Creation and Evolution: What Should We Teach?

Introduction

When I was an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky in the summer of 1980, I got a call from a friend who was a professor in biology asking if I had seen the newspaper that morning. A group calling themselves the Citizens for Balanced Teaching of Origins had submitted a proposal to the Fayette County Board of Education. The proposal was to require the teaching of creationism as a theory of how the earth and living things were formed, parallel to the biological theory of evolution. I had collected creation science material since my graduate school days, so I became the center of the faculty opposition to the proposal.

Scientists on campus were appalled that something like this might be considered by the Lexington Board of Education. It was clear to us that creation science was terrible science. It was factually incorrect, misinformed students about evolution, and made a hash of the philosophy of science. Scientists were not the only ones who objected to the teaching of creation science. While we objected to creation science as bad science, the mainstream clergy in town objected to it because to them it was sectarian religion. Lexington teachers also did not like the prospect of having to teach creation science because they knew it was outside of the standard curriculum.

Scientists, teachers, and mainstream clergy formed a group called the Committee for Effective Action in Science Education, or CEASE. We wrote letters to the editor, encouraged people to come to school board meetings, and generally “got out the vote” to try to persuade the school board not to introduce creation science into the curriculum. The community remained in turmoil. There was much opposition to the introduction of creationism into the science curriculum, but obviously there were also many people who thought it was a great idea.

At one dramatic meeting, the Lexington Alliance of Religious Leaders (LARL) submitted a petition signed by 78 local clergymen that supported the teaching of evolution and discouraged the teaching of creation science. That petition is presented next.

Petition from the Lexington Alliance of Religious Leaders (LARL):
As religious leaders, we share a deep faith in the God who created heaven and earth and all that is in them, and take with utmost seriousness the Biblical witness to this God who is our Creator.
However, we find no incompatibility between the God of creation and a theory of evolution which uses universally verifiable data to explain the probable processes by which life developed into its present form.

We understand that you may shortly receive considerable pressure from groups advocating the teaching of "Scientific Creationism" alongside the theory of evolution.
However, we feel strongly that to introduce such teaching into our schools would be both divisive and offensive to many members of the religious community of Fayette County, as well as to those not identified with any religious group.

Please be assured of our continuing interest in this issue, and of our strong desire that the Fayette County Public Schools not permit the teaching of "Scientific Creationism" as an alternative "theory" to evolution in science courses. (1981; signed by 78 Kentucky ministers and religious leaders)

You could have heard a pin drop in the school board meeting that night as the distinguished minister from one of the largest churches in Lexington distinctly read aloud each name on the list. Finally, on a Monday in October, the climactic school board meeting was held and the final vote was taken. On the five-person board, two people had committed to voting for the proposal and two against. The person with the swing vote had announced that he had planned to go on a retreat the weekend before to pray for guidance. At the critical meeting, he voted with the pro-evolution side, and the measure failed by one vote. Although the pro-evolution side won that particular battle, the controversy continued in communities around the country.

Within a few years, the courts decided that the teaching of creation science in public schools was unconstitutional. Early in 1982, a district court in Arkansas declared a law requiring equal time for creation science in the classroom unconstitutional. In 1987, the Supreme Court decided the issue by striking down all such equal time laws (Edwards v. Aguillard, 1987). However, the problem of creationism has not gone away just because the Supreme Court has declared teaching creation science to be unconstitutional. There are still efforts to have creationism taught in states and communities around the country.

A bigger problem, however, is getting evolution taught. Many teachers feel pressure not to teach it, or pressure to qualify it, or to present it as weak science. What are these ideas of Darwin’s that are so controversial?

We know Darwin for his theory of evolution by natural selection. The theory contended that living things had descended with modification from common ancestors, and that the most powerful mechanism producing these changes was natural selection. Natural selection and descent with modification also have been the foundation of antievolutionism since Darwin’s day. This is because of the ideas of special creationism and design, which formed the foundation of intellectual thought from the Middle Ages through the early part of the 19th century. Two of the major tenets of special creationism are that God created everything at one time, and that God created the “kinds” in their present form and there has been no change since that time.

The concept of common descent was not problematic for all Christians of Darwin’s time. Anglicans, who were not biblical literalists, rather quickly adjusted to the idea of evolution. In the United States at end of the 19th century, much accommodation occurred among both Protestants and Catholics. Natural selection was problematic for some Christians because God appeared less directly involved in the world. Yet in the 1600s, the great and devout scientist Isaac Newton had maintained that God worked through secondary causes, so the idea that God did not have to do everything directly was not new to Christians. However, natural selection removed God as direct creator, and this raised questions about whether there was a personal God and about the ultimate goodness of God. Indeed, evolution does have implications for Christian theology, but many thoughtful theologians have grappled with these implications and have found ways of resolving major problems. Most Christian denominations today accept evolution as the means by which God created, much as they accept Newton’s law of gravitation as the means by which God makes the planets circle the sun.

If we look at antievolutionism in the United States today, we continue to find a division between biblical literalists and mainline Christians. Biblical literalists—there actually may be more of them today than in Darwin’s day—object to evolution, and also to the natural selection mechanism. On the other hand, many mainline Christians accept evolution, but are disturbed by the issue of God’s level of involvement and its implications. These issues have created a large variety of creationists and evolutionists, as I shall discuss next.