Science
The continuing conflict
Bernard Dixon
Those who suspect that conflicts between science and religion are a thing of the distant past should take a look at what is happening just now in California. This month the California State Board of Education is due to adopt a new science textbook for use in elementary schools.
Whatever the Board's choice, a court action seems likely to ensue. After years of bickering over school books between fundamentalist religious factions and biological and lay groups who prefer the evolutionary account of man's origins, matters have come to a head. The creationists announced recently that they will sue the Board if the new textbook does not mention creation. The evolutionists will sue if it does so.
This odd situation is the culmination of ,ten years of controversy, in which an even odder organisation — the Creation Research Society — has played a leading role. Formed in 1963, the Society admits only people who maintain the literal truth of the Bible. Its 1,200 associate members and 300 full members (each of whom holds a higher degree in science) must believe that "the account of origins in Genesis is a factual presentation of simple historical truths," and that "all basic types of living things, including man, were made by direct creative acts of God during the Creation Week." They are also obliged to accept the real existence of Noah and his Flood.
Shortly after the Society was formed, two of its associate members began petitioning the California State Board of Education to include accounts of creation alongside the teaching of evolution in schools. Years of rumbling disputation followed and the eventual result was that when the Science Framework for California Public Schools (a document containing guidelines for science education) came up for approval by the Board in 1969, it was fiercely attacked because it did not mention creation. Faced with these protests, the Board deleted passages describing evolution and replaced them with a section stressing the duality of explanations of the origin of life; both special creation and evolution were possible. Now it was the scientists who had drafted the earlier version who complained — bitterly but without avail. The Board resolved that textbooks for routine use in Californian schools, including the one to be chosen this month, must conform to the Science Framework in its final form.
Opposition groups have been working hard recently. The Board has encountered renewed pressure and such powerful bodies as the National Academy of Sciences and the American Chemical Society have passed resolutions condemning its attitude. Yet so strong is the creationist case in California that at least one new American biology textbook for elementary schools has appeared in two different versions. There is a 'national' edition, which carries a photograph of the late Dr Louis Leakey in its section on man's evolutionary origin. The California edition, adjusted to meet the requirements of the State Board of Education, is rather different. In place of Leakey the archaeologist is a picture of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel fresco of the creation of man.
It would be easy merely to scoff at such antics and at the often bigoted thinking behind these recent controversies. This would be an over-hasty judgement. On the positive side, a correctly cautious view of science is emerging from the battle which gives far wiser guidance for the young than the dogmatism so often shown both by scientists and by believers in special creation. At a meeting last month, for example, the Board received a report from its curriculum commission, which has agreed on three new guidelines to ensure the ' neutrality ' of science textbooks. These are that dogmatism in science be replaced by conditional statements, that science discusses 'how' and not 'ultimate causes' for origins, and that questions unresolved in science be presented to students to stimulate interest and inquiry. The temper of these guidelines contrast favourably with the narrow dogmatism of very many science textbooks. If such excellent sense can emerge from a battle between two groups of blinkered bigots, so much to the good.
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