The Dispatch tries to verify the identity of those who submit letters to the editor, but this message presented some problems. It arrived on a postcard with no return address:

The Dispatch cannot confirm that this is a divine communication, but the newspaper does endorse the sentiment it expresses: that there is room in the world for science and religion, and the two need not be at war.

The newspaper also agrees that Reidelbach, a Republican state representative from Columbus, is among the lawmakers most in need of this revelation. She is the sponsor of House Bill 481, which says that when public schools teach evolution, they also must teach competing "theories'' about the origin of life.

Reidelbach says the bill would "encourage the presentation of scientific evidence regarding the origins of life and its diversity objectively and without religious, naturalistic or philosophic bias or assumption.''

What this appears to mean is that any idea about the origin of life would be designated, incorrectly, a scientific theory and would get equal time with the genuine scientific theory known as evolution.

Those who correctly object that the creation stories of various religions are not scientific would be guilty, in the language of this bill, "of religious, naturalistic or philosophic bias or assumption.''

Never mind that science is not a bias or an assumption but simply a rigorous and logical method for describing and explaining what is observed in nature.

What Reidelbach and her co-sponsors are attempting to do is to require that science classes also teach creationism, intelligent design and related unscientific notions about the origin of life that are derived from Christian belief.

So bent are they on getting Christianity's foot in the door of science classrooms that they apparently don't mind that this bill also appears to give the green light to the creation stories of competing religions, cults and any other manifestation of belief or unbelief. Apparently, even Satanists would have their say.

But the real problem is that Reidelbach's bill would undermine science education at the very moment when Ohio should be developing a scientifically literate generation of students who can help the state succeed in 21st-century technologies and compete economically around the globe.

The fact is that religious ideas, no matter how much they are dressed up in the language of science, are not science. And subjecting students to religious ideas in a science class simply would muddle their understanding of the scientific method and waste valuable time that ought to be used to learn genuine science.

The scientific method consists of observing the natural world and drawing conclusions about the causes of what is observed. These conclusions, or theories, are subject to testing and revision as additional facts are discovered that either bolster or undermine the conclusions and theories. Scientific truth, such as it is, is constantly evolving as new theories replace or modify old ones in the light of new facts.

Religious notions of creation work in the opposite fashion. They begin with a preconceived belief -- for example, that God created all the creatures on the Earth -- and then pick and choose among the observable facts in the natural world to find those that fit. Those that don't are ignored.

The scientific approach expands knowledge about the natural world; the religious approach impedes it.

The classic example of this occurred 369 years ago when the Catholic Church forced Galileo to recant the Copernican theory that the Earth revolves around the sun. That theory contradicted the religiously based idea that man and the Earth formed the center of God's creation. Had the church's creationist view of the solar system prevailed, Ohioan Neil Armstrong never would have set foot on the moon.

When it comes to evolution, much confusion grows out of the understanding -- or misunderstanding -- of the words theory and fact. Evolution is a theory, but one that has become so thoroughly buttressed by physical evidence that, for all intents and purposes, it is a fact. No one outside of the willfully obstinate questions the idea that new life forms evolved from older ones, a process conclusively illustrated in biology and the fossil record.

Where disagreement still exists is over how the process of evolution occurs. Scientists argue about the mechanism by which change occurs and whether the process is gradual and constant or proceeds in fits in starts. But while they debate over how evolution occurs, they do not doubt that it does occur.

Another way to understand this is to consider gravity. Everyone accepts the existence of this force, but many questions remain about just what gravity is and how it works. That scientists argue about how gravity works doesn't change the fact that gravity exists. Or, as author Stephen Jay Gould has put it, "Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome.''

Those who persist on questioning this fact are a tiny minority, even among people of faith. But they are a loud minority and, to those not well-grounded in science, their arguments can sound reasonable, even "scientific.'' But their arguments are little more than unfounded assertions dressed up in the language of science.

This minority also insists on creating conflict between religion and science where none needs to exist. Major faiths long since have reconciled themselves to a division of labor with science. Religion looks to humankind's spiritual and moral needs, while science attends to the material ones.

The Catholic Church, which once tried to hold back the progress of science, now admits that it was wrong to suppress Galileo. More than a billion Catholics draw sustenance from their faith untroubled by the knowledge that the planet is racing around the sun.

Religion, in turn, provides spiritual and moral guideposts to decide how best to use the awesome powers that science has unlocked and placed at humankind's disposal.

Nor are scientists themselves antagonistic to religion. Albert Einstein, one of the greatest scientific geniuses in history, was deeply reverent: "My comprehension of God comes from the deeply felt conviction of a superior intelligence that reveals itself in the knowable world,'' he once said.

Others have made similar observations. The more the scientific method reveals about the intricacies of the universe, the more awestruck many scientists become.

The simplest way to reconcile religion and evolution is to accept the view propounded early last century by prominent Congregationalist minister and editor Lyman Abbott, who regarded evolution as the means God uses to create and shape life.

This view eliminates conflict between evolution and religion. It allows scientists to investigate evolution as a natural process and lets people of faith give God the credit for setting that process in motion.

As for what to do about creationism and evolution in schools, the answer is easy. Evolution should be taught in science classes. Creationism and related religiously based ideas should be taught in comparative-religion, civics and history classes.

Religion was and remains central to the American identity. It has profoundly shaped American ideals and provided the basis for its highest aspirations, from the Declaration of Independence to the civil-rights movement. There is no question that religion is a vital force and a vital area of knowledge that must be included in any complete education.

But not in the science classroom, because religion is not science. There is no such thing as Buddhist chemistry, Jewish physics or Christian mathematics.

The Earth revolves around the sun regardless of the faiths of the people whom gravity carries along for the ride. Two plus two equals four whether that sum is calculated by a Muslim or a Zoroastrian.

Reidelbach and her supporters genuinely worry that a crucial element -- moral education and appreciation of religion's role in America -- is missing in education. But they will not correct that lack by injecting pseudoscience into Ohio's science curriculum.

And Reidelbach is not the only one making this mistake. Senate Bill 222, sponsored by state Sen. Jim Jordan, R-Urbana, is equally misguided. This bill would require that science standards adopted by the State Board of Education be approved by resolution in the General Assembly. This is a recipe for disaster, injecting not only religion, but also politics, into Ohio's science classes.

In a few months, when the State Board of Education lays out the standards for science education in Ohio's public schools, it should strongly endorse the teaching of evolution and ignore the demands of those who purvey pseudoscience.

According to Fredoneverything.net, religion is already being taught in our "science" classrooms:

Evolutionary Theology

Neither Heresy Nor Theresy

OK, I'm sorry...

I recently wrote a column in which I referred to the theory of evolution as a religion, and received indignant inquiries as to what I meant. This is what I meant:
People are in varying degrees uncomfortable with uncertainty. Some people for example insist that every detail of a journey be planned before they set out; others wing it and figure things out when they get there. The same differing tolerances apply in spades to cosmic questions of origins, destiny, and meaning. Some look at this odd world and say to themselves, “Hmmm. Interesting. Wonder whether there’s a reason for it?” Others, driven I think by a deep unease, want – perhaps “need’ is a better word – a sense that they understand what they really don’t.
Religion has usually provided the desired sense of understanding. The faithful know, or believe they know which serves as well, that the world came into being in a particular way, that we are here for certain reasons, and that we move toward particular ends. This isn’t contemptible, and has appealed to minds of enormous power and subtlety. Faith is comforting, which is not a bad thing. It provides a framework for, and encouragement to, the moral behavior that by common agreement we should embrace. And for many it provides an escape from the crushing pointlessness of a merely material existence.
Yet for many religion doesn’t work. They say, perhaps correctly, that five faiths with five conflicting stories of creation cannot be simultaneously true. The various sacred books are flawed. Angels and their kin are not detectable by elaborate instruments connected to computers, and therefore cannot exist. And so they eschew religion.
Besides, the whole idea of religion seems less plausible in a city choked with traffic, in a life circumscribed by cubicles and plastic rugs than, say, in the vast stillness of a desert at three in the morning, with the wind soughing and that odd sense of nearness to the heavens.
So, out with religion. What then might provide an acceptable illusion of understanding?
Answer: The detailed and catalogued materialism that we call “science.”
In many ways, it is a bad choice. The theoretical sciences consist only in the recognition that when certain circumstances exist, certain consequences follow. They are just a codification of the habits of nature. However, they have great moral force in today’s world. Have they not provided us with computers, cars, medicines, and space stations? Do they not employ obscure runes and mathematical symbols of appalling mysteriousness? They must be true.
Their success has been such as to throw all else into shadow. Any cosmic explanation must be at least consistent with the sciences. This being so, the simple thing to do was to make the sciences the explanation.
This we have done. Instead of saying that Yahweh or Allah created the world, we say that the Big Bang did it. It is not much of an improvement. The Bang suffers from a failure to answer the question usually asked of religious stories of creation: Where did the Bang come from? What came before? (The mind does not well handle questions of infinite regression.) .
Just as in medieval times the literate clergy awed the peasantry by speaking Latin, so today’s clergy emanate from the laboratories to astonish the laity with mispronounced Grecolatinate terminology. Abracadabra, rebus sic stantibus, and acetylcholinesterase have the same effect on unalert minds. All resonate with awful mastery. It takes temerity to suggest that, say, Stephen Hawking’s intelligence merely allows him to be more elaborately bewildered.
Religions require purposiveness. The Greater Materialism of the sciences provided it. Once the Bang had bung (or banged, maybe), why, the stars evolved, and the planets, and then what we usually think of as Evolution kicked in and life began itself. This of course led to that pinnacle of creation, Ourselves. (OK, “creation” isn’t the right word here.) Biological evolution has more emotional import than the collapse of gas clouds into stars, but it is really just a late step in the regnant creation story.
The popular understanding, probably shared in unguarded moments by academic evolutionists though they know better, is that Evolution is a force propelling life toward greater perfection. We speak of ourselves as Higher Primates, for example, though in terms of adaptation to environment we are inferior to tape worms and roaches. Popular evolution is suffused with a progress toward desired ends here that cannot be derived from the physics: Bang, gas, planets, trilobites, Los Angeles.
In short, evolution writ large tells us where we came from, how we got where we are, where we are going, and what the guiding principle is. This is what religions do.
The religious nature of this view becomes manifest in the intense hostility toward skepticism. If I questioned the value of pi, asserted that the earth was flat, or objected to the ideal gas law, I would be regarded as eccentric, but would not be savaged or loathed. People are confident of the value of pi. In any event it poses no threat to their sense of place in a dark and inhospitable universe.
But question evolution and the response will be anger, martial condescension, and rabid denial – usually from people who wouldn’t know icthyostegids from the citric-acid cycle. (You don’t have to know anything about evolution to be fierce about it.) They will be terrified that you might communicate this heresy to children. Further, with painful monotony they will accuse of Christianity. That is, their quick assumption is that you must represent a competing faith.
A difficulty with using physics as a religion (and all the sciences are elaborations of physics) is that you cannot get to things of transcendent importance to humans – beauty, consciousness, love and hatred, good and evil. These are no more contained in, or derivable from, physics than mass is derivable from plane geometry. Yet evolutionists are conscious in most instances, appreciate the lovely, love their dogs and children, and are good people.
They are careful not to notice this, which requires a philosophical jejuneness suited to a sophomore Marxist on his second volume of Sartre. They are much worse if they have heard of logical positivism.
It’s a religion. www.fredoneverything.net
©Fred Reed 2001. All rights reserved.

Subscribe and get Fred weekly by e-mail! For free, yet! Click

here!
When the e-mail form appears, just click on send. No message or subject is necessary. (Subscribing doesn't provide your e-mail address to spammers.)

To unsubscribe, click here. When the e-mail form appears, click on send.

Click Here! to check out Fred's splendid new book. It cures leprosy.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Evolutionary Theology

Neither Heresy Nor Theresy

OK, I'm sorry...

Subscribe and get Fred weekly by e-mail! For free, yet! Click

here!

To unsubscribe, click here. When the e-mail form appears, click on send.

Click Here! to check out Fred's splendid new book. It cures leprosy.