Evolution of a creationist victory
By COLLEEN CARROLL
Special to the National Catholic Reporter
For years, Tom Willis has watched earnest creationists struggle
unsuccessfully for a toehold in public schools.
Theyre flicked away like little worms by the school
officials, said Willis, president of the Creation Science Association for
Mid-America, which promotes Genesis-based creationism over the evolution theory
that links humans to apes.
A string of U.S. Supreme Court rejections and overwhelming support
from the scientific community for the theory of evolution has hurt the cause of
creationists like Willis. Most major religions -- including Catholicism and
mainline Protestantism -- allow their faithful to accept evolution as
Gods method of creation. (A Gallup poll showed that 44 percent of
Americans consider themselves to be creationists who believe that God created
humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years; 39 percent describe
themselves as theistic evolutionists who believe that God guided creation over
millions of years; 7 percent are Darwinists who believe that God played no role
in evolution, and 10 percent are undecided or dont know.)
Willis and his allies are undeterred. They continue to wage a holy
war against evolution, using a battle plan that now focuses more on the
deficiencies of evolution than on the merits of creationism.
Every once in awhile, they win.
On Aug. 11, they won big.
Six members of the Kansas Board of Education voted that day to
drop evolution from state standards and tests. The swing vote that sealed their
decision -- cast by a soft-spoken Mennonite seeking a compromise between
creationism and evolution -- capped a bitter debate that continues to echo
across the nation. Experts say that Kansas may be just the first of a spate of
states where anti-evolution forces are working to change the curriculum.
The decision in Kansas shocked pundits, parents and politicians
alike. Kansas Gov. Bill Graves, a moderate Republican, cringed publicly and
threatened to dismantle the elected board. Evolution-friendly voters vowed to
take revenge at the polls next fall, when four conservative board members are
up for re-election. Scientists lamented the arrogance of elected officials who
vote to determine principles of science. Journalists covered the
story with breathless incredulity. No one, it seems, really thought the board
would do this.
Well, almost no one. Creationists like Willis worked hard to make
it happen. And pro-evolution outsiders, like Molleen Matsumura of the National
Center for Science Education, have seen enough evolution skirmishes to sense
what was coming. Since the start of last year, the center has dealt with new or
ongoing evolution controversies in 40 states, at the rate of about one new
conflict a week.
In many ways, Kansas bore all the marks -- rural, conservative,
religious -- of an evolution war zone. The evolution fight does not divide
neatly along state or even partisan lines, but creationists enjoy hearty
support among rural voters with conservative Christian ties. And the struggle
over state education standards -- like the clash over textbooks that often
follows it -- offers creationists a perfect opportunity to crusade against
evolution.
In Kansas, conservatives pushing for local control against a
backdrop of national and state education standards won several seats on the
state board in 1996. Their arrival split the board evenly between conservatives
and moderates. Critics say fundamentalists targeted the less-visible state
board races for a quiet conservative coup. Others say the candidates were
elected on open promises of a more autonomous board that would support local
control of schools.
I didnt have a big issue about evolution, said
Steve Abrams, a conservative who led the anti-evolution charge and joined the
board several years before the 1996 conservatives arrived. Abrams said he did
not enter office seeking to oust evolution or promote a religious agenda:
I am not trying to push religion into public schools.
After the 1996 elections, conservatives pushed successfully for a
refinement of state standards that were last updated in 1995. Kansas standards
do not mandate curriculum, but they guide the state tests that drive assessment
of Kansas schools. So the content of state standards informally guides what is
taught and what is not.
To revamp state science standards, the board and the state
education commissioner convened a committee of 27 scientists and science
educators last year. Committee members modeled their work on the National
Science Education Standards, which identify evolution as a unifying
concept that must permeate science education. They also consulted with
the National Center for Science Education to find ways to keep evolution front
and center in the standards.
When the committees second draft appeared for public comment
that winter, its evolution emphasis aggravated conservatives like Abrams and
their creationist constituents. The draft also alarmed Kansas Catholic
Conference lobbyist Mary Kay Culp. Culp said she knows Catholics can accept
evolution, but the committees work was modeled too closely on the
national standards, which deify evolution, reflect a troubling
social agenda and denigrate religion.
The committees fiercest enemies were creationists, who
turned out in force to blast the draft standards after their release last
winter. Creationists like Willis -- linked by an e-mail chain that keeps them
abreast of evolution battles -- decided to draft their own standards. For five
months, Willis said, a group of creationists wrote eight drafts of science
standards that were periodically reviewed by conservative board members. They
worked in teams and communicated on-line.
If it hadnt have been for e-mail, we wouldnt
have been able to do it, said Willis, who holds degrees in physics and
operations research.
Willis also credits tough, steel-minded board members
like Abrams, a Baptist veterinarian who once led the state Republican Party,
and Scott Hill, a Methodist farmer who also toed the anti-evolution line.
Abrams, who said he does not belong to creationist organizations
or receive financial support from them in his campaign for office, said he
started working with Willis and his group in the spring. Abrams turned to them
for help in drafting standards when it became clear that the science committee
would not drop its emphasis on evolution.
I couldnt get [the committee] to listen, said
Abrams, who refused to discuss his views on evolution except to say that
credible evidence exists to refute it. Instead of just bitching and
complaining, I decided to do something about it.
In May, Abrams presented a set of creationist-friendly standards
to the board. The standards -- which referred to an intelligent designer of the
universe and praised applied science over theoretical science -- ratcheted the
evolution debate to a new level. The creationist-friendly standards did not win
approval, but they wrenched the boards debate to the right. Now board
members faced two choices -- standards developed by their own committee of
scientists, or standards developed by one of their own.
Abrams said he submitted his own set of standards because the
committee refused to differentiate between microevolution, the idea that living
things adapt to survive, and macroevolution, the theory of origins that links
humans to apes. By making macroevolution a unifying concept, Abrams
said, the committee was attempting to teach a scientific theory as
fact and ignore evidence that contradicts evolution. That, Abrams told
the board, is not good science. ... [Good science] is observable,
measurable, repeatable and falsifiable.
His argument is a popular one among todays creationists.
Many take it a step further, asserting that no one has seen evolution take
place, so evolution theory is no more credible than the Bibles creation
account.
Such relativistic rhetoric may sound odd coming from
fundamentalists, but it has served them well in states such as Alabama. Science
textbooks there warn students not to accept anyones conclusions about the
origins of the universe because no one was around when life began.
Abrams argument left little common ground between board
conservatives and the committee. The two sides reached an impasse. Thats
when Abrams and Hill joined with moderate Harold Voth to draft a third set of
standards based on the committees work. Voth, a moderate Mennonite and
retired school superintendent, had agonized over the evolution question for
months. In the end, Abrams and Hill persuaded him to drop macroevolution and
elements of cosmology.
Students should develop an understanding of the
universe, the revised standards said. The origin of the universe
remains one of the greatest questions in science. Studies of data regarding
fossils, geologic tables, cosmological information are encouraged. But
standards regarding origins are not mandated.
On Aug. 11, the three men presented their new draft of standards.
The draft passed by one vote -- Voths. The draft bore no names of
committee members, who pulled out of the enterprise in disgust.
It also bore no mention of the shared ancestry between humans and
animals. The standards left local school districts -- and individual science
teachers -- to grapple with the origins question, if they bothered to discuss
it at all.
The uproar that ensued traveled across America and as far away as
Canada, France and China. Much of the clamor came from critics of the decision,
who saw the vote as a throwback to the Scopes monkey trial. Abrams said he
received negative feedback from people with lots of letters behind their
names, but his rural and suburban constituents applauded him.
Matsumura said the Kansas case should be a lesson to apathetic and
uninformed voters. Creationists across the country continue to use grassroots
campaigns and school board decisions to attack evolution, since their efforts
on the federal level have borne no fruit. School board reviews of science
standards and textbooks give creationists the opening they need to influence
science curriculum. So concerned parents should pay attention to state and
local school board races and quiz candidates about their evolution ideas.
Be active citizens, Matsumura said. This issue
... often does take people by surprise.
Surprising as the Kansas decision was for evolution supporters, it
did not fully satisfy Abrams or even Willis. The standards that ultimately
passed may inspire some creationists to harass the anti-God groups of our
culture, Willis said, but the standards were more or less
sickly.
Politics, Willis said after the decision, is a
fragile enterprise.
National Catholic Reporter, October 8,
1999
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