Sitting around a long table, enjoying a farewell dinner after six weeks of digging and surveying throughout South Africa for BAA 101 and 102--paleoanthopological field courses--she dropped the question. By "she," I mean the local biology teacher and wife of our host. "Steve (Duke's Dr. Steven Churchill), if God made Adam and Eve, how could we come from chimpanzees?" As diplomatically as possible, Dr. Churchill explained that humans did not derive from chimpanzees, rather evolution claims that humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor that lived several million years ago. Misunderstanding evolution, like this instance, causes resistance to acceptance and leads to decisions like the one announced last week in Georgia.
In opposition to President George W. Bush's education policy, the state of Georgia's education superintendent moved to leave every child behind. Superintendent Kathy Cox announced that the word 'evolution' would no longer appear in Georgia's public school curriculum. While eliminating the "E" word scares us as much as removing dodge ball from gym classes, it isn't a major change in the curriculum. A recent grading awarded Georgia, along with 10 other states, an "F" for teaching evolution in public schools. Apparently the basic premise for modern science today does not warrant quality time in the classroom. We should probably throw grammar out too. That would free teachers to teach towards tests to ensure that schools stay open while spending lunchtime discussing creationism, or the new hip phrase "intelligent design"
Maybe Georgia won't go that far in the near future, but the proposed courses in biology, according to the L.A. Times, eliminate fossil evidence, Darwin's life and evolution from single-celled organisms. The plan stops just short of omitting Mendel's work to identify genes (which, in all fairness, was fixed data), life's emergence four billion years ago and the evolution that drove it to where it currently drives forward.
To take evolution out of any curriculum or place creation right next to it hampers any development of scientific inquiry in students. Joel Cracraft, president of the American Institute of Biological Sciences writes that creationism "rejects the fundamental precept of science that phenomena in the natural world should be interpreted through naturalistic explanations that are accepted (always tentatively) or rejected by reference to observation."
Public schools cannot teach creationism according to the Supreme Court's 1987 ruling in Edwards v. Aguillard. In this case, the state of Louisiana prohibited evolution from entering the classroom unless accompanied by "creation science." The Court, however, deemed that Louisiana promoted religion through this act. The Court also claimed that such an act undermined scientific education by eliminating evolution.
Seventeen years after this decision, creationism returns to the battlefield in public education under a different guise never before tested in the courts. This time, its proponents cleverly mask it as "intelligent design." Professor Sheryl Broverman explains that intelligent design is creationism "recast" and purported as science.
She adds that "ID (intelligent design) is based on the idea of 'irreducible complexity': i.e., that some components of biological systems require so many interconnecting parts to function that they could not have evolved piecemeal. Most of the examples given (flagella, blood clotting pathways) can be explained by our current understanding of evolutionary theory."
Professor of biological anthropology and anatomy, Churchill explained to me a primary difference between supporting evolution and intelligent design. "Intelligent design has some trapping of science, but it has a foregone conclusion." He counters that evolutionists, Darwinists or whatever you want to call them (heathens), are bound to change their views if they discover something that contradicts their previous findings and understanding of life.
Evolution is not a threat to religion. Even the Pope, the United Methodist Church, the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S. and several other churches endorse the teaching of evolution and the elimination of creationist subjects from public schools. Despite these stances, many churches, pastors and congregation members still feel threatened by the notion of evolution. The divide between people supporting and opposing evolution often extends beyond this debate into other beliefs and ideals concerning society, such as tax structure, marriage and plans to nuke the whales. In a secular state, like the United States, evolution must remain in schools and creationism must stay out.
Time still remains to alter Georgia's decision to eliminate evolution from its curriculum. A petition to do so is already in circulation. Former President Jimmy Carter denounced the decision as embarrassing and said, "There is no need to teach that stars can fall out of the sky and land on a flat Earth in order to defend our religious faith."
If these Georgians opposing their state school board fail, the simple solution remains to encourage change from the outside. Duke, along with its peer institutions should refuse to accept students not educated in the basic premises of evolution. That way, we can open up even more spots on campus for people from places like Long Island, the furthest evolved of all humans, followed in a close second by people from Texas and New Jersey.
Kevin Ogorzalek is a Trinity senior. His column appears every third Thursday.
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