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TechnoratiMonkeying about with evolution
Why do some people of faith distrust evolutionists? The reasons can be found in the notorious Scopes Monkey Trial.
I sometimes wonder goes through the mind of an American child faced with an afternoon of science classes. Does the prospect of an evolution discussion create a simmering sense of expectation, a trembling hope that something special is about to happen? Does the explosiveness of the topic and its contested history charge the classroom with electric excitement?
I doubt it. But there is no shortage of angst amongst American adults over just what goes on in those generally soporific science classes. Right now, 83 years on from the Scopes trial, the air is heavy in sleepy Louisiana, where the state legislature has ratified a bill to: "allow and assist teachers, principals, and other school administrators to create and foster an environment... that promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied, including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning…"
The most important point here, according to the widely-read magazine New Scientist, is that teachers in Louisiana can present topics related to evolution as scientifically questionable. Exasperated editors of science journals continue to fret over the fact that 45 percent of Americans ascribe to Young Earth Creationism, that is, that the Bible account of creation should be taken literally and that the intervening millennia could be counted on one’s fingers.
Are these evolutionary recusants merely religious fanatics either unwilling or unable to follow a relatively simple train of evidence? Perhaps some of them are. But the history of the popular debate on evolution demands a more nuanced consideration. The Scopes Monkey Trial is a case in point. This has become a touchstone for debate over evolution in the US ever since 1925. John Scopes was a teacher in Tennessee who defied a state law which banned evolution in the classroom. He was found guilty in a trial which riveted America and was even made into a classic film, Inherit the Wind.
At the centre of the controversy was the 1914 textbook which Scopes used, Civic Biology. The case for the prosecution was derided at the time (and ever since) as “theological bilge” from backwoods buffoons, partly because the defense team succeeded in turning the event into a trial of the historical and scientific value of the Bible. Time magazine described it as "the fantastic cross between a circus and a holy war". But what about the book itself? Everyone remembers the "degraded nonsense which country preachers are ramming and hammering into yokel skulls" (to quote the dyspeptic H.L. Mencken), but what about Civic Biology? What were its views on evolution? From a contemporary perspective, they, too, were bilge. Take for instance the author’s comments on race:
At the present time there exist upon the earth five races or varieties of man, each very different from the other in instincts, social customs, and, to an extent, in structure. These are the Ethiopian or negro type, originating in Africa; the Malay or brown race, from the islands of the Pacific; the American Indian; the Mongolian or yellow race, including the natives of China, Japan, and the Eskimos; and finally, the highest type of all, the Caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America.
The author offers forceful recommendations regarding the problem of criminality:
Studies have been made on a number of different families in this country, in which mental and moral defects were present in one or both of the original parents. The "Jukes" family is a notorious example…. In seventy-five years the progeny of the original generation has cost the state of New York over a million and a quarter of dollars… If such people were lower animals; we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading. Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race.
He is clear on the limits of reproductive choice:
When people marry there are certain things that the individual as well as the race should demand. The most important of these is freedom from germ diseases which might be handed down to the offspring. Tuberculosis, that dread white plague which is still responsible for almost one seventh of all deaths, epilepsy, and feeble-mindedness are handicaps which it is not only unfair but criminal to hand down to posterity. The science of being well born is called eugenics.
And he makes quite explicit the link between his views and those of evolutionary science:
If the stock of domesticated animals can be improved, it is not unfair to ask if the health and vigor of the future generations of men and women on the earth might not be improved by applying to them the laws of selection. This improvement of the future race has a number of factors in which we as individuals may play a part.
Objections, anyone?
One reason for the failure of evolution education at the popular level is that both sides have depicted evolution as inextricably linked to scientific materialism (clearly false), and one side of the debate has taken ethical anti-humanism to follow from scientific materialism (quite a sound conclusion). Scientific materialism may have expunged the eugenics movement from its pamphlets and websites, but it advocates eugenics under a new names like abortion, sex selection, genetic screening, and euthanasia. Note that both incarnations of the eugenics movement lay claim to a paradoxical ideal of compassion: we must be anti-human for the sake of humanity.
Materialists have claimed the discovery that man is 60 percent fruit fly, genetically speaking, is the basis for a radical new equality. What it really means, working from their philosophy, is the foundation for a radical new inequality. Souls are always equal, but genes are never. If the foundation for our deepest understanding of the human person is genetics, then the conclusions of Civic Biology, and the most radical of modern sociobiologists, are valid. And as long as evolutionary theory carries the baggage of a materialistic worldview imposed by its chief proponents, it will be opposed by many on the grounds of humanistic intuition independent of theological concerns.
Phil Elias studies Medicine at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.
...This article made a point saying many oppose the evolutionary theory because of their humanistic intuition. Since it presented statistics over population opinions, is is probably more corrected to say, they “don’t buy it”. Going farther, I wonder if the ones who did “buy it”, didn’t do it in the grounds of human intuition too (note the different word used). One of the main problems the churches had to solve to survive, was how to cover the will of nations to go to war in a Christian world, face to the Christian statement that we are all brothers. Social Darwinism presents no compunctions of that kind and should have be an attractive idea in that aspect. That nations compete themselves, kill, grow, change, evolve, disappear, is only accepted history. That people and families suffer the same, is common sense. If the natural world created by God presented the same traits, better yet. Evolution endorsed some of the more deepest human convictions, and so, it may have striven because of that… even if implying our ancestors might have been common animals or be associated with excesses like active eugenic policies or racial ideologies that took us to world wars.
Don’t fool yourselves, I’m a convicted evolutionist. But I find fascinating that the fate of scientific theories lies not in their intrinsic scientific merits but otherwise.
[And confessing myself to be a evolutionist, I’m forced to answer to John Thomas. From your own words, are you accusing me of being a liar? A deceiver? A cover-up?]
In my previous comment, I showed my surprise about “why should anyone oppose evolutionary theory on the grounds of humanistic intuition”. Actually, I understand quite well why that happen, but wanted to emphasis the idea that no one should do it. Actual modern science is building in a way that should exclude subjective judgments, but the same cannot be said about the way we acquire its knowledge to ourselves. Most of it is transmitted to us from others, it isn’t throughly validated but trusted as we trust those sources. If a teacher teach us the Gravity Law, we don’t mount a Cavendish experiment to confirm it, instead, if we trust him, we accept it. Later, we are free to change opinion, but meanwhile there’s the issue of knowing whom to trust, how to trust, and for that, we cannot avoid to use subjective thinking and our intuition.
And with this, we came to my next comment about this article…
“Why do some people ... distrust evolutionists?” Probably because they lie, deceive, cover-up, bluster, and professionally destroy anyone who would question their orthodoxy. (Remember the quote of the Chinese scientist visiting the US? - “In our country we cannot question the Government; in your country you cannot question Darwin” - the cost, it is attested, is professional suicide.) Science, as has been said, does not progress by way of the consensus view, or arrogant defence of the ruling dogma, still less through the virtual intellectual fascism by which dissent is silenced.
Phil Elias says many “have depicted evolution as inextricably linked to scientific materialism”; the existence of theistic evolutionism (or evolutionary theism) itself shows some people think evolutionism is not of necessity materialist - but many disagree (eg. Phillip Johnson), and certainly evolution came into being as a direct result of many decades of moves towards secularism/materialism, in Western thought, and it is maintained vigorously, today, because it is the pillar on which the whole Western secularist/materialist project stands (vide Richard Dawkins et al).
Spot on, David. The healthy body does what the mind, which has been influenced by the person’s spirit, decides.
Mal, I can’t argue with anything you said except to note that the mind manifests the spirit and, therefore, in healthy people, reflects it.
Of all the things that have evolved or come into existence some could be attributed to the works of man. In whatever endeavour man has been involved, the mind has generally played a significant role because it is that part of the human soul that is capable of analysing, assessing, calculating etc. However, we also know that some use their physical and mental abilities to act selfishly whereas others, with similar abilities, respond more responsibly and altruistically. For instance, some will ‘create’ new destructive chemical weapons by using previous knowledge, observations, materials that already exist and relevant natural laws while others will refrain from bringing such things into existence. So, obviously the moral component does not come from man’s body nor his mind but from something else - his spirit. It is a person’s spirit that influences the individual’s attitudes and actions towards people and the environment. It is the love component of a human’s soul.
Evolution has no moral component. The moral component comes from the mind of man.
Very interesting and provocative article. But something I don’t understand: Why should anyone oppose evolutionary theory on the grounds of humanistic intuition?! If it is a scientific theory, then it should be judged in scientific terms, which imply certain rules of discussion. Intuition is a powerful tool to supply arguments, but any produced must conform to those rules. Once abiding, anyone is welcome. The rules are simple: if a specific theory is contradicted by an objective fact, then it is proved scientifically wrong. Usually, it is patched or corrected to step over the killing “fact”, a process we may call “perfecting” the theory. If two scientific theories concur to explain the same fact, the simpler one, less patched or which explains more, tends to win the favor of the majority of the “scientific” community. One last rule: the theory is only called scientific if there is ways to prove it wrong.
So, what characterize a theory as scientific is its ability to be proved false, to be contested. The evolutionary theory (if it means what I think) is now the top explanation because it has been tested a lot and in general, winning. Must I remind that it was born in an hostile environment (of which the monkey trial is an example), and even so it survived, with a lot of church people in its genesis, whom looking in nature for signs of the creation, found ones that in honesty, had to be interpreted otherwise? It is not exactly a theory born from wishful thinking and forefathers love.
Against that, should we expect humanistic intuition to offer better tests, just because we don’t like certain social ideas inspired on evolution? Scientific theories are amoral, they do not say how the world should be, they only explain natural things. To go beyond that, is abusive. Humanistic intuition may reprove those ideas, but reprobation itself isn’t proof against evolution,… in the same way, nuclear theory isn’t disproved just because we don’t like the nuclear bomb.
The problem with Louisiana’s law is that such infantile approaches already caused a lot of harm to the Christian faith. Imagine if we would “promote critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of theological theories” on the divine origin of the Bible (or whatever difficult topic on faith and morals) among elementary students! What kind of critical thinking can an ignorant student of the advanced scholar research provide on this topic? I cringe at the thought of a bunch of middle school students “openly discussing” how the science of evolution-development is helping or not our understanding of evolution...I can tell you as a university professor, that if this is already a difficult topic for academics (scientists are still struggling with the laws of evolution) how much more for a group of youngsters that are JUST BEGINING to learn biology!!! Oh My! is what I’d say!
It’s my understanding that there is no necessary connection between the Louisiana law, and belief in creationism. Louisiana seeks to ensure academic freedom in the face of the Darwinists’ campaign to silence all dissent from its paradigm. There is no reference in the law to creationism, etc. Whatever may have been the genesis (!) of this law, it commendably seeks to ensure that school students are able to hear the pro AND contra arguments.
Whatever material thing that has evolved or developed has done so strictly in accordance with the Natural laws (or God’s Laws). The same could be said about anything that will or could come into existence. Scientists use these prevailing laws to predict or to create, but there is no way they could ignore, reject or circumvent them. Nor could they ever create new natural laws. Although scientists use these laws none of them could tell us when, why and how phenomena such as time and gravity, for instance, came into existence.
Do modern sociobiologists consider a human being to be merely a material body? Is there not a mind of whatever size located somewhere that is associated with this body? And, is there not a spirit that influences a person’s relationship to other people? Should we see ourselves merely as a ball of cells or genes?
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