Tuesday, November 16, 1999

The New Science In Kansas Schools                                                               

Position Paper By Jack Krebs, Kansas Citizens For Science

  Science Standards in Kansas: The Real Issues

Introduction

  This summer, the State Board of Education rejected the science standards recommended by the science writing committee that they themselves had appointed. Instead, they adopted a version, revised by three Board members, that deleted most references to cosmology, the geological history of the earth, and the evolution of life; made substantial changes to the very definition of science itself; and added numerous statements associated with belief in Biblical creationism. The Board members who voted for the standards have invoked "local control" of education as their rationale for this. However, I believe the real rationale for revising the proposed standards was to make progress towards establishing creationism as a separate but equal alternative explanation for the origins and development of life on earth.

  I believe there are two reasons why the Board majority and their creationist supporters felt it was so important to make the changes they did. The first is that their theological beliefs rest on the literal truth of the Genesis story, especially the curse of Adam as a prerequisite for the redemptive purpose of Jesus. The second is their belief that the theory of evolution is necessarily a godless, immoral theory that is responsible for most of the social ills we have faced the in past 100 years or so. The rest of this paper will expand upon these ideas.

  State Standards: It's Not About Local Control

 The claim that "local control" is the main rationale for the Board's action glosses over the fact that in virtually all other aspects of school improvement during the past decade, the Board has been acting to decrease local control by increasing state control. Documented improvement on the state assessments, which are based on the state standards, is a cornerstone of determining whether schools will be reaccredited. The purpose of the school improvement movement has been to standardize academic content and to increase accountability to the state in order to provide equitable education.

  The Board has consistently followed the recommendations of committees of state educators in setting standards, even when those standards have forced schools to make major changes in their curricula and teaching methods. In no other case has the Board resisted recommended standards because of a commitment to local control.

  Yet in this case three Board members rewrote the recommended standards, injecting their own personal religious and political beliefs into the adopted standards. The Board's claim that "local control" is the issue misrepresents the case in order to avoid acknowledging the true reasons for their actions.

 What were the major changes made by the Board members, and why were they made?

  The impetus for the rejection of the science writing committee's proposed standards came from a group of young-earth creationists—people who believe the Genesis story in the Bible is historically and scientifically true. This group, led by Tom Willis, director of the Creation Science Association of Mid-America (www.csama.org), provided considerable behind-the-scenes guidance to the Board in writing the revised standards.

 Biblically-based young-earth creationism (hereafter referred to simply as "creationism") claims that the earth and all species that have ever lived were created in six days sometime in the past 10,000 years; that the Fall of Adam and the resulting curse of God upon humankind is the reason we now have sin, death, and change in the world instead of the constant and perfect world of the original creation; that Noah's flood is primarily responsible for the current geological structure of the earth and the fossil record within it; and that only "micro-evolutionary" adaptations and variations in species have occurred since the Flood. This story is considered the true alternative to the science that was deleted from the standards.

  Since it's not legal to actually teach creationism as science, the Board employed three tactics to further their cause.

  First, of course, they eliminated all the topics that are in contradiction to the Genesis story. Secondly, they inserted changes in the definition of science to support two creationist claims: that supernatural causation should be considered as a possible logical explanation for natural phenomena, and that theories of evolution and cosmology, being in the unobservable past, cannot be established in the way that much of the rest of science can.

  The key revision they made was in the section "The Nature of Science", where they changed the first sentence from "Science is the human activity of seeking natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us" to "Science is the human activity of seeking logical explanations...." In a speech at a recent creationist seminar in Lawrence, Dr. Paul Ackerman, a member of the Kansas creationist group, emphasized that this change allowed the possibility that supernatural causation could be argued as the most logical explanation for a phenomenon, and therefore a creationist explanation could be considered truly scientific.

  The third tactic used by the Board was to add a number of statements and examples which support creationist claims, or which require the use of creationist literature to carry out the suggested activities.

  The most important example of such an addition is, "Natural selection can maintain or deplete genetic variation but does not add new information to the existing genetic code." This sentence directly supports the creationist belief that all the originally created "kinds" of animals contained perfect genetic information, that all evolution since then has been merely "micro-evolutionary" adaptation based on the loss of genetic information, and that one species can never evolve into another because that would involve the introduction of new genetic information. The claim made by this addition to the standards would be considered false by virtually all knowledgeable scientists.

  Other examples ask students to "consider the weaknesses" in the standard hypotheses about dinosaurs, to consider the ability of great floods and volcanoes to lay down sedimentary rock in short periods of time, and to study examples commonly found in the creationist literature that call into question the validity of radiometric dating methods. (See the website of Kansas Citizens for Science, www.kcfs.org, to see a complete comparison of all deletions and additions made by the Board writing team.)

 So, not only did the Board members remove statements about fundamental concepts of evolution, earth history, and cosmology, and change descriptions of the nature of science, they also added a number of statements that are opportunities for presenting creationist ideas in secular and scientific language. Taken together, these changes clearly show that a creationist agenda was the driving force in revising the proposed standards.

  The real issues are religious:

 1. Evolution negates the redemptive power of Jesus

Why do creationists hold these views when they conflict so dramatically with what science has found? I believe there are two religious reasons.

  For the creationist, the original creation was a perfect world, without death or decay. After the Fall of Adam, all of nature began to devolve towards its present state. Only then did animals begin to kill and eat each other. For humans, the curse of Adam brought both physical and spiritual death. However, Jesus's death atoned for the sins of Adam, and so through belief in Jesus one can be redeemed, gaining salvation and eternal life.

  Creationists, however, interpret evolutionary theory to mean that humans have evolved from a less perfect state, and that the predation involved in the survival of the fittest implies that death is a natural feature of life, not a consequence of sin. At the recent creationism seminar in Lawrence, presented by the Institute for Creation Research (www.icr.org), president John Morris summed up this issue by saying that evolution proceeds by the death of the unfit, and that such a belief Òyanks the foundation out from the cross." He concluded, "If death is not the penalty of sin, then what is the purpose of Jesus?

  So the theory of evolution strikes at the heart of the creationists' theological beliefs in humankind's relationship with God as mediated by the curse of Adam, and in the unique relationship of sinner and redeemer that one needs to have with Jesus. Evolutionary theory attacks the creationists' deepest understanding of themselves, which makes it impossible for them to even consider that the theory might be true. The real issues are religious:

  2. Evolution is a god-less, immoral philosophy

  The second issue is the inverse of the first, for not only do the creationists believe that "if one believes in God, one cannot accept the theory of evolution", they also believe that "if one accepts evolution, one cannot believe in God." Creationists claim that if one believes that the theory of evolution is true, then one necessarily must believe that there is no God, no meaning or purpose to life, and thus no moral accountability. They then conclude that a large number of social ills are directly attributable to the ascendancy of the theory of evolution. For example, in the preface to Paul Ackerman's recent book on the science standards, John Morris states that "naturalistic evolutionary teaching in our schools is the real culprit in teen drug use, the rampant spread of sexually transmitted diseases, despair and suicide in teens as well as violence", and at the creationism seminar he blamed evolutionary thinking for abortion, euthanasia, infanticide, promiscuity, racism, socialism, and fascism.

  Also, recently a local church distributed a flyer entitled "Evolution? or the Bible?". It contained statements such as these: "Underlying [evolution] is the belief that nothing exists but matter. . . . The doctrine of evolution does not leave man with any hope. . . . The doctrine of evolution does not give us a real basis for morality. Man has no standard to live by. Morality then becomes a matter of individual preference. Man is not given an 'ought' by evolutionary thinking. There simply is no reason for why one ought to be moral."

 Other local churches have been distributing the book "Refuting Evolution," from the group Answers in Genesis (AIG), around our local high schools. The director of AIG, Ken Ham, in an article "Evolution and Society" (www.answersingenesis.org), has written, "The fundamental clash we see in our society at present is the clash between the religion of Christianity with its creation basis and therefore absolutes, and the religion of humanism with its evolution basis and its relative morality that says 'anything goes.'"

  The creationist's belief, then, is that the scientific worldview as it regards the origin and development of life is the moral and spiritual antithesis of the enemy of a true and proper Christian belief in God and his relationship with humankind. In fact Tom Willis, in his essay "I'm a Christian, Too", claims that it is impossible to be a true Christian and "believe in" evolution. He writes, "virtually no 'Christian evolutionist' defends his position from God's word, simply because it cannot be done. Therefore, you can be certain that anyone claiming to be a Christian evolutionist is either immature in his walk [as a Christian], or a liar."

  Are they right?

  Are the creationists right in claiming that one cannot accept the worldview described by science and also believe in God? I don't believe so. For most Christians, belief in the theology of sin and redemption through Jesus Christ does not depend on a literal belief in the Genesis story. Similarly, those same Christians and millions of non-Christians accept the scientific worldview and believe in God ‹ having spiritual purpose and meaning in their lives, and holding themselves morally responsible to their God and their fellow man.

  Science purposely limits itself to looking for natural explanations for phenomena. That is not the same as saying that scientists believe that science is all there is to the world, and particularly to human life. Science is not anti-God. It is simply not in the business of drawing religious or moral conclusions. That is not the same as saying that one must be immoral. To quote a colleague of mine, "To say nothing of God is not to say that God is nothing." To say that we only consider natural causation when studying natural phenomena is not the same as saying we that we don't have any spiritual and moral beliefs in our personal and collective lives. Surely the creationists can see the difference.

  Conclusion

  Curriculum decisions based on the beliefs of creationism have no place in the determination of state science standards, no matter how secular the language used might be. This is particularly true when one of those beliefs is that the scientific and religious ideas held by many of the rest of us are a threat to a moral and meaningful society. The dilemma creationists have for themselves of being unable to reconcile science and religion should not be imposed upon the rest of us, and particularly not on our educational system. Please join Kansas Citizens for Science in our efforts to see the current science standards rescinded, and the science standards proposed by the science writing committee adopted in their place.

Published Tuesday, November 16, 1999