Cathedrals to Creation
It’s in Northern Kentucky, just south of Cincinnati. For only $75 you can get a “combo” ticket – one adult, good for the Creation Museum and a tour of a life sized replica of Noah’s Ark. You can even catch a glimpse of the boat from I-75 as you speed toward Lexington.
The Creation Museum calls out to you: “Prepare to Believe!!” It is the most visible national sign of “creation science,” the re-branding of the Biblical book of Genesis as a “scientific” view. The Museum even accounts for fossils, found in the silt and sand. They say they were buried during the Deluge. Before the Flood, according to “creation science,” man and dinosaur coexisted on earth.
There’s nothing wrong with the Creation Museum, or the life sized Ark. They are built with the same intent as Medieval Cathedrals, as monuments to religious devotion and belief. To the believers, they are places to remind them of the wonders of their faith. To the non-believers, those same places remind them of the religious dedication of their fellow men.
Science based on Faith
We learned the definition in school: science is the study of the world based on developing a hypothesis, or theory, then using provable facts to support, modify, or dismiss it. Religion is a belief system based on faith. These are not opposites; they can both exist in the same space. What cannot happen: provable facts cannot be confused with faith-based beliefs.
So the facts of science, stacked into provable concepts, always subject to verification by new facts, are tangible. You can look at evidence, physically touch the fossils, and understand the concepts of Carbon Dating and time. Millions of years cannot be condensed into the Biblical generations adding up to 6000.
When I first started teaching school in the late 1970’s, public education in Ohio had reached a balance between facts and faith. In science class, evolution was taught, and the facts were laid out. Students were required to know and understand those facts, but they were not required to “believe” them if their faith taught them differently. They could have “faith” in what they wanted, but had to know the facts to pass the tests.
There was a distinction between Biblical creation and evolution. Good teachers made it clear that many of the scientists who worked in evolution, including Charles Darwin, believed they were describing “the plan” used by the Deity. But “the facts” of evolution were delineated from the “faith,” whatever that was, of the scientists.
Battle in the Schools
But there was a backlash that took hold later in the 1980’s. It started with “creation science,” a skillfully manipulated “term of art” that cloaked faith in the language of science. Since it sounded like science, the proponents demanded that it be given the same standing in science class. In 1987 the US Supreme Court ruled that it was in fact faith, not science. Teaching “creation science” in public schools, the Court ruled, was the government taking “a side” in religion, in violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution (Edwards v Aguillard 438 US 578, 1987).
Then it was rebranded, this time as the “scientific theory of intelligent design.” Intelligent design hypothesizes that the complexity of life on earth are too great to have been “random chance” over millions of years, and therefore required some unseen force directing its design – in other words, a Deity. The proponents did an even better job of cloaking their religious views in scientific terms, and demanded that “intelligent design” get equal time with evolution in science class.
Courts v Politics
Federal District Judges have ruled that intelligent design does not meet the non-religious criteria set in Edwards to be taught in public schools (Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School Dist., 400 F. Supp. 2d 707, M.D. Pa. 2005). But the pressure on teachers, administrators, and local school boards from religious groups has been intense. Many science teachers in public schools today avoid teaching about evolution. Instead, they teach “the facts” of science, but leave the terms, evolution in particular, out.
While the battle may have been won in the Courts, it still plays out in Board of Education meetings every year. And while the Courts may be on “secular” teacher’s side, that doesn’t help much when three out of five school board members were elected to back “intelligent design”.
It Started Here
Our political discourse today is rampant with differing “sets of facts”. We look at, for example, the testimony in the House Intelligence Committee hearings, and hear absolutely opposite things. For one side, there is clear evidence that the President of the United States attempted to bribe another nation for help with his campaign. For the other side, it’s clear that the President did nothing wrong (or at least that’s what they say).
Even in the Vietnam War crisis of the 1960’s, it seemed that there was a single set of facts that could be discussed. And when the most trusted source of those facts, CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite, questioned the war, it impacted the view of the entire nation. Today there is no person with that kind of influence. We don’t just disagree, we don’t believe in the same set evidence and facts.
When did that happen? Is our national factual dispute just the creation of Roger Ailes and Fox News? Here’s a “fact” to think about: the “facts” first disputed were in the classrooms of public schools. Students were allowed to conflate facts and faith, and encouraged to “create” their own facts. If that worked for evolution, why not for other uncomfortable “facts” in society: for poverty, immigration, and climate change.
Teachers aren’t the only ones teaching students. Perhaps our national “accommodations” for creationism in the past forty years created a national willingness to accept only the facts that fit our existing views.
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said:
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.”
That’s not what we’re teaching.
