Now they’re calling Sarah Palin a “creationist.”  Already attacks on the Republican vice presidential nominee have appeared in secular liberal 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.

Lopez Lamong proudly carried the United States flag into the National Stadium during the Summer Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing, a young man who barely escaped the genocide that still ravages Darfur, Sudan . Others have not been so lucky.

When Lopez was only six years old, he was abducted at church, one of the many boys stolen so that they could be trained by militia guerrillas to kill.

"It was 8 a.m. Mass. Just my dad and mom and me. It was an open-air church. The priest was praising God. Then the soldiers came in."

His parents assumed that Lopez ended up dead, and buried him in absentia. He was, however, alive, but in a military camp. He would escape from the camp, crawling through a hole in the fence with three older boys. "There was no moon. We could see the lights [soldiers smoking] and when they talked, we crawled. When they stopped, we stayed still.”

Once away from the camp, they ran. The older boys carried him part of the way. In a precarious trek through thorns and brush, sleeping in caves at night, they made their way to Kenya, only to be arrested and sent to a refugee camp. Lopez would stay there for an entire decade, living on just one meal a day.

Happily, Lopez was then adopted through Catholic Charities at 16 by the Rogers family from the United States. In an interesting turnaround, Lopez assumed his own parents had been killed, but was able to meet them again in 2003, about 12 years after his abduction.

The new abundance in America at first confused and amazed him, as his description of his first trip to McDonald’s attests.

"They got me a chicken sandwich, and I didn't eat it right away because I was looking at it. They told me it was OK if I wanted to take it home. In the camp, we had chicken twice a year, Christmas and Easter, and there was one little piece and we had 10 people, so we chopped it up and boiled it up in water and ate the soup. If you got a little piece of chicken, it was Merry Christmas. And here I was, with my own piece, and they were telling me I could take it home and there was more there."

Much more amazing, Lopez was soon to go to Northern Arizona University, a star in track and field, a boy who ran for his life was now a young man who would soon run for the US Olympic team. Lopez will not stop running after the Olympics are over.

"When we were in Africa, we didn't know what was there for us as kids--we just ran. God was planning all of this stuff for me, and I didn't know. Now I'm using running to get the word out about how horrible things were back in Sudan during the war. Sometimes these things are not on CNN, so if I put out the word, I hope people can get the information. Right now, similar terrible things are going on in Darfur; people are running out of Darfur, and I put myself in their shoes."

Dr. Benjamin Wiker

In truth evolution says nothing about who or what created the universe. Evolution doesn't even say anything about how life got started. Evolution merely describes how one life form gave rise to another. Yet Darwin’s personal hostility to God somehow inaugurated a new fanaticism among his disciples. Today writers like Dawkins and Daniel Dennett argue that evolution is a kind of master key that unlocks the universe. These writers illegitimately invoke the scientific theory of evolution to prove the metaphysical doctrine of naturalism. We are still living with the tragic consequences of Darwin’s atheist moment.

Dinesh D'Souza

tothesource has run numerous articles suggesting that disciples of dogmatic materialism are becoming increasingly strident to the determent of free scientific inquiry and the free expression of religious belief. This is apparent to anyone who has sat in a science classroom, or read a Scientific American magazine or listened to one of the increasingly outspoken proponents of atheistic evolution. Should only one side be allowed to speak?

And if science is being taught in an atheistic way in our schools, isn’t that just as unconstitutional as science being taught in a theistic way?

Past tothesource Articles:

What to think?
http://www.tothesource.org/4_23_2008/4_23_2008.htm

Anythingbuttery
http://www.tothesource.org/9_20_2005/9_20_2005.htm

Expelled
http://www.tothesource.org/3_26_2008/3_26_2008.htm

Who picked this fight? Darwin did!
http://www.tothesource.org/8_17_2005/8_17_2005.htm

Has Darwin Become Dogma?
http://www.tothesource.org/11_10_2004/11_10_2004.htm

Darwin's Atheist Moment
http://www.tothesource.org/5_28_2008/5_28_2008.htm

Send your letter to the editor to feedback@tothesource.org.