An astonishing documentary is drawing fire for its attempt to resurrect geocentrism, the ancient/medieval cosmology that placed the Earth at the center of the universe. Featuring commentary by leading secular scientists like Lawrence Krauss and Michio Kaku, and narration by Star Trek’s “Captain Janeway” (Kate Mulgrew, when she is not piloting a starship), The Principle boldly goes where no sane person has gone for several centuries.
The Principle is a project of Robert Sungenis, whose denial of the Holocaust and unabashed anti-Semitism has earned him the title “one of the most rabid and open anti-Semites in the entire radical traditionalist movement.” Just about everyone else involved in the project is wondering where he got the cleverly-edited footage of them seeming to support the central—and completely refuted—thesis of the film.
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Brown University biologist Kenneth Miller, one of America’s leading advocates for evolution, has just received one of America’s oldest and most prestigious awards—from the Roman Catholic Church.
At commencement on May 18, the University of Notre Dame will honor Miller with the 2014 Laetare Medal, an award given annually to a Catholic “whose genius has ennobled the arts and sciences, illustrated the ideals of the Church and enriched the heritage of humanity.” The award was first given in 1883 and previous recipients include former President John F. Kennedy, and West Wing’s popular acting president Martin Sheen.
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The “Big Bang” theory of the origin of the universe got a big boost this week when scientists reported the discovery of 14-billion-year-old echoes of the universe’s first moments—the first proof of an expanding universe, and the last piece of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
Creationists and other conservative religious believers have a curiously ambivalent relationship with the Big Bang—unlike evolution, which is universally condemned. Young-earth creationists mock the Big Bang as a wild guess, an anti-biblical fantasy that only atheists determined to ignore evidence of God’s creation could have invented. In contrast, creationists who accept that the earth is old—by making the “days” of creation in Genesis into long epochs—actually claim that the Big Bang is in the Bible. Some of them are rejoicing in the recent discovery.
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A provocative new study sure to get attention over the next few weeks was presented at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) . Elaine Ecklund, director of Rice University’s Religion and Public Life Program, and author of the groundbreaking, controversial Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think, presented the study. Titled “Religious Understandings of Science (RUS),” Ecklund’s study looked at public perceptions of science and religion from a number of angles. More than 10,000 Americans were interviewed, including many scientists and evangelical Protestants.
Consistent with Eklund’s early work, the study found that the religious beliefs and practices of scientists were similar to those of the general public. It also found that nearly half of America’s evangelicals believe that “science and religion can work together and support one another.” Eklund is optimistic that this provides a “hopeful message for science policymakers and educators, because the two groups don’t have to approach religion with an attitude of combat.”
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As a Christian professor who has tangled with evangelical institutions over evolution, I am often invited to don the mantle of “heretic.” The invitation typically comes in the form of an interview in which I am asked to respond to questions that will identify me as a liberal-throw-the-bible-under-the-bus lost soul who has no business calling himself a Christian.
I recently received two such requests in a week. One email came from a sophomore at Liberty University, as part of an assignment for the course “Creation Studies 290: History of Life.” Founded by Jerry Fallwell in 1971, Liberty is the largest evangelical university in the world if you include its large population of online students, and America’s largest nonprofit university. “Creation Studies 209” is required of all of Liberty’s 100,000-plus students and claims to provide a “thorough understanding of the creation-evolution controversy,” and “draws upon knowledge from religion, science, philosophy and history.”
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The sky is falling! Fellow Christians, gather your children and seek shelter. Hold your hands over their ears while you flee. If you don’t they might hear about … evolution.
This was the reaction of Marvin Olasky, the editor of the evangelical magazineWorld, to my “revelation” in The Daily Beast a few weeks ago that most evangelical Christian colleges teach evolution to their students. “Teach evolution” was my phrase for what is happening. Olasky describes it instead as “insinuating evolution,” which sounds sinister. He suspects that my revelation will be the hot topic “in the hallways” at the meeting of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) which began Wednesday in Los Angeles.
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Ken Ham’s widely watched debate with Bill Nye has brought America’s most significant fundamentalist onto the radar screen of millions of Americans for the first time. Many are shocked to discover that such views still exist and, as polls remind us, are held by more than a hundred million Americans.
The Ken Ham phenomenon is uniquely American. Creationism exists largely as an American export in other countries, and I am bombarded with inquiries when I speak on this topic in Europe. European scholars find American creationism incomprehensible. How in the world can an Australian schoolteacher with a modest education create an organization like Answers in Genesis, with a $20 million annual budget? And raise $27 million to build a creation museum? And become one of the most influential educators in the country?
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The media is buzzing with news of the upcoming debate between Bill Nye the "Science Guy" and Ken Ham, America's leading young earth creationist the "anti-Science Guy." Much of the buzz has come from allies of Bill Nye, telling him to avoid climbing on stage with Ham to debate the credibility of biological evolution lest people get the mistaken impression that there actually is a debate about evolution.
People who hold marginal positions love debates because it makes their position seem credible -- after all we wouldn't be debating this question if it wasn't a real question would we? We wouldn't "defend" evolution unless it needed defending would we?
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America’s whack-a-mole debate about evolution in the public schools has reappeared in Virginia, where state assembly has proposed legislation to modify curriculum to include study of the “scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories.” If the anti-evolutionists get their way, Virginia elementary and secondary schools will have to develop new curricula that explores the weaknesses of evolution, a strategy intended to make room for alternative theories of origins.
Taken out of context, the Virginia bill appears attractive, which is why such bills can get traction so quickly. Who wouldn’t want to “create an environment in public elementary and secondary schools that encourages students to explore scientific questions, learn about scientific evidence, develop critical thinking skills, and respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion about scientific controversies in science classes”? Shouldn’t we applaud efforts to “assist teachers to find effective ways to present scientific controversies in science classes”? Or to “review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories”?
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Ian Barbour, who almost single-handedly founded the scholarly study of science and religion, died over Christmas. He was 90 years old, and for the last half-century he towered over the developing field of science and religion.
Prior to Barbour's work the interaction of science and religion was dominated by the notion that the two fields were constantly at war, have always been at war, and cannot interact in any way other than war. This "warfare metaphor," as it is called today, was born in the 19th century, largely through the work of Andrew Dickson White, the first president of Cornell University. White, heading America's first major secular university, was an outspoken champion of secularism and a harsh and often unreasonable critic of religion. His lively, wide-ranging and articulate book A History of the Warfare of Science With Theology Within Christendom laid out the historical evidence that Christian theology has forever been the enemy of science. White's widely read polemic, dismissed by most scholars today as pseudoscholarly propaganda, created the near-universal belief that science and religion can only quarrel.
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Evolution did not fare well in 2013. The year ended with the anti-evolution book Darwin’s Doubt as Amazon’s top seller in the “Paleontology” category. The state of Texas spent much of the year trying to keep the country’s most respected high school biology text out of its public schools. And leading anti-evolutionist and Creation Museum curator Ken Ham made his annual announcement that the “final nail” had been pounded into the coffin of poor Darwin’s beleaguered theory of evolution.
Americans entered 2013 more opposed to evolution than they have been for years, with an amazing 46 percent embracing the notion that “God created humans pretty much in their present form at one time in the last 10,000 years or so.” This number was up a full 6 percent from the prior poll taken in 2010. According to a December 2013 Pew poll, among white evangelical Protestants, a demographic that includes many Republican members of Congress and governors, almost 64 percent reject the idea that humans have evolved.
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Dr. Hedin's course at Ball State University on the "Boundaries of Science" remains in the news, with the New Atheists, led by Jerry Coyne, waging a war of words with the senior fellows at the Discovery Institute.
I often find myself caught between the extreme views coming from these opposing armies in the science culture wars. On the one hand, I stand with Coyne and the atheists in opposing the efforts of the Discovery Institute to alter science teaching in America by introducing long-discredited ideas about supernatural explanations for natural phenomena.
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Physicist Eric Hedin is headlining the Culture Wars right now because of his class at Ball State University on the "Boundaries of Science." Critics and supporters are deeply polarized about the propriety of this class, which the syllabus says "will examine the nature of the physical and the living world with the goal of increasing our appreciation of the scope, wonder, and complexity of physical reality."
Critics charge Hedin with promoting religion, noting that his syllabus is clear that he believes science provides pointers to God and that biological evolution is inadequate. His most strident critic, University of Chicago biologist Jerry Coyne, hyperbolically describes Hedin as the "the Ball State University professor who proselytizes about Jesus in his science class."
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The most interesting strategy employed by anti-evolutionists over the last century and a half has been to report that "Darwinism is Dead" or "Evolution has Collapsed." The exercise is all but meaningless in terms of scientific discussion but it's a marvelous culture war strategy, requiring almost no effort to get a few people claiming, in all seriousness, "They say evolution is dying. Most scientists don't believe it any more." And as long as the claim is made to laypeople who have no idea what the actual scientific community thinks, the strategy is sure to have some influence.
The anti-evolutionary Discovery Institute has just published a report titled "How a Scientific Field Can Collapse: The Case of Psychiatry." Taking aim at everything from its "eccentric pioneers" (Freud and Jung) to its "peer reviewed" -- but often changing -- guidebook, the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders," the article reports on recent and credible concerns about psychiatry published by scientists in respectable publications like New Scientist.
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I was sobered while watching a recent conversation on HuffPost Live about America's troubled conversation over origins. Nominally about recent attempts in Louisiana to get creationism into the public schools, the wide-ranging conversation shines a remarkable light on the country's century-long battle over creation vs. evolution.
All of the strategies developed by the anti-evolutionary leadership to rally support for their cause are on display. Significantly, however, the individuals in the conversation are not the leaders of the movement promoting their standard arguments, but ordinary conservative Christian leaders who have absorbed the anti-evolutionary message. Their confident claims and responses to challenges testify to the rhetorical power of this message. They are true believers.
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Anti-evolution bills continue to circulate in school districts across the country. The concerns that motivate the bills are now about a century old, first making headlines in the famous trial of John Scopes, on trial for disobeying a Tennessee law known as the Butler Act passed in 1925. The law read:
That it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, Normals, and all other public schools the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach any theory that denies the Story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.
Scopes was declared guilty in this celebrated trial but anti-evolution lost in the court of public opinion. Laws similar to the Butler Act were quietly ignored in other states. In 1968 the Supreme Court struck down a similar law, still on the books in Arkansas. Mississippi's supreme court struck down their version of the law two years later.
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The complicated and ancient drama of selecting a new pope will soon begin with the departure of Pope Benedict, our planet's most important spiritual leader. His successor will embrace a tumultuous set of challenges at a critical time in the history of Christianity.
An underappreciated achievement of Pope Benedict has been his consistent support for science. At time when the gulf between science and Christianity is widening in the United States -- polls show support for young earth creationism is on the rise -- Benedict was a quiet and powerful voice calling for Christians to embrace science.
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A friend of mine is in the late stages of a tragic pregnancy that will lead either to a stillborn baby or, at best, to a baby that will struggle for a few hours and die. The prognosis was made early on and the decision to take the baby to term was made. The story is heartbreaking but reveals something powerful about our species and how we think about new life.
We know a lot about how babies develop and what can go wrong in a process that is unimaginably complex. Fortunately the process works perfectly most of the time, which is why news of a pregnancy is most often greeted with a chorus of congratulations -- and problems are viewed with such concern.
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The ruckus about Rubio's relationship to geology continues unabated. And my attempt last week to deflect attention from him to the larger problem of science literacy in the United States has been misinterpreted as a defense of Rubio's position and a lack of appreciation for the relevance.
Let me be clear (as I may not have been in my first post): I think the age of the earth matters and that our leaders need to be either scientifically informed or skilled at finding authoritative voices to consult on the many scientific issues relevant to the future of the country and the planet.
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The science blogosphere is alive with condemnations of Marco Rubio for being vague on the age of the earth. In a much-discussed interview with GQ, the Tea Party favorite said he thinks there are "multiple theories out there on how the universe was created." The earth, says Rubio, may have been created in "seven days" or "seven actual eras." The ultimate answer to the question GQ posed -- How old do you think the earth is?" -- is that "It's one of the great mysteries."
Writing in the New York Times, Juliet Lapidos accused Rubio of intentionally waffling and pandering to a scientifically illiterate base that has "no truck with geologists." This is her charitable response, which she describes as "cunning." The alternative, she says, is "idiocy." Andrew Sullivan, writing in The Daily Beast, called Rubio "nuts." The more restrained Paul Krugman got into the ring, asking the provocative -- and relevant -- rhetorical question: "If you're going to ignore what geologists say if you don't like its implications, what are the chances that you'll take sensible advice on monetary and fiscal policy?" Even Rubio's fellow conservative Ross Douthat was critical, asking, "How are you going to have effective science education if schools have to give equal time to the views of fundamentalist Christians?"
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