Much has been made of late regarding the theory of evolution and how it’s taught in Texas public schools. For the next few months, the Texas State Board of Education will be considering changes to our children’s science curricula. The chairman of this board, a dentist named Don McLeroy, calls himself a Creationist and believes in a literal reading of the Bible. Cynthia Dunbar, a vocal board member, recently made news when she suggested that in the first six months of Barrack Obama’s presidential administration, he would collude with terrorists to bring down our nation.
I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t trust a biblical literalist, much less an admitted Creationist to arrange my children’s sock drawer, much less instruct, presume to choose who instructs or definitively decide what gets instructed to my children in a public school setting, much less a science classroom. And Mrs. Dunbar — a conservative zealot who is so thoroughly brainwashed that she (according to her own website) believes that her role on the Board of Education includes ferreting out nefarious “socialist” and “humanist” agendas — has absolutely no business proposing or voting on anyone’s intellectual future, let alone our children’s.
To date, a State Board of Education committee recommended a “change” in our public school curriculum that allows for an examination of the “strengths and limitations” of the theory of evolution in regards to the instruction of biology and science. This is simply the first step towards allowing Christian Creationist operatives to insert their mythology into public school curricula — it has nothing to do with real science or the instruction thereof. But for the sake of argument, let’s settle this once and for all.
It’s really simple. Like most scientific theories, evolution is based on and bolstered by the scientific method.
Formulate a question. Research and observe. Form a hypothesis. Perform an experiment. Collect and analyze data. Interpret data and draw conclusions. Reproduce and verify data. Publish your findings. The scientific method is universal and inviolate. Every serious branch of science has roots in it. Any conclusions arrived at by the scientific method are open to all takers. They can be tested, disputed, challenged and/or refuted if demonstrable, empirical evidence suggests a claim or theory is flawed or unsound.
The theory of evolution is the scientific heavyweight of explanations for humanity’s origins because it’s the most challenged, tested, supported and applied theory that anyone anywhere has ever come up with on the subject. Evolutionary principles are the foundation on which the studies of biology, botany, zoology, pathology, medicine, etc. are established. Without them, you, me and the esteemed members of our State Board of Education would still be having our blood drawn by leeches when we paid a visit to their local physician.
Creationist narratives for human evolution are based on faith instead of science and hold up only to adherents of said faith whom invariably claim their beliefs require no scientific evidence or demonstrable proofs. And there’s just one enormous, unavoidable problem with that: in any legitimate forum devoted to the origin of our species, the line for proponents of Creationist narratives starts at the back door and winds around the planet. Who decides who’s right?
The Bantu tribes of central Africa believe a god named Bumba regurgitated the sun, moon, stars, and human beings after a bad tummy-ache. The Scandinavian creation narrative maintains that humans descended from frost giants which emerged from the dripping underarm sweat of an evil ogre named Ymir. Persian Zoroastrians held that the first humans grew out of a rhubarb plant. The ancient Chinese believed that the goddess Numa shaped humans out of mud from the Yellow River because she was lonely. The Japanese creation narrative suggests that a goddess named Izanami and a god named Izanagi created the first Earthen land mass by stirring the ocean with a bejeweled spear until it curdled. Inuit Eskimos believe the world was formed by a raven.
It doesn’t matter to me if you and I are actually descended from vomit, sweaty armpits, rhubarbs, curdled ocean, mud or dust; until such claims can be reasonably traced, observed, tested and verified they do not constitute “science” and therefore do not belong in a “science” curriculum.
I have no problem with my kids being taught Creationist narratives because each one has its own cultural richness and contains clues to each people’s prehistoric, oral traditions. Its fascinating, profound stuff, but the tales themselves fall under the heading of anthropology, not science (or biology). And until these narratives can be scientifically validated, it should never be otherwise.
In the Christian creation narrative, after God reportedly created Adam, he is said to have explicitly instructed “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of Knowledge of good and evil, thou shall not eat of it: for in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (italics mine).
Adam ate of this tree and did not die. God was wrong.
Regarding the eminence of evolution in our public schools, so are many of his current followers.