Evolution and Religious Creation Myths

 America is becoming more and more isolated fromthe rest of the world. This
statement is true enough politically and ideologically, with the faulty intelligence
used to justify the 2003 war in Iraq, now known worldwide, and the
increased influence of religious thinking in the conduct of government affairs,
starting at the presidential level with George W. Bush. There is fear that
our nation’s separation of church and state is now threatened, considering
further that some politicians are using an anti-evolutionary, creationist
stance to sway their constituencies. But for a scientist, it is not just politics
that is of the essence. For a person practicing and teaching science, there is
now serious concern that the traditional division between science and religion
is coming to an end among a growing portion of the American public,
which is further promoting our international isolation. And scientific isolation
from the rest of the world is a frightening, dangerous prospect.

This state of affairs is not exactly new in the United States. Many will recall
the Scopes trial (also called the Scopes monkey trial) of 1925, in which John T.
Scopes, a high school science teacher, was sentenced for teaching evolution to
his students. Back in those days, the State of Tennessee had banned evolution
from its science curriculum, a law that Scopes—who had been recruited by
the American Civil Liberties Union—had evidently violated. Later, another
court overturned the verdict. Regardless of this outcome, it is disturbing that
a state had at that time taken the ill-inspired initiative to enact legislation
regarding the teaching of science, particularly in an area perceived as questioning
the validity of a literal interpretation of the Bible.
The consequences of this legislation—and the trial—were that, for a time,
America was seen as a scientifically backward country, particularly in Europe.
There, the issue of science potentially clashing with certain religious beliefs had
been settled earlier (although not quite completely) and was certainly not
expected to be legislated upon. In essence, science and faith had arrived at a
state of modus vivendi in Europe, with the United States more or less following
suit shortly after the Scopes trial. And this is indeed the way it should be,
because science and religion represent very different modes of knowledge and
understanding. Even though both can address similar questions (What is the
origin of the universe? What is the origin of life?), they tackle these questions
from very different perspectives and on completely different levels. In brief,
science does not need religion, and religion does not need science.When they
try to encompass one another, both become self-destructive.
Unfortunately, a renewed antiscience movement appeared in America in
the 1990s, and it is becomingmore and more vocal. It is also spreading to other
parts of the world. This movement includes some scientists, particularly life
scientists, who, again, are opposed to evolution. But this time, rather than
seeking a ban on the teaching of evolution, these activists are trying to convince
the public that equal time should be devoted to the teaching of divine
creation stories that fall outside the realm of science. Others are advocating the
teaching of ‘‘Intelligent Design,’’ a philosophy that attempts to pass itself off as
science. With a few scientists among their ranks to provide credence, creationist
and neocreationist movements now claim that evolutionary thinking is
critically flawed rather than being simply a-religious (or, perhaps as they see it,
antireligious), as in the past. As we describe in this book, nothing can be
farther fromthe truth: evolution rests on solid scientific bases and is in conflict
not with religion as a whole, but with only a very narrow interpretation of a
very small part of one sacred book, the Bible.
This is where America runs the risk of becoming isolated from the rest
of the world, and not just politically. Worldwide, an enormous majority
of believers in the Bible no longer interpret the Hebrew story of creation
literally—only Christian fundamentalists do so. This is their right, of course.
On the other hand, it is not their right to try to impose their religious views
on others, especially where science is concerned. In doing so, these people, if
successful, will clutter the science curriculum with misleading, unscientific
issues, something our country does not need. Neocreationists and proponents
of Intelligent Design usually prefer not to make reference to the Bible.
But in the final analysis, their goal is the same: they want to put an end to the
teaching of what they call ‘‘materialistic science’’ and replace it with something
more in agreement with their particular Christian convictions. This
strategy was discussed in the excellent book Creationism’s Trojan Horse: The
Wedge of Intelligent Design, by Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross (Oxford
University Press, 2004).
As we know, our modern world relies heavily on science and its applications.
As we also know, the state of scientific and mathematical knowledge
is not a healthy one in the United States. Teaching unscientific alternatives to
evolution in science classrooms would just make matters worse. In all fairness,
one should recognize that fundamentalists have so far used the democratic
process to further their views. But there is still a major problem: the
validity of science and the scientific process cannot and should not be decided
at the ballot box.
Most professional scientists, even though they are deeply irritated by all
the attacks against evolution, have remained largely silent in public forums,
at least in forums that involve the general public. This is a grave mistake,
because these attacks and attackers will not simply go away. It is now high
time to put the cards on the table and show what the game really is all
about—hence this book. Here, we describe our own view of creationism and
neocreationism from the perspective of anthropology and genetics and
provide rebuttals to their attacks against evolutionary science. We also
provide evidence that much of science is now relying on evolutionary
thinking, from cosmology to biology, and even some aspects of the social
sciences. Rather than being hopelessly flawed, evolutionary thinking is providing
a rich framework for the advancement of scientific knowledge.
In this book we avoid the stultifying debate about whether science is (or
should be) part of what philosophers call in turn methodological, philosophical,
theistic, agnostic, or materialistic naturalism. This issue is entirely
philosophical and has no bearing whatsoever on the enormous majority of
working scientists who conduct their research in their laboratories, the field,
and their observatories. These scientists use reason and the rules of science to
gain understanding of the natural world, not to decide which kind of philosophical
system science represents. This question is better left for philosophers
to argue about because in fact, most scientists do not care about it.
This book is not against religion. Rather, it is against self-declared righteous
people who, in the name of a distorted view of science and an intolerant
view of religion, put the perception of science in jeopardy in America.
Therefore, we have not attempted to present the problem as balanced—it is
not balanced. There cannot be a balanced view when science and nonscience
are clashing head to head.
As with all books, ours was inspired in large part by thinkers who preceded
us. In particular, it owes much to the thinking of Ilya Prigogine (1917–2003),
1977 Nobel Laureate for Chemistry and discoverer of dissipative structures. In
addition, we both found inspiration in the evolutionary thinking—biological
and cultural—of Stanford University human geneticist L. Luca Cavalli-
Sforza, whose scientific biography A Genetic and Cultural Odyssey: The Life
and Work of L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza (Columbia University Press) we published
in 2005. This endeavor originated a fruitful collaboration that continues to
date.
We thank Harold Juli (Connecticut College) and Michael Sinclair (New
York Law School), as well as three anonymous reviewers, for their help with
some of the topics covered in this book. P.F.L. also thanks Kathryn Dooley, a
student in his spring 2005 Origins of Life course at Washington State University,
for giving him permission to quote passages from her term paper for
that class. As always, all errors and omissions are ours alone.

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