Monkey business

>> Almost 150 years after Darwin, the battle over our origins rages on

by NAOMI BLOCH

Every once in a long while, a whale is born with bizarre-looking small hind legs. These mutated whales are probably the laughing stock of the whale jet set, but to most scientists they are a testament to the wonders of evolution.

Last October, Ontario made headlines when it removed evolution almost entirely from the public school curriculum, choosing to address the subject only in advanced Grade 12 biology. The Ontario Ministry of Education and Training kept a low profile during the brief flurry of media attention, managing to avoid the type of heady public battles between Christian evangelical groups and evolution supporters that have raged in the States during similar controversies.

The reasoning behind Ontario's decision remains a mystery, but PEI might hold some clues. Christianweek, a national Christian newspaper, reported last November that when a parent advisory group called the PEI Home and School Association called for the province to add creationism to the curriculum to counter evolution, the government assured the association that evolution is currently not taught at all.

And just in case some members of the general public were under the impression that Ontario's defection was an isolated event, along came the federal election campaign and the revelation that Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day is a Creationist who believes the earth is only 6,000 years old and that man and dinosaur walked together hand in paw.

The book of life

However, these events came as less of a surprise to those who've been mired in this century-old battle. Last September, McGill's Evolution Education Research Centre officially opened its doors. Its mission: to investigate how evolution is taught in schools at all levels in the hopes of improving the general public's understanding of the scientific theory considered to be the cornerstone of the life sciences.

"The understanding of biological evolution is so dismal that one out of every two people think it didn't occur," says the director of the McGill Evolution Education Research Centre, Brian Alters. "When people come out of high-school chemistry class they don't challenge whether balancing a chemical equation works. They don't challenge the fundamental concepts of physics. But when it comes to the life sciences and the number-1 theory that underpins it all, they say, 'I think the books are wrong and the scientists are wrong and the teachers are wrong.' So we feel a lot of it comes from improper education and weird ideas about evolution in general."

The research centre, a joint project with Harvard University, brings together leading North American researchers who plan to use their expertise to determine where various education systems break down and how it can be addressed.

"We're not just looking at whether they're teaching evolution or not," says Alters. "It's about how they're relating it to the other sciences. When they talk about geology do they bring up plate tectonics, and when they do that do they bring in evolution? When they bring up evolution, is it just among the lower animals or do they talk about human evolution also?"

Alters stresses that the centre's activities are purely academic. "We decided that serious, university-level research needed to be done to figure out why people aren't learning about evolution," Alters explains. "We're not political-action oriented at all. We're a bunch of researchers who are going about it in a different way--in the way we research most things."

Holier than thou

However, while Alters and his colleagues stick to what they know best, analyzing the world from the safety of a fortified ivory tower, their opponents are using a different strategy. Evangelical Creationists are fighting down on the battlefield, spreading their message directly to politicians, church groups and the general public. Their agenda is simple: to debunk evolution theory and reclaim God's lost children.

Creationist organizations such as Answers in Genesis and the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) in the States offer extensive educational material on their Web sites, including overheads, books and FAQs aimed at a pre-university level. Its Museum of Creation and Earth History in California is offered free to the public, and the institute also offers a series of anti-evolutionary science articles for kids called "Good Science." The Answers in Genesis ministry is in the planning stages of their Creation Museum and Family Discovery Centre, located in Ohio, and their Web site boasts that is "now ministering to over 10,000 visitors each day!"

Here in Quebec, the Creation Science Association of Quebec is just starting to rebuild its ranks under the guiding hand of its founder, Laurence Tisdall. Tisdall, a project manager for Hewlett-Packard with an MSc in micropropagation from McGill, founded the organization in 1990. "Obviously it's a very small association," says Tisdall. "It had up to 500 members four years ago, but then I got too busy with family and my job, so I couldn't keep up with the demand." Members of the Quebec association include anyone who donates $20 or more. Currently, the group has around 60 members, and Tisdall says he has a new team to help him.

Tisdall is a self-proclaimed evangelical Christian and Young-Earth Creationist, meaning that he believes in a literal interpretation of the Bible. Young-Earth Creationists calculate of earth's age by tracking years in the bible, thus placing the earth's age at less than 10,000 years old--a far cry from the mainstream scientific figure of around four billion years. Young Earthers also follow the account in Genesis of God's creation of the universe in six days.

Genesis vs. genetics

Tisdall gives anti-evolution lectures to church congregations, CEGEPs and universities, including the University of Laval and UQAM. On his Web site, Tisdall claims to have spoken to more than 400 church congregations. "I was doing up to 100 conferences a year but I've cut back this year," says Tisdall. "I never approach them, they invite us."

Last October Tisdall gave a talk entitled "How to debate our origins with an Evolutionist and never lose." He says that he starts all of his lectures the same way. "I do not believe that this is a question of science vs. religion," Tisdall declares. "This is religion vs. religion. Evolution tries to answer religious questions like, 'Where did we come from?' and 'Why are we here?' I don't think either theory should be taught in science class. They should be part of moral and religious classes like any philosophy should be."

Alters couldn't disagree more. "All major scientific organizations in the world include evolution as a fundamental science," states Alters. "All major scientific journals recognize evolution as a fundamental science. All major universities in Canada, the United States, and Europe award science Masters and Doctoral degrees in evolutionary biology."

But it's a tricky debate on many grounds, often blurring the lines between science, semantics and theological beliefs. Many Creationists accept what is known as microevolution but will not accept macroevolution. Macroevolution refers to any evolutionary change at or above the level of species. Microevolution is any evolutionary change below the level of species, and refers to changes in the frequency of alternative genes within a population and the effects that these changes have on the form of the affected population. Modern-day medicine is in an ongoing battle against microorganisms that are mutating so effectively as to render many antibiotics useless--microevolution in action. "I accept what Evolutionists call 'microevolution.' It's called 'adaptation,'" maintains Tisdall. "But what I contest is that little changes don't give you a big change at the end. They're not making things more complex."

Since Creationists follow the teachings of Genesis, which says "each unto his own kind," they contend that one form of life can't evolve into another. But where one kind begins and another leaves off has Evolutionists stumped. "Creationists contend that dogs can evolve into another type of dog, but there will never be a dog that will evolve into another kind of animal," says Alters. "We've tried to pin them down as to what exactly 'kind' means because in science we have this order that goes: kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species. That's how we categorize everything. So how does the word 'kind' translate for us today?"

Room for the supernatural

The evidence that all life on earth evolved from a common ancestor, supported by findings of anthropologists, biologists, geologists and others since the time of Darwin is overwhelming. Most scientists will say that this establishes evolution as a scientific theory as fundamental as gravity. However, one of the key mysteries still remains: the origin of life from inanimate matter. One explanation is the inorganic-organic hypothesis, which postulates that the essential chemical components of life were available on early Earth, and that organic matter interacted with the inorganic minerals, forming molecules that in turn formed amino acid proteins, then somehow arranged into ribosomes, then transfer RNA, DNA and so on to form the first primitive life form. But how basic proteins can develop into highly structured genetic material is still a conundrum. And it is this unanswered question that leaves significant room for the supernatural.

Most people who believe in God or some sort of higher being (and that's more than 90 per cent of North Americans) can reconcile evolution with the supernatural, but fundamentalists say the whole thing just doesn't hold holy water. "My daughter's in high school, and seven times in bold characters it's written in the first chapter of the [Grade 11] biology textbook: 'Evolution is fact.' But it isn't!" stresses Tisdall. The fact that the Pope has publicly supported evolution, saying theology is concerned with the soul and science with the natural world, does not impress Tisdall and other Creationists, who dismiss the Pope for compromising his faith in the name of science.

But religion is something that Alters would like to see students separate from science. "There are thousands of devoutly religious scientists who say, 'Okay, now I'm going to do science and now I'm going to practice my religion,'" says Alters. "It's hard to run a controlled experiment in a laboratory, where for one test tube you say, 'God can have an action on that one,' and for the other one you say, 'No, God can't have an action on that one.' Maybe God's behind it all, but we can't detect him in the laboratory."

How long is a day?

>> Exploring Creationism

Young-Earth Creationism (also called Scientific Creationism or Biblical Creationism): The Bible is "inerrant" and must be taken literally. The earth is 6,000-10,000 years old; some specify the year as 4004 B.C., as calculated by the 17th-century bishop, James Ussher. All life was created in six, 24-hour days. Geological and anthropological findings, such as the order in the layering of animal fossils, are related to Noah's Flood. Check out the Answers in Genesis Web site: www.answersingenesis.org.

Old-Earth Creationism (Progressive Creationism falls into this category): The Bible's use of the word "day" does not necessarily mean 24 hours. God created the earth and all life on earth in the order described in Genesis, but over billions of years. The earth is an "indefinite age," but biological evolution did not happen. Numerous ways are used to reconcile religion with science, depending on the organization. Check out the American Scientific Affiliation (mostly but not only Old Earthers) at: http://asa.calvin.edu.

Gap Creationism (also called Restitution Creationism): Between Genesis 1:1, where "God created the heaven and the earth," and Genesis 1:2 there was a very long time interval. Genesis 1:2, wherein God creates the world in six days occurred after the gap, and should be read as "the earth became waste and void" not "the earth was without form and void." This would account for some catastrophic event brought on by God before the first humans were created.

Day-Age Creationism: Popular in the 19th and early-20th century. Each of the days of creation in Genesis is actually a longer period of time, anywhere from a thousand to millions of years. The order of events in Genesis 1 is reflected in the order accepted by mainstream science.

Intelligent Design Creationism: Generally can be traced back to 18th-century archdeacon William Paley's argument that God's design can be seen everywhere in nature. Modern arguments are extremely technical, involving microbiology and mathematical logic. One aspect of modern Intelligent Design often used by many types of Creationists is biochemist Michael Behe's concept of "irreducible complexity." He proposes that certain microbiological structures will not work if broken further into their component parts, and that these structures therefore defy evolution theory. Behe says that the component parts are useless if they evolve independently, and Darwinian evolution does not allow for useless adaptation to occur. Therefore, some sort of "designer" must have created these forms. Check out the Centre for Renewal of Science and Culture at www.discovery.org. :

Information gathered from the Talk.Origins Archive and from ReligiousTolerance.org

--N.B.