Evolution's 'Dictatorship' -- Student Struggles to Get Opposite Viewpoint Heard

Samuel Chen was a high school sophomore who believed in freedom of speech and the unfettered pursuit of knowledge. He thought his public high school did, too, but when it came to the subject of evolution -- well, now he's not so sure.

In October 2002, Chen began working to get Dr. Michael Behe, professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University, to give a lecture at Emmaus High School in Emmaus, Pennsylvania.

Chen, who was co-chair of a student group that tries to stress the importance of objectivity on controversial issues, knew that Behe would be perfect, since the group was examining evolution as a topic. The author of Darwin's Black Box, a critique of the foundational underpinnings of evolution, Behe had presented his work and debated the subject in universities in the U.S. and England.

Behe agreed to come in February 2004 and give an after-school lecture entitled, "Evolution: Truth or Myth?" As the school year drew to a close in 2003, Chen had all the preliminaries nailed down: he had secured Behe's commitment, received approval from school officials, and reserved the school auditorium.

Then he found out just how entrenched Darwinist orthodoxy was in the science department at Emmaus. By the following August, Chen had entered into a six-month battle to preserve the Behe lecture.

As the struggle unfolded, it became obvious that those who opposed Behe coming to Emmaus didn't seem to care about his credentials. In addition to publishing over 35 articles in refereed biochemical journals, Darwin's Black Box was internationally reviewed in over 100 publications and named by National Review and World magazine as one of the 100 most important books of the 20th century.

Instead, it was Behe's rejection of Darwinism -- in favor of what is called "intelligent design" -- that drove opposition. According to the Discovery Institute, of which Behe is a fellow, this theory holds "that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection."

The head of the science department, John Hnatow, sent a statement to every faculty member in the school stressing that Emmaus held to the official policy of the National Science Teachers Association. That policy states: "There is no longer a debate among scientists about whether evolution has taken place."

It appeared there would be no debate at Emmaus, either. Some of the science teachers would not even allow Chen to address their classes and explain to students what Behe's lecture would be about.

Chen said various tactics were apparently used to undercut the event, including an attempt to cancel the lecture and fold the student organization without the knowledge of Chen and other members; requiring that the necessary funds for the lecture be raised much faster than for other student events; and moving the lecture from the auditorium to the school cafeteria.

One science teacher in particular, Carl Smartschan, seemed particularly riled about the upcoming lecture. Smartschan took it upon himself to talk to every teacher in the science department, insisting that intelligent design was "unscientific" and "scary stuff." He asked the principal to cancel the lecture, and then, when the principal refused, asked the faculty advisor for the student group to halt the lecture. Smartschan even approached Chen and demanded that the student organization pay to have an evolutionist come to lecture later in the year.

Smartschan's campaign to get the Behe lecture canceled was surprising to Chen because the event was scheduled after school, and not during class time, and was sponsored by a student group, not the school itself. Nevertheless, Chen persevered. The lecture was a success, attracting more than 500 people.

In the process, however, Chen's struggle took its toll. His health deteriorated over the course of the controversy, to the point where he collapsed three times in one month, including once at school. "My health has been totally junked," he told AFA Journal.

Brian Fahling, senior trial attorney and senior policy advisor for the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy, is advising Chen on his options for the coming year. Fahling said, "Schools are not allowed to interfere with viewpoints with which they disagree, and schools cannot disrupt the right of the students to participate in the academic and intellectual life."

Despite the hardship, Chen said he would do it all over again because the issue is so important. "I feel that there's a dictatorship on academic freedom in our public schools now," he said, adding, "I refer to evolution education as a tyranny .... You can't challenge it in our schools. Kids have been thrown out of class for challenging it."

That tyranny can be intimidating to students. "Some of the students who support me are afraid to speak out, especially because they saw how the science department reacted," Chen said. "They have a fear of speaking out against it in their classes."

On the other hand, he added that some students "are now questioning evolution, some for the first time."

I would not look for a God per se, but the mechanism by which life came to a dead planet. Places where life is the oldest, most concentrated, around known meteorite sites to see if it was brought here to one location, then spread naturally. I would also want to test for alternate dimensions in the universe somehow as a possibility. I would also study what it would take to bring all the necessary conditions for life together on the planet to allow life.

All of those avenues of research are already being explored.

What I would not do is say we absolutely just formed here as the earth cooled down and randomly happened and only do research based on that assumption.

I don't know of anyone who is saying that we "absolutely" formed here that way, nor is research being done "only" on that scenario.

However, it's no contradiction to also say that the best available evidence, and best available knowledge of the relevant fields, points towards natural abiogenesis. That conclusion could change overnight if new evidence or new knowledge ended up shifting the "best fit" theory towards some other conclusion. But at the moment, the admittedly incomplete evidence and knowledge (which in a real world are *never* "complete") indicates that abiogenesis is the best theory.

Science, in a nutshell, is all about honestly following the evidence where it leads (while looking for more), and accepting that even incomplete or sketchy evidence is a better indication of what's likely to be true than any guesses about what a fuller picture *might* indicate, or what we'd *prefer* to be true.

My gut instinct tells me life came from somewhere else than this planet, in whatever form but living,

"Gut instinct" being what you'd prefer to be true, or a guess about what might be. Why do you consider that a more reliable indicator than what an examination of the real world best indicates right now?

and there is nothing compelling enough in abiogenesis theory to change my gut instinct.

And just how familiar with abiogenesis theory are you, and how familiar are you with the known evidence?

That is not to say I could not change my thinking is some compelling evidence was discovered.

What if it already has, and you're not aware of it?

This is the dilemma when laymen adopt too much skepticism towards science, and refuse to believe some widely accepted theory (like evolution, *cough*) unless it can be explained to them in such great detail and so much evidence presented to them personally, that they are no longer able to think of any conceivable argument against it. It's especially a problem when they have preconceptions or pre-existing beliefs which would be challenged by the science.

Even professional scientists can't possibly personally verify every accepted scientific principle in every scientific discipline -- an entire lifetime would not be long enough to personally be shown and be convinced of every piece of evidence and every verification of every piece of the full body of scientific knowledge. So barring a damned good reason to question a particular conclusion in a particular discipline, the scientific individual provisionally accepts the established body of scientific knowledge, confident in the ability of the system to efficiently guard against the acceptance of nonsense to start with, and to eventually shake out the few bits of nonsense that manage to sneak in anyway.

And compared to any other system of discovering and accumulating reliable knowledge (or truth, if you will), science is lightyears ahead of whatever method is in second place. In short, the wise person accepts what science currently concludes on a topic (i.e., what the evidence indicates), and does not lightly cast it aside for what their "gut" thinks about it. For every person whose "gut" tells them "X", there's a person whose gut tells them the opposite. Intuition or feelings or even "common sense" are notoriously unreliable -- just look at liberals if you need an example.

Science is all about doing "reality checks" against the evidence, as a guard against getting stuck in the rut of what we'd *like* to believe.

But science is not a body of "gospel from on high" which cannot be questioned. On the contrary, being constantly questioned is what keeps it always self-correcting. HOWEVER, since established theories are built upon large foundations of evidence and verification (yes, including evolutionary theory and abiogenesis theory), it's ludicrous for someone to try to overthrow or tear down an existing theory without being armed with a great deal of knowledge about how and why the current theory has taken the form that it has, and what evidence and testing it rests upon.

This is why so many "amateur creationists" (and a lot of the allegedly professional ones) are so freaking annoying. They attack with little more than a firm feeling that the theory must be wrong somewhere, a small amount of knowledge about it (often wrong in fundamental ways, gleaned from poorly prepared creationist books or websites), and then smugly fire a popgun at a castle of theory while spouting something like, for example, "man couldn't have evolved from apes since there are still apes, all you scientists are real idiots for not realizing that, you're obviously just swallowing the Kool-aid of the anti-God conspiracy." Sigh.

The amount of hubris in such behavior is breathtaking.

As the old saying goes, "the first requirement for training a dog, is to know more than the dog". Likewise, anyone hoping to have a chance in hell of overthrowing a well-established field of science (including evolution), is going to have to make sure that they know the subject up, down, and sideways, which is not something they're going to learn from reading a popular book by Behe or Wells, or visiting a few creationist websites. Or by going with their gut.

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