Room For Debate

Religion and Science: No Fight Club Here

By Richard B. Katskee

February 12, 2009 RSS Feed Print

Guest blogger Richard B. Katskee is assistant legal director at Americans United for Separation of Church and State in Washington, D.C.

Since serving as one of the lawyers for the parents in the intelligent-design trial in Dover, Pa., I regularly receive invitations to give public talks on creationism and science education. Whether I'm speaking to science organizations, law-school faculties, church congregations, high school classes, or community groups, someone invariably asks, "What is it about evolution that gets people so riled up?"

Everyone wants to know why so many people with no other interest in science care so passionately about what's being taught in ninth-grade biology. They wonder how Charles Darwin—a 19th-century Englishman—became the bogeyman of the religious right in 21st-century America.

When you look closely at what the folks in the intelligent-design movement have to say, it turns out that what drives them is the same concern that motivated their creationist forbears going all the way back to the Scopes "Monkey Trial" in 1925. And that aim isn't to improve science education.

What underlies the fervent opposition to evolutionary science is a religious view—usually some form of biblical literalism or a fear that religion is being pushed aside by science. Some fundamentalists refuse to believe that the Bible may be allegorical in parts; they refuse to accept that it is a rich, sometimes-confusing guide to discovering deep spiritual truths. To them, the Bible is a history and science textbook, plain and simple. They maintain that the Bible must be literally true, down to the smallest jot and tittle, because if not, then it is all just a big lie. And if that were the case, then God wouldn't exist; there would be no moral absolutes, no way to tell right from wrong, and no basis for morality.

Now, here's the rub: Evolution is, according to this view, inconsistent with the existence of God because it causes a few headaches for biblical literalism. So it's God or Darwin; you can't have both. From there it follows that we'd better be sure that our kids learn about God—or at least not about Darwin. And it isn't enough for me to worry about my own children; I have to worry about yours, too. Because if our kids learn about evolution in high school, they will end up having no moral code to live by. It's Lord of the Flies all over again.

That is a classic false dichotomy. Most people of faith don't think that the question of God's existence turns on what some archaeology graduate student uncovers with the next shovelful of sand. And most people don't worry that their neighbor might kill them in their sleep if the Earth is more than 6,000 years old. The Bible and On the Origin of Species both offer insights about the world and our place in it. Religion and science can work together, as partners—but only if we don't force them to be at war with each other.

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evolution,
religion,
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I am myself profoundly unsettled on the questions surrounding the Bible/evolution debate.

On the one hand, there is what appears to be abundant evidence for the Bible. First, the Apostles carrying the message of Jesus would have had the opportunity to maintain esteem in their communities by complying with the orders of rulers not to evangelize, but instead chose the opposite course when they knew it would bring certain persecution and death; unlike religious charlatans today, they could not reasonably have been embarking on such a course as a "get-rich-quick" scheme or for any other selfish reason. They must have been certain, from direct eyewitness experience, that their message was true.

Similarly, the Bible states that God totally forbids any attempt to communicate with the dead or with any entity of the spirit world, or to obtain for oneself supernatural powers of any kind. Such an injunction is unprecedented in the history of world religions; I am not aware of any other religious text, in any other place or time, containing such a law; in fact, the tendency throughout human history, from the remotest antiquity to the present, and across all demographic lines, from tribal "healers" to multimillionaire "psychics," from Victorian-era "Spiritualists" to skateboard-riding, occult-video-game-playing Gen-Y kids, has been for the prospect of having magical powers to hold ubiquitous and perpetual allure, and even for those believed to have obtained them to be, if anything, adulated and exalted, not condemned, by society. This implies to me that the injunction against occultism could not have arisen organically, in the usual course of human events, and thus its inclusion in the Bible could not be a mere human fabrication.

To this evidence must be added the huge number of people who have overcome addictions or criminality through conversion; the fulfilled prophecies; the many remarkable archaeological finds corroborating the Bible's historical data.

And yet, on the other side, I find so much to convince me that the scientists can't be fabricating evidence either. For example, when they first started, about a decade ago, to claim that the extinction of the dinosaurs resulted from an asteroid colliding with the Earth, that sounded far-fetched to me at first, until I saw magazine articles and TV documentaries explaining this scenario: In geological digs at not one but many sites around the world, scientists have found strata containing iridium, an element rare on Earth but common in meteorites, consistently located, at every site, above, but never below, strata containing dinosaur fossils.

Similarly, they have found fossils of "transitional species," suggesting an evolutionary succession.

I further puzzle over how we could see objects in space more than 6000 light-years away if the universe were only 6000 years old.

I fervently hope that society can move beyond the bickering to a phase of united, unbiased inquiry.

Robert Venverloh of CA 3:01PM January 09, 2010

Science and religion are inherently incompatible. Any attempt to reconcile the two is a sad attempt at self-deception. Science is constantly looking for answers, based upon the best evidence available -- while religion assumes that it already has the answers (provided by ancient prophets who somehow knew God's mind, while being perfectly ignorant on virtually every other subject). This is not to say that science will never prove the existence of some sort of God (who knows?). But science will never prove the Christian or Muslim or Jewish religion to be true, because these faiths were (very obviously) cobbled together by ignorant, superstitious men who knew nothing about the true nature of the universe. Science will never prove that Jesus was the son of God (because he wasn't), or that Mohammed was a messenger of God (because he wasn't), or that the Jews are God's chosen people (because they aren't). It's time for mankind to outgrow these childish myths and embrace science and reason (and a more enlightened moral code) without the crutch of religion.

Monkeywrench of VA 8:15PM August 11, 2009

If you want to believe in a REAL GOD then don't you have to believe in REALITY, as well? The morality in the Bible such as loving your neighbor as yourself is logical. Adam and Eve and Noah's Ark are totally illogical.There is no such thing as magic. Can God make 2+2=5? No, that is nonsensical. Magic is nonsensical as well, so therefore God does not employ magic since magic does not exist. If God created the Universe, God did it with physics, not magic. In turn, the Universe created us through evolution.

James McCarthy of DC 1:46PM July 31, 2009

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