.