Ethics and Public Policy
Essays by Harry T. Cook March 2, 2008 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Scroll down on this screen and you will find this week’s essay, “Just A Theory,” being commentary upon a recent decision of education officials in Florida concerning the teaching of evolution. It is an arrangement with which both ardent agnostics and fervent Bible believers seem to be content. Curious.
to read this week’s sermon, “I Once Was Blind, But Now I See.” John Newton’s familiar hymn text and his remarkable moral conversion are cited as what some might call miracles.
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Harry T. Cook
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Just a Theory
By Harry T. Cook
It has been reported that state education officials in Florida have magnanimously agreed to have evolution taught in public school science classes there as long as it is taught as a “theory” yet to be proven.
Those terms seem to have satisfied religious conservatives in the Sunshine State because the hated observations of Charles Darwin will not be taught as “fact.”
A little reporting revealed that there has been much praising of the Lord among evangelical Floridians that the infidel has been vanquished.
A little more reporting disclosed that many teachers of public school science classes in Florida are grinning like Cheshire cats, because that’s all they’ve ever wanted to do is to teach evolution as a “theory.” No scientist deserving of the name would teach evolution as “fact,” because it isn’t.
Darwin’s ground-clearing work, published in 1859 as On the Origin of Species,does, indeed, represent a “theory” in the world of scientists. A “theory” is an as yet unproven, provisional conclusion of an exhaustive regimen of data sifting, analysis and testing, which becomes a working explanation for whatever is being scrutinized.
The idea is to try to disprove – not prove – a hypothesis, but gradually to let it evolve into a “theory” until a better explanation comes along through the same testing process. Nothing yet has come along to replace the Theory of Natural Selection, or what is loosely called “evolution.”
To be sure, Darwin’s work just as Galileo’s before him, contradicts what the Bible seems to say about the development of life. That’s the beef of the politically connected Religious Right in Florida and elsewhere. But who cares? The United States of America is bound to no religious ideology in the conduct of its governmental affairs; and, through the jurisprudential principle known as “incorporation,” neither are its several states.
Meanwhile it is worth observing that the Bible is not and never was a collection of scientific documents – for one thing because the obvious intention of their various authors were argumentative and polemical and not founded on objective observation and analysis, and for another because what we might call the Age of Science (as we understand “science”) was still more than two millennia on up the road from the approximate date of the earliest biblical document and no fewer than 1,500 years from the latest.
Withal, Florida public schools are, mirable dictu, doing what both scientists and fundamentalist Christians want them to do where evolution is concerned.
Is this a great country, or what?
© Copyright 2008, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.
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