‘Creation Science’: Secular Schools Can Leave Minds Closed, Too

There is no doubt in my mind that the Supreme Court was right to strike down the Louisiana law requiring the balanced treatment of evolution and “creation science” in that state’s public schools. Still, this whole episode strikes me as unhappy and embarrassing on all sides: The supporters of the Louisiana law were disingenuous to the point of hypocrisy in their arguments, and the court (and some of its liberal supporters) still shows little understanding of the relationship between secular and religious ideas.

Writing for the court, Justice William J. Brennan Jr. said, “The preeminent purpose of the Louisiana Legislature was clearly to advance the religious viewpoint that a supernatural being created human kind.” As such, the Legislature sought “to employ the symbolic and financial support of government to achieve a religious purpose”--in violation of the First Amendment.

Brennan is probably right about the Legislature’s motives. Moreover, the means that the Legislature chose for fulfilling its purpose was especially ill conceived. To mandate equal treatment of two “theories” that have wildly different degrees of scholarly support is educationally irresponsible.

Scientists decide what science is, and scientists reject “creation science”; 72 Nobel laureates joined in a friend-of-the-court brief opposing the Louisiana law, and it is safe to say that practicing biologists, geneticists and paleontologists are virtually unanimous in holding that “creation science” is simply bogus science dressed up for its day in court.

If “creation science” is not science at all, but poorly disguised religion, it’s clear that it shouldn’t be taught in science courses.

But this doesn’t really get at the underlying problem. Some of the opponents of evolution are right about something here: Since science can be taught with no balancing religious teaching, the court has in effect sanctioned the establishment of secularism in public education.

This is not a problem for fundamentalists only. Evolution as it is taught in the schools conflicts with religious liberalism as well. For it is not just generic evolution that is taught, it is brand-name evolution: neo-Darwinian, random-mutation, natural-selection evolution. In this scheme of things, change hinges on blind chance, value-neutral natural law and, unhappily, the massive suffering of animals. These are strange tools for any self-respecting deity to use in building a world.

The scientific view of evolution is not religiously neutral, and it would seem to be hostile to even the most liberal religion, for it rejects the idea that change occurs for a purpose, that there is any kind of divine plan being worked out in the world.

Now, many liberal theologians believe that they can reconcile their theology with this kind of science, and maybe they can. But it’s tricky business. At best it involves showing that the scientific explanations are inadequate. But the schools don’t teach liberal religious accounts of evolution any more than they do fundamentalist accounts of creation. They teach only the scientific account.

In “The Closing of the American Mind” (amazingly, the best-selling nonfiction book in the country right now) Allan Bloom writes: “The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity, but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities, that makes it seem inconceivable that other ways are viable.” That is what secular, public education does to religion.

So maybe, in the name of better education, students should be exposed to religious accounts of creation and interpretation of evolution as well as scientific accounts.

I want to be clear: This is not an argument against evolution, or even against neo-Darwinian accounts of it (I am an evolutionist myself). Nor is this an argument for religious indoctrination. I simply want kids to have an informed awareness of the alternative approaches to the subject. I want them to understand why fundamentalists believe in creationism in spite of the scientific evidence, and why liberals believe that evolution is not a threat to religion, and I want them to understand why biologists believe that evolution happened as they tell it.

Brennan wrote: “Families entrust public schools with the education of their children, but condition their trust on the understanding that the classroom will not purposely be used to advance religious views that may conflict with the private beliefs of the student and his or her family. Students in such institutions are impressionable and their attendance is involuntary.”

But doesn’t a secular school establishment violate the trust of parents and conflict with the private beliefs of student and family as much as would a religious establishment? And might it also violate the neutrality that is required by the First Amendment?

We can’t close the law books on this business yet.