Of Mold and Men
by Christopher Ferdinandi
ChrisFerdinandi@hotmail.com

The great Jon Stewart once asked, "Are we characters in a dubious fairy tale written thousands of years ago in the depths of human ignorance, or random globs of cells who got a little luckier than the shit that grows on our shower tiles?"

That question is on the forefront of the current "debate" over whether or not creationism - the idea that God divinely created the Earth and all its inhabitants in just seven days a little over 6,000 years ago - should be taught side-by-side with evolution in science classrooms.

For the extreme religious right this is a very pressing issue. With gay marriage and/or civil unions for same sex couples becoming legal in a handful of extra-sinful New England states, and courts ruling against school-ordained prayer and displays of religious icons on public property, God has been taking quite a beating in America. All He has left is the support of the executive branch, Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court, and the entire South and Midwest. Man, that's gotta sting! Having creationism taught in schools, I'd imagine, would be a great way to show the Big Guy that, "Hey, we're still thinking about ya!"

As part of the campaign, creationism has been given the cute new name: "Intelligent Design." Intelligent Design proponents - including the ever-articulate George W. Bush - insist that the job of a public education system is to expose children to differing schools of thought. And they're right, of course. But wouldn't it be nice if those differing schools of thought had even an inkling of scientific basis?

True to form, the extreme religious right has used the notion of scientific basis against the theory of evolution. Intelligent Design supporters argue that the theory has little to no actual scientific basis. Since evolution generally occurs slowly over a period of thousands, and often millions, of years, it is difficult to test directly. However, there is just as much scientific evidence for evolution as there is for the law of gravity. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the religious right made gravity its next target!

I can see it now: "Gravity is just a fabrication of scientists designed to diminish the glory of God. What actually happens, see, is God places his mighty, divine hand on the heads of all creation and holds us firmly to the ground. That's how we know man never made it to the moon. It's just impossible, see? God would just push that silly little space ship right back to the ground!"

The theory of evolution is built on Charles Darwin's The Origin of the Species, published in 1859. Since that time, countless other scientific studies have supported Darwin's theory, which was initially met, even by Darwin himself, with contempt and controversy. Ironically, despite their clear disdain for real science, the Intelligent Design folks now have their own book that seeks to scientifically validate the idea of creationism. It's called Of Pandas and People, and while I haven't read it, I can tell you that it is significantly shorter than Darwin's book.

One of the issues supposedly raised by Of Pandas and People is that the theory of evolution has changed over time. As new scientific evidence emerges, existing ideas and concepts must be reevaluated, and often times modified to accommodate the new information. This may, and often does, result in slightly differing interpretations of the data. According to Intelligent Design proponents, and Of Pandas, this shakes the ground on which the theory of evolution stands.

Intelligent Design is static and unchanging, and its supporters feel that this is its strong point. Intelligent Design isn't unchanging because there haven't been any discoveries raising question to its validity, however. It's unchanging because instead of accommodating new discoveries, the theory chooses to ignore them as if they don't exist. That doesn't make a theory strong; it makes a theory pathetic and asinine.

Of course, the idea that anything contained in the Bible should be presented as a scientific theory is absurd. For supporters of Intelligent Design, the book is the literal word of God, yet it is plagued with contradictions and scientific inaccuracies. How can such a text be taken as a serious scientific document? There are numerous little scientific inaccuracies in the Bible - For example, in Deuteronomy 14:7, rabbits are listed as an animal that chews cud, but they're not - but the most damning blow occurs within the creation story itself.

In the book of Genesis, the creation story in the Bible, man is created on two separate occasions. In chapter one, God creates man on the last day, but in chapter two, God first creates man, and then creates the land for him to populate. The meaning of the double creation of man is one that is widely debated among biblical scholars. How about that? It seems that Intelligent Design supporters are guilty of the same differing interpretations of information that they criticize evolutionists for! Checkmate!

A recent Pew Research survey of 2,000 Americans revealed that only 48 percent of the participants believed life on Earth has evolved over time. A shocking 42 percent felt that life had existed in its present form since the beginning of time, and the remaining 10 percent did not know. The fact that 42 percent of the people surveyed believed that life hadn't changed since the beginning of time tells me that creationism in the classroom is the last thing we need. If anything, we need to do a better job teaching evolution! Unfortunately, the survey also revealed that over two-thirds of Americans would like Intelligent Design taught in classrooms, and 40 percent would like it taught instead of evolution!

A big misconception in the debate over creationism in the classroom is the belief that if you support evolution, you don't believe God created life on Earth. But what's to stop someone from believing that life evolved through natural selection, but that God breathed the initial sparks of life onto the planet. Or perhaps evolution and natural selection themselves were guided by God and did not occur at random. There is a false sense of opposition between science and religion that originated when Darwin published his controversial book in 1859 and continues into today. The two are not mutually exclusive; one simply needs to reevaluate how literally they interpret the Bible.

To answer Jon Stewart's question, we are random globs of cells that got luckier - much luckier, I would argue - than the shit growing on our shower tiles. Whether we came to be due to a divine power or just sheer luck, well that's a choice made by individuals. But the role of public schools is to teach people about how we got here using the best scientific evidence we have available. It's not their job to make kids feels special by offering cute little stories about how God created everything on this earth for our disposal - that's what religious education is for.





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