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Survival
of the Fittest
Beliefs
By SHAWN STONE
From
well-funded think tanks to faith-driven activists to determined
politicians, the theory of evolution is again under attack—and
evolutionists aren’t winning
It
would be difficult to find a pair of more starkly contrasting
images than these two, projected side-by-side on a large screen.
The Troy audience for this recent evening lecture on the relationship
between Christianity and Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution
were appropriately startled and amused by the juxtaposition;
they laughed out loud. On the one side was a detail from Michelangelo’s
tremendous portrait of creation in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel,
showing a majestic god touching the noble, newly created figure
of man with the divine gift of life. On the other side was
an artist’s rendering of an early, rodent-like mammal. To
say the poor critter looked goofy would be an understatement.
Half-rat, half-weasel, the creature appeared to be the work
of an omnipotent creator, all right—a cartoon auteur like
John Kricfalusi (The Ren & Stimpy Show) or Tex
Avery (father of Screwy Squirrel, a character with more than
a passing resemblance to this forlorn little beast).
The lecturer deftly voiced the pertinent theological question,
which happily doubled as a perfect punch line: “How do you
connect evolutionary science with the Christian tradition?”
The answer, for millions of Americans, is simple: No connection
between evolution science and religious tradition is possible.
A joint poll conducted by The New York Times
and CBS News just after the 2004 presidential election revealed
that while around one-third of all Americans accept the theory
of evolution, a little less than half professed a belief that
God created mankind 10,000 years ago. Breaking the numbers
down further, in a bizarre bit of red state-blue state solidarity,
61 percent of Republicans and 51 percent of Democrats were
in complete agreement that man was created, in his current
form, by God. In contrast, only 9 percent of Republicans and
16 percent of Democrats said that humans evolved from “less
advanced” beings over millions of years.
And the battle over evolution is heating up again. According
to a March 14 story in the Washington Post, the Rev.
Jerry Falwell’s Virginia-based Liberty University is sponsoring
a Creation Mega Conference in conjunction with “a Kentucky
group called Answers in Genesis, which raised $9 million in
2003.” That same week, The New York Times reported
that some IMAX theaters in the South were not going to show
the James Cameron-produced documentary Volcanoes of the
Deep Sea, because of the film’s references to evolution.
(An unhappy Cameron told the Times that this was “symptomatic
of our shift away from empiricism in science to faith-based
science.”)
As Lisa Buzzelli, director of the IMAX theater in Charleston,
S.C., explained to the Associated Press, “many people here
believe in creationism, not evolution.”
If nothing else, at least some of the folks who support evolution
have a defiantly bracing sense of humor about the ongoing
struggle. In an April Fool’s Day lead editorial titled “Okay,
We Give Up,” the editors of Scientific American were
caustic and concise: “In retrospect, this magazine’s coverage
of so-called evolution has been hideously one-sided. . . .
We owe it to our readers to present everybody’s ideas equally
and not to ignore or discredit theories simply because they
lack scientifically credible arguments or facts.”
With mock solemnity, the SA editors resolved to henceforth
dedicate themselves to “fair and balanced science.”
(Italics theirs.)
Why
is this theory so threatening to so many?
Biological evolution, as laid out by Darwin and generally
accepted by the vast majority of scientists, refers to the
process of changes in a population over time. (A long, long
period of time.) Some of the changes are based on random genetic
mutations. Others are based on “natural selection,” the concept
that successful members of a specials will survive, breed
and pass on their favorable traits, while those with less-than-favorable
traits will pass these on in fewer numbers, and eventually
disappear. Oh, and as a PBS Web site on the basics of evolution
puts it, “All organisms, both living and extinct, are related.”In
other words, that early mammal—the one who looks like Screwy
Squirrel—is our ancestor.
But
while the public may be divided, the people who study this
stuff—biological and geological sicentists—overwhelmingly
say the evidence is behind evolution. “Evolution is not the
fringe,” explains Jason Cryan. “The other side is the fringe.”
This has been born out by surveys both serious and silly.
A 2002 poll of Ohio scientists, conducted by faculty members
at Cleveland’s Case Western Reserve University, concluded
that 93 percent of scientists did not know of “any scientifically
valid evidence or alternate scientific theory that challenges
the fundamental principles of the theory of evolution.” The
National Center for Science Education started Project Steve
two years ago, which has (so far) collected the signatures
of over 500 scientists named “Steve” who attest to their support
for evolution, a sly attempt to mock similar unscientific
surveys collected by supporters of non-evolution based theories.
Cryan is the director of the Laboratory for Conservation and
Evolutionary Genetics at the New York State Museum. Cryan,
who earned his Ph.D. at North Carolina State University, is
also an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Biological
Sciences at the University at Albany.
Cryan’s research centers on lantern-fly DNA sequencing. As
he explains on his Web site, he uses “DNA nucleotide sequences
from nuclear and mitochondrial genes to infer phylogenetic
trees (similar to genealogies), thereby hypothesizing evolutionary
relationships among insect groups.” In other words, he travels
around the globe collecting various kinds of lantern flies,
and then analyzes their DNA sequences to see how they’re related.
According to Cryan, the whole argument is framed incorrectly.
“It’s artificial.” Among members of the scientific community,
he explains, the theory of evolution is, essentially, universally
accepted. It’s not a matter of belief; it’s not—as he says
is the case with intelligent design—a “faith-based endeavor.”
But isn’t evolution a “theory”?
 |
| In
other words, that early mammal —the one who looks like
Screwy Squirrel—is our ancestor. |
This,
Cryan says, is a misunderstanding of the what the word means
in a scientific context. As described in information available
from the National Center for Science Education, “theory means
a logical, tested, well-supported explanation for a great
variety of facts.” It is not a “guess, or a hunch.”
Cryan co-lectures in a course on evolution at UAlbany for
biology majors. Choosing his words carefully, he says that
he is surprised at how “misunderstood” evolution is, even
among bio majors. Part of the problem, he suggests, is the
time crunch in secondary education, which makes it difficult
to “cover evolution in any meaningful way.” He also laments
that there is also a general lack of scientific education
among the general public—and, he adds, it certainly doesn’t
help when the president of the United States says that “the
jury is still out” on evolution.
He’s
involved, however, in doing something about improving the
teaching of evolution. For the past three years, he has organized
the Teachers Workshop for Teaching Evolution at the State
Museum: “The thrust of the workshop here is [to help educators]
with specific lesson plans and concrete ideas for teaching
evolution.”
This year’s conference, held Feb. 3 and 4, drew secondary-school
teachers from all over New York state, and had its largest
attendance yet: 65 teachers. The reaction, Cryan says, has
been overwhelmingly positive; the only restriction many teachers
complain about is the lack of course time they have for actually
teaching evolution. For, while evolution is included in the
topics required for the regents biology exam, Cryan says,
“it’s not a big part of the exam.”
(Ironically, this minimal requirement does force private religious
schools to teach evolution—even if evolution is placed in
a “Biblical context.”)
Asked about the various movements to restrict the teaching
of evolution in public schools—or introduce the teaching of
“intelligent design” into school curriculums—his response
is succinct.
“It
could happen here.” The scientific and education communities,
Cryan says, need to be proactive to see that it doesn’t.
Example: According to a March 31 story in New York Teacher
(a publication of New York State United Teachers), a pair
of high-school teachers in the rural Erie County town of North
Collins were targeted in 2003 by “a local parent who, as a
clergyman, sermonized about the teachers’ evolutionary teachings
during Sunday services and bought a half-page ad in the local
newspaper questioning their morality.”
A recently released informal survey by the National Science
Teachers Association revealed that 31 percent of teachers
said they feel pressured to include “nonscientific alternatives”
to evolution in their classes.
And not all this pressure is coming directly from parents
and activists. According to a Gallup poll released on March
8, 38 percent of teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17 don’t
believe in evolution. These teenagers do believe that
“God created human beings pretty much in their present form
at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.”
What, you may be wondering, is the main “rival” theory to
evolution? It’s no longer strict Biblical “creationism.” Twenty
years ago, the battle to have creationism taught in public
schools was fought and lost. Now, many of the same anti-evolution
activists have rallied around “intelligent design.” This is
the concept that some of the processes and mechanisms of life
are too complex to have randomly developed, and must be the
result of design—which, logically, implies a designer.
Michael J. Behe, a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University,
is the author of Darwin’s Black Box, a very readable
book for lay people that relates biochemical complexity to
the theory of evolution. When the subject of intelligent design
comes up, so does Behe. It is his suggestion that many life
systems are “irreducibly complex,” and thus suggestive of
design rather than the three pillars of evolution, time, genetic
mutation and natural selection.
“I
used to think Darwinian evolution was true,” Behe remembers,
“because that’s what I was taught in schools. So I never had
any trouble with it, until I read a book called Evolution:
A Theory in Crisis by a man named Michael Denton, who
was a geneticist working in Australia, and an agnostic who
just raised scientific objections to the theory.”
Behe found Denton’s arguments to be “compelling,” and was
surprised by his ideas, primarily because he had “never heard
any objections before to evolution by scientists.”
“It
made me kind of take stock of the theory, and I started to
become skeptical after that,” he says.
After meeting up with some like- minded people—people, mostly,
from outside of the sciences—Behe was inspired to write his
book. It was received well in the anti-evolution community.
Darwin’s Black Box was not well received in the scientific
community, however. Biologists from across the spectrum picked
it apart, argument by argument. (See for yourself: Google
“Behe evolution,” and you will find page after page of examples,
with the tone of the reply essays ranging from calm and reasonable
to, as one article is described, “scathing.”)
Behe took this in stride, however, and remains unpersuaded:
“Yeah, well, c’est la vie. My attitude is, well, until
I see a response to my argument that I find persuasive on
a scientific level, I don’t care if they throw brickbats at
me.”
“None
of the responses I’ve read,” he adds, “and there have been
a lot, have persuaded me that my ideas are incorrect. I soldier
on.”
Asked about his current work, he says “I’m working on things
kind of related to intelligent design.
“One
question I want to ask is, how difficult it would be to develop
a new protein-protein binding site? And so I’ve been trying
to do a theoretical model of that, and recently had a paper
published in Protein Science on that topic.”
The purpose? “My interest is what is Darwinian evolution likely
to be able to do, and what does it look like it would be too
difficult for it to do.”
Behe is trying to draw a line between evolution and intelligent
design: “If you’re like me, if you think there is such a thing
as design . . . but you don’t think everything in biology
is design, as I don’t, then [the question is] where is a reasonable
place to draw a line?”
Behe is a fellow of the Seattle-based Discovery Institute
(“which means they put my name on their letterhead”). This
think tank spends, according to the Washington Post,
“more than $1 million a year for research, polls and media
pieces supporting intelligent design.” Their board of directors,
at least as listed on their Web site, is packed with corporate
lawyers (many who made the big bucks at Microsoft), business
tycoons and a couple of ex-functionaries from the Reagan and
Ford administrations. Granted, Discovery has a wider range
of interests than just intelligent design—its transportation
proposal for the Seattle area is pure Buck Rogers meets Bill
Gates—but the board is noticeably short on scientists.
If there are a few scientists who doubt evolution, it’s useful
to point out that there are more than a few theologians who
support the theory.
The last program of the Chapel + Cultural Center’s Lenten
Speaker Series—the program that started with contrasting slides—fell
on the last Wednesday before Holy Week started this year.
The C+CC is the center of Roman Catholic life on the campus
of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and this particular lecture
series is designed to help that particular community (and
the community at large, too, “regardless of religious affiliation”)
to focus on various aspects of spirituality and Christianity
in the six weeks before Easter.
This final speaker, Georgetown University professor of theology
John F. Haught, addressed God After Darwin—an interesting
subject for a program four days before Palm Sunday. It’s even
more unusual considering that Haught’s ideas, which fit into
a long tradition of Roman Catholic thought, have no problem
reconciling God and evolution.
After the comic example of Michelangelo’s God and the proto-weasel,
Haught went on to describe other theologically troubling examples
of what seems like evolution’s offhand cruelties. He showed
a picture of a crocodile munching on a snake—a typical Animal
Planet-style, survival-of-the-fittest visual money shot—and
asked “Where is divine care?” He pointed out that, in developing
the theories on evolution and the origin of species, Darwin
lost his Christian faith.
And yet, building on the ideas of the early 20th century geologist-priest
Pierre Teihard de Chadin, Haught built a case for evolution
as “an expression of providence.” Evolution, he argued, with
its gradual increase in organized complexity (and corresponding
development of consciousness) leads to greater, not less,
freedom.
“We
know,” he said, “in a way our ancestors could not, that we
live in an unfinished universe.” Why, he asked, would a creator
make an unfinished universe? Because (answering his own question)
there is no real alternative to an unfinished universe. A
perfect creation is, he argued, theoretically inconceivable,
because with no freedom there is no future.
Interestingly, Haught seems somewhat sympathetic to Behe,
if only for the withering reaction Behe’s concepts provoked:
“The scorn with which some scientists have greeted Behe’s
rather guileless proposal is itself an interesting object
of study.” Haught, however, has little sympathy for the ideas
themselves, as he writes in his latest book, God After
Darwin: A Theology of Evolution:
“What
strikes the theologian after reading Behe’s book is that if
Darwinian theory is wanting in the full explanation of life,
then so also is the notion of ‘intelligent design.’ ‘Intelligent
design’ smoothly passes over the disorderly, undirected aspects
of evolution that are also part of the life-process.”
Haught was even more pointed in his lecture. Intelligent design,
he argues, has the effect of frontloading “the hand of providence.”
To Haught, the concept of design as used by Behe and colleagues
is too finite, and “a rather lifeless concept.”
The Catholic theologian sees something more promising in evolution:
a “universe seeded with promise, rather than design.”
Of course, it’s possible to reconcile religion and evolution
only when the religious tradition in question is not exclusively
text-based. To those for whom the Bible is the literal, received
word of God, it’s much harder for evolution to be anything
but a kind of heresy.
And when Haught has given lectures on God and evolution in
the South, he said, he’s been told by audience members that
he isn’t really a Christian.
And for some of those adherents to text-based religions, taking
on evolution is just the first item on a much bigger agenda.
Take Kansas, for example. An effort is being made there to
revamp teaching standards with regard to evolution. As Wichita-based
Southern Baptist minister Terry Fox helpfully explained to
the Washington Post, most citizens “don’t think we
come from monkeys.”
But Fox didn’t stop there. “If you believe God created that
baby, it makes it a whole lot harder to get rid of that baby,”
Fox told the Post. “If you can cause enough doubt on
evolution, liberalism will die.”
There are 19 states considering evolution-related legislation
or regulation. As Jason Cryan says, “It can happen here.”
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