Creationism in a tuxedo

David Rector

In the Parents Talk Back feature on May 10, one parent, Mark Gleason,

sensibly takes the Kansas school board to task for once again

proposing to teach intelligent design -- creationism in a tuxedo --

alongside evolution in biology classes.

Wendy Leece praises them, calling intelligent-design theory

science.

I’m afraid she is seriously deluded on that point. It is not

science; at best it is a scientific critique of evolution and natural

selection; at worst it is quackery. I have tried my best to give it

the benefit of the doubt on this point and have been repeatedly

disappointed.

Science is not about the past, but the future. It is a systematic

way to study the real world in order to make predictions about its

future behavior. Predictions are used by scientists for testing

theories and by others for the eminently practical purposes of

planting crops, building bridges, making clocks and so forth.

Scientists don’t keep theories that fail reality checks; only

economists and preachers do that. Like creationism,

intelligent-design theory makes no predictions; natural selection

makes many useful ones. Suppose you have an ear infection and take an

antibiotic for it. Suppose further that you stop taking the

antibiotic when the symptoms first disappear. It is likely that not

all of the bacteria will have been killed, and your infection will

flair up again. This time the remaining bacteria will be somewhat

resistant to the antibiotic you are using. If you repeat the mistake,

natural selection predicts that fairly quickly you are likely to

evolve a strain of bacteria totally resistant to that antibiotic. It

came as a surprise to scientists that bacteria, even ones of

different genera, can exchange genes for the antibiotic resistances

they have evolved by way of little genetic symbionts called plasmids,

and there now exist dangerous strains of bacteria resistant to all

available antibiotics. Similar resistance phenomena can be predicted,

and indeed occur, for pesticides and insect pests.

It is unfortunate that science is often so dreadfully taught that

most people do not realize that natural selection is actually

important to their daily lives, and many people do not realize how

dangerous it is for themselves and others to misuse antibiotics.

I do not have space to discuss in detail the role of evolution and

natural selection in the search for fossil fuels, in medicine, in

understanding cancer and immunology and even in computer science,

where algorithms based on natural selection are industrial strength

artificial intelligence. Suffice it to say that the actions of

Christians against the teaching of evolution in schools, and recently

universities, promise to do to medical research in the United States

something like what Lysenko did to agricultural research in Stalinist

Russia.

While science is an essentially democratic activity -- all

evidence and argument is publicly available and anyone qualified can

contribute -- scientific decisions simply cannot be made by the

general public. You have to have a certain minimal technical

education to understand the arguments, and technical education

requires ability and a lot of very hard work to acquire. For some

arguments, the technical level is very high indeed. Who do you trust?

A degree from a prestigious university does not a scientist make.

I know. I have directed doctoral students and seen what they and

others like them became. I have also seen a person with a mere

bachelor’s degree make sound scientific arguments and a famous

intelligent design theorist with multiple doctorates write

demonstrable fertilizer.

Now, since some religious persons seem not shy in giving

unsolicited advice to scientists, I think only fair to return the

com- pliment. Many religious people have no problem with Darwin.

Certainly the Baptist Church I went to when I was growing up

didn’t. We discussed Darwin in Sunday School. The late Pope commented

that the evolution of mankind was “more than a hypothesis,” and the

Catholic Church never had a problem with the evolution of the other

forms of life. Indeed, anti-Darwinism seems to be confined in the

West to American Protestants of an evangelical bent. It is obvious to

the Christian evolutionist that God used natural selection as his

method of creation.

Furthermore, he had good reason to do so. Life, if it is to

survive, must have a mechanism to adapt to changes in its

environment. Natural selection gives creation and adaptation in one

mechanism, an idea worthy of an ineffably sublime being. I put it to

people of faith that this makes a great deal more sense than the

“Harry Potter” image of creation -- an old man with a beard waves a

magic wand and poof, life exists.

As the Koran says, “God is nothing like a man.”

* DAVID RECTOR is a UC Irvine professor.