| Let me start off by saying that I enjoy living in a liberal, pluralistic and largely tolerant society. The kind of society, for instance, that extends a warm and unquestioning hand of friendship and support to the Dalai Lama, the self-exiled spiritual leader of Chinese-occupied Tibet. In particular, given Canada’s current "friendly" (i.e. dollar-driven) relationship with China, it was brave of Prime Minister Paul Martin to meet personally with the Dalai Lama, even though he emphasized that the summit was spiritual rather than political in nature.
Yet still it struck me as a little odd, as the Dalai Lama continued to tour Canada spreading his message of peace and enlightenment, that nobody mentioned the foundation for his religious authority (and by extension his political role as Tibet’s head of state): namely, that at the age of two, Lhamo Dhondrub was declared to be the reincarnation of the former recently deceased Dalai Lama. Such a claim is, as far as I know, beyond factual verification, instead depending on one’s personal belief or conviction. But in becoming the first prime minister to meet with the Dalai Lama, Paul Martin has set a precedent: democratic Canada now recognizes reincarnation as a legitimate path to public office. And in the future, not all such reborn leaders may be as benign and beatific as the Dalai Lama.
There is, then, a price to pay for maintaining the kind of open and tolerant society we’ve built over the past century or so. At the very least, there are times when we have to swallow our common sense and skepticism in pursuit of those values. Yet the elevation of tolerance over judgment – better judgment, even – itself poses dangers, it seems to me. "I may disagree with what you have to say," French philosophe Voltaire is alleged to have once said, "but I shall defend to the death your right to say it." But what if he was wrong?
That question occurred to me recently while thumbing through Michael Shermer’s book, Why People Believe Weird Things (1997). Editor of the American Skeptic magazine, Shermer devoted a fair portion of his book to the debate between creationists and evolutionists, including the 1925 "Monkey Trial" in which Tennessee public school teacher John Thomas Scopes was successfully tried and convicted for teaching the theory of evolution. He also reviews no fewer than 25 of the arguments that creationists have made against evolution, a list that’s far from exhaustive as any quick Google search of "creationism" reveals.
For the record, this is what’s at stake here: Evolutionists believe that organisms change over time, through a process of variation (within and among species), natural selection (of beneficial characteristics) and inheritance (of those same characteristics). Creationists, on the other hand, adhere to the story of Genesis in which God creates the universe, the world and all life thereon in a single act (or series of acts), with no room for future additions, deletions or modifications.
The ins and outs, or even specific details, of the debate isn’t what struck me. Rather, it’s the fact that the debate itself has been going on for so long, without any real advance or new ground being broken. The essential creationist arguments remain what they were when Darwin first published The Origin of Species in 1859, or when defence lawyer Clarence Darrow went head-to-head with Bible literalist William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes trial almost 80 years ago. And that’s the point: there is absolutely no evidence for evolution that creationists will accept as proof of the theory’s validity, so there really isn’t any debate at all.
So what’s it really all about? In the wake of the Scopes’ verdict, many states banned evolution from the classroom and textbooks until, in 1968, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled this to be unconstitutional. After a period of quiescence in the 1970s and early ’80s, a revived creationist movement switched tactics. Instead of seeking to use the state to outlaw evolution, they instead argued that (a) it should be made optional, that is up to individual school boards to decide whether or not to teach it, and (b) to retitle "creationism" as "creation science" and so gain it equal time and status in the classroom. The state of Kansas has been at the forefront of this move in the U.S., but here in Canada both Prince Edward Island and Ontario have moved to make the teaching of evolution "optional" in recent years.
This strategy has a hefty supporter in the form of U.S. President George W. Bush. "I’d make it a goal to make sure that local folks got to make the decision as to whether or not… creationism has been part of our history," he declared as presidential candidate in 1999, "and whether or not people are to be exposed to different theories as to how the world was formed."
But that’s the point: they’re not both theories. Evolution is – one that’s been tested, refined and reformulated over the past 150 years. "Evolution is as well documented as any phenomenon in science," wrote the late scientist Stephen Jay Gould, "as strongly as the earth’s revolution around the sun…. In this sense we can call evolution a ‘fact.’" Creationism, on the other hand, is not a theory, but instead – like belief in the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation – a matter of faith, beyond the realm of empirical proof or falsification.
A liberal, pluralistic society should – indeed must – have room for both facets of human experience. "To be sure," writes Kenneth Miller in Finding Darwin’s God (1999), "genuine faith requires... a trust in God, but it also demands a confidence in the power of the human mind to investigate, explore, and understand the evolving nature of God’s world."
Most creationists will never accept this, and so it is time to ask them – firmly but politely – to keep their antediluvian ideas to themselves and out of our classrooms. For too long now they’ve been testing the tolerance that Voltaire vowed to defend. |
Copyright ©2004 FFWD. All rights reserved.