Not only evolution is in danger - all frameworks of conventional wisdom

In several states of the United States, religious conservatives are once again trying to challenge the theory of evolution and shape the science books in their spirit. Hearings and legal discussions are expected in the coming months

"These books contain material about evolution. Evolution is a theory - not a fact regarding the origin of living beings. You have to approach this material with an open mind, research carefully and come to a conclusion after a review." Signed up on the stickers ordered by the public council that manages the schools in Cobb County - where the children of the suburbs north of Atlanta study. These days, almost two years after the stickers were affixed, discussions are taking place in a federal court in Atlanta on the question of whether they are not against the amendment to the constitution that establishes the separation of religion and state, by ruling a religious dogma in a scientific guise.

The state of Georgia is becoming the Tennessee of the 21st century. 80 years ago, the "Scopes Trial" or "Monkey Trial" shook the world. This is a trial held in the summer of 1925 in the state of Tennessee in the United States, in which the teacher John Scopes was prosecuted and accused of teaching Darwin's theory of evolution in the classroom. Four months earlier, on March 13, 1925, a law was enacted in Tennessee that prohibited the teaching of the theory of evolution for religious reasons. The liberals of that time tried to challenge this law in court, and therefore gave publicity to Scopes' alleged crime, until the members of the local conservative community had to prosecute him. The trial became famous thanks to the lawyers who accompanied him, when the prosecution was represented by the religious preacher William Jennings Bryan, while the defense was voluntarily represented by the lawyer Clarence Drew and other lawyers. In the end, Scopes was found guilty, and was fined one hundred dollars, which he also did not pay in the end as a result of a technical defect in the decision (the jury was not allowed to award a fine of more than 50 dollars). The law itself was only repealed in May 1967, after the United States Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional because it was religiously motivated.

The author of the biology textbook says that putting the warning stickers on his books in Cobb County is a "strange" action. According to Kenneth Miller, a cell biologist at Brown University, the stickers in his books added in Cobb County try to imply that everything in the book except evolution is certain. In his testimony in court, he said that the only place he saw warning stickers were the wrappers of the cigarette packs.

Six parents, assisted by the American Civil Rights Association, sued the school board, claiming that the warnings force teachers to teach creationism and discriminate against non-Christians and other believers. In a statement issued by Federal District Judge Clarence Cooper on November 10, he announced that he would issue a quick ruling on the matter. In a hearing in federal court in Atlanta, attorney Michael Manley accused the Cobb County school board of using warning stickers to promote religion in the school, which is prohibited under the constitution that provides for the separation of religion and state. "They promote a religious example to all the students," said Manley, who commented that the stickers seek to warn only about evolution, but not about the other alternative theories regarding the origin of the human race. The stickers were added to the books after pressure from hundreds of parents, many of them religious conservatives. Salman, one of the parents involved in the lawsuit says: "Science belongs to the science classes, religion is in our hearts and places of worship. If you start involving them and comparing them, you destroy them both."

"Darwin's theory is considered a theory and it is still a theory and it has never been proven and never will be," said a spokesperson for the school's board of directors. The controversy essentially differentiates between Democratic-leaning parents like Jeff Selman and Republican-leaning parents like Marjorie Rogers. "Give the kids all the evidence and let them make up their own minds," Rogers said. "This is a religious group that wants to take the country from us, and we will not give it to them." Salman said in a news release in mid-November, still during the trial. Many people from all over Atlanta move to live in Cobb County just because of the schools, which have been highly rated by the state. 13 textbooks dealing with evolution are included in the curriculum, and on each of them the famous sticker is affixed.

Lynwood Gunn (Gunn), an attorney for the school board in Atlanta suburbs, says that the sticker only advises students to keep an open mind and does not promote one religion or another, thereby violating the constitutional principle of the separation of religion from the state. And while the sticker scandal is still ongoing, science teachers were surprised in early 2004 when Georgia State Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox proposed a new science curriculum that dropped the word evolution in favor of the term change over time. The plan was quickly shelved, but entertainer Jimmy Fallon laughed about the decision on his Saturday Night Live show: "As a compromise, the dinosaurs will now be called 'Jesus' horses.'"

Creationists reject scientific explanations for the origin and development of life and prefer instead the idea of ​​a supernatural creation by God. Evolution, accepted by virtually all biologists, holds that life evolved from more primitive creatures, and that it was dictated by natural selection.

Is the status of evolution in danger in the United States following the victory of President Bush and his entry into a second term, which may be more conservative than the previous one? This question is important, and the answer to it is probably more complex than expected.

It turns out that the status of scientific truth was probably not stable among the American public even before the last election. In a detailed article published by the British Guardian newspaper on April 10, 2003, (The battle for American science), Oliver Burkman and Alok Jeh analyze the contribution of the Clinton administration to the advancement of scientific research and find that it was negative. As a frame story, they took as an example of this attitude the warning stickers that the board of education of a suburb in North Atlanta added to the biology textbooks that teach the theory of evolution.

There are different degrees of belief in creationism - from those who seek to accept the Bible as it is, to the supporters of the theory of intelligent design, who believe that some designer created the world, but do not oppose the claim that after creation some process of change also took place. Between these two levels there are also different variations on the theme. National Geographic magazine in its November 2004 issue quotes from two public opinion polls. In a Gallup survey conducted in the United States in February 2001, no less than 45% of the adult Americans who answered the survey agreed with the statement that "God created human beings in their current form more or less, in the last ten thousand years or so." 37% are ready to give a role to both God and Darwin, and only 12% trust the scientific determination completely. The same article also cites a survey conducted in October 2004 for the Israeli edition in which 42% answered that they believe in creation, 37% fully support evolution (3 times the proportion of American supporters of the scientific theory) and 20% believed in a combination of the two (almost half of the proportion of supporters of the theories incorporated in the United States).

Well is Darwin's theory in danger? The authors of the article in the Guardian go so far as to say that not only evolution is in danger. The new attack is against the frameworks of conventional wisdom (Conventional Wisdom) themselves, without exception, when scientific theories no longer carry more weight than other opinions. Other examples of the bad spirit blowing in Washington are the allocation of resources intended to fight AIDS to organizations that claim that condoms do not prevent AIDS, and that abstinence is preferable. The same organizations put forward a pseudo-scientific claim that sounds reasonable to the members of Congress - according to which the diameter of the virus is 0.1 microns (one millionth of a meter), while the diameter of the holes in the latex from which the condoms are made is 10 microns. The fact that the alleged scientific claim has nothing to do with reality is irrelevant for the people of that organization. Another argument is the alleged connection between abortions and cervical or breast cancer (which apart from the fact that these two phenomena are relevant only to women, there is really no connection), and which was raised as a factual claim on the website of the American Cancer Society. Another area where the Bush administration is conducting stalling exercises is global warming. Not that the Bush administration denies it, its people simply claim that there is not enough evidence and the investigation should continue until further notice.

A living example among us of a person who believes in the combination of the theory of evolution and the biblical creation is Prof. Zvi Maza, chairman of the Institute of Astronomy at Tel Aviv University: "I disagree with the claim that the theory of evolution has been proven in the same way that the rotation of the earth on its axis has been proven. I definitely think she is right, but I speak as a scientist, and here too I have an unacceptable position. Any theory that tries to explain how we got here, and tries to make a script of the past is definitely a less powerful theory than a theory that explains the situation today. Our ability to validate a theory that talks about the past is necessarily less than that of a theory with which we explain what is happening today. Therefore it is not accurate to say that the theory has been proven. It has been proven to a large degree of plausibility, but not in an absolute way because it depends on all kinds of assumptions."

"As a religious person, I believe that it is possible to believe in evolution, and there is no religious problem with that. I think that the theory of evolution really reflects what was, although it is possible that in the details it is wrong here and there. For example, in the Bible it is written that King Solomon built the temple. But does it mean that Solomon built it with his own hands? of course not. He gave the instructions and it was his servants who built the Temple. God gave "instructions" on how to create man. He built the material world in such a way that eventually man was created in it. There is no problem with this way of understanding, and anyone who thinks otherwise is taking the verses as they are, and this was not the author's intention. The intention of the author of chapter XNUMX in Genesis was to say that there is something beyond the world, something transcendent, and that the material world we see is not everything, but the details were given in chapter XNUMX in Genesis according to the scientific understanding of those days, and the religious person is not obligated to them. This is my unequivocal position on this matter," Prof. Maza concludes. And yet, even though he is not bound by the details written in the Book of Genesis, if the Torah book in which the same Chapter XNUMX of Genesis is written is found to be invalid for some reason, he will go miles to read a kosher Torah book.

Prof. Menachem Fish, also wearing a kippah, who teaches at the Cohen Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas at Tel Aviv University and serves as the head of the school of philosophy at the university, says that evolution has been tested and refined for decades, and has even been reinforced by the theory of heredity and genome research. According to him, there is no reason to challenge its scientific status in the absence of a better alternative. He also believes that there is no connection between religion and science.

Prof. Fish analyzes the historical background for the growth of the creationism movement: "Primitive, early Protestantism, from Martin Luther's seminary, sanctified simplicity. She sanctified the literal meaning of the scriptures because the revolution she called for in the Christian world demanded that everyone, regardless of who they are, read the Bible for themselves and learn about the word of God without the mediation of scholars, church institutions or theological authorities. In this religious culture, which centers on a blind reading of the holy scriptures, the idea is that all people will read and understand exactly the same thing - the word of God, and not that everyone will interpret the scriptures according to their own understanding. From such a coup, Mania and Bia committed themselves to the fact that the religious meaning of the writings is found in the literal simplicity of the words as they are. This type of Protestant reading has passed away in most Protestant churches, but it is alive and kicking in the area known as the Bible Belt in America. This is a Christianity that sanctified the literal sense of the two opening chapters of the Book of Genesis, is necessarily on a collision course with any scientific theory that deviates from this meaning."

"There is a deep human problem here, which we witness in all kinds of religious cultures. When a person's system of religious obligations or other ideological obligations is in conflict with the world around him. This tension, which exists between any two groups that have different commitments and believe in different things, becomes a political problem when such a group has political power. This is of course not a plot against anyone, but a belief out of good faith. When such a community wishes to defend itself against what it considers to be the losing views of a hegemonic culture seeking to impose its opinion upon it, this is the good case. However, the worst case is when such a community itself becomes the hegemonic culture, and seeks to influence other communities through its opinion. The significant problem arises when it comes to a system of beliefs and opinions and commitments held in a dogmatic and uncritical manner. There are very few religious cultures whose attitudes are explicitly and openly shaped in a critical manner. On the other hand, science prides itself on being self-critical, and as such shapes its decisions regarding the picture of the world in a brutal, systematic and institutionalized process of self-criticism."

And Prof. Fish further explains: "When the Christian commitment to creationism establishes itself as a scientific position and imagines itself as meeting scientific criteria of self-criticism, we find ourselves in the midst of a debate on the backs of students, as if there are two scientific alternatives that are in scientific debate with each other. The debate today in the United States is not with a religious community that seeks to preserve its beliefs in an uncritical manner in the face of a scientific environment, but with a religious culture that pretends to be scientific and tries to gather arguments according to which the position they hold - creationism - is superior by scientific standards of experiment, criticism, observation, conceptual criticism and fertility An explanation of her evolutionary past. I believe that in the eyes of the observer who finds these theories, this is a ridiculous situation, and it is dangerous not only for the scientific discourse but also for the religious discourse."

"When theories presented as rivals to scientific opinion only ask for a 'fair opportunity to be heard,' this is a very good rhetorical strategy because it sounds positive to American public opinion and to a sense of openness and fair play," says Kenneth Miller, a professor at Brown University in Rhode Island. "However, there is something called a scientific process, you know - open publication, criticism and rejection of things that are not convincing. We do not teach both sides of the theory of germs as causes of disease and healing by faith. Evolution is not in schools because of political activity or court decisions. It is there because it represents the truth. It has stood up to in-depth investigations and has become a scientific consensus. She won the battle and won."

Prof. Fish has a proposal for the representatives of science. "Scientists and educators would do well if, instead of being drawn into this debate, they would present the two images of the world side by side and show the students that by accepted scientific standards, the superiority of the scientific theory is immeasurably greater than the other, since historically, a scientific-creation theory preceded the evolutionary approach, and it is It was replaced because it found scientific merit according to scientific standards."

Indeed, when we continue into the 21st century and see that Bush's advisers live in their own scientific environment, as if there is more than one science and one can choose the desired science, it is appropriate that we at least know where this dissonance was born from.

More of the topic in Hayadan:

• 12 billion years and another 5760
• The Monkey Trial 2005
• Bush opposes evolution
• The New York Times defends evolutionists
• Has the monkey trial really been decided?