William J. Bennetta
On 9 November, Alabama's Board of Education decided to
disseminate a litany of lies and religious cant to all the young
people who study biology in Alabama's public schools. Biology
textbooks used in Alabama classrooms are to be decked with "A
Message from the Alabama State Board of Education" that seeks to
deceive students, undermine science education, instill false
notions about organic evolution, and promote creationism.
The Board's "Message" demands close examination and analysis,
because it incorporates some innovative tricks and falsehoods
that creationists are employing nowadays, not only in Alabama but
throughout the United States.
Creationism is a fundamentalist political movement. The
creationists seek to impose onto the population at large, by
political means, a religion that revolves around the creation
myths of the ancient Israelites, as retold in the King James
Version of the Holy Bible. The creationists' ultimate goal is to
abolish natural science and to replace it with a system of
pseudoscience devoted to affirming the narratives in the Bible's
first section, the Book of Genesis.
In working toward that goal, the creationists try to corrupt the
public's understanding of scientific knowledge and of science
itself. Their most conspicuous efforts are aimed at eroding the
teaching of science in public schools. They promote curricula
that misrepresent science, they demand that teachers present
scientific findings and biblical myths as equivalent
alternatives, they try to prevent the teaching of any science
that contravenes biblical lore, and they try to force the schools
to disseminate Bible stories that have been cloaked in
"scientific" disguises.
In all of these efforts, the creationists make abundant use of a
simple tactic: They lie. They lie continually, they lie
prodigiously, and they lie because they must. The idea that the
Bible could serve to explain nature collapsed in the 1800s,
under an overwhelming mass of scientific information that
discredited any naive, literal reading of Genesis, but the
creationists have to deny that this ever happened. They also
must deny all that science has learned since then about the
history of Earth and Earth's organisms -- and the only way to do
this is to tell lies. They tell lies about nature, lies about
science and lies about their own doctrines and aims, and they
change the lies, from time to time, to fit prevailing
circumstances. This is an important part of the story behind the
Alabama Board's "Message," and to understand it we must look back
to some things that happened, more than a decade ago, in the
nearby state of Arkansas. Those events in Arkansas did much to
shape the falsehoods that now are to be used on students in
Alabama.
Transparent Deceptions
In 1981 creationists in Arkansas secured the passage of a statute
that promoted the teaching of "creation-science" in public
schools. "Creation-science" was a collection of pseudoscientific
claims and fabrications that creationists had been using as a
strategic device since the early 1970s. The creationists said
that it gave "scientific" validation for prominent episodes in
the Bible, and that it refuted evolutionary views of the
universe, Earth, and living things.
The Arkansas statute required the public schools to accord
"balanced treatment" to "creation-science" and
"evolution-science," and the statute's Section 4(a) defined
"creation-science" in this way:
"Creation-science" means the scientific evidences for creation
and inferences from those evidences. Creation-science includes
the scientific evidences and related inferences that indicate (1)
Sudden creation of the universe, energy, and life from nothing;
(2) The insufficiency of mutation and natural selection in
bringing about development of all living kinds from a single
organism; (3) Changes only within fixed limits of originally
created kinds of plants and animals; (4) Separate ancestry for
man and apes; (5) Explanation of the earth's geology by
catastrophism, including the occurrence of a worldwide flood;
and (6) A relatively recent inception of the earth and living
kinds.
It was all a lie, and this was obvious. The six notions for
which "creation-science" allegedly offered "scientific evidences"
were not scientific at all. They were easily recognizable as
fundamentalist religious doctrines, even though the creationists
had sanitized them in the hope of evading the First Amendment's
establishment clause, which forbids any law that would establish
an official religion. "Creation-science" proffered creation
without a Creator, and a lower-case flood instead of the great
biblical Flood, but these little deceptions were transparent. So
were the references to "living kinds" and "created kinds" of
organisms; the word kinds, which has no biological meaning, had
been adopted from the King James rendering of Genesis. And the
item about a "relatively recent inception" of Earth was an
unmistakable restatement of the fundamentalist belief that
Earth's age is only 6,000 years or so -- a belief derived from
calculations involving the lifespans of biblical patriarchs.
(The most famous of these calculations was published in 1650 by
the Irish churchman James Ussher. He concluded that Earth had
been created in 4004 BC, and his result has been printed as a
margin-note in many editions of the Bible.)
The Arkansas statute was immediately challenged in a lawsuit
filed by an array of plaintiffs, including officials of various
religious organizations, parents of schoolchildren, and the
National Association of Biology Teachers. The case was tried
before Judge William R. Overton in the United States District
Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas; and in January 1982,
Overton ruled that the statute was unconstitutional because it
tried to establish a state religion.
Overton issued a long, analytical opinion in which he showed that
"creation-science" was simply biblical literalism in disguise,
and one of his points was especially potent:
Creation science as described in Section 4(a) fails to meet [the
essential characteristics of science]. First, the section
revolves around 4(a)(1), which asserts a sudden creation "from
nothing." Such a concept is not science because it depends on a
supernatural intervention which is not guided by natural law. . .
.
If the unifying idea of supernatural creation by God is removed
from Section 4, the remaining parts of the section explain
nothing and are meaningless assertions . . . .
That declaration -- the declaration, by a federal court, that the
concept of creation is necessarily entwined with supernaturalism
and is not science -- produced a rapid and profound change in the
creationists' tactics. As quickly as they could, the
creationists got rid of creation! They didn't alter their
doctrines or their political aims, of course, but they radically
revised their rhetoric. Leaders of the effort to thrust
biblical beliefs into public schools purged the word creation
from their public pronouncements and writings, and they revised
their old lies to produce new ones which were creation-free. And
though they continued to peddle much of the same rubbish that
they once had called "creation-science," they did away with its
name: The expression creation-science was dumped.
In revising their claims about organisms and the history of life
on Earth, shrewd creationists and their spokesmen have replaced
the word creation with several alternative terms. One of these
is intelligent design. Instead of contending that organisms have
been divinely created, the creationists say that organisms are
products of "intelligent design" or "an intelligent designer."
That the design and the designer are supernatural is clearly
suggested but never stated.
Two other terms that the creationists have enlisted as code-words
for creation are the phrases sudden appearance and abrupt
appearance. Instead of saying that organisms have been created,
creationists now say that organisms "appeared abruptly" or
"suddenly appeared" on Earth. That sudden appearance bespeaks
creation by Yahweh, the god of Genesis, is left as an
implication.
Sudden-appearance stuff plays a role in the religious devotions
of the Alabama State Board of Education, as we shall see when we
look at the text of the Board's "Message." First, though, we
must understand the full significance of such stuff. It
transcends the mere use of obfuscatory code-words, because the
notion of sudden appearance -- which at first was just a
rhetorical substitute for the concept of creation -- has now
become something more than that. The creationists have
elaborated it into their preferred way of dealing with the fossil
record.
The fossil record of life on Earth is clearly a record of
organic evolution. The creationists have always found this
infuriating and embarrassing (to say the least), and their
efforts to deny it have given rise to some of their wildest
falsehoods. For example, the original proponents of
"creation-science" fashioned a network of bizarre lies about the occurrence
and distribution of fossils, and they presented these lies as
"evidences" that the entire fossil record had been laid down
during a single event: Fossils, they announced, were the remains
of organisms that had died in the biblical Flood.
Today, of course, most creationist leaders refuse to be
associated (in public, at least) with any such invocation of
miracles and supernaturalism. Instead, they offer a mixture of
lies and meaningless assertions that have been designed to convey
three false ideas. First: The fossil record is full of sudden
appearances -- cases in which new organisms show up suddenly,
without any precursors or ancestors. Second: This means that the
organisms actually came into existence suddenly and without any
precursors. Third: Because the organisms came into existence
suddenly without precursors, they could not have originated
through evolution.
This is one of the daffiest constructs that the creationists have
ever put forward, and it makes the fossils-from-the-Flood story
seem tame. If you look again at the ideas that are involved
here, you'll see that the first two, taken together, amount to a
claim that the fossil record is literally perfect! The
creationists are saying that the record contains, and we have
unearthed, the remains of every organism that ever lived! Only
if that were true would an organism's "sudden appearance,"
without any known precursor, mean that no precursor existed.
Needless to say, however, it isn't true. It is patently false
and patently asinine -- but it suits the purposes of the Alabama
State Board of Education.
Mechanisms of Deceit
The Alabama Board's "Message" to students is to be printed on
adhesive labels, and such labels are to be applied to all the
biology textbooks used in Alabama's public schools. In the text
of the "Message," the Board tries to deceive and confuse students
by using three major mechanisms, all of which are creationist
favorites. The Board dispenses plain lies (some in the form of
statements, some disguised as questions); the Board makes
statements which convey false implications; and the Board
presents claims or questions which appear to carry information
but which are, in fact, quite meaningless.
Here is the entire "Message," followed by my comments. The
numerals shown in square brackets, within the "Message," refer to
the comments:
A Message from the Alabama State Board of Education
This textbook discusses evolution, a controversial theory [1]
some scientists present as a scientific explanation for the
origin of living things,[2] such as plants, animals and
humans.[3]
No one was present when life first appeared on earth. Therefore,
any statement about life's origins should be considered as
theory, not fact.[4]
The word "evolution" may refer to many types of change.
Evolution describes changes that occur within a species.[5]
(White moths, for example, may "evolve" into gray moths.)[6]
This process is microevolution, which can be observed and
described as fact. Evolution may also refer to the change of one
living thing to another, such as reptiles into birds. This
process, called macroevolution, has never been observed and
should be considered a theory.[7] Evolution also refers to the
unproven belief that random, undirected forces produced a world
of living things.[8]
There are many unanswered questions about the origin of life
which are not mentioned in your textbook, including:
- Why did the major groups of animals suddenly appear in the
fossil record (known as the "Cambrian Explosion")? [9]
- Why have no new major groups of living things appeared in the
fossil record for a long time? [10]
- Why do major groups of plants and animals have no
transitional forms in the fossil record? [11]
- How did you and all living things come to possess such a
complete and complex set of "instructions" for building a living
body? [12]
Study hard and keep an open mind. Someday you may contribute to
the theories of how living things appeared on earth. [13]
- This is the first of several instances in which the Board
uses the word theory in false and deceptive ways. Creationists
invariably do this, seeking to promote and exploit the common
notion that a theory is a mere speculation and that the word
theory is an antonym of fact. In the lexicon of science,
however, theory has quite a different meaning: Scientists use
theory to denote a structure of ideas, confirmed by preponderant
evidence, that explains a body of observations and thus explains
some aspect of nature.
The Board's statement that organic evolution is a "theory" is
false. Evolution isn't a theory but a phenomenon of nature.
There is a theory of evolution, which explains how and why
evolution occurs, but the theory and the phenomenon are two
different things.
Evolution isn't "controversial," either. Evolution is (and has
been for many decades) the grand, unifying principle of all
biology, and there is no controversy about this. By falsely
branding evolution as "controversial," the Board evidently hopes
to make evolution seem marginal, scary or both.
- False. Evolution accounts not for "the origin of living
things" but for the transformation of populations and the origin
of new species. The Board is deliberately confusing the origin
of life with the subsequent diversification of living things.
This is another classic trick of the creationists, dating from
the days of "creation-science."
- Humans are animals, even if Bible-thumpers deny this. By
separating "animals" from "humans," the Board shows that it is
dealing in atavistic religious fancies, not science.
- As I've said, creationists like to promote the misconception
that theory is an antonym of fact -- that theories and facts are
mutually exclusive and mutually antagonistic. In truth, however,
theories and facts are not antagonistic but complementary:
Theories explain facts, and facts support theories. Students
have to grasp this point if they are to understand how science
works and how scientific knowledge is organized, but the Board is
seeking not to promote understanding but to sow confusion.
The Board's claim that "any statement about life's origins"
should be considered a "theory" is nonsensical. As we know, a
theory is a structure of explanatory ideas confirmed by
preponderant evidence -- but there are plenty of statements
"about life's origins" that explain nothing and aren't supported
by anything.
- At the top of the "Message," evolution was a "controversial
theory." Now it is a description of "changes that occur within a
species." Does this mean that a description is a controversial
theory? Again, the Board is sowing confusion.
- That inscrutable stuff seems to be an addled allusion to the
work of H.B.D. Kettlewell, who studied some effects of selection
on populations of the moth Biston betularia. The effects that
Kettlewell described, however, were changes in the frequencies
of light and dark morphs -- not the evolution of white moths into
gray moths. The Board's notions about biology seem to be based
on Bible-camp rumors, rather than on any reading of scientific
literature. This complies with creationist tradition.
- Those two claims about "microevolution" and "macroevolution,"
taken together, seem clearly intended to convey three notions:
that fact means something which has been directly observed; that
theory means something which has not; and (once again) that fact
and theory are antonyms. All those notions are false and will
keep students from understanding what scientific facts are and
how scientific facts are developed.
- That is the third claim about the meaning of "evolution," and
it is an outright lie. There is no scientific context -- none --
in which "evolution" refers to any "belief that random,
undirected forces produced a world of living things."
- There it is: sudden appearance! But before we can analyze
the Board's sudden-appearance stuff, we must sort out that
rubbish about the "Cambrian Explosion." Contrary to the Board's
belief, Cambrian explosion isn't a synonym for fossil record, and
the fossil record isn't "known as" the Cambrian Explosion. The
term Cambrian explosion denotes the rapid diversification of
animal life, as seen in the fossil record, during the Cambrian
Period. This diversification was very fast, in terms of
geological time, but it wasn't "sudden" in any ordinary sense.
It spanned several million years.
The Board's ostensible question about sudden appearances and the
Cambrian explosion is nothing but drivel. Without a definition
of "the major groups of animals," it is completely meaningless --
and if we supply a definition, the drivel becomes a lie. Let me
demonstrate this:
Suppose that we invoke conventional classification and define
"the major groups of animals" as the broadest groups in the
animal kingdom -- the phyla. Now, did all of the animal phyla
"suddenly appear" in the fossil record during the Cambrian
explosion? No, they did not. Fossils show that the cnidarians,
for example, were prospering in the oceans before the Cambrian
Period began. Conversely, some phyla -- such as the bryozoans
and the loriciferans -- are not represented in the Cambrian
record at all. (The earliest fossils of bryozoans date from the
Ordovician Period, the one that followed the Cambrian.) In
short, there is no truth in any claim that all the animal phyla
appeared in the fossil record, suddenly and simultaneously,
during the Cambrian explosion.
But maybe the Board's "major groups" are not phyla. Maybe they
are classes. If we adopt that definition, then the Board is
claiming that such things as birds, spiders, insects and mammals
suddenly showed up in the Cambrian seas! Enough said. No matter
what meaning we assign to "major groups," the Alabama Board's
claim turns into a lie.
- This too is completely meaningless. What are "major
groups"? What is "a long time"? The Board is serving up some
more drivel, though its purpose isn't clear to me. Maybe it is
meant to imply that the fossil record confirms the biblical
account of creation. (According to that account, Yahweh quickly
fashioned all living things and then retired.) Or maybe it is
meant to imply that there is no such thing as evolution, because
evolution would have to produce "major groups" continually and
frequently. In fact, however, nothing in our theory of
evolution requires a steady, unending parade of new "major
groups."
- Here again, an ostensible question conveys an empty and
deceptive claim. Indeed, the Board is simply restating its
drivel about sudden appearances. The claim that unidentified,
undefined "major groups" have "no transitional forms" is another
way of saying that they appeared suddenly, with no precursors to
connect them to any other unidentified, undefined "major groups."
Denying the existence of transitional forms was a favorite
activity of the luminaries who cooked up "creation-science."
Today's creationists are sustaining that tradition and are using
the traditional devices: lies and double-talk. But even as the
lies persist, so do the fossils that discredit the liars. Look
at Archaeopteryx. Look at Ichthyostega and Acanthostega, two
transitional forms on the path that led to tetrapods. Look at
the beautiful series of transitional fossils that show how the
mammalian jaw articulation, in which the dentary bone is joined
to the squamosal, arose from an earlier arrangement in which the
articular bone rotated on the quadrate.
Maybe the Board would reply that those cases don't count, because
tetrapods, birds, and mammals aren't "major groups." Well, that
might work at a Bible camp in Dogpatch or Rednecktown, but it
won't work here. The Board had its chance to define what it
meant by "major groups" but it refused, so I shall take care of
that matter right now. I declare that the tetrapods, the birds,
and the mammals are all major groups, and I declare that the
Board is a group of liars.
- The origin of the instructions (by continual, open-ended
elaboration and modification of nucleic acids) is not the mystery
that the Board makes it out to be. And the notion that the
instructions are "complete," in any sense of that word, could
occur only to people who are utterly ignorant of biology.
- That this Board should offer advice about scholarship, or
should speak about keeping an "open mind," strikes me as
grotesque, but I can't disagree with the idea that the students
in Alabama's schools should study hard. I wish those students
well, and I hope that they will resist being conned and abused by
the Alabama State Board of Education.
I thank Kevin Padian, Peter U. Rodda and Michael T. Ghiselin for
providing information that I have used in writing this article.
Padian is a paleontologist and a professor in the Department of
Integrative Biology at the University of California at Berkeley.
Rodda, a geologist and paleontologist, is a staff scientist at
the California Academy of Sciences, in San Francisco. Ghiselin
is a biologist, a senior research fellow at the California
Academy of Sciences, and chairman of the Academy's Center for
the History and Philosophy of Science.
William J. Bennetta is a professional editor, a fellow of the
California Academy of Sciences, the president of The Textbook
League, and the editor of The Textbook Letter. He writes
frequently about the propagation of quackery, false "science" and
false "history" in schoolbooks.
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