Governor Huckabee, a creationist, has somewhat touched on this topic during his campaign - yet shrewdly avoids answering the question of "should we teach it - yes or no."
Evolution is effectively no longer a theory... yet creationism always has and always will be. As the evidence grows and grows in support of evolution, there is really no tangible (not anecdotal) evidence for creationism or intelligent design. Trying to prove creationism is trying to prove the existence of a god. The capabilities of the scientific method don't quite cover that realm of inquiry.
It's interesting that we're still discussing if we should be teaching creationism alongside evolution in our public schools. I'm fine with mentioning creationist theory, kind of like you would mention that there are people who believe that tobacco products are not harmful to our health. A simple aside, merely to acknowledge that there exists an alternative viewpoint. But I feel that actually teaching creationism as a doctrine, a field with no scientific support, is akin to teaching religion. Sure, public schools can and probably should have comparative religion classes to supplement those "world cultures" classes. However, in those comparative religion classes, nothing is taught as THE truth but many perspectives are presented. So go ahead, mention creationism in your social studies classes, but keep it out of my science department.
I found this little nugget from former Senator Mike Gravel on the issue:
Evolution is effectively no longer a theory... yet creationism always has and always will be. As the evidence grows and grows in support of evolution, there is really no tangible (not anecdotal) evidence for creationism or intelligent design. Trying to prove creationism is trying to prove the existence of a god. The capabilities of the scientific method don't quite cover that realm of inquiry.
It's interesting that we're still discussing if we should be teaching creationism alongside evolution in our public schools. I'm fine with mentioning creationist theory, kind of like you would mention that there are people who believe that tobacco products are not harmful to our health. A simple aside, merely to acknowledge that there exists an alternative viewpoint. But I feel that actually teaching creationism as a doctrine, a field with no scientific support, is akin to teaching religion. Sure, public schools can and probably should have comparative religion classes to supplement those "world cultures" classes. However, in those comparative religion classes, nothing is taught as THE truth but many perspectives are presented. So go ahead, mention creationism in your social studies classes, but keep it out of my science department.
I found this little nugget from former Senator Mike Gravel on the issue:
As for creationism in the schools, Gravel says: “Oh God, no. Oh, Jesus. We thought we had made a big advance with the Scopes monkey trial … My God, evolution is a fact, and if these people are disturbed by being the descendants of monkeys and fishes, they’ve got a mental problem. We can’t afford the psychiatric bill for them. That ends the story as far as I’m concerned.”
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That is only one of the many priceless Mike Gravel quotes. Recently he encouraged high schoolers in NH to avoid alcohol by sticking to marijuana.
Let's just say for a minute that we were going to teach some form of creationism in the science classroom along with evolution. How could it even be done? What creation story would be taught? To choose one at the exclusion of another would be without question a form of unconstitutional endorsement of religion. Both creationism and religion do have a place in public schools but that place is definitely not the science classroom. I have always thought that our high schools could benefit from some sort of comparative religion class and that class would be the proper forum to discuss creationism.
Correct me if I am wrong here but as far as I know the United States has never before had a religious leader as President. No matter how committed a religious leader would be to a separation of church and state the simple fact that he/she was a religious leader would be a serious issue. I do consider Mike Huckabee a religious leader, I don't have the time to find it now but I know there is a Huckabee quote out there stating that he wants to bring Jesus to the White House or something along those lines. I do not believe Huckabee will ever be our President and hopefully none of this will matter!
It was something like he wants to "win America back for Christ." I think it was shortly after the Jonesboro, Arkansas shooting in 1998 which, like every sad news event, is linked to moral decline due to general lack of Jesus by Christian conservatives. Makes you wonder why there are so few school shootings in godless European countries, eh?
I have to quibble with your terminology. Creationism isn't a theory. Evolution is a theory. If something is a "theory", it doesn't mean it's wrong or unproven. The Wikipedia article on Theory (at least, the version as of 11:16pm Thursday night) has a pretty good description of what it means to be a theory.
Creationism is a myth, or if you'd like to be a little more polite, a story. It's not even that impressive of a story. One story holds that six thousand years ago, God created a world fully formed with everything already taken care of over 6 days, and that created a being and said "Subdue it", and that was that. Another story holds that 13 billion years ago, everything that has ever existed sprang into existence in an infinitely small point and began expanding outwards at enormous speeds. With a few simple laws, and because of some small variations in the initial distribution of the materials a universe of a 100 billion galaxies, each with 100 billion stars, developed. On at least one of those worlds, after 6 billion years of trials, a bunch thermodynamic processes arose that are able to comprehend the laws of thermodynamics and imagine a world where they don't hold. Had those initial variations been slightly different, none of this might ever have happened.
One of these stories impresses me more than the other. When I go outside and put my thumb to the sky , I'm humbled to think that it covers 250,000 galaxies. Why do the creationists want to focus on such a infinitesimally part of that?
The heavens proclaim the glory of God, and I've always thought the best way to honor God is to observe and share what he set out for us to discover, and science provides the best path to do that.
It's 3:00 in the morning, I can't sleep, and I can't resist responding to this. So many things jump out at me here. I believe creationism is junk science, should not be taught in public schools, and that evolution is an elegant and convincing explanation of the diversity of species. And now let me qualify that by restating what I've been saying for a while:
The majority of the American public do not give a damn about this question. Maybe they should -- that's a question for another time. Party insiders might be concerned about the culture war -- our voters are largely not. While we're poking fun at creationists and going on-and-on about the stupidity of biblical literalism, a lot of other serious issues are taking place. And a lot of the people our party represents don't know anything about evolution either. My grandparents have been New Deal Democrats for 60 years, and remain absolutely convinced that the universe was created in seven 24-hour days. I don't want my grandparents to feel like our party is making fun of them behind their backs. Their generation helped make the party what it is today, remember. We owe them everything.
Again, I agree creationism is not science, but there are two opposing streams of thought in our party: 1) elitist snobbery (almost always bound by religious cynicism) and 2) populism. I choose populism. Whether we recognize it or not, Mike Huckabee has a populist evangelical quality. As a presidential candidate, he bears more resemblance to Jimmy Carter than Pat Robertson. He is the moderate in the race regardless of his metaphysical beliefs. Sometimes I feel like our campus organization has no interest in why our Republican opponents are attractive to people. We chalk it up to voter stupidity and keep smirking. We can keep smirking until we lose another election.
There was a time when religious voters in America were skeptical about government interference. Until religious-right opportunists convinced them otherwise, the Southern Baptist Convention affirmed and reaffirmed their agreement with the Roe v. Wade decision, indicating no moral disagreement with abortion. It was a brief twilight period where progressive ideas and religious faith united, and it was over in a flash because a couple religious businessmen (Jerry Falwell, etc.) took over evangelism. Falwell is dead, Robertson will soon follow him, and their followers are growing disillusioned -- the move to Huckabee is a move towards religious toleration. It indicates an openness among evangelicals to moderation. If we had any sense, we would realize that evangelicals are not voters naturally drawn to Republicans. They are voters which were stolen from us, which we can have back if we unify our message and stop laughing at them.
Andrew, you talk about how a religious leader could never be President. Jimmy Carter was not (to my knowledge) an ordained religious figure, but he was easily the most religious president of the last half-century. And his humanitarian work and progressive ideas have been informed by his faith, take them or leave them. It's as if we forget that our party's populism has a lot in common with Western religious values.
So in a nutshell, we can bang on about creationism until we lose another election and scare off another generation of religious people. Or we could be sensible and open-minded.
ERS
And I'll add one more thing: Mike Gravel is no expert on evolution, and there are multiple factual errors in his statement. The whole thing didn't sound right, so I did some quick Wikipedia searching:
The Scopes Monkey Trial was not an advance. The trial itself, and the appeal to the Supreme Court of Tennessee, both concluded with the judgment that the state of Tennessee COULD restrict the teaching of theories which contradicted Biblical authority. This opinion stood until a Supreme Court case in 1968.
I guess Gravel doesn't think so seriously about this after all. He misstates the outcome of the biggest trial in the creation-evolution debate of the last century.
Right you are Erik P; I agree with your terming of creationism as a story vs. a theory.
Though what you describe as the other story of the creation of the world is more the Big Bang which is then followed by evolution. Creationism rolls up both the creation of the world/universe with the advent of humans and fuzzy little critters at essentially the same time. Regardless, I agree with you Erik P.
Eric S., while I do agree that the majority of Americans don't see this as an issue in the election, it is still an issue at the local level and the media/Huckabee have almost made it a topic of discussion at the national level. Thus, I don't care if the rest of Americans aren't caring about it -- the point is that I do care and therefore I brought it up. I'm not poking fun at those who believe it, but I still will argue that they are inherently wrong to believe that it is a science that can appear in our public school science classrooms.
The candidates and the Party do what they need to do and say what they should say to win an election - whether that means moderating discussion on the facts in order to court religious voters or not. However, I'm not trying to court any voters.
Eric S. - What Gravel said was that we had made a big advance with the Scopes trial. And there was an advance. For the first time, people were seing the legitimacy of teaching actual science in the classroom. The high-profile nature of the case forced many to reexamine their curricula.
But while Gravel is technically right, I can see where the statement probably means he thought the Scopes trial solved everything.
Suchita, you're right. There's a more charitable reading of the Gravel statement. But that's not the only factual ambiguity in the statement -- the theory of evolution does not say that we are descended from "monkeys," of course, but from other earlier primates from which the species "Homo sapiens sapiens" was an offshoot. My only point is that sometimes those on the "correct" side of this issue are as uninformed as the creationists.
This doesn't change the fact that evolution is a robust theory of origins, and creationism is a myth. But it should make us cautious about claiming intellectual superiority when we're really after political strength.
Suchita, I failed to note your earlier post. I wasn't trying to imply that you shouldn't care about the issue -- it's important, of course. I care about it too. Fewer American students are excelling at math and science, almost surely for just this reason; there has been a chilling effect on biology classes everywhere. We can find a way to overcome that problem, though, without alienating religious voters. A national science curriculum, like in the UK, would be a tidy solution to creationist rhetoric in the public schools -- and it would be a practical idea, period.
My point was that I would like to court evangelical voters, because their central concerns are not too different from ours when we look beyond the occasional grandstanding. Plus, there are evangelical Democrats with conservative social views who still comprise part of our party -- Morris Fiorina at Stanford reveals that 10 percent of self-identified "strong Democrats" believe abortion should always be illegal. There must be other reasons why these voters are strong Democrats, then. This indicates that our party's values can trump socially conservative evangelical values, when the two conflict.
And again, Huckabee is still the most moderate Republican running. If the contest is between Obama and Huckabee, both candidates will be populists attractive to evangelical voters. Evangelicals will have a serious and profound choice. If Obama is nominated, he will receive a greater chunk of the evangelical vote than any candidate since Jimmy Carter. We'll need to find a way to draw even more evangelicals to our party to win that election. Why are we so embarrassed to do that? What ever happened to a big-tent, populist party?
The premise of a lot of the comments you've been making, Eric, is that Democrats absolutely NEEEEED to court white evangelicals even though poll after poll after exit poll has shown they are the most resistant demographic group in the country to voting for Democrats. Sure it would be nice to get a chunk of them, but at what cost? Do we blur our message on abortion rights? Start spouting off more religious rhetoric? Who is to say that doesn't turn off more voters than it brings in? Who is to say it won't repulse evangelicals who perceive it as phony? When you have a candidate like Howard Dean or John Kerry that isn't very religious, I think the best they can do is be authentic and try to change the subject away from religious issues, knowing they will never get the votes of a solid block of religious conservatives.
And, lets keep things in perspective. White evangelicals are about 25% of the country. No more than about a quarter of them have voted for Democrats in any presidential election since Jimmy Carter. Polls show they have extremely conservative views on issues like gun rights, foreign policy, and economic issues, not just social issues like abortion and gay marriage. Why spend an inordinate amount of time trying to court them? It's great if we have a sort of religious candidate like Obama who appeals to evangelicals for whatever reason and brings a chunk of them in, but there's no indication they will ever a significant part of the Democratic coalition...so why go out of our way?
The media always tells Democrats they have a religion gap because they don't appeal to evangelicals. Why don't they tell Republicans they have a secular gap when they only manage to bring in 20% of the non-religious?
There's a bunch of really good points, there, Ryan. Have you ever heard of the "two majorities" theory of American politics? Broken down quickly, the main thrust of the argument is that most Americans are liberal on economic issues and social on conservative issues, and that a lot of Americans are both economic liberals and social conservatives. This means we have a lot of Americans without a party which coherently reflects their politics. (Mike Huckabee is capitalizing on this.)
Democrats win elections when they convince most voters to vote against their social conservatism, and Republicans win when they convince voters to vote against their economic liberalism (Shafer, "The Two Majorities and the Puzzle of Modern American Politics," 2003).
Regardless of whether evangelicals can become an essential part of the Democratic coalition -- and I still believe they could -- we certainly DO need to appeal to social conservatives using the "two majorities" logic. (And of course, there is a lot of overlap between evangelicals and social conservatives.) One way is to use Shafer's logic and convince voters that economic liberalism matters more than social conservatism. This has been our strategy for two elections, and it has failed. Another -- my suggestion -- is to draw a connection (as Jimmy Carter did) between our economic policies and the sensibilities of evangelicals. Either is a valid option.
The foolish thing would be to do nothing, shrugging off religious voters. Perhaps you consider religious voters creepy and backwards, and will only tolerate their support without embracing it. Go ahead and make them pariahs. Laugh at their interpretations of sacred texts. I have no authority over this.
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