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.
