Saints and Sinners: Teaching evolution in schools
With the controversy over teaching evolution in public schools is heating up again, it may be a good time to resubmit a proposal I first made 20 years ago.
The debate centers on the place that evolution, creationism and the Johnny-come-lately theory of “intelligent design” should have in the public-school curriculum.
My solution to the argument is to change just one word in how we frame the issue. We need only substitute the word “tell” for the word “teach.”
The word teach has the connotation of indoctrination — of implanting information and ideas which are to be learned and absorbed.
We teach our children the 3 R’s and good manners with the end in mind that such instruction will sink in and be applied in their lives. We teach brotherhood and tolerance so that those who are taught will be led to follow these beliefs.
So, it is natural that parents who believe in evolution do not want their children to be “taught” creationism.
But teaching and telling are two different things. Couldn’t we tell our children about evolution, creationism and the “intelligent design” theory without scaring anyone into feeling we are trying to take over their minds one way or the other?
As a parent, I want my children to know about the theory of evolution. I also want them to know — as part and parcel of being educated persons — that there are a lot of people who don’t believe in evolution — who believe the world and humankind were created as the Bible says.
I want them to know how such a view of the origin of the world got started and what legitimacy, if any, it may have — both from a scientific standpoint and as a way of stating a truth which science alone can only dimly hint at.
It is not that evolution is necessarily untrue. It is just that, if humanity is a special creation of God, then the artist — which the author of the creation story in Genesis most certainly was — may do a better job than the scientist of getting us to see this.
To “tell” — not “teach” — this to schoolchildren is not to indoctrinate them with any particular philosophy.
It is to get them to understand how it is that we have two or more opposing philosophies of the origin of man and the world. We may need them all.
Some, like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), want creationism out of the schools, particularly out of science classes.
The fundamentalists are determined to prove that the creationist view is every bit as scientific as the evolutionist view. That is why today’s breed of creationists call themselves “scientific creationists.”
While most scientists, looking at the earth’s geological column, conclude that the many thousands of feet of rock strata were deposited over millions of years, the “scientific creationists” take the position that, in a great cataclysm like the flood in Noah’s time, these strata could have been deposited rapidly in a short period of time. They thus have no trouble in going along with the Bible reckoning that the earth may only be about 10,000 years old.
The new player in this debate is the “intelligent design” theory which holds that a mind or intelligence — which may or may not be God — must have had a hand in the creation of humanity and the universe since anything so complex and wonderful could not have resulted from random forces at work in nature as Darwin held.
Whichever of these theories is true, it is probably worth saying that science’s insistence that all truth conform to the letter of scientific truth is impoverishing us. Science, of course, must be true to itself. But, it must not, on that account, rule out all other expressions of truth.
Symbols, such as angels or the Bible story of creation, seek to express truths that cannot be adequately apprehended in any other way.
Let’s convey this message to our children.
(George Plagenz is a syndicated columnist.)