Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Teilhard was a truly and deeply religious man and that Christianity was
the cornerstone of his worldview. Moreover, in his worldview science and
faith were not segregated in watertight compartments, as they are with so
many people. They were harmoniously fitting parts of his worldview. Teil-
hard was a creationists [
sic
], but one who understood that the Creation is
realized in this world by means of evolution.
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By providing the example of this Jesuit paleontologist as evidence of the
compatibility of evolution and faith, Dobzhansky gives voice to a familiar
pattern in scientific efforts to combat creationism. But he does more than
just claim that one can be “truly and deeply religious” and accept evolu-
tion—he also makes evolution identical with Teilhard's faith. It is not just “a
theory, a system or a hypothesis” but also a “worldview,” “a general postu-
late” to which mere science must bow.
Written by one of the giants of the modern evolutionary synthesis and
published in
American Biology Teacher
, a journal devoted to science peda-
gogy, Dobzhansky's article is undoubtedly invoked more frequently than
any other message in public campaigns to promote the teaching of evolu-
tion. Should we therefore be surprised to find it endorsing Teilhard's specu-
lative mysticism? Not at all. I do not doubt that the scientists who create
such messages wish to promote evolutionary science, but its capacity for
mythical enlargement does much more than this.
The temptation to use science education as an occasion for promoting
evolutionism is also witnessed by two other features of these campaigns:
1) the fact that they tend to make the case for evolution mean the same
thing as the case for science more broadly, and 2) the fact that they seem
to be more concerned with refuting creationism than with teaching about
evolutionary biology. We would certainly expect an organization called the
National Center for Science Education (NCSE) to address creationism,
since it is certainly an obstacle to science education, but the fact that fight-
ing creationism is
all
the NCSE does seems a little odd. Its website provides
information about the dangers of doubting evolution and much guidance
about how to answer those who do, but (excepting the various suggested
library sources that it urges visitors to seek out) the NCSE offers almost
no scientific information. The little scientific education that the website
does include in its many editorial messages pertains
only
to evolutionary
science—never to physics, chemistry, geology, astronomy, or any other field.
But it makes sense to reduce the cause of science education to the defense of
evolution against creationism if “evolutionary science” symbolizes a broader
