Origins and Civil Liberties

[Digital_Savior]

Exerpts from Robert F. Smith's (of the ACLU) thesis titled Origins and Civil Liberties.

quote:For the past five years, I have closely followed creationist literature and have attended lectures and debates on related issues. A few recent examples will suffice: During the past academic year, Dr. Gary E. Parker, a biologist with the Institute for Creation Research, spoke twice at the Univ. of Missouri at Kansas City (26 Oct. 1979 and 28 Mar 1980). Dr. Duane T.. Gish, a biochemist and associate director of ICR, debated Dr. Vincent Sarich, an anthropologist from the Univ, of California at Berkeley, at the studios of TV-50 with a live audience (7 Mar 1980, Kansas City, KS), and the video tape has been shown nationwide. Dr. Gish and the Director of ICR, Dr. Henry Morris, each debated evolutionists on two campuses of the University of Missouri some years ago, and the debates are available on cassettes locally. Only a few days ago, ICR's Summer Institute on scientific creationism concluded at Calvary Bible College, Kansas City, Missouri.

Based solely on the scientific arguments pro and con, I have been forced to conclude that scientific creationism is not only a viable theory, but that it has achieved parity with (if not superiority over) the normative theory of biological evolution. That this should now be the case is somewhat surprising, particularly in view of what most of us were taught in primary and secondary school. In practical terms, the past decade of intense activity by scientific creationists has left most evolutionist professors unwilling to debate the creationist professors. Too many of the evolutionists have been publicly humiliated in such debates by their own lack of erudition and by the weaknesses of their theory. The ACLU should, of course, be unconcerned with the results of such debates as long as the free market-place of ideas remains open. For, in all of these debates, creationists have been scrupulous to adhere to strict discussion of science alone. Not religion! Statements to the contrary are false.

Contrary to the allegations of one member of the National ACLU Church - State Committee, no creationist professors are seeking to "require public schools to offer courses and textbooks that support the literal Genesis account of creation." Nor can it be legitimately suggested that scientific creationists are "disguising fundamentalist religion in scientific jargon," or that they are working for some covert "advancement of sectarian religion," whatever personal beliefs most of them may have. Scientific creationism is not religious creationism. As legal scholar Wendell R. Bird points out, "Being consistent with religious views does not make it religion." In 1925, in Dayton, Tennessee, at a time and place where only religious creationism was legally taught, Clarence Darrow thought it "bigotry for public schools to teach only one theory of origins" (Bird and Darrow quoted in Kansas City Times, Dec. 21,1978, p. 2E; cf. Scopes V. State, 154 Tenn. 105). Would the ACLU be any less bigoted were it to demand that a modern-day John T. Scopes be allowed to teach only neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory?

I am heartened to learn (if belatedly) that some members of the National ACLU Committee on Academic Freedom have reservations about the relevance to this issue of the establishment clause of the First Amendment (S. Hendel Addendum, June 9, 1980). Indeed, the de facto establishment of views on the ultimate nature of reality and the indoctrination of secondary school students (public and private) in only one view has been with us for some time. It is, of course, the scientific establishment that determines which view will be promulgated in public schools. Normative religion usually follows in the wake of that establishment in our own time, as in the time of Galileo Galilei.

Contrary to common assumption, Galileo was racked and forced to recant at the behest of the dogmatic, geocentric scientific establishment of his day (Ptolemaic). The Church had merely adopted the Ptolemaic assumptions, as it had Aristotelian and Platonic philosophies. The open society ought to include the broadest possible discussion of opposing views rather than demanding (coercing?) adherence to one narrow, totalist position. In practice, the dualmode approach to origins enhances education and confirms John Stuart Mill's notion that competing theories test and sharpen each other (On Liberty. chapter II).

In School District of Abington Township vs. Schempp, in 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court left public schools open to far broader categories of instruction than even the creationists seek:

* the State may not establish a "religion of secularism" in the sense of affirmatively opposing or showing hostility to religion, thus "preferring those who believe in no religion over those who do believe." Zorach V. Clauson, supra, [343 U.S.] at 314.

Not only are "religious exercises" not a part of scientific creationism, but one cannot conceive of any reason for "study of the Bible or of religion" in connection with it. Not even indirectly even though the Supreme Court would clearly allow it.

Scientific creationism depends rather upon normative science for its justification, i.e., the Second Law of Thermodynamics (entropy), inductive analysis of geologic strata, embryology, anthropology, multivariate analysis of fossils (paleontology & comparative anatomy), probability theory, etc. The upshot is that, although evolutionists might have comparative molecular biology on their side, recent discoveries have convinced many eminent evolutionists that one cannot obtain self-replicating molecules (life) in the presence of all-pervasive entropy/disorder, that there are no known transitional fossils (two such "missing links," Nebraska and Piltdown Man, were offered as evidence of evolution at the Scopes Monkey Trial, but they later turned out to be hoaxes), and the geologic column is characterized by the sudden, unsystematic, and catastrophic entry and exit of various forms of life. In each case, the scientific model is a theoretical construct based on circumstantial evidence from the past. Neither evolution nor creation has ever been observed, nor are they currently testable (provable) in a laboratory. Neither model is, thus, based any more on "faith" than the other. Similar problems of determining and reconstructing origins exist for astrophysics, where "steady state" and "big bang" models have existed side-by-side for a long time. That one model should coincide with some religious view is irrelevant.

In line with Lemon vs. Kurtzman (403 U.S 602,614; cf. 374 U.S. 215-6,222, 226), the only allowable test for the introduction of any theory of origins into the science curriculum of the public schools must be a test of scientific merit - which alone provides purpose, secularity, and lack of entanglement with religion. Government must remain neutral, and religion can have no hand in that assessment of merit. Separation of Church & State remains unthreatened by the introduction of scientific creationism. On the other hand, proscribing the teaching of scientific creationism would certainly violate the spirit of Epperson vs. Arkansas in that a de facto anti-creationist position is permitted while an anti-evolution statute is struck down! No group, secular or religious, should have the right to pretend that an area of knowledge doesn’t exist simply because it is "deemed to conflict with a particular" scientific dogma (393 U.S. 103). The Law is a double-edged sword, and the "right of teachers and students to be free of arbitrary restrictions upon the educational process (Meyer V. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390) ought to be applied as readily to restrictions upon teaching creationism as to teaching evolution.

Religious creationism is rightly to be excluded from any public school system as for the Iowa Dept. of Public Instruction (Jan 1978 position paper), and for Tennessee in Daniel vs. Waters (515 F2d 485). However, the leading professional organizations of educators and scientists pushing scientific creationism, the Creation Research Society (CRS), and the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), have never sought to introduce religious creationism into the public schools. Indeed, in a recent lecture at UMKC, one ICR scientist, Or. Gary Parker, came under fire from a fundamentalist Christian in the audience for not mentioning Jesus or the Bible. ICR scientists stick to science remarkably well, and it has always been ICR policy to use education and persuasion in convincing states and school districts to put creationism in the science curriculum not via litigation or compulsory legislation, which are counterproductive, but by resolution, endorsement, and adoption of dual-model texts. Creationist scientists in this country are generally confident that they can win acceptance for scientific creationism in open debate on the scientific issues alone. In my judgment, they have good reason for such confidence, and ought to be given a hearing by the ACLU before any policy decisions are made.

I am not an evangelical, fundamentalist Christian, and my fundamentalist friends do not consider me to be a "Christian." I have no ulterior motive for the above statements (am not connected in any way with ICR or CRS), unless it is the simple-minded notion that the ACLU should maintain the highest possible standards in the protection and expansion of civil liberties The ACLU must avoid the adoption of policies based on fallacious reasoning or on the hearing of only one side of an issue.

I agree with this guy 100%. Scientists and School Administrators that are threatened by scientific creationism (or ID) should reconsider their motives in preventing theories such as these access to the community at large.

I sense a deep insecurity and bigotry amongst the ranks of evolution science and their supporters.

EDIT: Forgot the resource link. My bad. Thanks for pointing that out, Beta.

[This message has been edited by Digital_Savior (edited 04-28-2006).]