Now they’re calling Sarah Palin a “creationist.”  Already attacks on the Republican vice presidential nominee have appeared in websites like Daily Kos and Huffington Post.  This charge is part of an effort to portray Palin as a Christian fanatic, an enemy of science who wants education to serve religious and political ends.

The source of the brouhaha is an interview Palin gave to the Anchorage Daily News in 2006 in which she said in response to a question about creation and evolution: “Teach both.  You know, don’t be afraid of information…Healthy debate is so important and it’s so valuable in our schools.  I am a proponent of teaching both.  And you know I say this too as the daughter of a science teacher.  Growing up with being so privileged and blessed to be given a lot of information on both sides of the subject—creationism and evolution.  It’s been a healthy foundation for me.  But don’t be afraid of information and let kids debate both sides.”

Critics have jumped on this comment, noting that “teach both” and “teach the conflicts” are recognized slogans of creationists and so-called intelligent design (ID) advocates and other critics of evolution.  This may be true, but there is a wide spectrum from creationism to ID.  Some creationists reject evolution altogether and hold that the earth is a few thousand years old.  Some ID advocates have no problem with an old earth and embrace certain forms of evolution while insisting that biology—and in particular the original cell—shows unmistakable evidence of intelligent design. 

Palin did not place herself in any of these camps: all she advocated was open debate.  The same Anchorage Daily News article quotes her saying, “I don’t think there should be a prohibition against debate if it comes up in class.  It doesn’t have to be part of the curriculum.”  Moreover, “I won’t have religion as a litmus test, or anybody’s personal opinion on evolution or creationism.”  These remarks show open-mindedness, not fanaticism.

Although critics seem alarmed by Palin’s advocacy of “teach both” or “teach the conflicts,” the original champion of such an approach was actually a distinguished liberal scholar Gerald Graff, who currently teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago.  Faced with academic reformers like Allan Bloom and me who urged that university curriculums focus on the great works of Western civilization, and champions of diversity who insisted on an emphasis on post-modernism and non-Western works, Graff essentially proposed that the debate be resolved by “teaching the conflicts.” 

Yet in a strange twist of history, Graff’s 1992 book Beyond the Culture Wars, which is subtitled “How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Education,” has now become a kind of strategy manual for critics of evolution to insist that alternative understandings including creationism and ID be taught in the classroom.  Graff himself has endorsed such an approach, saying that if the evidence for evolution is secure it has nothing to fear from criticism and rival theories.  “I can at least imagine a classroom debate between creationism and evolution that might be just the thing to wake up the many students who now snooze through science courses.  Such students might come away from such a debate with a sharper understanding of the grounds on which established science rests.”

Graff recognizes that science too rests on certain foundational and methodological assumptions, and surely the classroom is the place to examine those.  Still, I’m not sure that the science classroom is the place for such debates.  Rather, they are better suited to the philosophy or in some cases religion classroom.  Science classrooms should be reserved for teaching and discussing what science has discovered, and evolution is part of the corpus of current scientific knowledge.

The problem is not with evolution, but when atheists distort the science of evolution and use it as a battering ram to attack religious beliefs, especially the belief in a divine Creator.   Thumb through biology textbooks at the school and college level and you are likely to see pictures of fossils accompanied by descriptions and analysis, and then something like this: “By coupling undirected, purposeless variation to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of life processes superfluous.”  This is from Douglas Futuyma’s textbook Evolutionary Biology.

But this is not a scientific statement; rather, it is a metaphysical claim masquerading as a finding of modern science.  Darwin, although an agnostic in personal life, did not think evolution refuted belief in God.  In fact, early in the evolution debates before his hostility toward God fully hardened, he praised advocates of evolution like Asa Gray and Charles Kingsley who saw in it a fulfillment of a divine plan.  Unfortunately Futuyma’s statement is hardly an isolated case.  Books by Richard Dawkins, E.O. Wilson, Daniel Dennett, Stephen Jay Gould and others all make similar claims, and these have become part of the established curriculum in American higher education.

So what is the solution?  In the biology classroom, it is not to attempt to teach rival theories alongside evolution.  This would be akin to giving equal time to critics of Einstein’s theory of relativity in the physics classroom.  Evolution, like relativity, is genuine science.  What is needed is not an effort to bring creationism or “intelligent design” into the biology classroom.  Rather, what is needed is an effort to take the atheist interpretations and insinuations out.

Who can deny that metaphysical rejections of God as Creator do not belong in our science classrooms?  Not only are such claims unscientific, they are also, at least when advanced in public schools, a clear violation of the First Amendment.  The Constitution forbids an “establishment” of religion and the Supreme Court has interpreted this to prohibit public institutions from establishing or promoting both religious belief and unbelief.

Sarah Palin is so threatening to the radical secularists because she is willing to challenge their most entrenched orthodoxies, including their embrace of Darwinian evolution as an alternative to divine creation.  She can win the argument by insisting that the science classroom remain free of both religious and irreligious claims.  No creationism, no ID, and no denials of God either.   These denials should be removed from public school biology classrooms and textbooks.  Claims that explore the philosophical and religious implications of science can be profitably debated in philosophy class, religion class, or over the lunch table.