Creationism Controversy

The oft heard truism - he who controls the issue controls the debate - is presently at work in Cobb County, Georgia at a Federal District Court. At issue is whether public school text books may keep a small disclaimer that Evolution is theory, not fact, to which students are encouraged to employ critical thinking.

Plaintiffs in the case argue that the disclaimer is an impermissible violation of the Establishment Clause. It's a strategy that's proven a winner in courtrooms across the nation. Yet putting the legal merits aside, it ignores a vastly more important issue. What are public schools tasked to teach, science or truth?

They're not always one in the same. As Ed Larson points out in his Los Angeles Times op-ed (If It's Supernatural It Isn't Science)...

The norms of science call upon scientists to account for physical phenomena in terms of natural - repeatable, observable, testable - causes. Even if God specifically created the first humans in his image in a one-time event, that could not be a naturalistic explanation for our existence.It might be true, but it cannot be science.

Larson may hold open the possibility that God created humanity, but he's not willing to mix scientific and religious explanations in the classroom. It's "apples and oranges" he says and violates the "separation of church and state".

I agree that the scientific process is best served when it limits itself to drawing conclusions from natural phenomena. For indeed, it can go no further. Science is, by definition, bounded by the observable. Unless one is willing to deny any truth claims apart from what we can see and repetitively measure, than science is necessarily constrained in its ability to reveal truth. No miracle, for instance, could be accepted as true becuase they are beyond the scope of controlled measurement.

To artificially defend Evolution against all other truth claims because only explanations from science are considered cannot be said to serve the truth. This is actually a not too subtle form of imperial - we know better than you - indoctrination. For when science, no matter how flawed, is accepted as the truth, there is no tolerance for alternate claims even when, as Mr. Larson admits, those claims "might be true".

Such is the state of government education today. Ironically, and despite decades of this blindfolded approach, most Americans don't buy it. A CBS poll revealed that 55% still believe God created humans in their present form and that 65% want Evolution and Creationism taught side-by-side (see Opinion Polls). Even Kerry voters favor giving Creationism a voice in the classroom by a margin of 55%.

There are serious scientific challenges to Evolution. Indeed, the cracks in the facade are much wider today than they were a decade ago. But these are facts which determined Evolutionists appear desperate to keep the public, and especially those tutored in the public schools, from knowing. Why? Beliefs about origins are fundamental to people's world-view. And world-views, ultimately, are what drive legal policies effecting how we live, including the lightning rod issues of abortion, stem cell research, human cloning, same sex marriage, even laws as mundane as proscribing public indecent.

So the controversy in Georgia is about much more than a simple disclaimer in textbooks. It's about truth and how we honor it.