Darwin and ‘Intelligent Design’

Many people today find it difficult to understand how it is that 150 years after the publication of ‘The Origin of Species’ there is still a vociferous body of fundamentalist Christians, based in the Bible Belt of the United States, that champions an alternative view of the origins of the world.  At first glance it would seem to be part of the on-going argument between science and religion but if one looks more closely it is, in reality, the working through of a recent political problem peculiar to the USA.

The early emigrants to America were largely Protestant refugees fleeing the religious intolerance of a powerful and oppressive church both Roman Catholic and Anglican.  When, therefore, the first Constitution was drawn up in 1776 the original thirteen States were anxious to ensure there should be complete religious freedom and so they took steps to see that no particular religion was favoured by the new national government; this became enshrined in the First Amendment.

Over the course of time, however, this policy of denying any one religion precedence in government gradually changed and any religious involvement by the state in any of its activities, be it public worship or teaching religion in schools, was later proscribed.  Matters came to the boil in 1925 when it was found that notwithstanding the First Amendment a number of evangelicals in the non-conformist and conservative Southern States had passed legislation banning the teaching of the Darwinian theory because they saw it as materialist in outlook and a threat to traditional bible teaching.  In a test case it was ruled that the First Amendment should be upheld and that anti-Darwinian teaching (by which was meant the expounding of the Genesis creation story) should be proscribed because it was seen as to be religiously inspired.

The practice of anti-Darwinian teaching continued however so further cases were brought against those Bible States which were trying to curb the teaching of  science in favour of the traditional teaching of scripture.  And in this the Bible Belt Christians took their inspiration from the verse in the Authorised Version which says ‘O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called’, (1 Tim 6v20).  In each test case, however, the earlier ruling supporting the First Amendment proscribing the teaching of religion was upheld. The result of this continual pressure of denying local school boards the chance to offer any religious education only strengthened their resolve to disregard Federal Government’s rulings and to think up more ways to circumvent the restrictions and to continue with pro-Bible teaching.  This situation was tacitly accepted until the Russians launched their first Sputnik in 1957 when it was seen that America might be losing the space race.  This caused the central government to panic and prompted it to reinforce again the proscribing of anti-Darwinian legislation which many saw as the cause for the falling-away of an interest in science in education.  This in effect only heightened the stakes and made the pro-Bible campaign in the south think up ever more increasingly sophisticated arguments to prove that it was God who created the world, such arguments as ‘catastrophism’ (such as a comet crashing into the earth) and ‘intelligent design’ (e.g. how could the human eye ever have developed by random chance alone).  Their aim was to present pro-Bible arguments in a form more acceptable to the science lobby. But it did not work as their arguments were dismissed by the scientific establishment as merely pseudo-science.

The underlying thrust of the ‘intelligent design’ initiative is in effect an effort to bring religious education back into the public demesne because a purely scientific appraisal of creation brings with it, so the evangelical fundamentalists believe, a complete lack of moral guidance and teaching that leaves room for the general acceptance of drugs and crime.  It therefore has become a social and political issue rather than a religious one.  The interesting thing about all this is that Darwin himself was never an atheist but a self-confessed agnostic with a very open mind.  He makes many references both specific and implied that his theories only go so far. In the popular and final edition of ‘Origin of Species’ he includes quotations from other writers saying that God does not act by constant miracles but ‘by the establishment of general laws’.
The two outcomes of this are firstly that this situation has not arisen in the UK because we condone religious education in schools - something that needs to be protected - and secondly the emergence of the problem about how should we teach religion if we are to explain to young minds how the Bible and science can live together.  To say Genesis is a myth yet contains deep truths is a difficult concept for our teachers to put over.  They’ll need our every support and encouragement.

Richard Dexter

This entry was posted on 02/04/2009 at 11:37 pm and is filed under Ethics, Faith. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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