Andrew J. Coulson at Cato has some interesting thoughts on the issue of teaching evolution in American schools. Although this is not really an issue for Australians and I haven’t heard Muslims complain about the manner in which science is taught in public schools here, it does remain a burning issue in the United States especially amongst conservative Christians. Regardless, Coulson’s arguments about the legitimacy and appropriateness of government adopting and promoting particular epistemologies is interesting, and probably also applies to points of view and ideological positions outside of the teaching of evolution.
Responding to this criticism of an earlier (and also thought-provoking) post, Coulson writes:
In other words, Rosenau is saying that the government is in possession of absolute truth, acquired through science, and that it is the proper role of government to spread the Good Word. This is a government establishment of rational empiricist epistemology.
There are a host of problems with this view of the role of government, but the one that many of my fellow evolutionists have the greatest difficulty grasping is that not everyone shares our epistemology, and that establishing an official government epistemology is every bit as harmful as establishing an official government religion.
When parents teach their children the Biblical creation story as literal truth, they are not “lying” to them as Rosenau imagines. They are passing along the “truth,” as they think it should be acquired, on the subject of human origins. Their epistemology, when it comes to this particular issue, is an epistemology of religious faith. As a result, they do not want their children taught an account of human origins based purely on science because they think science is the wrong epistemological tool for that job — any more than Richard Dawkins would want his children taught creationism.
Ramming an official epistemology down the public’s throat has the same effect as establishing an official religion. It leads to never-ending conflict. Even if this kind of indoctrination were consistent with America’s political ideals (which it most certainly is not), and even if it actually resulted in the widespread understanding of evolution (which it does not), there is no justification for doing it that could outweigh the costs in social Balkanization and animosity.
12 comments ↓
Coulson is simply attacking a straw man. There is no claim of “absolute truth” from which to “spread the Good Word.” Those aren’t claims you would ever hear out of the mouth of any scientist or find in any science textbook, and it is a mark of dishonesty to drag them into this debate.
The “epistemology” being employed is not official in the sense of a government declaration of absolute truth, but rather because it is the common ground in our society for having debates over facts and technical skills necessary to function in fields like computer science, biology, chemistry, and so forth. Science is a common language which, unlike religious faith, which is only as common as believers wish it to be (and they should be free to regulate that on their own), presents a common ground of evidence by which everyone can view and argue and participate.
I understand your point and it is, of course, true that the test of science is that it is falsifiable.
However, I think Coulson’s point is that when it comes to this one issue of the origins of man there are two competing epistemolgies — one based on science (evolution) and one based on faith (creationism) — with the parents of children ‘believing’ in either one or the other. Therefore, his point is that it is wrong (and a recipe for ongoing conflict) for the government to forcefully require parents who subscribe to the second view to have their children taught the former view; just as, conversely, it would be wrong and a source of conflict for the children of parents who subscribe to the scientific view to be forced to study creationism.
Amir, the problem with your position is that it would require the schools to gloss over the premises on which the theory of evolution is based. If you want students to learn biology then they need to know about genetic inheritance and mutation. When you combine that with the idea of selecting for a specific characteristic - and that’s how genetic research started, after all - you have established that the descendants of a creature can be quite different to their ancestor.
Then you’ve got the fossil record, which shows the remains of creatures that aren’t around today. Where did they go? And why aren’t modern creatures found in conjunction with them? I assure you that you can’t stop kids hearing about dinosaurs, or wondering why the teacher says that they didn’t chase cavemen.
These three facts - mutation, selection, and the fossil record - are all that Darwin had when he developed his theory. He didn’t even know why there were mutations (”sports”), although he knew that they occurred. Darwin’s insight was that the process of evolution he and other naturalists observed in the fossil record could be explained by natural selection. I guess you could try to stop kids making this mental leap for themselves, but is this a good idea? I think it’s unhealthy, and it’s the opposite of what a good teacher should be doing.
This isn’t really a case of two competing eschatologies. It’s a case of choosing either to teach science or to deliberately keep children ignorant about it. I’m not suggesting that we need government employees to chase kids down and Reform! Their wrong! Ideas!, but how far do our teachers need to go in order to defer to their parents’ wishes? Suppose the biology teacher was teaching digestion and proper nutrition. One of the things s/he might cover is the difference between protein and carbohydrates, and that we need a certain amount of protein to be healthy. Well, a Catholic in the class asks if the Body and Blood of Christ to be found in his communion wafers is sufficient. What should the teacher do, assuming that s/he isn’t equipped to deliver a theological lecture on Essence and Accident?
I don’t want teachers to defer to every sect and religion that might be offended. It really isn’t necessary for the geography teacher to explain Aboriginal creation myths or for the maths teacher to give equal time to the Pi Equals Three Theory. As far as I’m concerned the kids need to be told that there is a fossil record consistent with the evolution of ancient life forms into those alive today, and that this has been explained as the result of natural selection operating over long periods of time. These (the fossil record and the fact that this explanation is offered) are incontrovertible facts. If a kid says that his Imam taught him the Omphalos theory of Gosse (the world was created with all its fossils), well, that’s epistemology and it’s not a topic the science teacher should debate. On the other hand, the science teacher should vigorously refute attacks on evolution that are made via bad science, like the claims that heat and pressure change radioactive decay rates. I would consider any science teacher that avoided debates like that one to be failing in his or her job of teaching the truth.
I didn’t mean for this to be a debate about genetic mutations, natural selection or the fossil record because there isn’t any really much debate within the Muslim community. We certainly don’t avoid visits to the natural history museum lest we become corrupted by the Dinosaur Conspiracy
Rather, what I found interesting is the broader issue of the state requiring certain positions — be they moral, philosophical or whatever — to be taught when they conflict with the values and ideas of a significant number of parents. For example, the causes of global warming are a good example of an area where there are ‘competing scientific eschatologies’, or in the teaching of economics (one friend complained to be recently that he his teenage daughter had been turned into a Keynesian). Of course, debates within science, including the dismal science rarely reach the intensity of religious debate, but I am interested in knowing where, if we are to have state education, the line should be drawn and how these differences can be accomodated.
Joe or Amir, do the Christians who believe in Creationism reject genetic mutation, fossil record and natural selection?
skhan,
There is a wide diversity of opinion on this with the (very broad) Church, just as I understand there to be in the Islamic community.
For example, the proponents of “intelligent design” are mostly Christians trying to incorporate genetic mutation, the fossil record and natural selection into a framework of faith.
There are also those (many in the US) who believe that the Universe was created at 9pm on 22 October, 4004 BC - give or take a few hours. They reject all notion of species change at all, regarding any evidence to the contrary as the work of the Devil, designed to mislead from the true path. In the main, these are those who rely on the King James version of the Bible, where the chronology of Bishop Ussher is regularly printed beside each major event.
So, yes, there are those who reject these, just as there are in the Muslim community.
There is an interesting discussion with a Australian Muslim paleontologist (Gary Dargan) here on the subject of Creationism, ID, and Harun Yahya (the author who Andrew linked to above).
My two cents worth:
The conflict over whether “creation-science” should be taught in a science classroom is an ironic indicator of an implicit capitulation on the part of some believers to a simpistic scientistic understanding of science.
Why don’t some believers want religious ideas taught in religion classes? Why don’t some believers want theology classes that enable students to put propositions about the divine into coherent relations with propositions about scientific discoveries and the method of making those discoveries?
The answer, I suspect, is that (a) some believers simply aren’t intellectually equipped to even understand such questions, let alone answer them; and (b) because some believers secretly hold scientific knowledge in such high regard as genuine absolute, incontrovertable truth that they feel that divine truths just aren’t ‘real truths’ unless they are included under the umbrella of ’science.’
It is thus a sign of deep, perhaps subconscious, insecurity about tenets of ‘faith,’ founded on an unsophistocated understanding of both divine tenets and science, that drives the “creation-science” movement.
For an intelligent Muslim discussion of the matter see this.
I can’t speak for these Christians, of course, but I understand that there are many different ways they accomodate their faith with their understanding of science. The technique I find most irritating is the argument of Gosse I referred to above: everything was created with the appearance of age, including the dinosaur fossils. I find it irritating because it actually undermines all natural science. Why do fossils seem old? Because they were created that way. Why do we see light that appears to come from many millions of light years away? Because it was created that way. Why radioactive decay? Because. It just shuts the door to a whole lot of research that assumes that objects reflect their past.
@ Joe in Australia’s comment:
The beauty of Gosse’s theory is that it eats itself. Philip Henry Gosse only appears to have existed in historical time. This however, is a mere illusion created by God, in which case, according to Gosseian-style thinking, there is no need to persist with our worries about Gosse.
So next time you meet such a Gosse-believer simply point out to them that Gosse’s absurd theory doesn’t really exist because Gosse nevr really existed to posit it.
The other wonderful thing about Gosse’s theory is that despite over 100 years passing since he first made the claim, nobody has ever been able to disprove it and I suspect nobody ever will. In that sense, it’s the ultimate intellectual escape clause from the fossil record and evolutionary biology: recognising that an observable phenomena exists but at the same time making the impressively unfalsifiable claim that it was created this way by God so as to deceive scientists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omphalos_(book) for an early attempt to meld evolution and creationism together
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