www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall The Truth About "Inherit the Wind"

http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110007065
The Wall Street Journal Online
When the Lines Were Drawn
How the Scopes trial reshaped science, religion and politics.

BY CHRISTOPHER LEVENICK
Friday, August 5, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

Eighty years ago last month, at the trial of John Scopes, the first shots of the culture war were fired. Scopes's crime? Teaching his high-school biology class a lesson that was thought to deny the biblical account of human origins, in violation of Tennessee's new Anti-Evolution Act.

To nobody's surprise, Scopes was found guilty--he had clearly broken the law--but the verdict did little to resolve the difficulties over teaching evolution in public schools. This year alone, 13 states have introduced legislation that would require schoolteachers to take a more critical approach toward evolutionary theory.

If the issues at stake in the Scopes trial seem familiar, so too should the way they unfolded. As in any good culture-war campaign, much of the controversy was staged. The law that Scopes broke was a symbolic measure, signed by a governor who thought it would never be enforced. Indeed, its leading advocate thought it should have no penalty provision. Scopes himself was no martyr for the cause of science: Local businessmen had asked him to stand for a test case, hoping that the publicity might improve the declining fortunes of Dayton, Tenn. As for the trial, it proved principally a chance for fundamentalists and the American Civil Liberties Union to duke it out before a national audience.

But it would be a serious mistake to think that little has changed since 1925, that we are simply rehashing long-exhausted arguments. The major issues of the Scopes case--religious, scientific, legal and political--have all shifted dramatically.

To begin with, our understanding of how evolution works has vastly improved. At the time of the trial, biologists could not agree on a single definition of evolution. It took another generation of scientific labor to construct a neo-Darwinian synthesis, an achievement that stands at the center of modern biology.

As the scientific consensus has solidified, the theological response has deepened. The great majority of Americans, then as now, try to balance scientific discoveries with biblical faith. Yet it was mostly after the trial that more sophisticated explanations emerged for how to read the Genesis account, in the words of Reinhold Niebuhr, "seriously but not literally."

Likewise profoundly altered is the law. Scopes's ACLU-led defense team based much of its case on free-speech grounds. Noteworthy by its absence, however, was any suggestion that the Tennessee statute violated the Constitution's prohibition of an establishment of religion.

The situation today is reversed. Having found that disestablishment applies to all levels of government, the modern courts work hard at suppressing any nonmaterialistic account of human origins. For its part, the ACLU has abandoned its commitment to defending the free speech of those who teach alternative theories and now actively roots out any teacher who dissents from Darwinian orthodoxy.

Yet the most profound change of all has occurred in American political culture. At the time of the trial, the nascent progressive movement drew much of its strength from the perfectionist impulses of evangelical Protestantism. That alliance began to dissolve at the trial, when two lions of the American left turned on one another.

Leading Scopes's defense was Clarence Darrow, a champion of progressive causes and an outspoken agnostic. Among the prosecutors was William Jennings Bryan, a three-time Democratic presidential candidate and a stalwart defender of traditional Christianity. The two had long worked together for social reform, but in Dayton Darrow treated Bryan with contempt. In the trial's climactic scene, Darrow called Bryan to the stand, where he sneered at the witness for "insult[ing] every man of science and learning in the world because he does not believe in your fool religion."

And so the culture war came. For the first time, coastal elites descended on small-town America, calling its citizens stupid and their beliefs backward. And though fundamentalism may have looked worse at the time, the longer-term damage was to progressivism; it was at Dayton that the movement began to lose its popular appeal.

Bryan, after all, was to the left of most Democrats today, but his followers found that they could not keep company with those who so disdained their faith. Nowadays, when liberalism's leading strategists wonder what's the matter with Kansas, they could do worse than to look back to Tennessee--and to their own caustic dismissive of serious Christians.

Mr. Levenick is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

There is a decent essay by Krauthammer in the latest TIME on the contemporary issue raised by incognitus.
http://www.time.com/time/columnist/krauthammer/article/0,9565,1088869,00.html
A number of points miss the mark IMO, and go a little over the top, but nonetheless give a counterpoint to the WSJ article.
Michael Behe and Lawrence Krauss debated on the News Hour tonight.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/religion/july-dec05/evolution_8-05.html
I thought that it was interesting that ID proponent Behe seemed to shy away from the idea that ID should be taught in school. Krauss was devastating on this point:
This is the problem. ID isn't science, as of yet, in any meaningful, contemporary sense. The idea of inserting it into a science classroom is therefore quite a strange one. Like Wicca - or for that matter, chemical kinetics - being taught in a Catholic theology class?

This point is lost, unfortunately, in the WSJ article linked above.
It is not a matter of free speech or of academic freedom to teach sheer speculation as though it were supported fact. Or, because of time constraints, in place of key facts. Or to teach anything that is just unrelated to the subject. In a cultural anthropology course on creation stories, ID might find a home. In a science classroom, it is simply inappropriate.

Hmmm. I have not often regarded TIME as the voice of intelligence, wisdom and lucidity. On reflection, while I read the article carefully, I see no reason (there's that word!) to change my opinion.

The author seems to be telling us that there is some sort of wall between science and religion - and, into the bargain, he (unintentionally, one hopes) concedes that reason belongs to religion, not to science!

Certainly science has to do with observation; one cannot concoct a "science" purely out of one's own head without reference to reality. But attempting to concoct a "science" without the use of reason is equally absurd.

I hold no brief for either extreme in the contention over "evolution" and "creationism" - and I'm inclined to hold that the alleged contradiction between "science" and "religion" is a red herring.


Incognitus

I think that Krauthammer uses "reason" and "first principles" in a specifc way that, being unstated, does undercut the good points of his article. Obviously reason is crucial to the analysis of observations to test their support or vitiation of an hypothesis; it may also be used in creating an hypothesis. It is the pivotal stuff of gedanken experiments, which are always better than actual ones. And working from "first principles" in science refers to the beginning with the most fundamental, established laws in solving a problem (versus by reference to another already solved problem).

Krauthammer sometimes uses quotes around "reason". He may wish to call attention to faulty logic, or perhaps just to the utterly specious reasoning described by Franklin, who wrote about "the convenience of being a reasonble person", as it enables one to find or invent a reason for whatever one has a mind to do.

I also think Krauthammer uses "first principles" in the specific sense of axioms - unprovable assertions that are starting points for rational deductions. Science doesn't work this way. And this explains why mathematics is not science. Mathematics sets up axioms as the fundamental principles and asks what are the implications of these axioms. Science can travel this path in seeking the ramifications of a hypothesis in order to design experimental tests. But ultimately it seeks by observation and analysis to discover the fundamental (within its limited domain of utility) principles that govern the world and universe. The very principles are being tested and are subject to being overturned.
And sometimes they are.

But scientists tend to be very conservative about science (while hopingto make some transforming discovery themselves). ID has yet to establish itself pretty much at all in science (while complxity is a vigorous field). As such the idea of teaching it in a science classroom is an absurdity.

Does any of this suggest a contradiction between science and religion? No. Truth is not contradicted by truth, JPII wrote. But the methods of approaching truth are distinct; as are the nature of the truths accessible. Science cannot tell us about God, although it may give some insight into the manner by which he created the universe, and much insight into the nature of the universe that He created. Likewise it is very unlikely that the conservation of mass would have ever been elucidated outside of the scientific method. There cannot be a contradiction between the truth discerned by these complimentary approaches.

Actually science can and does tell us a good deal about God, Who is revealed in His creation.

"Reason" is a shorthand for "right reason", which is "right" in that it is based upon reality - even the scholastics accept the definition of "truth" as "the adequation of thought to reality". Without that crucial element, one may be as reasonable as one likes without being the least bit scientific.

However, an attempt to be "scientific" without reason is at least equally absurd. The dog can perceive certain aspects of reality - but since the dog is not a rational being, that doesn't make him scientific. Just please don't tell the dog I said so; he's very sensitive!

Incognitus

Well I am not really sure, incognitus, what your thoughts are on the meaningof science/scientific or reality. But I get perhaps a better idea of what Krauthammer meant. If reason is right by its being disciplined by a faith-based (axiomatic) sense of reality - rather than simply by what can be observed and probed - then Krauthammer is right: science has nothing to do with such an idea of reason. Science cannot be without rational thinking, or without imagination. But it works within a very limited sphere of observable, testable reality. And in this sphere every idea is subject to scrutiny.

Dear djs,
Certainly reason - and faith - are based upon observable, perceptible reality; the Church teaches that "fideism" is a heresy.
There is a confusion (not to use a nastier word!) inherent in the American approach to the discussion. The late Dwight Eisenhower said several times, quite emphatically, that everyone should have a religion, and he didn't care what that religion might be! Religion, in Eisenhower's view, "helps". When I read in that Time article that some unspecified "faith" belongs in the public square, etc., but has nothing to do with science, I thought at once of Eisenhower.
Theology claims to be a science. There's an amusing story of a professor at a university who was convinced that this claim was sheer balderdash until the university decided to hire a theologian, just for appearance's sake. The theologian who got the job was a specialist in Sacred Scripture (which was why they hired him - they though it would appease the Bible-bangers), and his first move was to request the university to purchase some expensive equipment, including the most up-to-date computers, to enable the theologian to participate in ongoing work on the Dead Sea Scrolls and other biblical palimpsests.
As amusement, it's a bit superficial. But it does indeed indicate that theology is not based on moonshine - it does and must take observable data into account.
This weekend is the anniversary of Hiroshima. Science unassisted by religious faith can indeed discern how to build an atomic bomb (although it would be impossible for science to do this without the use of reason and the use of such well-known scientific tools as hypothesis). However, if one builds an atomic bomb, there is an immediate need to have some basis upon which (and upon whom!) to use it.
And on, and on. This is an old discussion and will continue long after we are, I hope, in the heavenly kingdom.

Incognitus

Dear friends,

One of the quite amazing pitfalls of modern science is the seeming conviction of many scientists that it is somehow less "subjective" than other forms of thought and analytical procedure.

Even what is "observable" depends on what we, as human beings, acknowledge is "observable" and what we acknowledge as observable is also something that is conditioned by subjective aspects of our development, culture, views etc.

As a result of some health problems and an ongoing interaction with physicians and their scientific mind-set, I've finally joined many others who prefer to stay as far away from traditional doctors and the chemical drugs medical science has produced for us - the "objective" reality is that they are not healthy for us even though we've been brought to believe they are.

This is an ideological use of science to create chemical products that do us harm for the most part - while selling those products to us on the grounds of "rational, objective science."

Hardly!

Alex