Rocks of Ages (12 page)

Draper wraps himself even more fully in a Darwinian mantle. The end of his preface designates five great episodes in the history of science’s battle with religion: the debasement of classical knowledge and the descent of the Dark Ages; the flowering of science under early Islam; the battle of Galileo with the Catholic
Church; the Reformation (a plus for an anti-Catholic like Draper); and the struggle for Darwinism. Moreover, no one could claim a more compelling personal license for such a view, for Draper had been an unwilling witness—one might even say an instigator—of the single most celebrated incident in the overt struggle between Darwin and divinity. We all have heard the famous story of Bishop Wilberforce and T. H. Huxley duking it out at the British Association meeting in 1860. But how many people know that their verbal pyrotechnics did not form the stated agenda of this meeting, and only arose during free discussion following the formal paper officially set for this session—an address by the same Dr. Draper on the “intellectual development of Europe considered with reference to the views of Mr. Darwin.”

This link between struggles over Darwinism and the construction, by Draper and White, of the mythical model of warfare between science and religion—a model that must be debunked for the NOMA principle to prevail—permits a smooth transition to my inevitable discussion of the most potent and current American battle between scientific evidence and claims advanced in the name of religion—the attempt by biblical fundamentalists, now extending over more than seventy contentious years, to ban the teaching of evolution in American public schools, or at least to demand equal
time for creationism on a literal biblical time scale (with an earth no more than ten thousand years old) in any classroom that also provides instruction about evolution. If this battle has played a major role in the twentieth-century cultural history of America, and has consumed the unwelcome time of many scientists (including yours truly) in successful political campaigns to preserve the First Amendment and reject the legislatively mandated teaching of palpable nonsense, then how can NOMA be defended as more than a pipe dream in a utopian world?

The myth of Columbus and the flat earth supports NOMA by the negative strategy of showing how the opposite model of warfare between science and religion often invents battles that never occurred, but arise only as forced inferences from the fictional model. Christian scholars never proclaimed a flat earth against the findings of science and the knowledge of antiquity, and Columbus fought no battles with ecclesiastical authorities over this nonissue. Modern creationism, alas, has provoked a real battle, thus supporting NOMA with a positive example of the principle that all apparent struggles between science and religion really arise from violations of NOMA, when a small group allied to one
magisterium tries to impose its irrelevant and illegitimate will upon the other’s domain. Such genuine historical battles, therefore, do not pit science against religion, and can only represent a power play by zealots formally allied to one side, and trying to impose their idiosyncratic and decidedly minority views upon the magisterium of the other side.

The saga of attempts by creationists to ban the teaching of evolution, or to force their own fundamentalist version of life’s history into science curricula of public schools, represents one of the most interesting, distinctive, and persistent episodes in the cultural history of twentieth-century America. The story features a tempestuous beginning, starring two of the great characters of the 1920s, and also a gratifying end in the favorable Supreme Court decision of 1987. The larger struggle, however, has not terminated, but only shifted ground—as creationist zealots find other ways to impose their will and nonsense, now that the Court’s defense of the First Amendment precludes their old strategy of enforcing creationism by state legislation!

Please note that I am discussing only a particular historical episode—fundamentalist attempts to impose creationism on public school curricula by legislative fiat—and not all nuances of argument included under the ambiguous term “creationism.” Some personal versions of creation fall entirely within the spirit of
NOMA and bear no relationship to this story—the belief, for example, that God works through laws of evolution over the long time scale determined by geology, and that this style of superintendence may be regarded as a mode of creation.

As a matter of fact, not a necessity of logic, the activists of the creationist movement against the teaching of evolution have been young-earth fundamentalists who believe that the Bible must be literally true, that the earth cannot be more than ten thousand years old, and that God created all species, separately and
ex nihilo
, in six days of twenty-four hours. These people then display a form of ultimate hubris (or maybe just simple ignorance) in equating these marginal and long-discredited factual claims with the entire domain of “religion.”

I have no quarrel with fundamentalists who believe in teaching their doctrine in homes and churches, and not by forced imposition upon public schools. I am quite sure that they are wrong about the age of the earth and the history of life, and I will be happy to remonstrate with any advocate who maintains an open mind on these questions (not a common commodity within the movement). Lord knows, we have the right to be wrong, even to be stupid, in a democracy! Thus, I have no problem with the largest and most potentially influential of all creationist groups in America, the Jehovah’s Witnesses—for they do not try to impose their
theological beliefs upon public school science curricula, and they agree with my view that churches and homes are the proper venue for teaching such private and partisan doctrines. In other words, our struggle with creationism is political and specific, not religious at all, and not even intellectual in any genuine sense. (Sorry to be harsh, but young-earth creationism offers nothing of intellectual merit that I have ever been able to discern—but just a hodgepodge of claims properly judged within the magisterium of science, and conclusively disproved more than a century ago.)

Before presenting a capsule history, I would summarize the peculiarities of our contemporary struggle with creationism in two propositions:

1. The forceful and persistent attempt by young-earth creationists to insinuate their partisan and minority theological dogma into the science curricula of American public schools cannot be read, in any legitimate way, as an episode in any supposedly general warfare between science and religion. If the issue must be dichotomized at all, the two sides might be characterized as supporters versus opponents of NOMA; as defenders of the First Amendment for separation of church and state versus theocrats who would incorporate their certainties as official state policy; or, most generally, as defenders of free inquiry and the right of
teachers to present their best understanding of subjects in the light of their professional training versus the setting of curricula by local sensibilities or beliefs (or just by those who make the most noise or gain transitory power), whatever the state of natural knowledge, or the expertise of teachers.

In any case, however we choose to parse this controversy, the two sides cannot be labeled as science and religion on the most basic criterion of empirical evidence. For the great majority of professional clergy and religious scholars stand
on the same side
with the great majority of scientists—as defenders of NOMA and the First Amendment, and against the imposition of any specific theological doctrine, especially such a partisan and minority view, upon the science curricula of public schools. For example, the long list of official plaintiffs who successfully challenged the Arkansas creationism statute in 1981 included some scientists and educators, but even more ordained clergy of all major faiths, and scholars of religion.

2. This controversy is as locally and distinctively American as apple pie and Uncle Sam. No other Western nation faces such an incubus as a serious political movement (rather than a few powerless cranks at the fringes). The movement to impose creationism upon public school science curricula arises from a set
of distinctively American contrasts, or generalities expressed in a peculiarly American context: North versus South, urban versus rural, rich versus poor, local or state control versus federal standards. Moreover, young-earth creationism can be favored only by so-called fundamentalists who accept the Bible as literally true in every word—a marginal belief among all major Western religions these days, and a doctrine only well developed within the distinctively American context of Protestant church pluralism. Such a fundamentalist perspective would make no sense in any predominantly Catholic nation, where no tradition for reading the Bible literally (or much at all, for that matter) has ever existed. Jewish traditions, even among the orthodox, may revere the Torah as the absolutely accurate word of God, where neither one jot nor tittle of text can ever be altered, but few scholars would ever think of interpreting this unchangeable text literally.
²

Protestantism has always stressed personal Bible study, and justification by faith, rather than through saints or the interpretations of priests—and literalism becomes conceivable under these practices. But, again, the vast majority of modern Protestants would not choose to read their sacred texts in such a dogmatic and uncompromising manner—particularly in European nations with a limited diversity of mainly liberal styles. But American Protestantism has diversified into a
uniquely rich range of sects, spanning the full gamut of conceivable forms of worship and belief. The vast majority, of course, pursue the same allegorical and spiritual style of reading as their Catholic and Jewish neighbors, but a few groups—mostly Southern, rural, and poor, to cite the distinctive dichotomies mentioned above—have dug in against all “modernism” with a literalist reading not subject to change, or even argument: “Gimme that old-time religion. It was good enough for grandpa, and it’s good enough for me.” (Through personal ignorance, I am not considering here the traditions of Islam and non-Western religions.)

To cite just one example of fundamentalism’s distinctly American base, and of the puzzlement that creationism evokes in the rest of the religious world, I once stayed at the Casa del Clerico in Rome, a hotel maintained by the Vatican, mostly for itinerant priests. One day in the lunchroom, a group of French and Italian Jesuits called me over. They belonged to a group of practicing scientists, visiting Rome for a convention on science and the Church. They had been reading about the growth of “scientific creationism” in America, and were deeply confused. They thought that evolution had been adequately proven, and certainly posed no challenge to religion in any case (both by their own reasoning and by papal pronouncement, as discussed on
this page
–
this page
). So what, they asked, was going on
chez moi?
Had good scientific arguments for young-earth creationism really been developed, and by lay fundamentalists rather than professional scientists? A wonderful polyglot of conversation ensued for the next half hour in all three languages. I told them that no new (or any) good arguments existed, and that the issues were both entirely political and uniquely American. They left satisfied, and perhaps with a better sense of the conundrum that America represents to the rest of the world.

The fundamentalist movement may be as old as America, and its opposition to teaching evolution must be as old as Darwin. But this marginal, politically disenfranchised, and largely regional movement could muster no clout to press a legislative agenda until one of the great figures of American history, William Jennings Bryan (much more on him later; see
this page
–
this page
), decided to make his last hurrah on this issue. Bryan gave the creationist movement both influence and contacts. In the early 1920s, several Southern states passed flat-out anti-evolution statutes. The Tennessee law, for
example, declared it a crime to teach that “man had descended from a lower order of animals.”

American liberals, including many clergymen, were embarrassed and caught off guard by the quick (if local) successes of this movement. In a challenge to the constitutionality of these statutes, the American Civil Liberties Union instigated the famous Scopes trial in Dayton, Tennessee, in 1925. John Scopes, a young freethinker, but quite popular among his largely fundamentalist students, worked as the physics teacher and track coach of the local high school. He had substituted for the fundamentalist biology teacher during an illness, and had assigned the chapters on evolution from the class textbook,
A Civic Biology
, by George William Hunter. Scopes consented to be the guinea pig or stalking horse (choose your zoological metaphor) for a legal challenge to the constitutionality of Tennessee’s recently enacted anti-evolution law—and the rest is history, largely filtered and distorted, for most Americans, through the fictionalized account of a wonderful play,
Inherit the Wind
, written in 1955 by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, and performed by some of America’s best actors in several versions. (I had the great privilege, as a teenager, to see Paul Muni at the end of his career playing Clarence Darrow in the original Broadway production, with an equally impressive Ed Begley as William Jennings Bryan. Two film versions
featured similar talent, with Spencer Tracy as Darrow and Fredric March as Bryan in the first, and Kirk Douglas as Darrow with Jason Robards as Bryan in the later remake for television.)