Hudson Valley Humanists
Evolution Versus Creation
by Leo Igwe
Are human beings products of natural selection or are we creatures in the image of God? How did life originate? How did we get to be here? How did we get to be human? Questions concerning the origin of life and of all things have agitated the human mind for ages. Religions have tried to figure out an answer - “God created all things”. The Christian book of Genesis graphically narrates and codifies the process of creation day by day -as if the narrator was there at ‘the beginning” Incidentally most people have accepted creationism as an ‘an article of faith’ foreclosing the possibility of any other account of the origin of the world.
Recently creationism donned a new garb — Intelligent Design (ID)- the idea that life is so complex that a designer must be behind it. But the creationist account did not put to rest the question of the origin of life. Thinking minds have been at work - seeking, searching, researching, questing, questioning, postulating and inquiring into other possible accounts or explanations of the origin of our species.
In 17th to 19th centuries, a revolutionary idea emerged. Thanks to the works of Robert Hooke (1635-1703) W. M Smith (1769 - 1839) Georges Louis Leclerc compte de Buffon (1707 - 1788) Erasmus Darwin (17 31 - 1882) Jean Baptiste Antonie de Lamarck (1744 - 1825) and then Charles Darwin (1809 - 1882) evolution - the “grandeur” view that all plants and animals have originated and descended by modification from few single ancestral forms - became a fact.
As Darwin stated “ I view all beings not as special creations but as the lineal descendants of some few beings”. Evolution progresses in the following ways
(i) struggle for survival
(ii) variation of the species
(iii) mutation of genes
(iv) heredity
(v) natural selection.
Evidence for evolution abounds in paleontology, comparative anatomy and morphology. The Evolutionary theory radically challenged the religious view of human origin. It dealt a heavy blow to one of the pillars of supernatural faiths — creation.
The evolutionary theory brought the origin of life down from the sky, making Africa not ‘the Garden of Eden’ the place where human beings first emerged.
Nat surprising, religious fanatics- creationists and advocates of Intelligent Design have been up in arms against the evolutionary theory. They are crusading to suppress the evidence for evolution. They want to get evolution out of the school curriculum or get its teaching watered down.
In November 2004, Board members of a school in Dover, Pennsylvania, USA voted to include Intelligent Design in the science curriculum casting doubt on Darwinism and evolution. A month later, plaintiffs filed a suit challenging the decision. And in December 2005, a US District Judge, John Jones ruled against the decision of the school board stating that ID is not science and should not be taught in science classes.
In September 2006, evolution came under attack again from a Christian cleric in East Africa. Bishop Boniface Adoyo of the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya demanded that all reference to evolution be dropped from an exhibition of hominid fossils in Nairobi National Museum. The Museum houses Louis and Richard Leakey’s collections of hominid fossils said to be one of the best illustrations of the origins of our species. According to Bishop Adoyo, evolution undermines the account of the creation of man in the image of God. “It’s creating a weapon against Christians that’s killing our faith … children going to the museums will start believing we evolved from apes?”
So, for this reverend gentleman, children and the general public should not believe that we evolved from apes - even when there is evidence for that.
This anti-science, anti-evidence and antediluvian attitude of the church and religions generally has been responsible for the so-called conflict between science and religion. Actually there would have been no controversy or conflict at all between science and religion if all religions can keep to their own boundaries. Firstly, the religious outlook is a view of life that held sway at the infancy of the human race. Religion is primitive, pre-modern, pre-scientific and preenlightenment. So most of what religions teach today are out dated or untrue and can only hamper intellectual and moral progress.
Scientific discoveries have provided humanity with better insights into life and reality than religion ever did.
Again religion belongs to the spiritual, celestial and supernatural realm. Religion thrives on lack of evidence and in spite of evidence- on the mysterious, the mystical, the inscrutable, the incomprehensible, the ineffable and in fact the nonsensical. Religion propounds and propagates absolute and infallible truths through revelation, dogma and indoctrination. Simply put, religion is superstition and cannot provide human beings with objective information about nature, this life and the real world.
But science is the study of nature. Science focuses on matter and the mundane using reason, commonsense, experience, experiment, observation and critica thinking to understand and explain life and reality. Scientific truths are testable, confirmable, demonstrable, verifiable and falsifiable but religious truths are not. Religious ‘truths’ are revealed myths and misconceptions which believers are made to swallow hook, line and sinker.
Scientific truths are based on evidence; religious truths are based on blind faith. So it is with evolution and creation. Evolution is science; creation or ID is religion. Evolution illuminates our understanding of nature but creationism darkens and distorts it.
That the evolutionary theory is scientific-based on evidence does not make it perfect. As the American District Judge, John Jones, declared, “To be sure, Darwin’s theory of evolution is imperfect. However the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the classroom or to misrepresent well - established scientific propositions. Science takes care of its imperfections, errors and shortcomings and ensures progress and improvement in human knowledge and understanding through its self-correcting mechanisms.
So advocates of creationism and ID should stay clear of our science classes, laboratories and museums. Already they have the churches, mosques, shrines, ashrams and other ‘holy’ places to peddle their sacred dogma, superstition and paranormal wares. According to Richard Dawkins, "Evolution is as much a fact as the heat of the sun” So let's use our classrooms and museums to expose our children to the facts about the origin of our-species without religious interference or intrusion.
Leo lgwe is the executive director of the Center for Inquiry, Nigeria.