TV REVIEW : ‘In the Beginning . . . ‘ Needs a Better Ending

Randall Balmer seems to be a very good listener.

As host and interviewer of PBS’ two-part “In the Beginning . . . The Creationist Controversy,” Balmer asks the tough but fair questions, ponders the answers and weighs and balances both sides in the debate between Darwinists and Christian fundamentalists who insist on a literal interpretation of Genesis. He is the ideal man in the middle of the storm.

Balmer, though, concludes his program so disastrously that we wonder how much he really has been listening. He sums up the debate as the result of a pluralistic society, in which all sides can be heard. That sounds wonderful and innocuous, but it is wrong. What “In the Beginning” really depicts is the debate of reason versus religious zealotry, American-style.

The creationist argument first tries to rely on a crude pseudo-science, which posits among other things that a worldwide flood formed the Grand Canyon in a few weeks or months. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but rather than provide one iota of hard proof, creationists such as Duane Gish merely question the lapses in evolutionary study.

If you listen closer than Balmer has, notice how his creationist guests then make the wild leap to accusing evolutionary thought of being the root of all social problems, from drugs to rampant sex.

This is not science--the constant re-examination and refinement of tested hypotheses--but, as the Supreme Court has ruled, religion. Yet Balmer’s report shows the dogged efforts of creationists to insert their religious notions into public school curricula.

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Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education tells Balmer that hocus-pocus will step in when good science isn’t taught effectively in school. She properly blames scientists and educators for not taking the well-funded and aggressive creationist forces seriously, and yet, the great Darwinist Stephen Jay Gould also tells Balmer that he has been fighting these anti-intellectuals, and taking his valuable research time to do it. It is a war for young minds, and unreason may be winning.

Balmer nods his head, but is he really listening? And, for that matter, is the American public?

* “In the Beginning . . . The Creationist Controversy” airs 10 p.m. tonight and Wednesday on KCET-TV Channel 28.