I’ve been engaging with creationists in various ways for
longer than most people have. I met my
first one in the graduate dorm at the University of Arizona around 1976. I couldn’t believe it; I felt like I was
talking to a medieval necromancer.
That was
a long time ago, over 35 years, and we have been spectacularly
unsuccessful in our engagement with creationism
since then. Obviously there are people
who have worked wonderfully in defense of science education, like my dear
friend Genie Scott, without whose efforts there would probably be twenty states
banning the teaching of evolution altogether today. But the fact remains that over the last
twenty years or so, about half of adult Americans have consistently
self-identified as creationists.
Rather
than ask what’s wrong with them ,why they are such morons, as one usually hears
in this context, I think we should turn it around and look at that fact as a
statement about the colossal failure of science education. Now let
me make my point clear at the outset:
I am not denying that the creationists are ignoramuses; I am saying that
that fact does not dictate a solution to the problem of creationism. The solution comes from first identifying it
as a problem of applied anthropology.
Again,
full disclaimer. I am not a very
spiritual person, and certainly not a creationist. My dues to the National Center for Science Education
are paid in full, and unless you’re Genie, I’ve probably been a member of NCSE
longer than you have. I can be an
asshole, but I don’t believe that it makes for good negotiations. When I taught intro physical anthropology at
Berkeley back in the late 1990s, I had Phil Johnson come over and give a guest
lecture on Intelligent Design. I think
my students (who already had heard about Natural Theology, because I gave them
the intellectual context for understanding Darwinism) learned more about it
from him than they would have from me.
And I learned more about it from lunch with Phil Johnson than I did from
reading his work. Or, as I once put it
in the Anthropology News (Nov. 2005, p. 3)
Now there are a lot of intersecting political agendas
here. Republicans, for example, refuse
to acknowledge anthropogenic climate change for different reasons than evolution. The first is about corporate economic
interests; the second is about theology.
Anyway,
this post is inspired by a viral video
from a few months ago, when Louisiana was holding hearings to try and
repeal the latest in a seemingly endless series of creationist bills.
A
retired science teacher named Darlene Reaves gives testimony, and is queried by a legislator named Sen Walsworth about
experimental evidence for “Darwin’s theory of evolution”. He seems to take “Darwin’s theory of evolution”
to mean, quite reasonably, something about the origin of people by a
naturalistic transformation of simpler forms of life. And he has heard that science privileges
experimental results, so he asks her about the experimental evidence for human
evolution.
But
rather than say, “There is a lot of indirect experimental evidence” and perhaps
go on to talk about it, she responds with evidence for her idea of Darwinian
evolution, which, again quite reasonably, means (to her) descent with
modification and adaptation by natural selection.
Her
initial response (@ 0:21) is about observational evidence, not experimental
evidence, and the lawmaker corrects her.
She insists that he pay attention, and she goes on to talk about the
fossil record. This is nice, but it’s
not an answer to the question.
So he
tries again, and asks her for “an experiment that proves [Darwin’s theory of
evolution] beyond a shadow of a doubt.”
And she responds with a discussion of selection in bacterial colonies.
There
are only three things wrong with this response, as far as I can see. First, even on a good day, it would have
little to do literally with “Darwin’s theory of evolution” since Darwin didn’t
know anything about bacteria, or how they evolve. Second, even creationists generally will
concede that microevolution happens, and as Darwin understood, you just need
domesticated plants and animals to show it; the question is, can you
extrapolate from that to the history of life?
The Origin of Species is, in
Mayr’s famous phrase, “one long argument” that indeed you can. But the point needs to be argued, because it
is unprovable experimentally. (The most
important argument IMHO, is: If you can’t extrapolate simply and easily from microevolution
to macroevolution, and there are
complications like speciation, then just how is that an argument for
biblical literalism?) Third, if we
accept the unarticulated premise that there is a connection between bacterial
selection and human origins, the fact remains that he is interested in people
and she is answering about bacteria.
That’s why he asks @ 0:52: “They evolved into a person?”
The
questioner has asked what is, on the surface at least, a very simple question:
Is there an experiment you can do to prove that humans arose by naturalistic
processes from ape ancestors? The
correct answer would be “No” and to follow it with an excursus into scientific
epistemology. But that would require
interacting with scholars in the humanities, and thinking about other things
than biology – like history, anthropology, and philosophy – and that would probably
hurt.
So
instead, we answer “Yes” and declare our interlocutors to be idiots.
Which is
the strategy that has been failing for decades.
But the
history of colonialism shows pretty clearly that powerful groups who declare
their antagonists to be ignorant fools simply manage to foster long-term
resentments. That is why I think this is
an applied anthropology problem. The
lawmaker doesn’t understand the concept of model organisms – the idea that we
can learn something about our own species by studying other, “simpler”
species. Explain it to them! Otherwise the endeavor sounds like “the old bait-and-switch” in which the scientist
gives answers to questions that aren’t asked, and doesn’t answer the questions
that are. The stupid creationist is interested in human
origins, but is being lectured about bacteria, and actually asks what that has
to do with humans, because, as he says at @ 1:03, “I think that’s what we’re
talking about”. To which the biology
teacher responds, “That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about evolution.”
Sadly,
the only modern ethnographic study of creationism is by a mathematician. I haven't read it yet, because frankly I struggle with ethnography by actual ethnographers. (There’s also the nice old one by Chris
Toumey, God’s Own Scientists, but that was even before
Intelligent Design re-galvanized the anti-evolution political lobby.)