Chapter 3

ATHEISM COMES INTO THE CLASSROOM THROUGH THE

BACK DOOR

How did philosophical materialism develop during the 19^th Century?

Galileo and Newton, those whom we credit for ushering in the age of modern science were strong Christians. In order to do science, they made assumptions that were derived directly from their Christian faith. Christian theology provides a philosophical foundation for science. In other words, Biblical Christianity justifies the presuppositions necessary for using the scientific method. Galileo and Newton believed that a constantly active providential God sustains the universe in a rational and orderly fashion because, according to the Bible, it is God’s nature to be rational and orderly. Furthermore, the universe must be real, and can be studied by human observers who interpret their observations of nature in a rationally understandable way.

By the early nineteenth century, however, the philosopher George F. W. Hegel had been promoting the idea that if the human mind had been made in the image of God, it should be possible for man to rethink God’s creative thoughts about the universe.

In the early 19^th century, Hegel and his followers controlled German universities. If Hegel’s approach to the discovery of new knowledge was valid, scientific laboratories were unnecessary. This infuriated German scientists, and a bitter controversy ensued. They argued that Hegel’s approach didn’t work when it came to answering questions about the physical universe. Scientists accused Hegel of lunacy, and the Hegelians accused scientists of using the wrong method to find new truth. This argument persisted for at least fifty years.

But by the mid-nineteenth century, many academicians realized that one way to patch things up between scientists and philosophers was to promote philosophical materialism. This view steadily gained momentum during the latter half of the nineteenth century.

The French philosopher, Auguste Comte, went to the opposite philosophical extreme (compared to the position embraced by Galileo and Newton). He claimed that if a question could not be addressed with the scientific method, then that question had no meaning. Science was regarded as man’s only source of absolute truth. Since matter was believed to be governed by Newton’s immutable laws of physics, it was then logical to assume that those laws gave all events their final explanation. The universe became a continuously woven fabric of cause and effect relationships that made the regularity of nature unbreakable. Comte called his view “logical positivism”.

Near the end of the nineteenth century, the German philosopher Ernst Haeckel proclaimed: “Towering above all the achievements and discoveries of the century we have the great, comprehensive ‘law of substance’, the fundamental law of the constancy of matter and force. The monism of the cosmos, which we establish thereon, proclaims the absolute dominion of the great eternal iron laws throughout the universe. It thus shatters, at the same time, the three central dogmas of the dualistic philosophy: the personality of God, the immortality of the soul, and the freedom of the will.”(ref.) It would be difficult to find a better expression of atheistic philosophical materialism than this quote from Haeckel’s “Riddle of the Universe”. (Haeckel’s book was published in fourteen languages.)

In the 19^th Century, what changes were occurring in geology and biology?

In the late 18^th century, James Hutton (a physician by training) put forth his principle of “uniformitarianism”. Hutton claimed that all geological events of the past could be understood in terms of processes going on today. But Hutton certainly crossed over the legitimate boundary of science into philosophy when he wrote: “Not only are no powers to be employed that are not natural to the globe, no action to be admitted of except those of which we know the principle, and no extraordinary events to be alleged in order to explain a common appearance….(finish this quote)” But it was the pioneering geologist Sir Charles Lyell who convinced most of the scientific world that the principle of uniformitarianism was the scientific basis of geology.

Now we come to the most famous event of the nineteenth century in the life sciences. –the publication of Charles Darwin’s “Origin of Species” in 1859. There’s no doubt that 19^th century Europe was ready for it. It meshed so well with the growing tide of 19^th century philosophical materialism. This was a time when Darwin, Alfred Russell Wallace, and Herbert Spencer had all been captivated by their study of struggle for existence in populations of living organisms.

But was Darwin an atheist? No. Darwin was an agnostic. In 1873 he wrote (in a letter to a Dutch student) “But I may say that the impossibility of conceiving that this grand and wondrous universe, with our conscious selves, arose through chance seems to me the chief argument for the existence of God: but whether this is an argument of real value, I have never been able to decide.” (as cited in Frankenberry, N.K.”The Faith of Scientists”, Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 2008 –p. 130) Charles Darwin could never resolve the issue of whether or not an intelligent designer was involved in bringing life to our planet. Darwin’s friend, the Duke of Argyle, wrote of a conversation he had with Darwin, during the last year of Darwin’s life: “I said to Mr. Darwin, with reference to some of his own remarkable works on the fertilization of orchids and upon earthworms and various other observations he made of the wonderful contrivances for certain purposes in nature –I said it was impossible to look at these without seeing that they were the effect and the expression of mind. I shall never forget Mr. Darwin’s answer. He looked at me very hard and said, ‘Well, that often comes over me with overwhelming force; but at other times’, and he shook his head vaguely, and added ‘It seems to go away.’” (Clark & Bales, “Why Scientists Accept Evolution”, Baker, 1966, 41-42)

Evolution with atheistic implications crept into the

biology classroom during the 20^th Century.

In the 20^th century, “creation vs. evolution” debates raged in school board meetings and in the courts. In the famous Scopes trial of 1925, creationists won, but it was a hollow victory. During the remaining 75 years, creationists lost in the courts, primarily because creation was seen as a religious tenet, and judges consistently decided that religion had no place in the science classroom.

In 1995, the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) issued a statement that evolution was an unsupervised and impersonal natural process. Two years later, scholars Alvin Platinga and Huston Smith wrote the NABT that since science is not equipped to deal with theological issues, teaching evolution as an unsupervised impersonal process was inappropriate in a science classroom.

But on October 8, 1997, on the first day of NABT’s Annual Meeting that year, the Board of Directors voted to retain the two controversial words (unsupervised and impersonal) in their policy statement on evolution. But on the very last day of their meeting, (October 11^th) the directors voted again –this time to delete them.

Not long after, Harvard’s Richard Lewontin allied himself with a group of distinguished scientists who asked the NABT to reconsider their October 11^th action to delete the words. They wrote that “Science is based upon fundamental assumptions that the world can only be explained by referring to natural mechanistic forces”. (Isn’t that basically what Ernst Haeckel wrote a century earlier?)

However a leading sociologist of science, Steven Fuller, refused to sign the Lewontin letter, explaining: “To describe evolution as impersonal and unsupervised is indeed ideological, especially when the people behind the petition themselves claim that evolution can neither prove nor disprove the existence of God. It’s agnosticism up front, but atheism through the back door.”

How is it possible for public school instructors to maintain religious or ideological neutrality, when best-known evolutionary biologists feel that evolution has profound metaphysical (and even atheistic) implications? Instructors must not ignore the fact that a significant minority of scientists disagree with the “universal common descent” hypothesis (as defined in my definition D in chapter 2).

According to human genome project director, Francis Collins (as expressed in a lecture given at Caltech on 2/5/09), approximately 40% of all scientists believe that a Supreme Being is responsible for the existence of our universe, and everything within it. (Most of them also believe that God is responsible for providential occurrences that take place within our universe –occurrences that their atheist colleagues would say were occurring by “blind chance”.) If this is true, approximately 40% of all scientists would have reservations about an “unguided” evolutionary hypothesis (definition E in chapter 2).

But is a science classroom the appropriate place for students to ponder the “blind watchmaker”view of evolution versus an “intelligent design” view? Perhaps not, for such an issue is well beyond the realm of scientific testability.

Regardless of whether or not philosophical implications of evolution should receive attention in a science classroom, the U.S. Congress has declared (in a conference report to the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act) that “where topics are taught that may generate controversy (such as biological evolution), the curriculum should help students to understand the full range of scientific views that exist, why such topics may generate controversy, and how scientific discoveries can profoundly affect society.” ( H.R. Rep. No 107-334, at 78 (2001)) There is absolutely no denying that the teaching of biological evolution has generated controversy, and it has profoundly affected society. No U.S. court has ever ruled that teachers cannot teach about scientific critiques of evolutionary biology as long as it is done in an atmosphere of intellectual openness. The most important aspect of this involves the term “scientific critique”. What may seem to be a scientific critique to an intelligent design advocate, may seem to someone else to be an argument in favor of a religious point of view. Nonetheless, it is worth noting that scientific critical analysis of neo-Darwinism has been sanctioned in at least ten states (either at the state or the district level). These states are Alabama (2001), New Mexico and Minnesota (2003), Ohio (2003-2006), Missouri (2005), Kansas (2005-2007), Pennsylvania, California, and Mississippi (2006), and Louisiana (2008). It is significant that this particular policy has never faced a court challenge in any of the above states. (C. Luskin, “Does Challenging Darwin Create Constitutional Jeopardy? A Comprehensive Survey of Case Law Regarding the Teaching of Biological Origins” Hamline Law Review 32(1), 59-61.)

But the question still remains, when might a “scientific critical analysis of neo-Darwinism” cross over the boundary of scientific issues into a philosophical domain? And also, if it were to cross over into a philosophical domain, and therefore be inappropriate to discuss in a science classroom, would it be acceptable to discuss the issue in some other class that was not a science class? In Louisiana’s 2008 “Science Education Act”, there is a specific provision that teachers are not to “promote discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs, or promote discrimination for or against religion or non-religion.” (Louisiana Science Education Act 473, cg. 17, 2008). It is quite conceivable that a Louisiana court might consider intelligent design to be a religious belief.

But one thing is for sure. Whenever the word “evolution” is used in a K-12 classroom, the instructor has an obligation to make clear which meaning (among the five definitions given in chapter 2) is intended by the user. If there is any doubt this can be done, then it would be better to avoid the “e-word” and substitute another word or phrase that does have a meaning that is unmistakable in its context.

Why would evolutionists object so loudly if someone wrote a text on biological origins and included all relevant scientific information (for which there is evidence) but did not once use the word “evolution”? W. R. Thompson, an entomologist and Fellow of the Royal Society has answered that question this way: “The concept of organic evolution is very highly prized by biologists, for many of whom it is an object of genuinely religious devotion, because they regard it as a supreme integrative principle.” (Thompson, W. R. “Science and Common Sense” Albany, New York: Maji Books, Inc., 1965, P. 229)