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“Sticker Shock”
The front page of yesterday’s Globe marked the death of Dr. Ernst Mayr, widely considered to be the foremost evolutionary biologist of the 20th century. The esteemed Dr. Mayr was the Alexander Agassiz professor emeritus of zoology at Harvard. I have a story that has to do with Dr. Mayr’s predecessor, Dr. Agassiz.
Agassiz wrote a four volume work entitled: Contributions to the Natural History of the United States which one writer called “an excessively learned, a monumental, an epoch-making work, the fruit of vast and heroic labors, with colored plates on stone, showing the turtles of the United States, and their embryology. In the preface of this work Agassiz wrote: “In New England I have myself collected largely; but I have also received valuable contributions from the late Rev. Zadoc Thompson of Burlington… from Mr. D. Henry Thoreau of Concord… and from Mr. J.W.P. Jenks of Middleboro.” The story I want to tell begins with Mr. Jenks of Middleboro – this story was recorded many years later by one of his students; I found it in a book entitled A Treasury of Science first published in 1943.
Mr. Jenks was principle of an academy in these parts. He told his student that the great Professor Agassiz unexpectedly appeared in his doorway one day. (I gather that Agassiz was the Elvis of his generation – or at least very well known.) So Jenks knew instantly who Agassiz was. Agassiz’s masterpiece was nearly finished except for one small yet very important bit of observation – he had carried the turtle egg through every stage of development save one, the earliest. Lack of eggs at this early stage had brought him to a standstill. So when Agassiz asked Jenks if he would be willing and able to get him some turtle eggs at this stage he instantly agreed. There was a difficulty, though – he’d have to get them to Cambridge within three hours of the eggs’ being laid or they’d be useless. With a combination of horse, train and buggy, Jenks was confident it could be done.
Mr. Jenks of Middleboro knew instantly where to get the eggs – a patch of sandy shore along a pond a few miles from the academy. On May 14 at 3 am just before dawn he tied his horse and settled himself among some cedars close to the shore where he could watch. Jenks loved being out in the fragrant early mornings – loved the scent of the ponds, and the woods and the ploughed fields nearby… but as the days went by he became frustrated because the turtles were showing no desire to lay. He also feared that maybe they were conscious of his presence and laying somewhere else. Finally, in the second week in June, an enormous turtle lumbered up onto the sand with a hurried and purposeful gait. Here I will quote a bit from Jenks himself:
“I held my breath. … She paddled up a narrow cow path into the high grass along a fence. Then, up the narrow cow path, on all fours, just like another turtle, I paddled, and into the high wet grass along the fence. …With…the tin pail of sand swinging from between my teeth to avoid noise, I stumped fiercely, but silently, after the turtle.”
From here I’m forced to make a long but wonderful story short. When it dawned on Jenks that it was Sunday, and there would be no 7 o’clock train, he upended the turtle when she began to bury her eggs. He layered the precious eggs into the sand in his pail, got onto his carriage and started the horse at a full gallop, hoping against the odds, that his horse could go the full distance to Cambridge. If he had to, he’d finish on foot. But then, inexplicably he could hear the chug-chug-a-chug of a train. Jenks turned toward the train whistle. Soon he was riding parallel to the track as the train was coming toward him in the distance. He moved the carriage onto the tracks and his hat blew off as the train began to slow and grind to a stop – before it reached a full standstill Jenks had jumped out, tin pail in hand, and swung aboard. “Throw her wide open!” he commanded. Hatless, hair in disarray, smeared with yellow mud and cradling the pail as though it were a baby, Jenks looked a crazy man. But he was in luck. The train he had commandeered was a freight train that should have passed in the night and was making up for lost time. Jenks transported the eggs from Middleboro to Cambridge within the three hour window.
All there is to show for it in the great work is a sectional drawing of a bit of the mesoblastic layer of one of the eggs! But Agassiz’s standards were such that the drawing was necessary for the meticulous scholarship to be complete, and thanks to Jenks, among many others, complete it was – a true labor of love. Agassiz’s monumental achievement is the kind of foundational material that is used by evolutionary biologists to track the development of life.
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You’ll find Darwinism and evolutionary biology in the news all this week because Saturday would be Darwin’s 123rd birthday. And surprisingly for the 21st century Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is being challenged as never before.
You may have heard that two weeks ago a federal district court judge ordered a board of education in Georgia to remove stickers from biology textbooks that stated “Evolution is just a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things.” The interesting thing is that no one disputes that evolution is a theory – in fact, the chapter on evolution is titled, “The Theory of Evolution.” So what is all the fuss about? Why the demand for the stickers?
The author of the science book in questions says,
“The most misleading part of the sticker was its concluding sentence: “This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.” Think about that. The sticker told students that there was just one subject in their textbooks that had to be approached with an open mind and critically considered. Apparently we are certain of everything in biology except evolution. That is nonsense. What that sticker should have told students is what our textbooks make clear: “Everything in science should be approached with critical thinking and an open mind.”
The judge ordered the stickers removed because they served no scientific or educational purpose. The purpose they did serve was to put doubt in the minds of the students, to confuse students between the difference between theories and facts. Theories in science don’t become facts – rather, they explain facts. Evolutionary theory is a comprehensive explanation of the changes that have been observed in the fields of natural history, genetics and molecular biology and painstakingly documented by the likes of Dr Agassiz, our own Mr. Jenks and hundreds and thousands of dedicated scientists around the globe since the 19th century.
At Dover Area High School in Pennsylvania, administrators recently appeared before ninth-grade biology classes and read a statement. “Evolution is no more than a theory”, it read, “and as a way to explain the origin of humans on earth, “intelligent design” theory is just as valid.”
In response, Alan Leshner, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science wrote, just last Tuesday:
“The statement, approved by the Dover school board was brief, but the intent is revolutionary. It seeks to discredit the science of evolution, backed by nearly 150 years of research and accepted by an overwhelming majority of scientists worldwide, and to encourage the acceptance of intelligent design, a theory with strong appeal to many religious people, but no backing in actual evidence or in science.”
The movement known as intelligent design is the old creationism wearing new clothes. Intelligent design asserts that the natural world is so complex that it could not possibly have developed without divine intervention. Their claim is that science has discovered evidence of the work of a “designer” and that they have mathematical formulae and scientific “concepts” to back this up. They imply that biology and earth science teachers just don’t know enough about what’s going on in their own fields and they should be brought up to speed with intelligent design.
Barbara Forrest and Paul Gross, author of Creationism’s Trojan Horse, write in their introduction to their study of intelligent design,
“This movement seeks nothing less than to overthrow the system of rules and procedures of modern science and those intellectual footings of our culture laid down in the Enlightenment over some 300 years. [They] admit this is [their] aim. [They] desire to substitute a particular version of “theistic science,” whose chief argument is that nothing about nature is to be understood or taught without reference to supernatural or at least unknowable causes—in effect, to God.”
You may ask, if intelligent design has no backing or actual evidence in science, how can it be a threat? A thirty year old study published in the Journal of Medical Education gives one answer.
For the study, scientists hired a silver-haired, scholarly looking professional actor and taught him to teach without substance on a topic about which he knew nothing. They called him Dr. Fox. Their idea was that given a sufficiently impressive performance even experienced educators can be seduced into feeling they have learned despite irrelevant, conflicting and meaningless content conveyed by the lecturer.
The actor memorized a prefabricated nonsense lecture entitled “Mathematical Game Theory as Applied to Physician Education.” He was trained to answer questions with “double talk, non sequiturs, and contradictory statements - spiced with humor and meaningless references to unrelated topics.”2
And it worked. The phony Dr. Fox’s presentations of discoveries in mathematical game theory were strongly approved by educationally sophisticated, lecture-experienced audiences. He received comments like, Very dramatic presentation, ‘Excellent… enjoyed listening…warm manner.. good flow… extremely articulate.” People can be fooled.
Authors Forrest and Gross assert that intelligent design creationists don’t really expect to win arguments with scientists about science, but they do want to have arguments with scientists so the public might think they have a substantial case. They want the public to demand creationist science. On the practice of science, intelligent design has had no impact, but they have made amazing inroads in selling intelligent design to the public.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science has been aware of these new creationists for a long time. In 2002 they passed the following resolution:
Recognizing that the "intelligent design theory" represents a challenge to the quality of science education, the Board of Directors of the AAAS unanimously adopted a resolution saying that because ID proponents claim that contemporary evolutionary theory is incapable of explaining the origin of the diversity of living organisms; and because they have failed to offer credible scientific evidence to support their claims, and have not proposed a scientific means of testing their claims;
Therefore Be It Resolved, that the lack of scientific warrant for so-called "intelligent design theory" makes it improper to include as a part of science education;
Therefore Be Further It Resolved, that AAAS urges citizens across the nation to oppose the establishment of policies that would permit the teaching of "intelligent design theory" as a part of the science curricula of the public schools;
The National Center for Science Education reports that the United States is unique in the industrialized world for its level of anti-evolutionism. Americans are split 45% to 45% on evolution (with 10% unsure). Compare that to the fact that 80% in other industrialized countries typically accept evolution. Many American science teachers are now choosing to avoid teaching evolution. Others try to avoid trouble by labeling it as “controversial” which scientifically speaking, it is not.
The intelligent design movement grows stronger every day. Cases are in the courts or being challenged by school boards in Georgia, Kansas, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Missouri and Mississippi. For the record, when President Bush was asked about evolution he said “On the issue of evolution, the verdict is still out on how God created the Earth.”
It has always been religion’s purview to explain the great mystery of how it all began. That is what the Book of Genesis is all about. Unitarian Universalism takes a different approach. Where did it all come from? We don’t know. As Unitarian Universalists we simply covenant to affirm and promote a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. We accept the evidence of our senses as true: we heed the guidance of reason and the results of science. A belief that God as creator is not problematic in and of itself. What is seriously troubling is to be required to ignore or warp scientific evidence being presented by the natural world. There should be plenty of room for both science and a creator no matter how far science advances. To think otherwise is to lack imagination and narrowly confine God’s potential to our own understanding. The physical evidence simply doesn’t square with the idea that the earth is no older than about 10,000 years and that man and dinosaurs co-existed before a flood that created the Grand Canyon as is claimed by the Museum of Creation and Earth History in Santee California. Popular demand does not make it so and never will.
The theory of evolution doesn’t rule out faith. Just as religion didn’t disappear after Galileo demonstrated that the earth is not at the center of the solar system, evolution does not exclude God from our origins. The November Issue of the Geographic asked on its cover in large print: “Was Darwin Wrong?” Inside in equally large type the answer is announced: “NO. The evidence for evolution is overwhelming.”
So, to go back to where we started – the stickers may have come off the books in Georgia for the time being – but how shocking and sad that here, in America’s 21st century, we are increasingly having to defend modern science and Enlightenment ideas. There is some irony in the statement by Jesus that “the truth shall set you free” as science and religion both stake their claims.
The phrase sticker shock brings to mind another meaning – we suffer sticker shock when we learn the price of something and it is so high we are numbed by it. As religious people, as people who love the truth, who are inspired by the vast natural world and humbled by it, we are called to this debate. Let us not look away, let us not avoid it. The cost to science, to the truth and to our future and our children’s future is much too high.