ReligionDispatches.org

Fragments from Ardipithecus Ramidus. photo courtesy of Tim D. WhiteBrill Atlanta

Bookended by Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday in February and the 150th anniversary of his seminal work, The Origin of Species, in November, the year-long celebration of the great naturalist’s work demonstrated that the intersection of religion and science continues to draw headlines.

In some cases, the year’s events beautifully illustrated ways in which faith and reason may be embraced. On February 15, (three days after Darwin’s birthday) more than 11,000 church leaders around the country and the world participated in what is now known as Evolution Sunday, in which pastors delivered sermons celebrating evolution’s role as part of the awesome diversity of life, and Darwin’s theory of natural selection as part of God’s overall plan.

But other examples highlight the continued disconnect biblical literalists have regarding the subject of not only evolution, but of scientific thought in general. By the time the November 24 anniversary of Origin rolled around nine months after Darwin’s birthday, Young Earth creationist Ray Comfort was grabbing the religion headlines. Comfort’s best-known argument against evolution is the cultivated banana because it comes in a biodegradable package and is designed for easy gripping by the human hand.

Accompanied by former child actor Kirk Cameron, Comfort led a crusade at college campuses across the country to distribute altered copies of Origin. Comfort penned an introduction for the new version in which he quotes from Mein Kampf in order to link Darwin to Adolf Hitler, accuses Darwin of being sexist, and argues falsely that there are no transitional fossils in the fossil record.

So, in the assessment of the top stories that intersect religion and science, there was some good news, some not-so-good news and some downright depressing news.

Of course, no list of the top science/religion stories can be done without first acknowledging the obvious political agenda some religious conservatives have in fostering this divide, and sadly, Rick Santorum is still at it.

The former Pennsylvania senator, who has long led efforts to combat the teaching of evolution in public schools, continues to rehash his failed attempt to insert intelligent design language into the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

In his December 17 column for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Santorum complained that scientists are trying to foist their viewpoints on people, and (reality be damned) “Americans don't like being told what to believe.”

Maybe because we have learned to be skeptical of ‘scientific’ claims, particularly those at war with our common sense—like the Darwinists’ telling us for decades that we are just a slightly higher form of life than a bacterium that is here purely by chance, or the Environmental Protection Agency’s informing us last week that man-made carbon dioxide—a gas that humans exhale and plants need to live, a gas that represents less than 0.1 percent of the atmosphere—is a dangerous pollutant threatening to overheat the world.

(While the newsroom at the Philadelphia Inquirer has been gutted, Santorum gets paid $1,750 per column to foist such misinformation on a poorly informed public.)

In all fairness, Santorum makes one good point: many Americans don’t like being told what to believe.

The latest Harris poll released last week reveals that despite efforts in the past year to educate the public about evolution, Americans have not changed their views much since Harris’ 2007 poll. Forty-five percent of respondents indicated that they believe in evolution, 33 percent indicated that they don’t believe in it, and 22 percent said they weren’t sure. Meanwhile, 40 percent said they believe in creationism, 30 percent indicated that they don’t, and 30 percent said they were not sure.

At times, the stories of 2009 revealed a clash between those defending science and those who would impose their religious views on others. Sometimes, the stories revealed a connection, a joining together of two ways of looking at the world. Other times the stories were about science explaining our religious notions; still others sought to use religion to deny science.

So, in a decidedly unscientific assessment, here are the top religion-meets-science stories from the Year of Darwin:

1. “Junk Science” in Texas Classrooms

In April, fundamentalist Christian members of the Texas Board of Education inserted intelligent design code words into its science education requirements. The wording includes directing students to analyze and evaluate “sudden appearance” in the fossil record and analyze the “complexity of the cell.” The language prompted creationist and pro-intelligent design organizations like the Seattle-based Discovery Institute to claim victory “for science education,” but science educators say it actually opens the door to junk science.

2. How Do You Solve a Problem Like Religion (In The Scientific Community)?

One of the most heated debates to take place this year didn’t get much attention from the mainstream media, but boiled over on the science blogs. (And creationists say the scientific community is a monolith.) The debate, which continues, is over how to reach out to people of religious faith.

At issue is what some have come to refer to as accommodationism, the idea among some scientists that the best way to encourage the acceptance of evolution specifically and science in general is to accommodate the beliefs of those of non-fundamentalist religious faith. Many of the prominent voices embracing this idea are non-believers themselves, but they stress that one can hold both a belief in God and acceptance of science.

John Wilkins, a science blogger, pointed out the need for pragmatism in a June post on his blog Evolving Thoughts:

This is not just about strategy, but it is in part about strategy… Making science the enemy of religion is going to have a single outcome, one that we can all predict. It won’t be the death of religion.

Other scientists, such as PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins, say that belief in God is irrational, and accommodating religious faith is compromising science. Responding to Wilkins’ post, Myers wrote on his blog Pharyngula that, quite simply, its dishonest as a scientist to say that religion and science are compatible:

Religion is an archaic, failed mode of thinking that continues to demand greater respect than it deserves, and exploits tradition, fear, and emotion to maintain its undeserved position. Wilkins tries to compare it to two dancers jostling for space on a dance floor, I prefer to think of it as one dancer, humanity, afflicted with lice, religion, and twitching and squirming unpleasantly while struggling with a persistent parasite.

3. Just Say No... To Louisiana

The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB), one of the nation’s leading scientific societies, took the unusual step in February to boycott Louisiana due to the state’s new anti-science law.

In 2008, lawmakers voted to pass the Science Education Act, which was signed into law by Gov. Bobby Jindal. The law, based largely on wording from the pro-intelligent design Discovery Institute’s sample academic freedom bill, explicitly says that teachers are permitted to use supplemental materials to teach critiques of evolution and opens the door to teaching creationism and intelligent design.

In response, SICB chose to hold its annual conference in Utah, whose state Board of Education recently passed a resolution recognizing that “the Theory of Evolution is a major unifying concept in science.”

Tags: creationism, darwin, discovery institute, evangelicalism, francis collins, global warming, kirk cameron, origin of species, pz myers, rick santorum

Related Stories

Jesus Loses His Freak: How I Lost One Leper Messiah, and Gained Another
By Mark Dery

Making ‘The Link’: AIPAC’s New Crises
By Matthew Duss

Capricology: Divine Madness
By Henry Jenkins and Salman Hameed