[Marxism] stupid Times column on evolution

["acpollack2@xxxxxxxx" <acpollack2@xxxxxxxx>]

Author of "Freethinkers" blames freethinkers for creationists' comeback, urges 
reconciliation of science and religion. (Nonetheless her book has lots of great 
facts on important historical figures like Ingersoll).
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/19/opinion/19jacoby.html?oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

January 19, 2005
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Caught Between Church and State
By SUSAN JACOBY

HORTLY after the 1925 Scopes "monkey trial," the usually astute historian 
Frederick Lewis Allen concluded that fundamentalism had been permanently 
discredited by the prosecution in Dayton, Tenn., of John T. Scopes, who had 
taught his biology students about Darwin's theory of evolution. "Legislators 
might go on passing anti-evolution laws," Allen wrote, "and in the hinterlands 
the pious might still keep their religion locked in a science-proof compartment 
of their minds; but civilized opinion everywhere had regarded the Dayton trial 
with amazement and amusement, and the slow drift away from fundamentalist 
certainty continued."

This was a serious historical misjudgment, as most recently demonstrated by the 
renewed determination of anti-evolution crusaders - buoyed by conservative 
gains in state and local elections - to force public school science classes to 
give equal time to religiously based speculation about the origins of life. 
These challenges to evolution range from old-time biblical literalism, 
insisting that the universe and man were created in seven days, to the newer 
"intelligent design," which maintains that if evolution occurred at all it 
could never be explained by Darwinian natural selection and could only have 
been directed at every stage by an omniscient creator.

Kansas, where evolution opponents regained control of the state board of 
education in November, is likely to be the first battleground. Proposals to 
modify the state's recommended science curriculum with alternatives to 
Darwinian evolution will be an issue at statewide public hearings scheduled in 
February. In Georgia last week, a federal judge ordered a suburban Atlanta 
school board to remove stickers labeling evolution "a theory, not a fact" from 
high school biology textbooks, but an appeal seems likely. Other states where 
the teaching of evolution is on the 2005 legislative or judicial calendar 
include Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and South Carolina.

Many liberals mistakenly believe that these controversies are largely a product 
of the post-1980 politicization of the Christian right. In fact, the elected 
anti-evolutionists on local and state school boards today are the heirs of 
eight decades of fundamentalist campaigning against Darwinism through back-door 
pressure on textbook publishers and school officials. Even efforts to cloak 
creationism with the words "science" and "scientific" - as in "creation 
science" - is an old tactic, reminiscent of the Soviet Union's boasting about 
"scientific communism."

More sophisticated proponents of intelligent design, those who are religiously 
conservative but not insistent on literal adherence to the biblical creation 
story, use anti-Darwinist arguments from a tiny minority of scientists to 
bolster their case for a creator. Last month, a group of parents in Dover, 
Penn., filed the first lawsuit to address the issue, challenging the local 
school board's contention that "intelligent design" is a scientific rather than 
a religious theory and, therefore, does not violate the separation of church 
and state.

At the beginning of the 20th century, however, America was well on its way to 
an accommodation between science and mainstream religion, now a fait accompli 
in the rest of the developed world, that pleases neither atheists nor theocrats 
manqués but works for almost everyone else. A growing number of Americans 
accepted both evolution and religion but considered it the responsibility of 
the church, not public schools, to sort out the role of God. This view was 
expressed in 1904 by Maynard M. Metcalf, a zoologist and a liberal Christian, 
who praised the move to exclude religious speculation from the teaching of life 
sciences.

The Scopes trial changed all that. Instead of being the nail in the coffin of 
creationism as many believe, the trial undermined the emerging accommodation 
between religion and science by intensifying the fundamentalists' conviction 
that acceptance of evolution would inevitably weaken any type of faith.

When the 24-year-old Scopes was charged with violating a state law forbidding 
the teaching of evolution, his conviction by a jury (later overturned on a 
technicality) was a foregone conclusion. Clarence Darrow, the nation's most 
famous lawyer and most famous agnostic, turned a jury defeat into a public 
relations victory (at least among scientists and intellectuals) by goading 
William Jennings Bryan, who was assisting the prosecution, into taking the 
stand as an expert witness on the Bible.

Bryan, in the view of the Northern press, made a fool of himself. Opponents of 
evolution, however, lauded Bryan, and the press's ridicule of their hero helped 
to create the enduring fundamentalist resentment of secular science and secular 
government that has become such a conspicuous feature of our culture.

Between the Scopes trial and the early 1930's, "science-proof" fundamentalists 
pressured publishers into excising discussions of evolution - and often the 
word itself - from biology textbooks. The nature of that success is literally 
illustrated by a change between the 1921 first edition of "Biology for 
Beginners," a standard text by Truman Moon, and the second edition, published 
in 1926. The 1921 edition appeared with a portrait of Darwin on the 
frontispiece. Five years later, Darwin had been replaced by a drawing of the 
human digestive tract.

Texas, then as now one of the largest textbook purchasers, led the drive to 
extirpate evolution. "I am a Christian mother," said Gov. Miriam Ferguson of 
Texas." "And I am not going to let that kind of rot go into Texas textbooks." 
Mrs. Ferguson personally censored textbooks while presiding over the statehouse 
from 1924 to 1926. Censorship was soon institutionalized in a state commission 
that scrutinized all potential textbooks.

The caution inspired by such pressure extended beyond the Bible Belt and 
persisted for decades. In 1959, the Harvard University paleontologist George G. 
Simpson (a bête noire on creationist Web sites today) noted that most American 
high school science texts relegated evolution to a separate, optional section.

Perhaps the most insidious effect of the campaign against evolution has been 
avoidance of the subject by teachers, who, whatever their convictions, want to 
forestall trouble with fundamentalist parents. Recent surveys of high school 
biology teachers have found that avoidance of evolution is common among 
instructors throughout the nation.

The singular achievement of the fundamentalist minority has been to render 
evolution controversial enough to silence many teachers who know better. Only 
now, when the religious right is no longer satisfied with avoidance but is 
demanding that schools add anti-Darwinist intelligent design to the curriculum, 
are defenders of evolution fighting back against the intimidation that has 
worked so well since the premature declaration of the death of fundamentalism 
in the 1920's.


Susan Jacoby, director of the Center for Inquiry-Metro New York, is the author 
of "Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism."



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