Linda Dawson is IASB director/editorial services and editor of The Illinois School Board Journal.
According to history books, the earliest European settlers in what was to become the United States were looking for a place to practice their religion free from oppression. So it should be no surprise that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights states:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
With such prominence — a first-place listing in the First Amendment — it also should come as no surprise that questions of religion in public schools can draw heated debate especially when it comes to teaching evolution, creationism or intelligent design.
As board members make curriculum and policy decisions, having a good understanding of differing viewpoints can help guide and inform discussion on the issues.
Differing world views
In his 2000 essay “Darwinism vs. Creationism: A Checkered History, A Doubtful Future,” Lloyd Pye, an American author and alternative theorist, said: “The true roots of the challenge to divine creation extend 65 years prior to Darwin, back to 1795, when two men — a naturalist and a geologist — published stunning works. The naturalist was Erasmus Darwin, Charles Darwin’s grandfather, a brilliant intellectual in his own right.”
Surprisingly enough, Charles Darwin originally was on a career path to becoming a minister when his love of nature and medicine led him into his evolutionary pronouncements in 1859 with The Origin of Species. Pye noted, however, that though Darwin “used the word ‘origin’ in the title, he was careful to discuss only how species developed from each other, not how life originated.”
While both Christians and Jews point to the first book of the Holy Bible, Genesis, as the story of creation, other cultures and societies have their own theories as well. The ancient Chinese myth of Pan-Ku involves the hatching of a cosmic egg; others from Mesopotamia, Greece, Japan and India involve multiple gods, mentioning primordial “goo” and even emptiness.
But even among Christians, different denominations and believers in different countries often hold different opinions regarding the creation story and the theory of evolution.
Religious Tolerance of Ontario, Canada, lists these as some of the fundamental differences among various Christian groups:
• Fundamentalists and other Evangelical Christians believe in the inerrancy of the Bible. They believe that God created the heavens, earth and everything else in six days and rested on the Sabbath because that’s what it states in Genesis.
• Liberal Protestants have promoted evolution “for decades,” and have either assigned symbolic meanings to the stages of creation or treat the passages as creation myths, not unlike the stories from Greece, China and India.
• Mainline Protestants may adopt either of the first two positions, or a “theistic evolution” theory in which they believe God originally created the universe as it says in the Bible, but He was the one who guided the evolutionary techniques to develop new species.
• Roman Catholics, through various papal encyclicals and council reports, believe in the inerrancy of God but allow that “the doctrine of ‘evolutionism’ is a serious hypothesis, worthy of a more deeply studied investigation and reflection.”
• Mormons, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, believe that humans were created by God and that geology, biology, archaeology and anthropology have nothing to do with the salvation of mankind.
While all this is in simplified form, it provides the backdrop for numerous polls of people all across the world to determine their stance on the debate between creation and evolution.
What the numbers say
Six different times between 1982 and 2004, Gallup Daily News polled selected Americans about their beliefs of creationism, theistic evolution and naturalist evolution. Those poll results are available with other polls conduced by Fox News, NBC News, Pew Research and CBS at religioustolerance.org.
Gallup, according to Religious Tolerance, words the questions the same each time to create a valid comparison. Many others were one-time polls and represent a snapshot at a particular time.
In 1982, 44 percent of Americans polled said they believed “God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 10,000 years.” Another 38 percent answered affirmative that “Man has developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process, including man’s creation.” And just 9 percent agreed that “Man has developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life. God had no part in the process.”
The numbers for the creationist and theistic evolutionists have remained fairly constant. Creationism polled as high as 47 percent in 1993 and 1999 and had a 2004 agree rate of 45 percent. Theistic evolution reached its highest percentage of 40 percent in 1999 then retreated to 38 percent in 2004.
However, the percentage of those who say they agree with naturalistic evolution rose to 13 percent by 2004.
In their analysis, Religious Tolerance said: “One might expect a gradual increase in support for the creationist view, because of the increasing percentage of older Americans — the Baby Boomers born shortly after World War II. People tend to be more committed to religion with age. However, support for creationism seems to be stagnant, not growing,” pointing to a slight increase in the belief of naturalistic evolution.
Other polls listed by Religious Tolerance show that women are more likely to believe in creationism than men in the United States, those with annual income under $20,000 are nearly twice as likely to believe in creationism as those with annual income over $50,000, and college graduates are nearly four times more likely to believe in evolution than those with no high school diploma.
With many of the other polls listed, Religious Tolerance questions the validity of the answers, citing how the phrasing and structure of the polling questions “can massively affect the results.”
In 1996, a CBS poll reported that 55 percent of Americans believed in a creationist view, 27 percent in theistic evolution and 13 percent in naturalistic evolution, numbers slightly higher for the creationist view, slightly lower for the theistic view but the same for naturalistic theory as compare with the 2004 Gallup Poll. These findings led Religious Tolerance to opine:
“By any measure, the United States remains a highly religious nation, compared to other developed countries. American adults tend to hold more conservative beliefs.”
So what poll results can you find in other countries? A survey conducted by the International Social Survey Program in 1991 asked people to agree or disagree with seven statements about their religious beliefs:
• I know God exists and I have no doubts about it.
• I definitely believe in life after death.
• The Bible is the actual word of god and it is to be taken literally, word for word.
• I definitely believe in the devil.
• I definitely believe in hell.
• I definitely believe in heaven.
• I definitely believe in religious miracles.
An appended question asked how true the following statement is: Human beings developed from earlier species of animals.
Nearly 63 percent of Americans polled agreed that they had no doubt of God’s existence and just more than 63 percent said they believed in heaven. Less than 35.4 percent agreed with the statement on evolution.
Of the results listed, East Germany had the highest percentage of those who agreed with evolution theories at just more than 81 percent. They also had the lowest belief in God at just more than 9 percent. That, Religious Tolerance analysts observed, may be attributed to having two generations under Communist rule following World War II.
An interesting contrast exists in Israel, which had just a 43 percent response that God exists, while nearly 57 percent answered that they agreed with evolutionary theory. Religious Tolerance points out that Orthodox Jews generally reject evolution while Reform and Conservative Jews generally reject creationism, although one would have thought the percent who believe God exists would have been higher for both groups.
Back to Pye
So what does all of this mean? In terms of beliefs, people are firmly divided on a number of issues. And getting them to agree may be difficult.
“Science education has not convinced a lot of Americans that Darwin was right,” according to Charles Haynes, a senior scholar at the Freedom Forum’s First Amendment Center, who was quoted in an April 2003 article in American School Board Journal, “Where Did We Come From?” “Many religious Americans have long held that evolution or the theory of evolution challenges many of their deeply held beliefs.”
“The problem is simple,” Pye said, “nobody in any conceivable position of power wants to confront the truth about human origins. No scientist, no politician, no clergyman could hope to preserve his or her authority — at whatever level — after actively coming forward with the truth about this incendiary subject.”
Both the creationists and the evolutionists have gaps in their theories that are largely unexplained. “If Charles Darwin were alive today and could be presented with the facts that have accumulated since his death, even he would have to admit his theory has turned out wrong,” Pye opined.
So what should a school board do when the conversation comes up around the board table?
According to Thomas Hutton, former staff attorney for the National School Boards Association now practicing with the firm of Patterson Buchanan Fobes Leith and Kalzer in Seattle, Washington, boards “should proceed cautiously.”
Writing in a 2003 article in American School Board Journal, Hutton offered these three tips in “Legal Guidance: What the courts say about teaching evolution”:
1. Be careful about requiring the teaching of intelligent design in science courses. A religion or other social studies course is a legally safer place to discuss such ideas.
2. Be careful about “teaching the controversy” only with respect to evolution. On the other hand, recognize that applying the approach more consistently, even if it proves effective, may run up against time pressures as teachers struggle to meet increasing test standards.
3. Require teachers to maintain strict neutrality of religious views, pro and con. A school district must be vigilant about ensuring that teachers do not interject their religious perspectives into instruction.”