was a moral victory in a sense, for the pro-evolution side
successfully made their opponents into objects of national ridicule.
Scopes was found guilty, however, and fined. The teaching of
evolution was soft-pedalled in high-school biology and geology texts
for decades thereafter.
A second resurgence of creationist sentiment took place in the
1960s, when the advent of Sputnik forced a reassessment of
American science education. Fearful of falling behind the Soviets in
science and technology, the federal National Science Foundation
commissioned the production of state-of-the-art biology texts in
1963. These texts were fiercely resisted by local religious groups
who considered them tantamount to state-supported promotion of
atheism.
The early 1980s saw a change of tactics as fundamentalist
activists sought equal time in the classroom for creation-science -- in
other words, a formal acknowledgement from the government that
their world-view was as legitimate as that of "secular humanism."
Fierce legal struggles in 1982, 1985 and 1987 saw the defeat of this
tactic in state courts and the Supreme Court.
This legal defeat has by no means put an end to creation-
science. Creation advocates have merely gone underground, no
longer challenging the scientific authorities directly on their own
ground, or the legal ground of the courts, but concentrating on grass-
roots organization. Creation scientists find their messages received
with attention and gratitude all over the Christian world.
Creation-science may seem bizarre, but it is no more irrational
than many other brands of cult archeology that find ready adherents
everywhere. All over the USA, people believe in ancient astronauts,
the lost continents of Mu, Lemuria or Atlantis, the shroud of Turin,
the curse of King Tut. They believe in pyramid power, Velikovskian
catastrophism, psychic archeology, and dowsing for relics. They
believe that America was the cradle of the human race, and that
PreColumbian America was visited by Celts, Phoenicians, Egyptians,
Romans, and various lost tribes of Israel. In the high-tech 1990s, in
the midst of headlong scientific advance, people believe in all sorts of
odd things. People believe in crystals and telepathy and astrology
and reincarnation, in ouija boards and the evil eye and UFOs.
People don't believe these things because they are reasonable.
They believe them because these beliefs make them feel better.
They believe them because they are sick of believing in conventional
modernism with its vast corporate institutions, its secularism, its
ruthless consumerism and its unrelenting reliance on the cold
intelligence of technical expertise and instrumental rationality.
They believe these odd things because they don't trust what they are
told by their society's authority figures. They don't believe that
what is happening to our society is good for them, or in their
interests as human beings.
The clash of world views inherent in creation-science has
mostly taken place in the United States. It has been an ugly clash in
some ways, but it has rarely been violent. Western society has had a
hundred and forty years to get used to Darwin. Many of the
sternest opponents of creation-science have in fact been orthodox
American Christian theologians and church officials, wary of a
breakdown in traditional American relations of church and state.
It may be that the most determined backlash will come not
from Christian fundamentalists, but from the legions of other
fundamentalist movements now rising like deep-rooted mushrooms
around the planet: from Moslem radicals both Sunni and Shi'ite, from
Hindu groups like Vedic Truth and Hindu Nation, from militant
Sikhs, militant Theravada Buddhists, or from a formerly communist
world eager to embrace half-forgotten orthodoxies. What loyalty do
these people owe to the methods of trained investigation that made
the West powerful and rich?
Scientists believe in rationality and objectivity -- even though
rationality and objectivity are far from common human attributes,
and no human being practices these qualities flawlessly. As it
happens, the scientific enterprise in Western society currently serves
the political and economic interests of scientists as human beings.
As a social group in Western society, scientists have successfully
identified themselves with the practice of rational and objective
inquiry, but this situation need not go on indefinitely. How would
scientists themselves react if their admiration for reason came into
direct conflict with their human institutions, human community, and
human interests?
One wonders how scientists would react if truly rational, truly
objective, truly nonhuman Artificial Intelligences were winning all
the tenure, all the federal grants, and all the Nobels. Suppose that
scientists suddenly found themselves robbed of cultural authority,
their halting efforts to understand made the object of public ridicule
in comparison to the sublime efforts of a new power group --
superbly rational computers. Would the qualities of objectivity and
rationality still receive such acclaim from scientists? Perhaps we
would suddenly hear a great deal from scientists about the
transcendant values of intuition, inspiration, spiritual understanding
and deep human compassion. We might see scientists organizing to
assure that the Pursuit of Truth should slow down enough for them
to keep up. We might perhaps see scientists struggling with mixed
success to keep Artificial Intelligence out of the schoolrooms. We
might see scientists stricken with fear that their own children were
becoming strangers to them, losing all morality and humanity as they
transferred their tender young brains into cool new racks of silicon
ultra-rationality -- all in the name of progress.
But this isn't science. This is only bizarre speculation.
For Further Reading:
THE CREATIONISTS by Ronald L. Numbers (Alfred A. Knopf, 1992).
Sympathetic but unsparing history of Creationism as movement and
doctrine.
THE GENESIS FLOOD: The Biblical Record and its Scientific
Implications by John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris (Presbyterian
and Reformed Publishing Company, 1961). Best-known and most
often-cited Creationist text.
MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS: Practical and Useful Evidences of
Christianity by Henry M. Morris (CLP Publishers, 1974). Dr Morris
goes beyond flood geology to offer evidence for Christ's virgin birth,
the physical transmutation of Lot's wife into a pillar of salt, etc.
CATALOG of the Institute for Creation Research (P O Box 2667, El
Cajon, CA 92021). Free catalog listing dozens of Creationist
publications.
CULT ARCHAEOLOGY AND CREATIONISM: Understanding
Pseudoscientific Beliefs About the Past edited by Francis B. Harrold
and Raymond A. Eve (University of Iowa Press, 1987). Indignant
social scientists tie into highly nonconventional beliefs about the
past.