Evolution battle continues

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/04/2015 (4037 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In 1959, on the centennial of the publication of Charles Darwin’s seminal book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, H. J. Muller, an American geneticist and Nobel laureate, wrote: “When we say a thing is a fact, then, we only mean that its probability is an extremely high one: so high that we are not bothered by doubt about it and are ready to act accordingly. Now in this use of the term fact, the only proper one, evolution is a fact.”

Evolution is indeed a “fact,” but Darwin’s theory about how humans and other species evolved through adaptation and natural selection, touched off a great and contentious debate about the meaning of God and human existence — a debate that continues to this day.

Science and faith are not incompatible. Yet, as one Free Press reader recently wrote — in reply to another young letter writer, who questioned why biblical creationism did not have the same standing as evolution in her Grade 11 science class — “Evolution is science; creationism is faith.”

Still, U.S. public opinion polls done in 2012 showed that anywhere from 51 to 46 per cent of Americans believed that “God created people in the past 10,000 years.” (Similar polls conducted the same year indicated that 39 per cent of Canadians and 31 per cent of Britons favoured creationism rather than evolution.)

That likely explains why the evolution-creationism question is an issue among potential Republican Party presidential candidates for 2016. And the discussion is revealing. Not wishing to upset their conservative and religious supporters, most of the would-be presidents have been evasive.

In 2011, Former Texas governor Rick Perry said evolution is “a theory that is out there.” Likewise, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told reporters who have asked him for his view on the subject, “that’s none of your business.” More recently, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker refused to answer the question about evolution, as has Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Tellingly, Cruz announced his candidacy at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va, an evangelical institution (founded in 1971 by Jerry Falwell) that does not teach evolution, but instead what the university calls a “robust, Young-Earth creationist view of Earth history.”

Finally, former Florida governor Jeb Bush can’t seem to make up his mind. In one interview, the as-yet-undeclared Republican front-runner responded to a question about intelligent design (a variation of creationism) by declaring that, “it’s not part of our standards (in Florida)… Nor is Darwinism or evolution either.” He got that wrong, since evolution is very much part of the science curriculum in Florida, while creationism is not. And in another, he claimed to believe in evolution, yet asserted that it should not be a mandatory component of the secondary school science curriculum.

That Americans will have to decide whether they want to elect a president who understands and accepts the science of evolution is fairly remarkable. This issue should have been put to rest 90 years ago after the celebrated Scopes “monkey trial,” when traditionalists and modernists clashed over Darwinism and evolution in a courtroom in the small town of Dayton, Tenn.

In the summer of 1925, 24-year-old teacher John Scopes was charged with violating the state’s recently enacted anti-evolution law. Under the law, it was illegal for any teacher in Tennessee’s schools or universities “to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.” Any educator violating the act could be found guilty of a misdemeanour and fined a maximum of $500 and not less than $100.

Scopes had taught his students from a state-sanctioned biology text that included a section on the theory of evolution and was charged with the crime — and willingly, since the case had been engineered by the American Civil Liberties Union, which wanted to have the law declared unconstitutional.

What propelled the case to be immortalized as the “monkey trial” and “the greatest since that held before Pilate” — in the words of journalist H.L. Mencken — was the participation of politician and orator William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution and Clarence Darrow, one of the greatest American criminal lawyers, for the defence.

For about two weeks, the trial received tremendous press coverage. Each day, Bryan and Darrow sparred about the meaning of civilization, Darwinism, fundamentalism and the story of the Bible.

In the end, Scopes was found guilty and fined $100, a symbolic and arguably hollow victory. Nonetheless, Tennessee (among other states) did not repeal its controversial law until 1967 and it took one more year before the U.S. Supreme Court finally ruled that anti-evolution laws were a violation of the constitution.

Now & Then is a column in which historian Allan Levine puts the events of today in a historical context.