No fight over what gets taught in American classrooms is more heated
than the battle over humanity's origins. For more than a century we have
argued about evolutionary theory and creationism (and its successor
theory, intelligent design), yet we seem no closer to a resolution than
we were in Darwin's day. In this thoughtful examination of how we teach
origins, historian Adam Laats and philosopher Harvey Siegel offer
crucial new ways to think not just about the evolution debate but how
science and religion can make peace in the classroom.
Laats and Siegel agree with most scientists: creationism is flawed, as
science. But, they argue, students who believe it nevertheless need to
be accommodated in public school science classes. Scientific or not,
creationism maintains an important role in American history and culture
as a point of religious dissent, a sustained form of protest that has
weathered a century of broad--and often dramatic--social changes. At the
same time, evolutionary theory has become a critical building block of
modern knowledge. The key to accommodating both viewpoints, they show,
is to disentangle belief from knowledge. A student does not need to
believe in evolution in order to understand its tenets and evidence,
and in this way can be fully literate in modern scientific thought and
still maintain contrary religious or cultural views. Altogether, Laats
and Siegel offer the kind of level-headed analysis that is crucial to
finding a way out of our culture-war deadlock.
