Can't We All Just Get Along?
The following appeared as a "guest essay" in the August 25, 1999 issue of the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle newspaper. Several people called and said they liked my picture. I didn't post the picture as I was hoping someone would actually read the words.
The Kansas Board of Education has recently taken an extremely paranoid step in removing evolution from the curriculum. Scarier still is the possibility that other states will soon follow suit. This all stems from the notion that Creationism and Evolution must be mutually exclusive. Granted, they are often positioned that way, but not out of necessity. Creationism and evolution can live in harmony, not in conflict.
It is unnecessary that Christian Creationists are threatened
by evolution. General principles of evolution are accepted as
scientific fact. They have been observed in the lab and in nature on
small but significant scales. However, the larger ideas that man
evolved from apes or birds from dinosaurs remain a theory. They haven't
been, and probably never will be, conclusively proven. But that doesn't
make the ideas less valuable to us. It is important to understand that
scientists do not develop theories in an effort to write accurate
history books. Scientific principles are used to build predictive
models of the future. Understanding how life evolved from
primordial soup could be essential to terraforming Mars as a 22nd
century habitat for our great-grandchildren. Understanding the
principles or rules by which life propagates across an area or an era
could be essential to our own survival.
Christian creationism is not good science from this perspective. It
doesn't help build predictive models which allow technical progress in
our society. It should not be taught as science any more than economics
or Shakespeare should. That doesn't mean Christianity isn't valuable or
that creationism has to be wrong. The Christian god is omnipotent and
omniscient. It may well be actual fact that he created the universe
some 4000 years ago. Being omniscient, he would have realized humans
would need to understand the "rules" by which the universe operated in
order to gain control of our world and multiply fruitfully on this
planet, and maybe others. Being omnipotent, he would have been able to
litter the universe with background radiation that appeared to come
from a big bang explosion 15 billion years ago. He could have put
dinosaur bones and early hominid fossils in the earth for us to find.
I'm unaware of anyone's creation myth that prohibits their creators
from having put down fossils when the Earth was built. Dine at an
Applebee's or TGI Friday's and look at the antiques strewn on the
walls. Most were built just prior to the restaurant itself, but were
constructed in such a way that they appear to be much older. Is it that
much of a stretch to believe an omnipotent being could accomplish that
same effect on a larger scale?
If somehow the creationists were proven right tomorrow beyond all
reasonable doubt, principles of evolution would still be useful
scientific tools. Science is not threatened by religion. Given the
reasoning above, I see no reason why religion should be threatened by
science. They can coexist peacefully, each fulfilling a need. More
importantly, they might both be right.
