Printed from ABQjournal.com, a service of the Albuquerque Journal

URL: http://www.abqjournal.com/west/opinion/268246westoped12-09-07.htm

Questions about the origins of the universe, of life and of humankind are inherently religious in nature. The fact that these questions may be addressed scientifically does not change their religious nature.

Either our existence is due to a transcendent intelligence or it is due to unguided material causes. It is one or the other. Consequently, any scientific theory of origins will have unavoidable implications that favor one of these explanations and challenge the other. When that theory is brought into the public school classroom for instruction, its religious implications come with it.

Theory and implication are inseparable.

Having entered into an activity that touches on religion, public education is encumbered with the Constitutional requirement that in all aspects of the teaching of that theory, it must ensure neutrality with respect to religion.

How can public education ensure neutrality with respect to religion while instructing students in a scientific theory that touches on religion?

In August of 2005, the Rio Rancho School Board adopted Policy 401 on science education to address this question. The policy called for teaching "an objective science without religious or philosophical bias." In public education, scientific objectivity ensures religious neutrality.

On Dec. 4, 2007, after over two years of controversy and resistance on the part of district science teachers, this policy was rescinded.

There were no substantive arguments directed against the plain language and stated intentions of the policy itself. No one said they did not care about the religious rights of parents and students and no one argued that theories about origins have nothing to do with religion. And no one argued that they thought science education should be biased in favor of some religious view— theistic or otherwise.

Rather we heard— among other things— that the sponsors of Policy 401 had a hidden religious agenda. (One opponent said it really didn't matter what the policy said, its intent was to introduce religion into science education.) What is interesting is how predictable and transparent this tactic is. You can see right through the accusation to the truth of the matter, which is that it is those who employ such a tactic that have the hidden agenda. And it is not hard to figure out what that agenda might be.

Placing this matter in its historical context helps us understand the urgent need for Policy 401 and exposes the inadequacies of the various objections that were raised against it.

Thomas Huxley was a contemporary of Charles Darwin. Following Darwin's publication of "On the Origin of Species" in 1859, Huxley became a strong advocate of his theory and quickly became known as "Darwin's Bulldog."

It is interesting that Huxley had a view of Darwin's theory and its place in Victorian England that was almost prophetic for our own times. He saw relatively little scientific value in Darwin's theory— the evidentiary gulf between premise and conclusion was just too large— but he saw great value in its ability to provide the foundation for a new secular religion to replace Christianity, which he judged was no longer adequate to meet the needs of late 19th-century England. And he saw public education as the means for spreading this new faith.

Fast forward to the present day and we will see if things have gotten any better for Darwin.

Jerry Coyne, professor of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago, recently provided some insight that bears on this question. In his review of David Mindell's book, "The Evolving World: Evolution in Everyday Life," Coyne echoes Huxley's view about Darwinism in his criticism of Mindell for going overboard on "selling Darwin." Coyne says, "To some extent these excesses are not Mindell's fault, for, if truth be told, evolution hasn't yielded many practical or commercial benefits." Also that "future advances (in biology) will almost certainly come from transgenics, which is not based on evolution at all." And more: "In the end, the true value of evolutionary biology is not practical but explanatory. It answers, in the most exquisitely simple and parsimonious way, the age-old question: 'How did we get here?' ''

Coyne, more than 100 years after Huxley, sees evolution pretty much the same way Huxley did— not much use with respect to science, but as a secular religion, a real winner! And about that deal where Huxley used public education to spread the new secular religion throughout England? How's that working for us in America? It is Huxley all over again.

Public education is teaching Huxley's secular religion to American school children and their parents are paying the bill. It is about as sweet a deal as you can imagine, and the Darwinists are not going to give up without a fight.

Now we see why Policy 401 is so important. The real question in New Mexico— and across America, for that matter— is why every school district doesn't adopt and enforce a policy like 401. Policy 401 may be dead, but the principles it embodied live on. In the meantime, the ghost of Thomas Huxley still haunts the biology classrooms of America.