THE CHASM OF CREATIONISM

YOU CAN BET THAT WE HAVEN'T HEARD THE LAST OF THE CREATIONISTS

Evolution. It's an elegant word, and not without romance. The word bespeaks the
stately transformational march of life across centuries, millennia, eons. Long
accepted as scientific fact, however much debate still surrounds the details of
its workings, the process of evolution underlies modern biology and remains one
of the key accomplishments of modern science. We've devoted this special issue
of Omni to exploring some of the fascinating aspects of evolution and the
scientists who explore it. Since this is Omni's thirteenth anniversary,
evolution seemed an appropriate inauguration for our "teenage" years.

But evolution also underlies an ongoing controversy whose final echoes have not
yet been has heard. Despite debate, trials, depositions, Supreme Court
decisions, ad infinitum, there remains in this country a movement that would put
scientific fact on the same basis as religious faith and alter our traditional
balance of church and state, and alter as well the nature of scientific
education itself.

I'm speaking of what its proponents call scientific creationism, the argument
that the biblical explanation of creation and the origin of life should be
taught in science classes. Despite defeat after defeat in courts and
legislatures, the movement has not yet gone away, nor does it show any sign of
doing so.

While we can understand the desires of creationists to have their views given
equal footing with scientific fact-who doesn't want his individual views granted
official credibility?-we must also be alert to the very real dangers of such
decisions. History resonates with misguided, often tragic efforts to
subordinate scientific reality to religious or state orthodoxy. In the
Stalinist Soviet Union there was an attempt to recast biology in Marxist terms,
making science serve, as it were, the purposes of the state. Nazi Germany used
pseudoscientific arguments to justify abominations.

The creationist argument is different in degree, but only in degree. We are
asked to accept the religious views of a minority of the world's population as
equal in academic value to the shared knowledge of the world's scientific
community. This is not only wrongheaded, it's just wrong.

Faith is personal, science universal. Faith is subjective, science objective.
The great gift of science is its methodology, the relentless questioning of the
universe in search of its workings. Science asks why and how and couches those
questions in a rigor that insists the answers be provable. Evolution, one of
those answers, has been proved repeatedly. Creationism's followers accept their
dogma without question; such is the nature of faith. There is a chasm between
scientific fact and religious faith. That chasm can be spanned individually.
As we saw in our August issue, plenty of scientists are devoutly religious.
Bridging that chasm must not, however, take place in our public schools. Those
bridges, for those who choose to build them, must be constructed in the home and
the church.

Opposition to the incorporation of creationism into our schools must rest upon
an honest understanding of the nature of evolutionary thought. One of the
arguments raised against evolutionary theory is the lack of scientific consensus
regarding the mechanics of the evolutionary process. Yet that lack of consensus
is itself a lovely indicator of the openness of scientific inquiry. We look
this month, for example, at a debate currently taking place over the fundamental
nature of evolutionary change. Debate-the careful marshaling of evidence,
analysis, and interpretation-gives science its vigor and integrity. Such debate
is rarely welcomed in strict creationist circles.

"Prove it" may be the most basic tenet of scientific inquiry. Evolution has
been proved so thoroughly that its validity can no longer be questioned in
scientific terms. Creationism, by its nature, can never be proved.

The next time the creationist argument rears its head-and it will; in some ways
we're overdue for another wasteful airing of a debate that should long since
have been put to rest-perhaps the open-minded among us should adopt some of the
creationists' own tactics. Suppose we argued that evolution, scientific
evolution, should be taught in church alongside creationism. You can bet that
the response from the creationist side would drown out even the loudest of
objections raised when creationists try to impose their will on our schools and
our minds.