Evolution in the schools

I am amazed that evolution verses creationism has made it into the media yet again in my lifetime. I have yet to understand why this is even an issue that we waste our valuable time debating and how the Christian extremists continue to force this issue into the media. I am a Christian who has had my children in a Christian elementary school and I still do not get it. Yes, as a Christian I feel it is important for my children to learn what our faith teaches about God, about Jesus and about creation. Never, however, would I ever expect our public schools to do that teaching for me or for my church. Nor would I want them to.

Which version of Christianity would the public schools teach if they were allowed to do so? Would they teach the Christian conservative wacko version of Christianity, the Catholic version, or the Presbyterian version? My father’s business partner believes that God created the Grand Canyon exactly as it is today. He does not believe God created it through years of erosion by a river. Nor does he believe that dinosaurs that died left dinosaur fossils. He believes that God left those fossils there for us to find just for fun and that dinosaurs never really existed. Is this the version that will be taught in our schools when the Christian conservatives get their way? Will last months lesson on dinosaurs at my daughter’s school be illegal under their standards of education? Will they be able to teach about psychology and depression in public schools or would the Scientologists object? Will children be told that excommunication is the consequence of divorce and their divorced parents are going to hell? Where does it end? What these Christian conservatives do not understand is they are attempting to open up a can that they will not be able to close. I want my children to learn my religion and the only way for me to make that possible is to take them to my church where they are preaching what I believe. If religion were taught in schools, then whose religion would it be? That of the teacher? The school board? Would we poll the students’ religious preferences and whichever religion is in the majority that religion is taught?

People love to talk about our founding fathers. This is exactly the type of thing our founding fathers tried to prevent. They all came to America seeking religious freedom. They were all Christians seeking freedom from the religion of other Christians. In their countries the King chose the religion of the people. If the religion of that country was Catholic then everyone had to practice Catholicism and could not be Protestant. If the King chose Lutheran then Baptists were not allowed to meet. The founding fathers realized that by adopting one religion as the official religion no one could truly be free because everyone has different opinions about how to practice that religion. These forward thinking men not only made freedom of religion possible but also they made freedom from religion possible. They made sure that no one in America would ever be forced to practice one form of religion, would never be taught one type of religion and would never be persecuted by the government for their beliefs. The Christian conservatives are trying to re-write this history by simply saying that those who signed the constitution were Christians, but they are forgetting the history behind that document. The constitution deliberately did not name Christianity as the state religion although they were nearly all Christian and they did this, not as an oversight, but on purpose. They came from a history of persecution and they wanted to protect their descendents from this very possibility.

Christian conservatives of today have made it their life’s work to claim persecution. Any Christian American claiming persecution in America does not understand the meaning of the word persecution. Christians can openly practice their religion in their home, on the street or in their place of worship. They can teach their children anything they want them to believe and can get special consideration at work for their religious beliefs. Christians are not regularly targeted in violent attacks or killed for practicing their beliefs. They do not have to hide their Bibles in their homes or fear loss of job or life if people find out they are Christian. They are not targeted by the government and put in jail if they participate in worship. If any of these things were to happen they would have the law and the government on their side to punish the attackers, to return them to their jobs or to free them from jail. The only thing Christians cannot do is force everyone else to partake in their religious celebrations and force others to believe what they believe. This is not persecution. Our laws only limit what Christians can do to other people, not what they themselves can do as private citizens. Christian conservatives claiming persecutions need to talk to Christians in China, in Palestine, in the former Soviet controlled regions. They will learn a lot about what constitutes persecution and what is simply protection of others from them.

Christians of today actually are much the opposite of the persecuted group they would like people to believe they are. Some Christians have come to believe that it is okay to force others into their religion. They have decided that the fore fathers chose Christianity as the state religion and all other religions must just live with it. They have begun to re-write history to exclude those of other religions or no religion. Some Christians have even decided that our country’s laws should be re-written based on their own form of Christianity. That if their particular form of Christianity condemns one sin as greater than all other sins then our country should make it illegal. They believe that our President and congress should be guided by the Christian conservative religious beliefs even if the majority of the country let alone the majority of other Christians do not hold those beliefs. This is a dangerous turn toward theocracy, which we have been fighting in other parts of the world, but some have been embracing in our own country. In Afghanistan, Muslim religious leaders decided the laws of the land. These Muslim beliefs were not held by all Muslims, only by the Muslims who happened to be in power at the time. All people in the country were forced to live by these beliefs and these laws regardless of whether their own Muslim or other religious beliefs were different from those in power. This is no different from what the Christian conservatives in America are attempting to do today. These people would like to take their own extremist version of what the Bible says and create laws based on that belief system which all Americans would have to live by.

What if the Christians doing this were Catholic? Would the Christian conservatives approve of this turn of events? Catholics are Christian. They use the Bible as their main source of religious information. Would Christian conservatives allow Catholics to create laws based on their religious beliefs and practices? No birth control? No divorce? No remarriage? No death penalty? Catholicism would be taught in the schools as an alternative to evolution and sex education and anything else the Pope opposed. I would be willing to bet that they would not approve of that state religion.

What is it about the teaching of evolution in schools that upsets the Christian conservatives so much? Why are they so afraid? Do they really think that their sixteen year old is going to hear about evolution and decide that he is not going back to church? The theory of evolution is exactly that, a theory. It is a scientific explanation for how the world began that is incomplete. If their children have attended church at all, they will already know what the church’s position is on creation. If their parents have spoken to them about religion at all then they know what their parents’ views on creation are. If they do not know then learning about evolution in school would be a great time for them to talk with their parents about the Christian beliefs about creation. I just do not understand how this is threatening to people who claim to believe in God and who claim to be teaching their beliefs to their children. It just seems so odd to me to be so afraid of this science but not other ideas that are a much greater threat to Christianity. I think materialism, greed, self-absorption, poverty vs. extreme wealth, war, torture, etc. are all much greater threats to Christianity than teaching a scientific theory to kids in school. Why have these people chosen to ignore all of the above issues and focus on this one? Especially when they can take their children to church or teach them at home about creation every single day of their lives and evolution is one chapter out of hundreds that their child will learn in school.

Finally, how to do these people expect their children to function in society, in college, etc. without knowing basic scientific principles that are known by the rest of society. How will their children take the SAT or take a college course without knowing whom Darwin was and what the theory of evolution is? They certainly will not be able to major in biology or science without needing to learn about scientific information that is possibly in contrast to their religious beliefs. Apparently, they do not have the faith in God that they claim to have or the trust that he will reveal the truth to these young people. These Christian conservatives seem to lack the strength of their conviction when they are so fearful that one chapter of science will destroy 16 years of teaching their children about God. I was taught evolution in high school and college and I have managed to discern between my religious beliefs and science. Actually, my 10th grade science teacher was a Christian fundamentalist named Mr. Donaldson. I still remember what he said when he taught evolution. “The following chapter is about evolution. This is the scientific theory of how the earth and its inhabitants were created. This theory may be in contrast to your family’s religious beliefs. If so, I suggest you talk to your parents or someone in your religious community about that. For the test, you must know what I am about to teach you in this class.” That was that. I learned about evolution from school and I passed the test. I learned what the Bible said about creation at home and at church. I made an informed decision about what I would believe at that time. Life went on. I continued to attend church and believe in God and practice my faith and I passed my ACT test and went to college. No harm, no foul, no big deal.