Shermer’s coverage of the four-battle war between creationists and evolutionists was worth the price of admission alone, and since the price was free—his Great Courses lecture series was a library checkout—it was doubly worth it. I don’t want my writing to be lame, so I will refrain from application of the Huck Finn enthusiasm for a certain traveling circus, “It didn’t cost nothing and it was worth it, too!” But in this case, it really was worth something, even though I paid nothing.
Most of the participants of the Scopes trial had ulterior motives, and the outcome of the trial was not what evolution advocates had hoped for. They had wanted Scopes to lose, so as to appeal the case all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. Scopes did lose, in the overwhelmingly religious state of Tennessee, inclined towards fundamentalism then and hotbed of it even now, but that state employed a “legal loophole” (Shermer’s term) so that the case went no further. In light of the guilty verdict, other states enacted anti-evolution laws for their schools, and textbook writers were so intimidated that they didn’t touch the subject for 25 years. It took the shock of Sputnik in 1958 to galvanize evolutionists around sudden fears that the U. S. was falling behind in science.
The fledgling ACLU, rallying to the defense, initially saw the case as a test of free speech, rather than squabbling over religion or science. Dayton Tennessee hoped the case would put their economically distressed town on the map. John Scopes, an out-of-town substitute teacher, thought the publicity might help his cause in a local love interest, says Shermer. He wasn’t even sure that he had taught evolution, but he agreed to be used as a test case for the evolutionist cause. Alan’s grandfather covered the trial for the Baltimore Sun and repeatedly “mocked the town's inhabitants as "yokels" and "morons.” (actually, it was H. L. Mencken)
Lead prosecuting attorney William Jennings Bryan was not the narrow minded “buffoon” that Alan’s grandfather made him out to be. Shermer points out that he was in most respects liberal-minded. However, in the aftermath of WWI, he became alarmed at the human cost of teaching evolution. Aghast at Germany’s embrace of the “pseudoscience” of social Darwinism, channeled into eugenics, he decided that the best way to stamp out that aftereffect was to stamp out the original effect. His distrust of science can be seen in his statement released to reporters after the trial:
“Science is a magnificent force, but it is not a teacher of morals. It can perfect machinery, but it adds no moral restraints to protect society from the misuse of the machine. It can also build gigantic intellectual ships, but it constructs no moral rudders for the control of storm-tossed human vessel.” He next devotes a few lines to the horrific advances of war that science had enabled, then concludes with: “If civilization is to be saved from the wreckage threatened by intelligence not consecrated by love, it must be saved by the moral code of the meek and lowly Nazarene. His teachings, and His teachings alone, can solve the problems that vex the heart and perplex the world.” That statement will resonate with many today, not just Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Michael Shermer strives mightily to separate the science of Darwin from the “pseudoscience” of social Darwinism. I am willing to let that separation stand in the scientific sense, but it certainly does not stand in the sense that matters—that of common sense and human motivation. Newly minted atheists such as H. G. Wells acknowledged the corrosive effect of evolution. In his Outline of History, he states: “A real de-moralization ensued...a real loss of faith after 1859 [publication of Darwin’s Origin of the Species]. Prevalent peoples at the close of the nineteenth century believed that they prevailed by virtue of the Struggle for Existence, in which the strong and cunning get the better of the weak and confiding....Man, they decided, is a social animal like the Indian hunting dog....It seemed right to them that the big dogs of the human pack should bully and subdue.”
It is just psychology Wells references. There is no scientific linkage, certainly no “proof.” But anyone who has seen 2001–a Space Odyssey instantly makes the connection. The starving hominid does not advance by loving his neighbor. He does not advance by displaying morality and decency. He responds by picking up a Darwin and beating his rival to death with it, and then all his buddies close in to make sure the kill is complete.
The only ones blind to this obvious connection are atheistic evolutionists, who wish to spotlight human advancement, not human regression. But my wife came across a young man in her ministry just today who opined that many of his generation were “returning to God and the Bible,” since “nothing else has worked out too well, has it?” Only atheist evolutionists are blind to the societally corrosive effects of their beloved theory. Hence, my hilarious joke that 93% of such evolutionists play drums, but the only song they will perform is Also Sprach Zarathustra.
Suffer through the latest innovation of “evolutionary psychologists” explaining how moral qualities evolved, pure storytelling enhanced by mostly irrelevant or ambiguous modern studies. See if you can hold it together as they explain how man’s preference for curvy women evolved because the straighter type didn’t have those convenient shelves for balancing lots of babies, presumably dropping them all to be gobbled up by hungry predators—all just a typical day in the life of our “struggle for survival.” Standby for their explanation on the evolution of religious devotion itself, that God is a superhuman cop to enforce, though threats of a hot afterlife, the do’s and don’t of evolving society, infinitely preferable to a human cop of whom you can pop one in the jaw.
Phillip Johnson, University of California law professor, founding father of the intelligent design movement, according to Shermer, “accuses scientists of unfairly defining God out of the picture by limiting the search for causes to only natural causes. He complains scientists who postulate that there are supernatural forces or interventions at work in the natural world are being pushed out of the scientific arena on the basis of nothing more than a fundamental rule of the game.” Of course. The “rules of the [science] game” are written so that he will lose. He should accept it, as Jehovah’s Witnesses do, instead taking his shots that science is not the all-powerful tool of discovery that it pretends to be, but instead he urges “that the rules be changed to allow methodologigical supernaturalism.”
“Okay,” Shermer says, “but what would that look like? How would that work? Since science is based on natural causes, what are we supposed to do with a supernatural explanation?” His words appear to indicate that he doesn’t really disagree that the game is rigged—he just doesn’t know how to fix it. His words reveal the fundamental weakness of science; it is not equipped to analyze things that are “examined spiritually.” In theory, scientists acknowledge their inadequacy on such things and pass on judgement upon them. In practice, many of them come to feel that their discipline has the lock upon discovery as they seek to run their “competition” off the road.
It spills over into other fields. Luke Thomas Johnson says of the allied “historical-critical approach” to biblical criticism, “the historian cannot take up anything having to do with the transcendent, or the supernatural, the historian cannot talk about the miraculous birth of Jesus, his miracles, his walking on the water, his transfiguration, his resurrection from the dead, and so forth. Well, fair enough. The historian can’t talk about those things, but that methodological restraint ... very quickly becomes implicitly an epistemological denial, that is ‘the historian cannot talk about these things, therefore they are not real.’” This quote taken from a review contrasting biblical interpretation models of Johnson and Bart Ehrman. I disagree with the historical-critical method of Ehrman, though I applaud him for one very clever aside that if you know a Latin phrase and also a perfectly fine English phrase meaning the same thing, you should always use the Latin so that people will know you are educated.
I once had a long discussion at the door of a committed evolutionist. At length he said, “What difference does it make, anyway? Either way, we’re here.” I replied that if there was a Creator, just possibly he had intentions for the earth and might not tolerate its ruination. But if there was no God, then any hope for the earth would come from human efforts alone, “and they’re not doing so well.” The man’s wife, who up to this point had not said a word, responded with “That’s a good point.”