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PRESIDENT'S
LETTER
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| Rick
Amasino |
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Do
You Believe the Universe Is Expanding?
Evolution, Elections, and Education
As I wrote in an earlier
issue of the ASPB News (1),
the Dover trial has not put the controversy over evolution to rest. A
recent example: At a so-called debate (2),
in which several candidates for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination
participated, one of the questions was, “Do you believe in evolution?”
Questions like this come from a media whose raison d’être is
to maximize advertising revenue, and such questions help turn these debates
into theater—an effective strategy to increase ratings and advertising
revenue. Indeed, post-debate coverage reinforces this trend; much of the
coverage is focused on who was the “winner” and which candidate’s
responses caused the crowd to cheer. (For one audience, advocating torture
was a real crowd pleaser [3,
4].)
One of the candidates
who indicated at this debate that he did not “believe” in evolution
attempted to clarify his stance in a New York Times op-ed (5).
One of his points: “If belief in evolution means simply assenting
to microevolution, small changes over time within a species, I am happy
to say, as I have in the past, that I believe it to be true.” In
other words, “evolution” is OK if evolution can be redefined
so that no new species result from it. Humpty Dumpty—who said to
Alice, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither
more nor less”(6)—would approve.
To be “balanced,”
I should mention a so-called presidential forum in which the current top
three candidates for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination participated
(7).
The forum, which was a special edition of the Cable News Network show
The Situation Room, began with the following statement from the moderator:
“Tonight, we expect to tackle some of the most important moral issues
of our times.” The first question was, “Do you believe in
evolution, or do you believe in creationism?” The follow-up question
indicated that the intent of this line of questioning was to address whether
or not the candidate believed in a literal interpretation of scripture:
“There are some people who say, . . . Isn’t it mutually exclusive?
I mean, either man was created by, you know, from Adam’s rib or,
in fact . . . man came evolutionwise from apes? Aren’t the two mutually
exclusive?” (Some other “important moral” questions
asked of the candidates are listed in footnote 7,
and a reference to one reasonable view of the relationship of science
and scripture is in footnote 8.)
Consider possible
candidate responses to two questions that are similar to “Do you
believe in evolution?” To “Do you believe the universe is expanding?”
a possible response might be, “I am not sufficiently familiar with
the data at this time to provide an informed answer to that question.”
This answer would likely be acceptable to the media, because whether or
not the universe is expanding is not, at present, a “hot-button”
issue. Because evolution is a hot-button issue, a similar “not sufficiently
familiar” response to the evolution question would result in this
issue being repeatedly raised. Thus, the candidates must answer, even
if they have not had an opportunity to adequately explore the data (for
example, during their undergraduate education).
To “Do you believe
in the heliocentric view of our solar system?” a reasonable response
might be, “Copernicus and Galileo made compelling arguments that
the heliocentric view was the best interpretation of the data available
several centuries ago, and all of the data obtained since that time have
supported the heliocentric theory.” If “Darwin” and “evolutionary”
were substituted for “Copernicus and Galileo” and “heliocentric,”
this would be a concise and complete answer to “Do you believe in
evolution?” The heliocentric answer would be broadly accepted, in
large part because much of the data supporting the heliocentric view,
such as satellite views of the solar system, are not only simple to interpret
but have been well presented to the public in movies and other venues
of popular culture. Thus, it is no longer possible to frame the heliocentric
view as a threat to certain religious beliefs, as was the case during
the time when Galileo went before an inquisition. In contrast to the heliocentric
view, however, the data supporting evolution are not as simple and accessible.
Is there any possibility that evolution might someday be as widely accepted
as the heliocentric model of our solar system? Perhaps, but only if people
are properly exposed to the ideas and the evidence.
The theory of evolution
and the body of knowledge supporting it are, of course, rich and varied,
and all of the data gathered since the publication in 1859 of Darwin’s
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (9)
have provided overwhelming support for Darwin’s (and Wallace’s)
ideas. Yet we cannot expect others who have not had an opportunity to
explore the vast and rich data to simply accept evolution because scientists
say it is so. There are many reasons for this, and I note two of them.
One is that in the eyes of the public, not all scientists accept evolution.
The media do not have the ability to ascertain who is a scientist, and
as long as there is a market for this “controversy,” the media
will continue to present the views of people they label “scientists”
who claim to present “evidence” to refute evolution. We cannot
blame the public for their inability to distinguish a scientist from someone
impersonating one if both are presented as scientists. The other reason
is that it is human nature to want to consider the data and arrive at
one’s own conclusion (10). This is how
we operate as scientists, and we ought to make every effort to provide
this opportunity to others.
Can we do a better
job of providing others the opportunity to explore evolution? It is difficult
to do this in sound bites or debates (although casting doubt on the validity
of evolution is quite effective in sound bites and debates). The rich
and varied body of knowledge supporting the theory of evolution and its
fascinating history requires time to reasonably explore (e.g., the better
part of a semester). How many of our courses devote sufficient time to
allow students to immerse themselves in this topic and arrive at their
own conclusions?
The most important
teaching in which we, as scientists, participate may be the science courses
for students who are not science majors. College-educated people who are
not science majors will comprise a significant fraction of the viewers
of future presidential media events, and some of them will be framing
the questions for these events.
Many students who
are not science majors will take only a single college-level course in
a biological science. For such a student, is there any topic in biology
better suited to teach critical thinking than an exploration of the data
in support of evolution and of the various ways in which data are cherry
picked or manipulated to claim lack of support?
An exploration of
evolution is a great topic for someone who will take only one biology
course. Is there any topic in biology with a more fascinating history?
Is there a biological question that is more inherently interesting to
most people than where we came from? And should not one of the most profound
ideas ever to come from biological science be a cornerstone of a higher
education?
Are the “Plants
and People” courses, or the equivalent nonmajors courses offered
to those who take a single biology course, doing all that could be done
to enable students to arrive at their own conclusions as to whether, as
Darwin stated (9), “from so simple a beginning
endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being,
evolved”? Do our nonmajors courses lead to an appreciation of the
fact that, as Dobzhansky (11)
clearly stated, “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light
of evolution”? Or, put another way, might there come a time when
the presidential “debate” question “Do you believe in evolution?”
generates yawns of boredom rather than increased advertising revenue?
Richard Amasino
amasino@biochem.wisc.edu
REFERENCES
- Amasino, R. (2006).
Beyond Dover: It ain’t over. ASPB News 33(3): 11, 13–14.
http://www.aspb.org/newsletter/mayjun06/
07dover.cfm.
- A link to the transcript
of this “debate” is at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/
18478985/.
- See Rosa Brooks’s
article at http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-brooks18may18,0,732795.column?coll=la-news-comment-opinions.
- See the Colbert
Report—2nd Republican Debate at Comedy Central: Motherload at http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/?lnk=v&ml_video=87158.
- See Sam Brownback’s
New York Times article at
http://www.brownback.com/s/NewsRoom/PressReleases/WhatIThinkAboutEvolutionNYTimesOpEd/tabid/363/Default.aspx.
- Lewis Carroll.
(1871). Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.
London: Macmillan.
- A transcript of
this forum is available at http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0706/04/sitroom.03.html.
Other questions from this forum included the following:
“Do you think homosexuals have the right to be married?”
“Do you think this is a Christian nation?”
“How would prayer influence the decisions that you make as president?
And, most importantly, when you pray, how do you know if the voice that
you are hearing is the voice of God or your own voice in disguise?”
The questions at the forum were the purview of each questioner. One
of the participants, Jim Wallis, editor in chief of Sojourners magazine,
did in fact focus on topics that I would consider “important moral
issues,” and his questions can be found at the website containing
the transcript.
- The issue of scripture
in relation to science was clearly addressed by Father George V. Coyne,
a Catholic priest and director of the Vatican Observatory. Some of his
remarks and a link to a talk he gave are in the May/June
2006 issue of the ASPB News. See also the Clergy Project,
which is described at http://www.butler.edu/clergyproject/religion_science_collaboration.htm
and was also discussed in the May/June
2006 ASPB News.
- Charles Darwin.
(1859). On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or
the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. London:
John Murray. http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F373&viewtype=text&pageseq=1.
- Galileo Galilei
concisely stated this point: “You cannot teach a man anything;
you can only help him find it within himself.” This is obvious,
but how many courses are taught with this as a guiding philosophy?
- This quote from
Theodosius Dobzhansky is the title of an article he wrote for The
American Biology Teacher, March 1973 (35:125–129). A copy is
available at http://www.2think.org/dobzhansky.shtml.
Richard Amasino
amasino@biochem.wisc.edu
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