Louisiana: Taking a stand for Jesus…on teaching Creationism in the schools

cave art by early modern humanity – Chauvet – France

Thinking About  Evolution, Pandering to the Christian Right – which in any event seems to be losing some of its clout – Perry, Palin and Bachmann Duke It Out on Creationism…

Among his other intemperate comments pandering to the Christian right wing in his home state, Texas, Governor Rick Perry takes a shot at evolution. Knowing it plays well among the political neanderthal types that so populate the `great lonestar state’, and in an obvious effort to outflank the likes of Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann on the right, Perry stoops to joining the science bashing crowd, dismisses evolution as `just a theory’ and one that “has some gaps.”

While any scientific theory, including the theory of natural selection, has gaps, the biggest gap here seems to be not in Darwin’s hypothesis, but in the space between Perry’s ears. Furthermore, as the recent 3 part tv series on NOVA `On Becoming Human‘ suggests, our understanding of the main lines of human evolution over the past fifty years has become more and more sophisticated and down right fascinating.

But then Perry did have stiff competition to contend with:

– In her memoire, Going Rogue’ Sarah Palin reveals that she  “didn’t believe in the theory that human beings — thinking, loving beings — originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea” or from “monkeys who eventually swung down from the trees.”

– Not to be outflanked on the right by Perry and Palin on the great evolution debate, Michele Bachman has also entered the ring with with her own canned manure, claiming that important scientists question or deny evolutionary theory and placing the anti-evolutionist latest line of offense – defense of what the call `intelligent design’ , a kind of last line of defense of anti-evolutionary strategists.

Actually for Perry, kicking Darwin’s theory of natural selection in the teeth is actually just a warm up for his main target – global warming – that he explains is simply a cynical mechanism for scientists to get plush government contracts. One wonders if Perry has ever read Darwin’s Origin’s of Species, even has the vaguest notion of what is the theory of natural selection…or more basically, should I dare to ask, if he can read at all?

It’s getting tougher to openly defend Darwinism these days in this great land of ours. I used to teach the stuff and on some days – like today – miss talking about australopithecus’ small brain size, neanderthal burials and Cro-magnon cave art. It’s been a few years now and have lost my edge concerning the latest developments, but the subject of Human Evolution is one that is near and dear to my heart. Although he wrote more than 20 years ago and might not be considered `up to snuff’, my favorite writer on the topic, easily, remains John Pfeiffer. I still consider one of his later works: The Creative Explosion to be as fine and wondrous explanation of the long human journey as one can find anywhere.

Evolution – human or otherwise – still fascinates me and every year I try to pick up one or two works on evolution in general, human evolution in particular. To that end, last summer I re-read Darwin’s The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation To Sex. This summer, among other things, I’m plodding through Stephen Jay Gould’s opus magnus The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Also had an interesting discussion with a friend (my father in law!) about the presence of Omega 3s in the human brain and its possible evolutionary link to a fish diet. I do all this now `for fun’, out of respect for the field, and I suppose also `in solidarity’.

Gould was a few years ahead of me at Jamaica High School (in Queens, NY) and I have always been especially proud that my high school produced such a genius, and a political progressive. I’ve read most of the other stuff Gould has written, much of it columns in Natural History that were then turned into books. The news that Jamaica High School is closing its doors, reported in the New York Times saddened me and I would not be surprised to read that Gould is organizing against the closure, even from the grave…but once again, as usual, I digress.

Where I now teach, there is little room for much integration of human evolution – although in a course on the global politics of birth control, about to take place again this fall, I do go over Darwin’s theory of natural selection both to expose the students a tiny bit to it and to explain how early 20th century eugenicists misused it. I can think of few theories that have been twisted all out of meaning as this theory, used to justify, among other things, international bullying and capitalist predation.

These last years, the few times that the theory has come up, it is striking how few students coming out of American high schools are in any way familiar with it. Few think of it more than some kind of contest between male moose in rutt.

I regret this because not to be familiar with, understand Darwin’s theory of natural selection is to be, early in the 21st century, scientifically illiterate. It is one thing to be scientifically illiterate and quite another to be scientifically illiterate and proud of it.

But then, that is what make America the great nation that is: the only country I can think of it where people vote against their class and general interests and are proud of the fact. I can’t do much to counter that general trend – a part of the right wing Christian fundamentalist political thrust that includes worshiping privatization economically, supporting tax cuts for the super-rich, anti-abortion extremism, savaging science and saving only those Jews who convert to Christianity from purgatory.

Evolution in general and human evolution in particular have long threatened Christian fundamentalists with their miopic literalist interpretation of Genesis. They see it as an integral part of the secular humanist modernist paradigm the fundamentalists find so threatening. Yet much more than their holy texts, it is human evolution which holds us together as a species, that connects us to each other and to our shared past not just with other humans but with all living things.

Nor is it all Christians that find the study of evolution threatening. Many Protestant and Catholic thinkers have found a way to reconcile the fossil record with their religious views. Some of the great evolutionists, Darwin included (de Chardin comes to mind as well), were quite religious. Still, the intensity, nay, the violence with which Christian fundamentalists attack evolutionary theory has in recent years overshadowed these more moderate, thoughtful Christian voices.

And the anti-evolution offensive continues..

Chauvet cave art…

The anti-evolution offensive, hardly noticed anymore in the mainstream press or political circles, continues virtually unabated. For some years now, I have been a card carrying member of the National Center for Science Education  that tries to counter the creationist trust in state legislatures and schools throughout the country. Its executive director, Eugenie C. Scott has done yeo(wo)man’s work to that effect.

A recent letter from Scott from  notes that `in the seven-year period between February 2004 (during the Bush years) and February 2011 (well into the Obama years) there were thirty-nine anti-evolution bills introduced into state legislatures across the country.’ With a sense of history, one of these resolutions, Alabama’s House Bill 391, was introduced on the 145 anniversary of the publication of Charles’ Darwin’s The Origin of Species. Touching, no?

These bills claim to be extending `academic freedom’ to K-12 teachers in public schools, but their not so hidden agenda is to undermine the teaching of Darwinian evolution and to encourage the teaching of creationism, the latter being nothing more than pseudo-science and gobbledygook.

In 2011 along…

• In New Mexico, a creationist lobbyist was quoted in the press claiming that evolution was `a dogma’ pushed by `a priesthood whose underlying philosophy is scientific materialism’ (sounds pretty serious and subversive!)
• In Tennessee, where they never quite got over the Scopes evolution trial of the 1920s, bills introduced in both the state house and senate defend intelligent design (the latest and not particularly effective creationist fabrication) as `a theory that many scientists are beginning to consider and hold’. Put politely, this statement is untrue. Put more rudely but to the point it is a bunch of nonsense
• Not to be undone by Tennessee’s leap into medievalism, Oklahoma, often a `vanguard state’ in that great leap back into the past (too many football players hit in the head I would guess), is putting for a bill that would require “every publicly funded Oklahoma school to teach the `debate’ of creation vs. evolution”