Evolution as Faith

For those interested in a great history of the anti-evolution movement, I heartily recommend a book by Ronald L. Numbers, The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design (the expanded edition is great). Reading Numbers's detailed, riveting text, an odd thing happens, at least for me: I start rooting for the creationists. Throughout the early twentieth century and thereafter, the creationist cause seems forever vexed by the scorn of mainstream science and the internal divisiveness of its proponents. More poignant still are the stories of creationists who recognized the need to gain education in mainstream science only to find themselves unable to use that science to justify the anti-evolutionists' arguments. To see friendships strained or even destroyed due to what could only be heart-wrenching conversions by those involved--well, it inspires sympathy.

To be sure, the pathos-inducing narratives of 20th century creationism do not mitigate the fact that creationism largely failed throughout its many endeavors to find widespread appeal among mainstream science. As I related yesterday, though, creationism's current proponents have not entirely given up the fight against evolution on scientific grounds. They have become quite adept at recognizing and responding to the latest discoveries or arguments that seem to support an ancient universe.

But attacking evolution does not ipso facto support young-earth creationism. To a large extent, however, anti-evolutionism's major young-earth organizations, Answers in Genesis and Creation Ministries International, seem uninterested in positive support for their brand of creation science (flood catastrophism). Instead, they are modulating their case, not only seeking to undermine evolution's status as well-supported science but also arguing that evolution is a faith--a matter of unprovable metaphysical commitments--on par with creationism.

Note that last--this modulated argument concedes that Biblical creationism is not, strictly speaking, a scientific matter. By their tacit and not-so-tacit definitions, science consists of conclusions drawn (intuited) from direct observation. Evolution fails as science, in their arguments, because its processes cannot be directly observed; no one has yet spied a lower life form turn into a higher life form, nor has anyone witnessed (and this is a favorite catchphrase) "something [life] coming from nothing [non-life]." Evolutionists' counter-arguments (e.g., the definition of science being used is misleading, evolution unfolds over massive timescales and could not reasonably be expected to be observed by humans) get dismissed as pie-in-the-sky, ad hoc rationalizations.

Yet, admit creationists, neither can they respond to a skeptic's demand to see God appear and creation brand-new life before their eyes. Apart from the Bible, which only young-earth creationists and inerrantists accept as reliable history, creationists are as bereft of observable evidence of divine creation as evolutionists. Creationism and evolution, argue the creationists, are similar in that both are essentially unprovable, unobservable explanations of evidence, explanations that must be taken not on the basis of superior science but on faith. Evolution, in other words, is as faith-based as creationism.

To judge from the explosion of young-earth creationist resources in the last decade or so (a shift that Numbers notes with some surprise in his book), this argument has been working like gangbusters, at least in the US. I think several factors make the evolution-is-faith argument fly.

First, the counter-arguments from mainstream scientists can be pretty complicated. Whereas creationists rely on common-sense, no-fancy-learnin' simplicity for their appeal, science of any branch requires some degree of training and education to get. Some of this training is disruptive to "common sense" as such, highlighting how first-order observations are themselves in need of bias-checking, double-blind controls, and peer review. Moreover, historians and philosophers of science point out that the paradigms and models used to shape scientific discourse are to a certain extent culture-bound. The most revolutionary scientific models--especially those that eventually become the new dominant paradigm--often involve thinking that runs against the grain of what constitutes "common sense" in a particular time ("The earth moves around the sun? Preposterous! Light is a particle and a wave? Crazy talk!"). And, of course, the tools and vocabulary endemic to a discipline (molecular biology, for instance) simply aren't readily accessible to laypeople. Science remains vulnerable to straw-manning and "common sense" critique.

A second reason for the success of the evolution-as-faith-not-science argument has to do with the liberal tradition, by which I mean not left-progressive politics but the post-Renaissance idea that humans are best considered as singular individuals vested with certain inalienable rights and personal sovereignty. People, within the US liberal tradition as expressed currently, have a right to their opinions, especially when those opinions are religious or metaphysical. The US's history renders its citizens resistant to the suggestion that religious belief or expression (particularly if that belief is Judeo-Christian in origin) should be curtailed or suppressed. Indeed, it's considered bad form even to suggest that another person's faith might be invalid (though conservative evangelicals have been developing multiple ways to do just that). To people nervous about the threat to the sovereignty of their faith convictions that evolution seems to pose--a threat creationists intensify in their rhetoric and materials--viewing evolution as just one more kind of faith levels the playing field.

But I think the most compelling reason that the evolution-as-faith tactic wins so much support from pro-creationists has to do, again, with the issue of certainty and antipathy to doubt.

More tomorrow,

JF