Evolution: will it be taught in school?
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When teaching school children about science, there are only two ways to deal with the inevitable false claims. One is to ignore them. The other is to teach them — in necessary detail — and then refute them. 

To refute every false claim is impossible. There just isn’t enough time. Even if there were time, it would just bewilder the children. Science taught in school is not supposed to bewilder. It should clarify and — if possible — inspire. That’s the goal of most science teachers.

In “Darwin, divinity can share the same schoolhouse,” Charles F. Austerberry’s optimism about the current war against evolution leaves me uncertain. Is he offering a peace plan, or trying to reduce the tensions with a laugh?

There will be no constant warring against evolution, he says, if only it is taught with religious neutrality. And I thought that’s what we were doing all the time! Austerberry says teachers should just tell their students that “the results of scientific investigations do not establish any particular philosophy or religion.” Aside from the fact that this well-meant proposal is not new, there are a few things badly wrong with it.

First, epistemology — the nature and limits of human knowledge — is a main branch of philosophy. Natural science — which is what we’re talking about — is based upon particular epistemic standards: the rule of evidence, open communication and peer review, repetition of observations and experiments, isolation of variables, avoidance of bias, scrupulous scholarship.

Good scientists try to follow these standards in their effort to understand the physical world. That effort, under such principles, is only about 300 years old, but it has changed the world. There is nothing multicultural about honest inquiry. It transcends culture.

So, although science may not “establish any particular philosophy,” as Austerberry says, it does favor its particular philosophy of knowledge over all others. To pretend in front of children that it does not is to mislead them.

Second, Austerberry’s peace plan implies that the current conflict is not really about the content of evolutionary biology but about the tone of classroom teaching. As anyone who follows the daily output from intelligent design promoters knows, that’s wrong.

Although some have tried, they have failed during their decade-long takeover of neo-creationism to find any scientific evidence for agency, for supernatural intervention, in the history of life. Yes, there may be or may have been such intervention — science cannot disprove it. But to date, nobody has offered any evidence in favor of it — as defined by those 300-year-old rules. Science is about evidence.

Having failed to produce positive evidence, neo-creationism has returned to its tradition of slandering evolution. In doing so, it defames all biology, because evolution is its central organizing principle and has been for almost 100 years.

“Teach the controversy”— a slogan once used by postmodern-bedazzled, leftist academics — is the current form of the mostly rightist, creationist attack on science. Given the massively promoted claim of the new creationism, “compatibilism” is impossible.

The claims of the intelligent design movement is that Darwinism (biology) is riddled with error, fraud and conspiracy to hide the truth of its own collapse. If you don’t believe this, seek out the primary scientific literature, not just the propaganda of neo-creationism. If you need pointers to the literature, see my book co-written with Barbara Forrest, titled Creationism’s Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design. In our book, we try to bring that primary literature to a larger public.

If the subject matter of science classes makes a few children uncomfortable, that’s very troubling. But parents or clergy must deal with it. Perhaps they can show that a sow’s ear and a silk purse are contradictory, yet equally valid, descriptions of the same thing.

Paul R. Gross is University Professor of Life Sciences emeritus at the University of Virginia.