Creationism v. Evolutionism in America's Public Schools

In 1859, Charles Darwin unintentionally went headlong against the teachings and beliefs of the Christian Church when he proposed his theory of evolution. At the time, Darwin had extensive knowledge of theology--he was essentially a theologian first, scientist second. He was given an opportunity to partake in an expedition on the HMS Beaglein order to study the flora and geological formations of South Africa. It was on this voyage that he concluded that the Earth is in a stage of perpetual change. It was the proclamation of a constantly changing world and the championing of the theories of "survival of the fittest" and "natural selection" that ultimately caused the Church to condemn him and his teachings. Over a hundred years later, issues concerning evolution and creationism, the two main theories detailing the origin of humanity, have resurfaced and are subject to much debate. In this article, I will outline the two positions and then address the current debate over which view should be taught to the children who attend American public schools. Creation Scientists hold that a literal reading of the Bible provides a better account of the world's order than evolutionary theory does. They hold that the flood described in Genesis is responsible for the present geological structure of the world. The explanation creation scientists give for why different geological strata can be characterized by the fossils they contain is through "hydraulic sorting and the relative mobility of different species in escaping the rising flood waters." For example, the fossils of dinosaurs appear to be the oldest because they were slow-moving creatures and the most incapable of escaping the rising levels of water during the Great Flood chronicled in the Bible.

Creationists believe that "some 6,000 years ago the Earth and all living things were suddenly created in a process similar to that detailed in Genesis." Creationists also hold that God, through six days of creation and one day of rest, gave the Earth the appearance of old age, which explains why it looks the way it does today. This belief in a newly-created, yet weathered Earth is how creation-scientists account for the seemingly ancient geological formations that are abundant on the Earth's surface and serve as evidence for many of the evolution theorists' contrary theory. Essentially, the creationist view sees God as wholly responsible for the universe the way it is and that the universe is not in a state of constant flux.

Creationists also believe that God created "every individual soul out of nothing, uniting it with the cells of the parents, which have fused in generation to form a single human being." It creates a certain sacredness and spirituality that is accorded to man as the apex of Divine creativity. We are each ascribed a soul by God and within that soul resides man's personal relationship with his Creator. The role of creating the physical body is thus given to the parents of the individual, while the spiritual fulfilment is left entirely to our Creator.

The creationist view maintains the dignity of humankind--we are created in God's image as the summit of creation, and are the only beings to possess a Divine soul, that is to say, we can consider ourselves to be God's masterpiece. It is the infringement on these values which adherents to creation-science abhor in the theory of evolution presented by Darwin. As mentioned above, Charles Darwin is the central theorist of evolutionary theory yet he was not alone in his proposal of a different origin for man than that described in the Bible. Darwin was heavily influenced by Lyell's book Principles of Geology, which was concerned with showing that geological alterations do not occur "cataclysmically," but instead occur over a long period of time. Also, he "observed related but different species near each other on the same continent; similarities between fossils and living forms in the same areas; resemblances between species on distant islands and those on the nearest continent...and from this he concluded that species were not the result of Divine intervention but were descended with modification from common ancestors." It was the combination of all these observations which led Lyell to believe in an ancestral descent among species which served as the fuel for Darwin's argument.

Charles Darwin authored two books that are the focal point of his theory of evolution and which address the most controversial issues from the point of view of the Christian Church. In The Origin of the Species, he puts forth the theory of natural selection which can be summed up in the following manner: 1. There are random variations among the species, 2. There is a struggle for survival, and 3. The fittest members of a society survive. In The Descent of Man, Darwin proposes the idea that man is directly descended from the apes and that our seemingly superior intelligence is merely a difference in degree, not in kind, from that of the primates. The Christian Church was unable to accept such a theory because it eliminated the sacredness of a soul created and ascribed specifically by God. If we, in fact, are descended from apes, then we too are merely creatures of the animal kingdom, without a soul that is particular to humans. And if we were created in God's image, God would have to be an animal as well. The assurance that the Bible provided that man had control over nature was seriously threatened.

The mechanism of natural selection eliminated the "God of the Gaps" which had been relied upon by scientists such as Issac Newton. Newton relied on the God of the Gaps in order to explain what he was unable to explain using only the laws of the universe that science had provided him with. Darwin still credited a designer of the universe and a creator of the laws of the universe but he denied entirely the existence of the God that is described in Genesis. On one hand, he was able to explain the origin of man without eliminating a God altogether, but it was his insistence on the proximity between man and ape that caused so much controversy. The reason that Darwin's theory was not well received is that his evidence was indirect. His theory offered a new explanation for phenomena that, until then, were unexplainable by science. The problem was that it rested highly upon many things that had yet to be proven by science. It was not until Mendel's work on genetics was uncovered that Darwin's theory began to gain concrete scientific support. Mendel's work provided "a reliable basis for evolutionary inheritance." Eventually, other disciplines such as "comparative anatomy, embryology, ethology, bio-chemistry, parasitology, biogeography, and especially palaeontology" began to uncover knowledge that supported his theory. By 1930, Sir Ronald Fisher had paved the way for Neo-Darwinism by showing how "genetic mutations function in the process of natural selection."

At the turn of the century, Herbert Spencer pioneered a discipline known as Social Darwinism, which combined biology, physics, sociology and philosophy and used Darwinian thought to analyze society's structure. Essentially, it stated things were the way they were because it was 'natural' for them to be that way. The rich were rich and the poor were poor all because of 'natural law.' John D. Rockefeller once said that the growth of large business is merely survival of the fittest...[forcing small companies out of business is not an evil tendency in business. It is merely the working-out of a law of nature and a law of God." Years later, he was also quoted as saying: "God gave me my money." One can imagine that this sparked quite a controversy with some as well. The rich were quite content with this analysis but the poor, on the other hand, felt that not only had they been disregarded by their socio-economic environment, they were now told they were inferior because of God's will. The Age of Technology was around the corner, and Social Darwinism proved that people are poor not merely because of society but because of science. It spawned a new order that was run based on the old principle of the divine right of kings. People who wanted to escape this had to turn to the churches that were not caught up in this phenomena. The risk was that in being opposed to the "scientifically intellectualized social order," they were often regarded as being anti-scientific and subsequently, anti-intellectual. Eventually America reached the Industrial Age and the notion that anyone can get what they want and are in control of their own destiny. This belief was championed by stories of Horatio Alger which proved that "everyone who wants to can succeed--that average people have the skills to cope with problems without elite education."

Recently, there has been much debate over which if the two theories of human origin is appropriate and should be taught to America's public school students. Many of the current legal battles can be traced back to the Scopes trial of 1925 during which John Scopes, a science professor in Dayton, Tennessee, was convicted for illegally teaching Darwin's theory of evolution.

The lawyer responsible for prosecuting Scopes was William Jennings Bryan, an avid supporter of the Bible's account of creation. Scopes agreed to be a figurehead for evolutionists and go to court hoping that he might ignite a controversy concerning the country's freedom of religion law. The case began as a purely academic question: Did John Scopes teach evolution in his class? Although Scopes admitted to having taught evolution, Bryan, hungry for publicity, would not stop at that. He would soon transform this simple debate into a trial of Darwinism versus the Bible. He felt that "all the ills from which America suffers can be traced back to the teaching of evolution," and that "it would be better to destroy every book ever written and save just the first three verses of Genesis." Although Bryan won the case, Scopes's defendant, Clarence Darrow, managed to humiliate Bryan in court and seemed to have gained a victory nonetheless. In the eyes of evolutionists, Darwinism had emerged victorious. A brief glance over the nation's big-city newspapers published the next day proved otherwise, though. Mostly everyone had seen what Bryan had said as being obviously true. He was honoured in his city, a college was named for him and still stands today as a bastion of anti-evolutionist thought.

The Scopes trial marked the beginning of the debate that is still heated in America. In order to address it properly, it is inevitable that the dichotomy of Church and State, and their relative powers over society, much be once again reconsidered. The debate centers around the fact that teaching creation-science in public schools might infringe upon one of the most important freedoms provided by the U.S. Constitution, the freedom of religion. The main motivation behind the creationist movement is to show that "our species was singled out for a special creation in God's own image." Creationists have a hard time accepting the fact that they are descended from apes and that they must teach that to their children as well. Conservative commentator, co-host of CNN's Crossfire, and former presidential candidate, Pat Buchanan holds firmly that he is not related to primates, that he is a creature of God and that "parents have the right to insist that Godless evolution not be taught to their children or their children not indoctrinated in it."

As of November 1989, California's public schools no longer present Darwin's theory of evolution as fact, but as both fact and theory. This is an "equivocation pleasing to the religious right because few understand that to scientists, 'theory' is not synonym for mere 'hypothesis'." Philip Dunne, a writer for Time Magazine, brings up an interesting point in that, to most people (non-scientists), the term 'theory' implies something that is debatable, which essentially the theory of evolution is, but as many scientists would argue: "It's true that evolution is 'just a theory.' So is Einstein's theory of relativity, the theory of plate tectonics, and the theory of subatomic particles. Yet no one argues that teachers should present alternatives, because no other alternatives exist. All these theories have unanswered questions, and any of them might someday be overturned by a new idea that explains its facts better. But at the moment, no other is even close." This seems to be the strongest argument in favour of the evolutionary theorists who hold that the theory of evolution should be taught to children in public schools as more than 'just a theory.'

Creationists, though, tend to feel that if evolution is in fact a theory, then why can we not see creation-science as an alternate theory that should be accorded the same amount of importance in places such as schools. The problem arises in that if the U.S. were to institute a mandate that required creationism to be given the same weight as evolution and in some case taught as the sole theory (if Pat Buchanan has his way), one could see it as a subversive way of imposing religion on students. Scientist John Cole feels that "attacking evolutionism may stem from a simple desire to attack the establishment and to express general discontent rather than from a straightforward disagreement with a biological theory."

The Fundamentalists represent the most extreme believers in the creationist movement when it comes to teaching the origin of life to children in U.S. public schools. They want to re-institute prayer in the classroom (the Gallup Polls show that 69% of Americans are in agrreement with that particular suggestion), and to censor school libraries and texbooks in accordance with their tenets. Even president Ronald Reagan said: "I have a great many questions about evolution; I think that recent discoveries down through the years have pointed up great flaws in it." It is apparent that the Fundamentalists do not have a problem with forcing religion on students. One must note, though, that this particular group represents the extreme right on the issue and shouldn't be seen as a representation of the creationist movement as a whole. Polls consistently show that nearly half of the American population do not subscribe to Darwin's theory of evolution which explains the innability to secure one of the theories as the one to be taught in schools. They both display a practically equal amount of supporters.

It is difficult to see a way that these two seemingly polar opposite theories can coexist if one is to take the two theories in their strictest sense. If one is to take the Biblical account of creation literally, it is impossible to, at the same time, believe that we also evolved from single-celled organisms. But if one were able to reach a compromise between these two theories without compromising one's own respect for scientific knowledge or religious belief, then I believe the two can be compatible. It is definitely a possibilty that a Divine Force set the universe in motion with the Big Bang and provided all of the laws for the universe, including evolution--perhaps we can accept "evolution as the process the Creator may have used to bring life and mind into being."

Dunne concludes his article by pointing out that, in a sense, we are all creationists because "to some extent, we may learn how it happened, when it happened, but never why, any more than we can bound infinity or clock eternity." Once again, we are shown that science and religion are engaged in the same project, to discover the origin of life, but will forever, as far as we can see, be unable to find the final piece of the puzzle, the meaning of life. Dunne also says that "we [creationists and evolution-theorists] differ! Only on the specifics. The idea of linear time is so embedded in our consciousness that we instinctively believe there must have been a beginning, a creation, a genesis. But on what impulse, whose design? That we can never know." I feel that Dunne has located the issue central to the debate at hand. As far as we can see, there will never be a definite answer as to which theory is correct. We should be able to remain open to different possibilities--we should be able to credit both Science and Religion for their respective accomplishments and in teaching them to the American youth, refrain from over imposing either of them on the youth.