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Science vs. Creationism
by Mark Ostapiak
The latest episode in the long struggle between the ideas of
evolution and creationism was marked by a Dec. 14 federal lawsuit filed by
the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church
and State on behalf of 11 parents in Dover, PA.
They insist that the local school board's decision to introduce
"intelligent design" theory "in public school science
classrooms violates their religious
liberty by promoting particular religious beliefs to their children
under the guise of science education."
Another lawsuit, introduced before the Atlanta Division of the U.S.
District Court on Nov. 8, has six parents of students challenging the Cobb
County School District (CCSD) in Georgia for an anti-evolution disclaimer
on high school science texts that reads:
"This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact,
regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached
with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered."
At stake in these suits are (1) the principle set in the U.S.
Constitution's Establishment Clause, which clearly stipulates the
separation between church and state; (2) a 1987 Supreme Court decision
deeming it illegal to devote equal time for teaching "creation-science"
alongside evolutionary science; and
(3) the teaching of well-established evolutionary science in public
schools throughout the country.
Fact versus "theory" is the basis and most compelling aspect
of the historic argument between proponents of evolution and creationism,
where the latter’s
religious dogma asserting that the earth was created by a divine being
is thinly veiled behind the euphemism, "intelligent design."
Phillip E. Johnson, a law professor at Berkeley, is credited with
establishing in 1991 the philosophical underpinnings of intelligent design.
He argued that
Darwinian evolution was based on weak assumptions and scant
evidence.
In addition, according to a Dec. 21, 2001, article in The Chronicle
of Higher Education, "in 1996, a biochemist at Lehigh University,
Michael J. Behe,
offered scientific argument in favor of intelligent design. Mr. Behe
introduced the idea that some living things are irreducibly complex,
meaning that they
could not have evolved and must have been designed."
Behe's claim of irreducible complexity, the topic of his 1996 book “Darwin's
Black Box,” “may well represent the most sophisticated and the most
seductive-creationist attack on evolution in a quarter century,”
says H. Allen Orr, writing for the Boston Review in 1996.
Behe states in his book that "by irreducibly complex I mean a
single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that
contribute to the basic unction, wherein the removal of any one of the
parts causes the system to effectively stop functioning."
However, an all-important fundamental cellular process, the Krebs
cycle, is known to be able to skip certain crucial stages, and continue to
operate.
Otherwise known as the citric acid cycle, Krebs is a key piece to
cellular metabolism, necessary for all life.
It’s also peculiar that the argument of irreducible complexity is
limited by Behe to our planet, as if chemical, biological, and physical
processes occur
only under conditions here. There’s evidence that the original
components of life on earth could have stemmed from processes in
interstellar conditions,
billions of years ago. On Sept. 28, 1969, an extra-terrestrial
meteorite fell in Murchison, Victoria, in Australia, that contained 60
amino acids.
"It now seems possible that at least some of the amino acids
found in meteorites predate the formation of our solar system and were in
fact synthesized in interstellar space," says Dr. Christopher Chyba,
head
of the Center for the Study of Life in the Universe (LITU) at the
SETI Institute.
Amino acids are essential for all life, and they can be reproduced
in lab experiments when a mixture of methane, ammonia, water, and hydrogen
sulfide (inorganic compounds that are enormously abundant throughout interstellar
space) is exposed to ultraviolet light to simulate the effect of sunlight on
the chemicals. Nucleic acids, the fundamental substances of life, were also
produced.
Given the tens of billions of years that those same compounds had to
interact under innumerable conditions throughout the universe, the
possibility of what could be done in the lab is not unlikely to be
duplicated in space.
Obviously, from science, with all its various disciplines, a general
explanation for the root of life’s origins can be achieved. However an
intelligent design approach acts as an unnecessary brake on further
scientific exploration. Its limitation on what is knowable is not good
science.
History of the debate
The creationism vs. evolution debate predates the emergence of
modern evolutionary theory. The debate got underway in the 1820s, when the
Rev. William Buckland, the first professor of geology at Oxford University,
refuted the Biblical basis for geological history.
Since Darwin’s evolutionary theory of natural selection was
published in 1859, creationists have had to additionally defend the
scientifically proven ideas
of earth’s biological history. Their version of the two natural
histories has no foundation other than the book of Genesis, though
modern-day rhetorical nuances have often made the underlying religious
message difficult to spot.
A precursor of the current ideological struggle was the 1925
"Scopes Monkey Trial," in which Dayton, Tenn., high school
biology teacher John Scopes was
charged with illegally teaching evolution in his class.
In 1980, the McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education case resulted in
a decision deeming Arkansas law #590 unconstitutional on the basis that it
was meant to advance religion in school under the guise of "creation-science."
Today, many advocates for this view dress-up their dogma in different
ways, but for the staunchest evangelicals there is no equivocation: a
divine force
created the earth and all of its life forms in seven days; the
present day geological column is the result of Noah’s great flood; and
biological diversity is the work of a supernatural being, who is referred
to as God by most religious advocates of creation-science and as an
"intelligence" by proponents of intelligent design.
When faced with the well-established fact of a sequenced geological
column, the creationists often resort to pseudo-scientific rhetoric to
explain why fossils of primitive sea-creatures are invariably found in
sedimentary layers beneath that containing dinosaur fossils, and early
human remains above that of dinosaurs.
They maintain that there are three primary reasons why all extinct
creatures are found in subsequent layers of the earth’s sedimentary column:
• Hydrodynamic sorting: Those creatures that were denser or more
streamlined would fall first to the bottom and should end up in the lower
strata.
• Ecological zonation: Things living in the bottom of the ocean end
up in the lowest strata, whereas those that lived in mountaintops, for
example, would
probably end up in the uppermost strata.
• Differential intelligence of mobility: Smarter animals or animals
that can move and avoid the flood waters (of Noah’s time) might end up in
higher strata
because they would have escaped the rising flood waters longer than
others.
A succinct refutation of these three principles was presented by the
late Harvard professor, Stephen Jay Gould, in his expert testimony during
the 1980 McLean v. Arkansas case. He used the example of a single-celled
creature, foraminifera:
"It is a unicellular calcite called foraminifera. Many of the
foraminifera are planktonic; that is, they are floating organisms. They all
live in the same lake
floating at the top or the upper waters of the oceans, they don't
differ in hydrodynamic properties. They live in the same ecological zone,
and they certainly don't differ in intelligence and mobility. They don't even
have a nervous system.
"And yet for the last 20 years there has been a worldwide
program to collect deep sea cores from all the oceans of the earth. And in
those cores, the
sequence of planktonic foraminifera species are invariably the same.
Each species is recognizable and lives in only a small part of the column;
some at the bottom of the column, some at the top of the column.
Those at the bottom do not differ from those at the top, either in
intelligence, ecological examination, or hydrodynamic properties."
Geologists, on the other hand, assign dates to the fossil record
based on three scientifically proven facts based on firmly proven
conclusions that were established by employing the scientific method of observation,
hypothesis, and testing:
• Original horizontality: This principle states that sedimentary
rocks that are deposited over large areas are laid down initially in
relatively horizontal layers.
• Superposition: This principle states that given the principle of
horizontality, those strata that lie on top of others will be younger
because they were
deposited later, unless subsequent movements of the earth have disturbed
the sequence by folding, faulting, and other such processes.
• Biotic succession: This principle states that fossils occur in the
same sequence everywhere in the earth.
Fact vs. theory;
Gaps
The Cobb County, Ga., school district’s disclaimer sticker is
consistent with creationists’ past attempts to debunk evolution. They
argue, according to Gould in his 1981 essay, "Evolution as Fact and
Theory," that fact and theory are "part of a hierarchy of
confidence running downhill from fact to theory to hypothesis to guess."
Actually, evolution is both a theory and a fact, wherein facts are
the world’s data and theories are ways in which science interprets these
facts.
While many different theories—from Darwin’s original theory of
natural selection, to Gould’s associated theory of punctuated
equilibrium—have sought to explain the natural processes by which
amphibians, birds and mammals from reptiles, and humans from other mammals,
the factual basis for evolution is firm.
It’s much like the fact that gravity exists. No matter how one tries
to label this natural phenomenon, when matter is dropped gravity always
pulls it to the ground. Likewise, earth’s natural processes tend to produce
changes in organisms that often lead to the appearance of new species.
Gaps in the fossil record have been exploited by creationists who
argue that evolution did not happen.
An excerpt of the intelligent design text, "Of Pandas and
People," which has been chosen to be used in the Dover, Pa., schools,
reads: "The absence of
unambiguous transitional fossils is strikingly illustrated by the
fossil record of whales. … If whales did have land mammal ancestors, we
should expect to find some transitional fossils.
"Why? Because the anatomical differences between whales and
terrestrial mammals are so great that innumerable in-between stages must
have paddled and swam the ancient seas before a whale as we know it appeared.
So far these transitional forms have not been found."
However, in Pakistan in 1993, scientist found in younger sediments 120
meters above remains of the oldest known whale ancestor, Pakicetus (some 52
million years old), a “missing link,” Ambulocetus natans (literally, the
swimming walking-whale).
Crucial parts were found intact that illustrated the transitional
status of this species between sea and land.
Yet, gaps in the fossil record still remain. Gould has explained
these gaps as resulting from the uneven rate at which species evolve. He
has argued—and most paleontologists now agree—that the evolutionary process
does not proceed in a gradual manner but is characterized by long periods
of equilibrium occasionally punctuated by relatively sudden bursts of change.
Such a process, rather than producing a smooth fossil record, might
result in one characterized by occasional leaps from one species to
another.
For Marxists, a historical (thus, a dialectical) and materialist approach
to all questions is the foundation of scientific thought. Like all
scientific disciplines, Marxism itself must stand up to the test of
experience in a universe in which all matter is constantly changing.
Evolution takes this principle and applies it to natural law and all forms
of life.
Conversely, intelligent design is simply religious dogma. No matter
how scientific its rhetoric, it is inextricably tethered to the creationist
line that God
or a supernatural being created all life. Its limited way of
thinking runs counter to the dialectical materialist view that the universe
and its mysteries are knowable through scientific inquiry.
*This
article first appeared in the January 2005 issue of Socialist Action
newspaper.
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