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The devolving of evolution | page 1, 2
"These are hurdles easily overcome -- this [ruling] isn't going to stymie them," he
says of the high school students who won't get evolution theory in the
classroom. Those at KU who approve of the board's decision voice their support in guarded
terms. "Any time [you say] something mentioning creationism,
they say you're anti-science," explains campus minister Lanny Maddux. "[But] I think
the evolution presented in high school textbooks is not true, could not
have existed." Similarly, Scott Ketrow, KU director of the student organization Campus
Crusade for Christ, couches his moral approval of the ruling in practical,
political terms. The decision, he says, will allow local school boards to decide what is important to teach rather than forcing them to follow mandates from on high. Though some high schools will choose not to teach Darwinian theory, he contends that in the end the decision will provoke a much-needed debate around creationism and evolutionism. But hasn't America already had this dialogue? Over and over? "I don't know all the specifics of the Scopes trial -- to students on
campus now, that's irrelevant," Ketrow admits. "I think most haven't heard of it." Perhaps the most glaring question to emerge from the board's vote is this: Why
must creationism exclude evolution? If Christians want to posit a divine
power, can't they locate this power in the "why" behind evolution?
There is precedent for this recognition within other religious communities;
in 1996, even Pope John Paul II acknowledged evolution as a viable theory,
provided it accepts that creation, however organic or intricate, was God's work. "Here [as opposed to in public high schools], we don't have a problem with the
dichotomy," the biology department's Burg says of the creationism-evolution split. "Several of my students are adamantly opposed to evolution theory. But they've never
dropped a class or complained. I don't cram evolution down their throats --
we look at the evidence and talk about it." Evolutionary biology professor Wiley sees no problem with the teaching of creationism in, say, a social studies class. But to inject it into a science curriculum, he says -- creationists are now calling themselves "creation scientists" -- invariably contaminates a student's
understanding of the field. As Kansas' higher education institutions wait
to see what will come of the school
board's vote, professors and students agree that certain consequences are unavoidable. The
ruling will deny some Kansas kids exposure to evolutionary theory and certain cosmological ideas, such as the big bang theory. These students will flub the occasional biology quiz in college and may be subject to the ridicule of those who assume their education was sub-par. They'll get through the day. They will have other explanations for
the order of things. Still, there's other mourning to be done: Evolution
has forced those who take the Bible as literal fact to contemplate the
invaluable and distinctly human concept of metaphor. Like earlier
discoveries -- that the Earth is not flat, that the Earth is not at the center of the universe -- evolution made word-for-word readings of the Bible problematic. Forced to swallow these
updates, the faithful evolved their understandings of the text
to allow for inconsistencies. People learned to read the Bible metaphorically. "I don't think there's a person in the world who accepts [the Bible's]
value of pi," religious studies chairman Miller points out. (The Bible names the value to be exactly 3, rather than the irrational number commonly approximated at 3.14.) By the same token, something's missed if creationists aren't given the
opportunity to learn and then reject Darwin's ideas. Like the Bible, "The
Origin of Species" offers a narrative rich in metaphoric power. Without evolution around to trouble literal interpretations of Genesis, the
very notion of metaphor may languish in some small way. For children reared
in the creationist compound, Adam and Eve will never symbolize us, in all
our tortured fates; they will be our literal ancestors. And this suggests an ironic backfire for the creation movement: It may narrow the power of Christian mythology rather than expand
it. At the heart of creationism, after all, lies the conviction in a fundamental divide between humans and animals. By scrapping this lesson on metaphor, creationists risk devaluing one of the features that most distinguishes us from all other species.
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