By Ken Stuckas
Many decades ago I heard someone influential
say that religion and science have no quarrel
with one another - that they addressed completely
different issues; each could answer questions
that the other could not. As time rolled on
I heard similar sentiments, but less frequently.
The recent resurgence of the fundamentalist/evangelical/charismatic
Christianities (FECCs) in the United States
has put a stop to any serious peacemaking efforts.
It seems that science in its rapid progression
is putting the lie to religious regression.
The centuries-long battle didn't start with
science attacking religion; it began as a response
to the threats of sound scientific work. With
the worldwide spread of democratic forms of
secular government that promote free speech,
religious tolerance and universal suffrage,
Christianity was no longer the law of the land.
As a result the FECCs have had to wage a guerilla
war against science. But the Goliaths of science
are the good guys: the Davids of old time religion
are the feeble aggressors. Fundamentalist Christianity
should be at war with science - its survival
depends on it.
Increasingly clothed in glass-paneled megachurches,
FECCs appeal to church-shoppers who are proudly
non-denominational. Or so it would seem. Checking
with two of the prominent local FECCs megachurches
it was learned that the preachers were former
Pentecostals who grew tired of the holy roller
image and disguised themselves as non-denominational
shepherds to attract the popular church-shopping
crowd. Soon they were filled to overflowing
offering various ministries to attend to special
interest groups - the singles and teens being
among the most popular. It's about money.
Even traditional religions are seeing the light.
A small congregation in a modern southern city
split off from a mainstream Methodist church.
For a few years they met in the storefront of
a strip mall and named themselves Crossroads
Church and marketed their product with the motto:
"We're not perfect." The few hundred parishioners
looked forward to the day they could move into
a real church building. They planned to build
one in the midst of a new suburban development
that has apartment and condo complexes. Their
plans were finally realized and within a few
months they counted 3,000 among their membership.
The very fine print on their literature and
their sign out front has the subscript letters
UMC. They still are a part of the United Methodist
Churches but have tried their best to hide that
fact. Why the deception? It is to avoid the
perceived stigma of their origins, of course.
Why? Mainstream denominations are not well attended.
It's about money.
Fundamentalism emerged in the U.S. in the late
1800s out of resentment over the increasing
liberalization of most major American Protestant
sects. The fundamentalists' alienation motivated
them to turn back the clock to the dogma of
biblical literalism, perhaps to set a counterexample
and to intimidate those who were inclined to
stray toward intellectual freedom. A twelve-volume
paperback series issued in 1910, The Fundamentals,
laid down the law. It preached that Jesus would
return to earth and attack religious liberalism
and downright error, throwing special bolts
of lightning at Catholics and Mormons.
Hostile to anything intellectual especially
if it contradicted their acceptance of the Bible
as literal truth, they rejoiced when teacher
John Scopes was found guilty and fined $100
by the judge for teaching evolution to a biology
class in the tiny mountain town of Dayton, Tennessee.
The Scopes "monkey" trial, of July 1925, was
characterized by Scopes' Chicago-based defense
attorney Clarence Darrow as "the first case
of its kind since we stopped trying people for
witchcraft." This seminal case was, of course,
instigated by the American Civil Liberties Union
to test the law in Tennessee and was covered
for the press by the agnostic iconoclast, H.L.
Mencken of the Baltimore Sun. Even though Scopes
initially lost, upon appeal the trial was set
aside by the U.S. Supreme Court on a technicality
- the trial judge had made a minor error. Scopes
could have been tried again but by then publicity
surrounding the trial had damaged the cause
of fundamentalism. Mencken's anti-fundamentalist
bias and other negative press coverage brought
to the world Inherit the Wind, a stage play
by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, and then
a movie of a fictionalized version of the story.
Thereby the trial lives on in the minds of the
world as a black mark against fundamentalism.
Searching for a basis in American culture, the
fundamentalists reverted to the evangelical
mentality that flourished throughout the 1800s.
The labels "fundamentalist" and "evangelical"
are sometimes confused because the two movements
have common origins. To distance themselves
from the extreme anti-modernism of the 1930s
some mainstream conservative Protestants adopted
the label "neo-evangelical" to describe themselves.
We have since then described evangelicals as
Christians who are conservative in their theology
but not necessarily in their politics.
It's hard to label the rainbow of Christian
sects and organizations that have sprung up
since that time and especially in recent years.
But fundamentalism lurks in the minds of FECCs
to varying degrees. The question that might
be posed to the titular leader of any church
to flush them out, is to ask, "Do you believe
that the Bible is to be taken literally?" Few
will mark themselves by answering yes or no
because they are, first and foremost, politicians
and businessmen. For it is the biblical literalists,
however they cloak themselves, that are at the
roots of the attack on science and enlightenment.
And this battle against the satan of reason
they see as requiring secrecy, stealth and dirty
tricks. They don't seem to be bothered by the
implications of the fact that there are about
4,700 religions worldwide with differing views
on the subject and only one body of science.
One might think their war would be against all
science, but it is not. They attack biology,
anthropology, archaeology, geology and paleontology
specifically, not realizing that all branches
of science contribute to and support the findings
of those sciences. They fail to attack chemistry
which it is the basis of all biology. They also
neglect to confront physics which is ultimately
the basis of all chemistry.
Attacking, variously, darwinism, neo-darwinism,
and biological evolution is fundamentalism's
thinly-veiled attempt at having religion taught
in public schools. All past attempts in teaching
"scientific creationism" alongside evolution
as legitimate competing theory have failed in
the courts and now a new tactic has been spawned.
It is called "intelligent design."
Foremost among the recent proponents of intelligent
design are such diverse characters as Michael
Behe and Jonathan Wells, both PhD-degreed scientists.
Behe, a Roman Catholic, and the author of the
book Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge
to Evolution1, says that it's okay to view the
processes of living organisms from a scientific-reductionistic
viewpoint - that the cause and effect processes
of chemical laws are a valid and complete explanation.
But he inserts mystery into the picture by declaring
that at the cell level things become suddenly
irreducibly complex. While he invokes the privilege
of most stealth creationists of not introducing
his religious beliefs into his scholarly work,
he leaves the door open begging the reader to
scream "God did it!" Humbly he declares that
the concept of [deistic] intelligent design
is "so significant that it must be ranked as
one of the greatest achievements in the history
of science." Behe has not so cleverly reclothed
the old and stale biblical literalist arguments
in lab coats.
He compares the irreducible complexity of the
biological cell to that of the familiar mousetrap.
Take away any one part - the spring, the platform,
the trigger - and the mousetrap no longer functions.
True enough of any well-designed, form-follows-function,
human invention - and irrelevant. The parts
of mousetraps are not self-assembling from their
molecular constituents as are the biochemical
reactions that can be shown to have produced
the molecular precursors of single-celled proto-organisms.
Unlike the practical mousetrap, the cell has
many constituents that can be thrown away with
no immediate effect on the function of the organism.
Some wag has labeled these entities, "junk DNA."
Seems that Nature is not all that efficient.
Can one really blame Behe for taking advantage
of a temporary gray area on the cutting edge
of biochemistry and attempting to play the role
of peacemaker between his science and his religion?
Yes! He ought to join his colleagues in doing
the science necessary to answer the questions
instead of throwing in his scientific towel
by declaring that all the components of an irreducibly
complex system "have to be there from the beginning."
It is noteworthy that not one single peer-reviewed,
scientific paper has appeared on the subject
of intelligent design by anyone including Behe.
It seems that Behe's Black Box is empty. Yet
the idea was peddled to the U.S. Congress as
something that ought to be taught to our school
children.
Jonathan Wells represents a much more egregious
case of deception. His book, Icons of Evolution2,
was the result of a PhD in biology from the
University of California paid for by the Unification
Church. On the church's website Wells was quoted
as saying, "Father's [Rev. Sun Myung Moon's]
words, my studies, and my prayers convinced
me that I should devote my life to destroying
Darwinism..." Does he mention that motive in
his book? No. Is his book intellectually and
scientifically honest? Again, no.
Note carefully that stealth creationists who
claim science credentials always leave behind
a telltale clue to the motivations behind their
objections to mainstream science - a clue that
no red-blooded scientist in search of funding
would ever be tempted to leave in his wake -
they never propose an hypothesis requiring further
scientific research as a solution to the scientific
problem.
Who defends science? Well very few defense forces
are necessary it seems. Most scientists have
no time for this pesky fundamentalist mosquito.
They are too busy doing science. They rally
only for significant battles - mostly court
cases against school boards with stealth creationist
members who attempt to change school curricula
in favor of the FECCs viewpoint. Ultimately
the science side has won every one of these
skirmishes.
One notable nonprofit organization with a unique
strategy is the National Center for Science
Education (NCSE) of Oakland, California run
by Dr. Eugenie Scott, an anthropologist and
longtime foe of junk science in general and
anti-evolutionists in particular. With a very
small staff and budget, the NCSE has successfully
participated in efforts against multi-million
dollar funded opponents like the Discovery Center,
the Institute for Creation Research and Ken
Ham's Answers in Genesis. The NCSE approach
is to offer up, in legal battles to keep religion
out of the public classroom, the voices of the
many mainstream religious organizations which
have no problem with the concept of biological
evolution. According to Dr. Scott, "One clergyman
with a backward collar is worth two biologists
at a school board meeting any day!" 3 The NCSE
also supports the teaching of evolution in public
schools through a collaboration of working scientists
and science teachers.
One eminent invertebrate paleontologist long
involved in the battle against creationism,
Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard, has grown disgusted
with creationists' using out-of-context quotes
from his work as ammunition against evolutionary
science. He has recently written a 1400-page
definitive summary of modern evolutionary science,
The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. 4 It can
be predicted that it will be panned by creationist
critics most of whom will not have bothered
to read the book - most of whom will merely
read the excerpt from the Harvard University
Press website and quote other creationist critics
who have also not read the entire book. So,
to cut them off at the pass, right up front
on page 24, Gould writes: "Nothing of Darwin's
central logic has faded or fully capsized, but
his theory has been transformed, along his original
lines, into something far different, far richer,
and far more adequate to guide our understanding
of nature."
The creationists will also pounce on any negative
criticism from other evolution science scholars
and interpret such criticism, as they have in
the past, as the failure of Darwinism. But the
progressive nature of science a encourages this
process of give and take at the cutting edge
of discovery and should not be mistaken for
failure.
Pascal Boyer has written Religion Explained:
The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought
from the point of view of the cultural anthropologist.
His thesis is that religion is what it is because
of the development of the human mind by evolution.
He shows that such a conclusion could not have
been reached before new understandings in cognitive
science, psychology and anthropology came to
be known. Boyer states that religious beliefs
persist not because of the social unity they
generate, or because of psychological gratification,
but because the subconscious architecture of
the human brain has so evolved to be receptive
to them. Critics of evolutionary psychology
believe the link between the ancestral causes
and present effects is a matter of 20-20 hindsight.
But the cognitive and developmental psychology
research that Boyer relies upon supports his
argument by explaining why religious beliefs
are much more common across all places and times
than is the belief in science. Scientific theories
are often counterintuitive in a way that is
inconsistent with our inherited mental architecture
- more so than our systems of religious beliefs.
Boyer emphasizes the point that our brains did
not evolve through natural selection for the
purpose of religious belief, but that the belief
in spirits, gods and ancestors is a byproduct
of evolution.
So, one could hardly make a case for the eventual
disappearance of religion. But a case can certainly
be strongly supported for its continued retreat
in the face of advancing science. In reverse
of the evolved invertebrate mollusk it is clear
that, since Galileo, religion has gradually
retreated into a smaller and smaller intellectual
shell, having less and less to say about the
way the universe works. And fundamentalism is
being forced by the power of the accumulating
bodies of evidence of science into the business
of selling snake oil.
REFERENCES
1. Darwin's Black
Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution,
Michael J. Behe, Free Press.
2. Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? Why
Much of What We Teach About Evolution is Wrong,
Jonathan Wells, Regnery 2000.
3. Research in Science and Theology, April 2002,
Vol. 2, No. 8, T.J. Oord and E. Stark.
4. The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, Stephen
Jay Gould, Harvard University Press, 2002, ISBN
0-674-00613-5
5. Religion Explained, Pascal Boyer, Basic Books,
2001, ISBN 0-465-00695-7
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help: how to add your comment Page hits: 3670
My thanks to Ken for this article. See also
Ken's
Entropy in
Evolution.
-
Jim
