by Maceo Carrillo Martinet
Daily Lobo
Earlier this month there was a court hearing over proposed changes on how to teach the theory of evolution in schools. The debate took place in Kansas, but received both national and international attention.
Kansas is no newcomer to the debate between religion and science. Six years ago, Kansas was in the spotlight when the state school board voted to downplay the theory of evolution in its science curriculum. Now that conservative Christians dominate the Kansas State Legislature, the issue is again under scrutiny.
The court hearing will determine whether to change the state curriculum standards regarding what teachers should cover when discussing the theory of evolution. This comes at a pivotal time, because the state school board is in the process of developing new science teaching guidelines.
One of the proposed changes to the teaching standards is to make clear to students that the theory of evolution is not an established fact. Concepts important to the theory of evolution, such as the idea that we all descend with modifications from a common ancestor, would be openly challenged in the classroom.
One of the main groups challenging how the theory of evolution should be taught is a group called Intelligent Design Network, based in Kansas. This group indirectly promotes the existence of God in science curriculum by highlighting the complexity of life, as well as the various points of debate in the fossil and genetic record. During the opening testimony of the court case, one of the co-founders of the Network, William Harris, said, "Science classrooms are teaching children something opposed to the Biblical teachings."
The debate between science and religion on the origins of life is nothing new to Western culture. During the Middle Ages in Europe, there was a fundamental split in the perspective between reason and revelation, two paths toward finding truth in the minds of Western thinkers. Reason and revelation became two related but independent bodies of knowledge, the secular and sacred. The role of Western science became institutionalized with the advent of universities and research facilities.
It is worth noting that once Darwinian evolution became the accepted explanation for the origins of life, Western society became the first to accept a purely mechanical explanation for life. With a Western scientific paradigm comes the acceptance that life was not created for any purpose or with any goal, but is an outcome of many years of random, physically based occurrences.
The debate regarding the teaching of evolution in Kansas offers an interesting insight into American society and culture, and how diverse outlooks are treated. Each side of the debate declares they alone know the real truth about how life was created.
Why is the debate on how life was created locked into a mindset in which one side is right, and the other is wrong?
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Maybe the answer resides in the history of Western religion and science.
Both Christianity and Western science have historically been used by many of its practitioners to claim that other religions and knowledge systems are inferior and primitive. Throughout much of Western culture, differing cultures and differing viewpoints were interpreted with the assumption that one was superior to the other. It follows that the secular and sacred are going at it in Kansas.
No one person or group of people knows the absolute truth on how life was created, because none of us were actually there to witness the special moment when life breathed its first breath. The closest we are going to get to the origins of life is when we witness a woman giving birth.
It is not the fact that science and religion have two different views on life that makes this a contentious issue. The real issue is the lens we use to understand the role that science and religion play in human civilizations.
Many human civilizations did not see a separation between science and religion. Ancient Egyptian monks, for example, were also scientists. They would practice the stories of old while studying trigonometry. Ancient Egyptian society, as well as other indigenous societies throughout the world, had particular views on the ways in which religion and science related to each other. If we began our debates on the theory of evolution with the context that there are multiple outlooks on science and religion, then maybe our debates would be more engaging and students would really learn something in school.
