Group

Here is Eugenie Scott's important 1996 article in The Sciences, which
appears not to be webbed.

I will reference this on my "Articles posted to CED" page
(http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/cedartic.html) so that search engines
like Google can find it for the benefit of others.

As before, I assume that this is covered by the "fair use" provisions of
USA, Australian, and international copyright law, being distributed by me
in the public interest without profit for scientific and educational purposes.

Steve

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Essays & Comment

MONKEY BUSINESS

BY EUGENIE C. SCOTT

[mural]

Roger Brown, Noah's Ark (detail of maquettes for unrealized mural
project), 1982

FRIENDLY, NEVADA, IS AN UNFRIENDLY TOWN in which to teach
evolution. So reports a teacher who says he faces disciplinary action
because his lessons mention Darwin.

Paradise, California, may be a paradise for conservative Christians who
want their children's science education to include an account of the origin
of life based on the book of Genesis. At a new charter school (a locally
managed school with relaxed curricular requirements) a sympathetic board
of directors has announced that it plans to let the creationist parents have
their way. Similar schools in Orange, California, and Berlin, Michigan,
may soon follow suit.

Moon, Pennsylvania, was the site of some out-of-this-world science
teaching in March 1994. Parents sued the district after a school-district
administrator spent a day telling students that the dinosaurs died out in
Noah's Flood; that the diversity of human languages was divine
punishment inflicted on the builders of the Tower of Babel; and that
creation "science" has shown that the earth is only a few thousand years
old, on the basis of the fall of, yes, moon dust. The district settled the
lawsuit, promising not to advocate creationism in science classes again.

One hundred fourteen years after the death of Darwin, seventy-one years
after the Scopes trial and nine years after the Supreme Court struck down
laws requiring equal time for creation and evolution, the struggle over
evolution in the schools is alive and well. As executive director of the
National Center for Science Education, I deal with it daily, keeping an eye
out for newly kindled brushfires of controversy and giving information and
advice to people who want to ensure that unscientific "science" stays out
of the public schools. Some days it seems the telephone rings almost
nonstop with reports and complaints from around the country: a state
committee poised to slap antievolutionary warning labels on biology
textbooks; a school board abuzz with a new "scientific" theory called
intelligent design; teachers bracing for the inevitable barrage of leaflets
when the Institute for Creation Research sends one of its popular "Back to
Genesis" roadshows to town.

The legal setbacks of the 1980s left their mark on the antievolution
movement. Now, instead of lobbying for state laws to put creation
"science" in the classroom, advocates have returned to the grass roots. By
putting pressure on local school boards and teachers, they try to make
evolution too hot to handle, or at least to sweep it into the educational
background. The low-profile approach has paid off in a series of local
victories--small, piecemeal and sometimes short-term, but still troubling to
anyone who cares about science education in America. And there are signs
that the movement is again starting to flex its muscles at the state level as
well.

WHAT MAKES WELL-MEANING PEOPLE FIGHT so hard to keep
children from learning a basic scientific principle? From the beginning of
the American antievolution movement, the driving force has been the
same: a struggle for souls. Students who learn evolution, the creationists
reason, will come to doubt the existence of God. Without the moral rudder
that religion provides, they will become bad people doing bad things.
Evolution is thus evil and a cause of evil. As Henry M. Morris, the most
influential twentieth-century creationist, wrote in 1963, "evolution is at the
foundation of communism, Fascism, Freudianism, social Darwinism,
behaviourism, Kinseyism, materialism, atheism and, in the religious
world, modernism and Neo-orthodoxy."

20 THE SCIENCES - January/February 1996

In the early 1920s creationists succeeded in outlawing the teaching of
evolution in three American states. In Tennessee in 1925, John T. Scopes
was convicted of the crime of teaching evolution. The Scopes trial was
widely considered a Pyrrhic victory for antievolution campaigners, but the
ensuing controversy largely kept evolution out of school textbooks for
another thirty years. Only after the Sputnik scare of 1957 did scientists
principle of biology.

Antievolutionists were appalled. Adding to their woes, in 1968 the U.S.
Supreme Court ruled, in Epperson v. Arkansas, that it was illegal for states
to ban the teaching of evolution. Such bans, Justice Abe Fortas wrote,
single out evolution from the curriculum "for the sole reason that it is
deemed to conflict with a particular religious doctrine Thus they violate
the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution:
"Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

The ruling gave antievolutionists a new focus: if they could reframe the
biblical account of creation as a *scientific* theory, the establishment
clause would no longer apply. Creationism could be taught in science
classes, blunting the evil effects of evolution. In the 1970s, laws requiring
equal time for creation "science" in public schools were proposed in at
least twenty-two states and were passed in two, Arkansas and Louisiana.
Both laws soon sparked lawsuits. The Arkansas case, McLean v. Arkansas
Board of Education, hinged on the law's point-by-point definition of
creation "science":

Creation-science includes the scientific evidences sic and related
inferences that indicate: (1) Sudden creation of the universe,
energy, and life from nothing; (2) The insufficiency of mutation
and natural selection in bringing about development of all living
kinds from a single organism; (3) Changes only within fixed limits
of originally created kinds of plants and animals; (4) Separate
ancestry for man and apes; (5) Explanation of the earth's geology
by catastrophism, including the occurrence of a worldwide flood;
and (6) A relatively recent inception of the earth and living kinds.

The obvious similarities to Genesis proved to be the law's downfall. In
January 1982 the federal district court judge William R. Overton ruled that
creation "science" was religion, not science. "A scientific theory must be
tentative and always subject to revision or abandonment in light of facts
that are inconsistent with, or falsify, the theory," he wrote. "A theory that
is by its own terms dogmatic, absolutist and never subject to revision is
not a scientific theory The state did not appeal his decision.

THE LOUISIANA CASE, EDWARDS V. AGUILLARD, went all the
way to the Supreme Court. In 1987 the court reaffirmed that creationism is
inherently a religious concept and that advocating it in public schools
would violate the establishment clause. Discussions of creationism would
still be permitted in other contexts, such as comparative religion classes.

But the devil is in the details: the Edwards decision seemed to leave a
loophole, which antievolutionists have exploited. Justice William J.
Brennan Jr. wrote, in his opinion, that "teaching a variety of scientific
theories about the origins of humankind to schoolchildren might be validly
done with the clear secular intent of enhancing the effectiveness of science
instruction." In a dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that "the people of
Louisiana, including those who are Christian fundamentalists, are quite
entitled, as a secular matter, to have whatever scientific evidence there
may be against evolution presented in their schools, just as Mr. Scopes
was entitled to present whatever scientific evidence there was for it

Whether Justice Scalia knows it or not, "scientific evidence against
evolution" is one of the euphemisms antievolutionists have devised to
avoid referring to creation. Authors of creation--"science" literature comb
scientific journals for supposed anomalies, then laboriously construe them
as suggesting that evolution never took place. The presenter in Moon,
Pennsylvania, for instance, cited a thirty-four-year-old article from
Scientific American on the amount of meteoritic dust falling to earth and,
ignoring the much weaker pull of lunar gravity, concluded that the same
amount must fall on the moon. If the moon were billions of years old, he
asserted, its surface should be covered with several hundred feet of dust.
Yet astronauts had left footprints only a few inches deep. Thus the solar
system must be no more than a few thousands of years old--too young for
evolution to have taken place. (Satellite measurements have shown that the
article vastly overestimated the fall of cosmic dust. Moon dust, however,
remains a creationist mainstay.)

OTHER CREATIONIST ALIASES INCLUDE "abrupt appearance
theory" (coined by Wendell R. Bird, the creationists' legal strategist in the
Arkansas trial) and "intelligent-design theory" (promoted by two biology
professors: Percival W. Davis of Hillsborough Community College in
Tampa, Florida, and Dean H. Kenyon of San Francisco State University in
California). Intelligent-design theory (ID theory) is a lineal descendant of
the "argument from design" propounded in 1802 by the English theologian
William Paley in his book Natural Theology. If you find a watch on the
ground, Paley argued, you naturally conclude not that it assembled itself
by chance but that a watchmaker made it. Analogously, the intricacy of
nature must be the work of an omniscient designer, the God of the Bible.
Modern ID theory equates evolution with chance and argues that intricacy
must arise from design--though for establishment-clause purposes it leaves
the designer unnamed.

The best-known statement of ID theory is Of Pandas and People, which
Davis and Kenyon published in 1989 as a supplement for high school
biology courses. Its theme is that natural selection of random adaptive
variations cannot explain the structural complexity of living things. As
evidence, the book cites examples such as the structures of the

January/February 1996 -THE SCIENCES 21

[mural]

22 THE SCIENCES - January/February 1996

[mural]

January/February 1996 -THE SCIENCES 23

DNA double helix and of the protein cytochrome-c, as well as
sophisticated-sounding (if misapplied) ideas from information theory.
Apart from a passing reference in the introduction, it does not mention
creationism or a creator.

Scientists have found Of Pandas and People to be riddled with
inaccuracies, and teachers have found it pedagogically inadequate. At least
two states, Alabama and Idaho, have considered approving it for
classroom use; both rejected it. After those setbacks the publisher, the
Foundation for Thought and Ethics in Richardson, Texas, sent out
mailings encouraging a "quiet army" of parents and other citizens to take
the book directly to local teachers and school boards. Communities where
it has popped up for consideration include Vista, California; Richland,
Washington; Louisville, Ohio; and Plano, Texas.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH "ALTERNATIVES TO evolution"? With
"evidence against evolution"? Why not let students hear all sides of a
controversy and decide for themselves? Wouldn't that improve their skills
in critical thinking?

Certainly it would--in principle. But surely a good critical-thinking
exercise ought to deal with issues that are actually in contention.
Evolutionary mechanisms, rates and phylogenies all are being debated in
science; whether evolution took place is not. Even if it were a live issue,
properly evaluating the literature on evolution would take far more
scientific knowledge (to say nothing of vocabulary) than most secondary
school students possess. No one would ask a ninth-grader to decide
whether a physician should use bypass surgery or balloon angioplasty to
treat a patient with clogged arteries. Yet medicine is only a branch of
biology, whereas evolutionary theory ranges across biology, geology,
astronomy, physical anthropology and other scientific disciplines. In my
opinion, using creation and evolution as topics for critical-thinking
exercises in primary and secondary schools is virtually guaranteed to
confuse students about evolution and may lead them to reject one of the
major themes of science.

At least critical-thinking exercises give students some exposure to
evolution. Many teachers simply avoid the subject altogether. Others go
further, acting on their own initiative to teach creationism or straw-man
distortions of evolution. As I write, an even more pernicious assault on
evolution is just starting to unfold. Early in November 1995 the Alabama
board of education ordered that all biology textbooks in public schools
carry inserts labeled "A Message from the Alabama State Board of
Education":

This textbook discusses evolution, a controversial theory some
scientists present as a scientific explanation for the origin of living
things, such as plants, animals and humans.

No one was present when life first appeared on earth. Therefore,
any statement about life's origins should be considered as theory,
not fact.

The word "evolution" may refer to many types of change.
Evolution describes changes that occur within a species. White
moths, for example, may "evolve" into gray moths.) This process is
microevolution, which can be observed and described as fact.
Evolution may also refer to the change of one living thing to
another, such as reptiles into birds. This process, called
macroevolution, has never been observed and should be considered
a theory. Evolution also refers to the unproven belief that random,
undirected forces produced a world of living things. There are
many unanswered questions about the origin of life which are not
mentioned in your textbook, including:

o Why did the major groups of animals suddenly appear in the
fossil record (known as the "Cambrian Explosion")?

o Why have no new major groups of living things appeared in the
fossil record for a long time?

o Why do major groups of plants and animals have no transitional
forms in the fossil record?

o How did you and all living things come to possess such a
complete and complex set of "instructions" for building a living
body?

*Study hard and keep an open mind.* Someday, you may
contribute to the theories of how living things appeared on earth.

The charge that evolution is "an unproven belief"; the references to
changeless "groups" of organisms and to the supposed absence of
transitional forms between them; the deliberate confusion of the scientific
use of "theory" (an explanatory system) with the popular meaning (guess
or hunch); even the ironic plea for open-mindedness--all of that is straight
from the arguments-against-evolution school of creation "science The next
few months will tell whether Alabama's warning labels are an isolated
aberration or the first wave in a new nationwide campaign.

FACED WITH SUCH MISGUIDED FERVOR, SCIENTIFICALLY
minded people often react with bafflement and disbelief. Attack evolution
You might as well try to repeal the heliocentric model of the solar system]
American school systems, however, are far from the forefront of scientific
thought, and in many of them, I can attest, the skirmishing is intense. To
anyone who shares my concern about the future of science education in
America, I say Welcome, and I offer the following pieces of advice.

o *Get Involved*. Fifteen years ago professional scientists descended upon
statehouses to testify against equal-time laws. Now the action has shifted
to school districts, schools and teachers--the level at which, in American
public education, the most crucial decisions are made. Scientifically
trained people can play a key role, keeping an eye on their local schools
and stepping in to remind school boards and the broader community of the
facts: that the courts have ruled that creation "science" is not science and
does not belong in the science curriculum; and that evolution is a solid
component of scientific thought and not, as the title of a popular
antievolution book has it, "a theory in crisis."

A little information can go a long way. Many school boards still have not
heard that teaching creationism as science is unconstitutional. Others may
plan to flout the law, but they back off once they find out about the
possible consequences. In 1994, for instance, in Merrimack, New
Hampshire, members of the National Center for Science Education were
outraged to hear that their local school

24 THE SCIENCES - January/February 1996

board was thinking about introducing creationism into school curriculums.
I advised them to demand that the school board consult its legal counsel;
the case law is so clear that any lawyer would advise against teaching
creationism. The controversy galvanized the community into turning out in
record numbers to vote for moderates during the spring 1995 election.

o *Avoid Debates*. If your local campus Christian fellowship asks you to
"defend evolution," please decline. Public debates rarely change many
minds; creationists stage them mainly in the hope of drawing large
sympathetic audiences. Have you ever watched the Harlem Globetrotters
play the Washington Federals? The Federals get off some good shots, but
who remembers them? The purpose of the game is to see the Globetrotters
beat the other team.

And you probably will get beaten. In such a forum, scientific experts often
try to pack a semester-long course into an hour, hoping to convey the huge
sweep of evolution, the towering importance of its ideas, the masses of
evidence in its favor. Creationist debaters know better. They come well
prepared with an arsenal of crisp, clear, superficially attractive
antievolutionary arguments--fallacious ones, yes, but far too many for you
to answer in the time provided. Even if you win the debate in some
technical sense, most of the audience will still walk away from it
convinced that your opponent has a great new science that the schools
should hear about. Teachers have enough problems. Above all else, do no
harm.

o *Preserve the Middle Ground.* Antievolutionist organizations insist that
one can be either an evolutionist or a Christian, not both. Such an all-or-
nothing approach makes tactical sense: Polls have shown that 86 percent
of Americans identify themselves as Christians, and most of them do not
know or care much about evolution. (A Gallup poll taken in 1993 showed
that nearly half of adult Americans agree with the statement, "God created
human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last
10,000 years or so") Forced to choose between religious faith and a badly
understood scientific principle, will the public choose evolution? I doubt
it.

[mural]

Hugo Sperger, Noah's Ark, 1987

But that choice is based on a false dichotomy. Some of the strongest
criticism of creation "science" has come from mainstream Christian
denominations, which hold that evolution is part of God's plan. In McLean
v. Arkansas Board of Education, the lead plaintiff, William McLean, was a
Methodist minister; his supporters included clergy from the Episcopal,
Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Southern Baptist and African Methodist
Episcopal churches, as well as the American Jewish Committee and the
American Jewish Congress. The true dichotomy is between biblical
literalists and nonliteralists, not between religion and science. Stripped to
its essentials, the difference between creation and evolution boils down to
a question of history: Does the universe have a history, or was everything
in it created as is, all at once? Evolutionists recognize the evidence that
stars, galaxies, geological features and living things are different today
from what they were in the past; creationists deny it.

It is true that evolutionary theory makes no reference to the supernatural.
Like all science, it is naturalistic: it answers questions about the material
or natural world using only material explanations. Problems arise when
people confuse two distinct kinds of naturalism. *Methodological
naturalism* simply requires that, in trying to explain any particular
observation or experimental result, an investigator may not resort to
miracles. It is the frame of mind that all scientific workers adopt on the
job, and centuries of progress has shown its value. *Philosophical
naturalism* asserts that the material world is all that exists--that there is
nothing supernatural, no God or gods, no creator, no creation. Many
people with science backgrounds describe themselves as philosophical
naturalists, but many do not. Gregor Mendel decoupled methodological
from philosophical materialism, and so do other scientists today.

ONE OF THE deepest fears of conservative Christians--and a powerful
motivator in their fight against evolution--is the specter of a teacher who
concludes a lesson on evolution by saying, in effect, "So much for your
religion!" In my experience, such occurrences are next to nonexistent in
primary and secondary schools, and they are rare in universities. My own
position is that advocating a nontheistic philosophy in the science
classroom is just as wrong and just as unscientific as advocating
creationism is.

Being a philosophical materialist myself, I take some lumps for being so
conciliatory. I sometimes get heated letters and E-mail echoing the
sentiments of William B. Provine, a biology professor at Cornell
University, who wrote in the September 5, 1988, issue of The Scientist
that scientists who are also devout have to "check [their] brains at the
church house door." Clearly the writers agree with creationists that there
can be no middle ground between science and religion. To them I can only
say: Most Americans have already made their choice to be religious. Now
you must choose which you prefer--a religious population that accepts
evolution or a religious population that rejects it--and decide what you can
do to make that choice a reality.

EUGENIE C. SCOTT is executive director of the National Center for
Science Education, a nonprofit membership organization in Berkeley,
California, that supports the teaching of evolution and opposes the
advocacy of creation "science."

January/February 1996 -THE SCIENCES 25

(Scott E.C, "Monkey Business," The Sciences, New York Academy of
Sciences, January/February 1996, Vol. 36, No. 1; pp.20-25. Emphasis in
original)
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PS: If evolution is true and creation is false, then wouldn't it be better in
the long run to *not* "avoid debates" (see tagline)? OTOH, if evolution is
false and creation is true, then it would make sense (without making it
*right*) for evolutionists to "avoid debates" since they are in power. But a
policy of "avoid[ing] debates" is likely to be a *disaster* in the long run,
since it gives the impression that evolutionists have something to hide (i.e.
they know deep down that their theory is inadequate) and are *afraid* to
face up to the creationist/IDist critiques of evolution.

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"*Avoid Debates*. If your local campus Christian fellowship asks you to
"defend evolution," please decline. Public debates rarely change many
minds; creationists stage them mainly in the hope of drawing large
sympathetic audiences. Have you ever watched the Harlem Globetrotters
play the Washington Federals? The Federals get off some good shots, but
who remembers them? The purpose of the game is to see the Globetrotters
beat the other team. And you probably will get beaten. In such a forum,
scientific experts often try to pack a semester-long course into an hour,
hoping to convey the huge sweep of evolution, the towering importance of
its ideas, the masses of evidence in its favor. Creationist debaters know
better. They come well prepared with an arsenal of crisp, clear,
superficially attractive antievolutionary arguments--fallacious ones, yes,
but far too many for you to answer in the time provided. Even if you win
the debate in some technical sense, most of the audience will still walk
away from it convinced that your opponent has a great new science that
the schools should hear about. Teachers have enough problems. Above all
else, do no harm." (Scott E.C, "Monkey Business," The Sciences, New
York Academy of Sciences, January/February 1996, Vol. 36, No. 1; pp.20-
25, p.25. Emphasis in original)
Stephen E. Jones, BSc (Biol). http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones
Moderator: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CreationEvolutionDesign
& http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProblemsOfEvolution/ Book: "Problems
of Evolution" http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/PoE/PoE00ToC.html
& http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/pe00cont.html
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