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the reality of evolution. These data formed the basis for his monumen-
tal book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection; or,
Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life, widely regarded as
one of the cultural landmarks in the history of humankind.
But Darwin complicated matters for subsequent generations by us-
ing his book not only to argue for evolution itself, but also, as the title
of the book foretells, to propose a mechanism by which life became so
abundantly diversified from a single source. He called the mechanism
natural selection, although it is more popularly known as survival
of the fittest (a phrase coined by Herbert Spencer). Darwin was timid
(or shrewd) enough to say virtually nothing about humankind in his
first description of evolution by natural selection. But in a subsequent
book, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, he threw
down the gauntlet and argued that Homo sapiens had evolved from
some lower form. He even suggested a location for the origin of man
Africa, a stunning anticipation of modern scientific orthodoxy. The
suggestion flew in the face of white supremacy and may have helped
deter the acceptance of Darwinian thought by early twentieth-century
Western Europeans.28
Virtually all biologists believe that Darwin established evolution as a
fact of life (or of life s history, to be more exact), and modern science
has added many new dimensions to the evidence.29 There is also wide-
spread agreement that evolution is based on natural selection, al-
Paradoxical Strife 201
though room remains for argument about the details. In contrast, the
school of thought known as creationism accepts neither of Darwin s
conclusions, arguing instead that the biblical account of creation accu-
rately describes the origin of life and of all living creatures at one
stroke. Other cultures have their own creation myths, but these have
not engendered the impassioned opposition to evolution that typifies
biblical creationism. Of late, even Pope John Paul II has declared that
evolution is more than just a theory, indeed, that it has proved
true. 30
It has been more than seventy-five years since the Scopes Trial in
Dayton, Tennessee, exposed the speciousness of the creationist argu-
ments against evolution.31 The trial originated from an initiative by the
American Civil Liberties Union to challenge a Tennessee law that pro-
hibited the teaching of evolution in public schools. In an effort at pub-
lic relations, civic leaders of the town of Dayton (population 1,800 at
the time of the trial) persuaded twenty-four-year-old John T. Scopes,
general science teacher and part-time football coach, to be prosecuted
for teaching evolution as indeed he had been doing; nobody could
teach biology without teaching evolution was the way one of his ac-
quaintances put it.32
The trial took place in the summer of 1925. The outcome was
a foregone conclusion. Scopes readily acknowledged his crime, was
found guilty by the jury, and fined $100 (the minimum possible pen-
alty). But during the trial, the principal lawyer for the defense, Clar-
ence Darrow, persuaded William Jennings Bryan to take the witness
stand. Bryan was a celebrated lawyer, journalist, orator, perennial can-
didate for the U.S. presidency, and biblical fundamentalist who was
spearheading the prosecution in the trial. The ensuing cross-exami-
nation by Darrow exposed the flaws in Bryan s fundamentalist be-
liefs and undermined the credibility of his opposition to evolutionary
theory.
It is notable that Bryan himself argued only against the teaching of
evolution as a fact, not against its inclusion in the curriculum of pub-
lic schools as an unproven theory. The position of latter-day crea-
tionists is little different; indeed, is sometimes more extreme. They are
always given more than a cursory hearing, and on occasion, they come
202 Paradoxical Strife
close to success. The State of Kansas recently suffered great embarrass-
ment when its board of education voted to remove the subject of
evolution from its public-school curriculum. To its credit, the voting
public of Kansas quickly retaliated at the ballot box. The children of
Kansas will be taught the facts of life s history after all.
Creationists typically conflate the genesis of species by evolution
with the origin of life and even the origin of the universe. It is a conve-
nient confusion. The evidence for evolution is rock solid (indeed,
much of it has been found in rock, in the form of fossils), whereas the
explanations for the origins of the universe and of life remain hypo-
thetical. Conflating the three allows the creationist attack on origins
theories to also challenge the authenticity of evolution. In reality,
Darwin wrote virtually nothing about the origin of life itself. His pre-
eminent concern was the origin of species.
Creationists often confound the debate in another manner by treat-
ing evolution and natural selection as consubstantial. They are not.
Natural selection is the widely accepted explanation for how evolution
occurs. But biologists still argue about some of the details of natural
selection, and creationists use these disputes inappropriately in efforts
to discredit the reality of evolution itself.
The very definition of life now relies in part upon the reality of evo-
lution. Biologists define any system as living if it displays two prop-
erties: the ability to reproduce independently, and the ability to evolve.
Once more: nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evo-
lution.
The newly available chemical sequence of the human genome pro-
vides a stunning account of human evolution, a fossil record in DNA
that spans more than a billion years and records the major steps in the
emergence of Homo sapiens. Only the most obdurate opponents of
evolution could now deny its reality. The human genome sequence has
also dramatized the kinship within the human family. The DNA of any
two people on the planet is likely to be 99.9 percent identical. These
findings have added a powerful biological argument against the fic-
tions of race and bigotry. There is no molecular substance to the belief
that one portion of the human family is inherently inferior to another;
Paradoxical Strife 203
indeed, no molecular substance to the existence of race in any biologi-
cal sense of the term.
Evolution in the Public Schools
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