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Law Review Article Documents the Role of Anti-Religious Activism in Evolution Advocacy

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Would an objective individual, familiar with the history of evolutionary theory, perceive the idea as religiously neutral? As I discussed here in the context of a newly published law review article, this is a question that courts have not asked — even though they evaluate the religious associations of alternative scientific theories.

In the article, “Darwin’s Poisoned Tree: Atheistic Advocacy and the Constitutionality of Teaching Evolution in Public Schools,” Casey Luskin examines the way courts have struck down the teaching of alternatives to evolution in public schools because of their historical associations with religion. At the same time, courts typically ignore the anti-religious historical associations of Darwinism. As Luskin documents, the result is a double standard. He argues that religious associations of scientific views on origins science should be considered not constitutionally fatal, but rather as an “incidental effect.”

In a section that spans an impressive 76 pages with 380+ footnotes, Luskin documents numerous historical associations between anti-religious thought and activism, on one hand, and evolution on the other. Darwin and his contemporaries pointed out those connections, as have prominent scientists down to today, echoed by the popular media and atheists, including the modern “New Atheist” movement. Here is a small sampling of the evidence Luskin provides.

From the beginning of the idea’s history, evolution has been linked to atheism:

Historian and legal scholar Edward J. Larson writes that prior to Darwin “the doctrine of special creation had dominated Western biological thought.” But even early evolutionary ideas had anti-religious associations. As historian Peter Bowler explains, pre-Darwinian formulations of evolution, such as Lamarckism, were “firmly linked to materialism, atheism, and radical politics.”

After the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859, the link between anti-religious activities and evolution became stronger. Larson observes that “[b]y replacing a divine Creator with a survival-of-the-fittest process as the immediate designer of species, Darwin’s theory undermined natural theology.” Physicist Taner Edis explains that “[e]volutionary theory immediately caused religious turmoil.” Richard Dawkins applauds this intellectual shift, noting that “although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”

A spokesperson for the National Center for Science Education once glibly asserted that “if Dawkins didn’t exist, [ID proponents] would invent him anyway.” Yet, Luskin writes, “innumerable other examples could be given of scientists and academics who similarly use evolution to oppose religion.” For example:

In 2006, 49 scientists (mostly biologists) from the University of Virginia wrote en masse that “[n]ot only does evolution clash with religious dogma, but it undermines the significance that some would like to give to the place of humans in the universe.” The following month, the eminent evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne from the University of Chicago discussed evolution education on NBC’s Today show, declaring that “[t]he scientific way of looking at the world, which depends on evidence, and the religious way of looking at the world, which depends on faith, are fundamentally incompatible.” Later that year, Time magazine reported in an article discussing evolution that “the antireligion position is being promoted with increasing insistence by scientists…”

Luskin quotes University of North Carolina at Charlotte anthropologist Jonathan Marks who observes that cultural conflicts between science and religion are as much the result of scientists making anti-religious statements in the name of evolution as they are anything else. Marks wrote:

Evolution provides the most empirically valid explanation that we have for the present existence of life. Period. But why should it really matter whether we are descended from arboreal hairy primates or not?…The reason it matters to so many people is that scientists have made it matter, and they’ve done so in the worst possible way. They’ve taken a proposition… — “We are descended from apes” — and stretched it into a series of additional propositions, often both authoritative and odious. Thirty years ago, in a widely read scientific-philosophical work called Chance and Necessity, the French molecular biologist Jacques Monod argued that evolution shows life to be meaningless.

After citing many scholars who note that Darwin’s ideas have been historically used to oppose religion, Luskin writes:

Peter Bowler contends that Huxley’s enthusiasm for evolution was motivated by a desire to pose a “challenge to religion . . . based upon the desire to present science as a source of authority to supplant the church.” Many beyond Huxley shared this motive, as Bowler observes that in the decades following Darwin, “[o]pponents of religion openly rejoiced at the prospect of replacing ancient superstition with a philosophy based on a scientific understanding of human nature.” By the 1909 celebration of the publication of Origin of Species, Marsha L. Richmond explains that for many of the attendees, “‘Darwinism’ connote[d] a certain naturalistic and materialistic worldview…” During this period, “evolution was widely perceived as a component of the rationalist campaign against organized religion.” The perception that evolution opposed religion was becoming crystallized within society, as the warfare model became “[d]eeply embedded in the culture of the west, [and] has proven extremely hard to dislodge.” Taner Edis suggests that the decades following Darwin’s work into the early twentieth century were “a golden age of nonbelief.”

After the Scopes trial of 1925, the controversy over evolution died down as both sides entered a “thirty-year truce.” The controversy was revived in 1959 when prominent evolutionists gathered at the University of Chicago to celebrate the centennial of the publication of Origin of Species in what has been called the pinnacle of America’s acceptance of Darwinian thought. Julian Huxley, the grandson of T. H. Huxley, proclaimed … at the centennial of Origin of Species that evolution spelled the death of religion:

In the evolutionary pattern of thought there is no longer either need or room for the supernatural. The earth was not created: it evolved. So did all the animals and plants that inhabit it, including our human selves, mind and soul as well as brain and body. So did religion…

Evolutionary man can no longer take refuge from his loneliness in the arms of a divinized father figure whom he himself created, nor escape from the responsibility of making decisions by sheltering under the umbrella of Divine Authority, nor absolve himself from the hard task of meeting his present problems by relying on the will of an omniscient but unfortunately inscrutable Providence….

Peter Bowler explains that soon thereafter, the modern creationist movement began as a response to anti-religious evolution advocacy:

The more materialistic implications of Darwin’s thinking became widely accepted only in the twentieth century, when biologists at last became convinced that natural selection was the driving force of evolution. As scientists began to insist that we must learn to live with the idea that we are the products of a purposeless, and hence, morally neutral natural world, so the modern creationist backlash began.

Courts love to blame any tensions between evolution and religion on religious persons. But Luskin notes that even Francis Collins — a leading biologist, who is deeply religious and an evolutionist — has observed these tensions result not necessarily from the religious community but from atheists in the scientific community who have aggressively used science to attack religion. Collins says:

I don’t think it’s fair to blame believers for getting defensive about attacks on the Bible when they see their whole belief system is under attack from some members of the scientific community who are using the platform of science to say, “We don’t need God anymore, that was all superstition, and you guys should get over it.” Believers then feel some requirement to respond, and this has led to an unfortunate escalation of charges and countercharges.

Other prominent theistic evolutionists admit that many leading scientists promote a cultural perception that evolution is hostile to religion. Luskin writes:

Also in 2002, pro-evolution physicist Karl Giberson and historian Donald Yerxa discussed the anti-religious agenda of a small but influential cadre of leading scientific writers who expound on Darwin to the public…. “[T]here is not a single leading popularizer of science who openly holds traditional religious views, and there are very few who hold any views that could be described as religious,” write Giberson and Yerxa. Many of these writers “are positively hostile to traditional religion and committed to demonstrating that science not only fails to corroborate any religious perspectives, but can actually dismantle and refute any religious perspective on the world.”

Many prominent modern scientists affiliated with evolutionary viewpoints continue to reject theism:

Surveys and reports on the affiliations and viewpoints of leading scientists suggest that many of them view evolution as antithetical to religion. At the time of a 1996 survey, as at the turn of the century, about 40% of scientists believed in God, but a related study of NAS (National Academy of Sciences) scientists found “near universal rejection of the transcendent by NAS natural scientists.” This was particularly acute [with] NAS biologists, where only 5.6% believed in God. The authors contrasted the statements of NAS booklets on science and creationism and the realities of NAS membership:

The [NAS Science and Creationism] booklet assures readers, “Whether God exists or not is a question about which science is neutral.” NAS President Bruce Alberts said: ‘There are many outstanding members of this academy who are religious people who believe in evolution, many of them biologists.’ Our survey suggests otherwise.

Richard Dawkins reports that the Fellows of the Royal Society of London were polled on their religious beliefs. Of those that responded to the poll, only 3.3% “agreed strongly with the statement that a personal god exists” while 78.8% “strongly disagreed.” Dawkins commented that, “[w]hat is remarkable is the polar opposition between the religiosity of the American public at large and the atheism of the intellectual elite.”

The results of the poll cited by Dawkins were confirmed by a poll conducted by William Provine and Gregory Graffin, published in The Scientist. Provine and Graffin surveyed 149 leading evolutionary biologists and found that 78% were “pure naturalists,” and strikingly, “[o]nly two out of 149 described themselves as full theists.”

Similarly, biology textbooks describe evolution in ways that further public perceptions associating evolution with anti-religious views. They have often described evolution as unguided and random, and several go so far as to explicitly demean the spiritual realm. Douglas Futuyma notes in his college textbook Evolutionary Biology, “By coupling undirected, purposeless variation to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of life superfluous.” Luskin notes that one of Kenneth Miller’s textbooks leaves readers “with a starkly anti-theistic passage on the implications of evolution”:

Darwin knew that accepting his theory required believing in philosophical materialism, the conviction that matter is the stuff of all existence and that all mental and spiritual phenomena are its by-products. Darwinian evolution was not only purposeless but also heartless — a process in which the rigors of nature ruthlessly eliminate the unfit. Suddenly, humanity was reduced to just one more species in a world that cared nothing for us. The great human mind was no more than a mass of evolving neurons. Worst of all, there was no divine plan to guide us.

Furthermore, atheistic organizations openly advocate for evolution. As one example, Luskin writes:

Taner Edis says, “[I]n the United States, there is a recent movement to celebrate February 12, Darwin’s birthday, as ‘Darwin Day.’ This event is supported largely by humanist, free-thought, and atheist-oriented groups, using slogans of science and humanity. Naturally, the scientific community responds positively, treating it as a public outreach….”

Popular media repeats these anti-religious associations with evolution — from the well-known Inherit the Wind to the TV series Cosmos, whose first edition featured Carl Sagan, and second Neil deGrasse Tyson. Millions of people watched these series, which promoted the public perception that an evolutionary viewpoint opposes religion. Luskin observes:

One of the main spokespersons for science in the late 20th century, Carl Sagan, was a prolific expositor of science to the public. One of his most famous statements is from his book Cosmos and the eponymous 1980 television series watched by millions where Sagan promotes evolution and proclaims, “the Cosmos is all that there is or ever was or ever will be.”

The exact same statement — “the Cosmos is all that there is or ever was or ever will be” — was repeated in the opening scene of the 2014 reboot of Cosmos which aired on Fox. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, the series’s host, strongly promotes evolution, explaining that life is the result of “unguided” and “mindless evolution.” Knowing Tyson’s personal views, this is unsurprising. Bill Moyers described Tyson as the “unabashed defender of knowledge over superstition and clearly the rightful heir to Carl Sagan’s curiosity and charisma.” When asked by Moyers whether faith and reason are compatible, Tyson answered, “I don’t think they’re reconcilable,” and later stated, “God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance.”…

Other creators of the 2014 edition of Cosmos expressed their desire to use the series to attack what they view as religion. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times titled “Seth MacFarlane Hopes ‘Cosmos’ Counteracts ‘Junk Science,’ Creationism,” executive producer MacFarlane acknowledged the series’ intent to oppose “a resurgence of creationism and intelligent design quote-unquote theory.” Elsewhere MacFarlane has stated, “There have to be people who are vocal about the advancement of knowledge over faith.”

Luskin notes that another executive producer of Cosmos, Star Trek writer Brannon Braga, is vocal about atheism, and its role, not only in Star Trek, but in Cosmos, stating that he anticipated Cosmos would oppose the “dark forces of irrational thinking,” as “religion doesn’t own awe and mystery. Science does it better.”

Luskin goes into much more depth in his article, documenting links between evolution and atheistic advocacy. Since the inception of the theory, many have coupled evolution with anti-religious rhetoric. Yet courts ignore these connections — while at the same time declaring alternative theories are unconstitutional to teach because of their religious associations.

In the next post, I will address how Luskin recommends courts respond to connections between atheism and evolution advocacy: not by declaring evolution unconstitutional to teach in public schools, but by reevaluating tests that examine the religious or anti-religious associations of origins science theories.

Photo: Atheist pin badges, by {{{1}}} (Flickr: Pin Badges) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Sarah Chaffee

Now a teacher, Sarah Chaffee served as Program Officer in Education and Public Policy at Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. She earned her B.A. in Government. During college she interned at Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler’s office and for Prison Fellowship Ministries. Before coming to Discovery, she worked for a private land trust with holdings in the Southwest.

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