Stephen Jay Gould Quotes
In their recently aborted struggle to inject Genesis literalism into science classrooms, fundamentalist groups followed their usual opportunistic strategy of arguing two contradictory sides of a question when a supposed rhetorical advantage could be extracted from each.
Gould, Stephen Jay. Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History. W. W. Norton & Company, 1983.
Conflict between religion and evolution does not exist in most churches. There are exceptions of some orthodox Jews, fundamentalist Christians and Muslims. However, in this case the highest prelate of the American Episcopal Church not only sees no conflict but urges that evolution be taught in schools.
In a policy statement relegating non-evolution theories of origin such as creation science to the social science and language arts curricula:
This quotation is noteworthy because although there are some scientists who are sympathetic to the religious fundamentalist view of the origin of the universe, they are almost always second class scientists. In this case, the scientist is a first class scientist, a Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry. So his quotation has more weight than of most others and is used more often by many fundamentalists who support the Biblical Genesis version of creation rather than the Big Bang scientific explanations and evolution. There are however many great scientists who also are people of faith in a God. They may be religious, but like most religious Americans, interpret the Bible metaphorically and symbolically rather than literally as the fundamentalists do.
This quotation is important and memorable for several reasons. First, the Congressman is one of the relatively few highly educated Americans who believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible. Most Christians and Jews do not interpret the ancient scripture literally. Most Christian and Jewish religious organizations, including the Roman Catholic Church, have no problem at all with evolution and the big bang theory. As a matter of fact, the scientist who developed the mathematics to explain the big bang was a Catholic Priest. Even some religious people who do not believe that that evolution is not an accurate interpretation, rarely claim that the Earth is only 9,000 years old. It is actually over 13 Billion years old. An anti-scientific view of the world is certainly within an American’s right, but the fact that this congressman was assigned by The Republican Party leadership to be a Member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology given his belief structure is amazing, If the earth were only 9,000 years old, there is no way the global positioning satellites could tell us where we are, our nuclear arsenal would be unstable and dangerous, radiation medicine would not help anyone get well just for a few examples. A second noteworthy aspect is that the Congressman is not just stating that the millions of scientists and science teachers are wrong—in error. He accuses each and every one of them of acting as agents of Satan and that their motivation in studying and doing science is to undermine his and others faith in God and that none of them has any belief in or desire for a personal Savior. It is rare that this type of un-American behavior is found in a member of Congress who claims that any person who disagrees with his religions views or has different Biblical interpretations is an agent from Hell. The founding fathers created the First Amendment to cope with and even tolerate the few who had the extreme and unrealistic views of this Congressmen.
This quotation is a good example of what a substantial number of Americans believe and the classic errors they make in acting on their views. The vast majority of the religions in America have no conflict with evolution. To them evolution is the method that God chose to create the life on earth. Some fundamentalists take the Old Testament versions of the creation of the earth and man (there are 2 of them that conflict) literally by which they conclude that the earth is 6,000 years old or so. In reality, the earth is over 10 Billlion years old but the scientific evidence that proves this as well as evolution via natural selection is almost always not known to them. It is not as if they have studied it an rejected evolution. Almost all have never studied it. As a result they think that the word “Theory” means an unproven hypothesis which is the lay, non scientific meaning of the word. But in science, a theory is large set of related proven laws or principles, that has been tested over and over again and for which there has NEVER been a counterexample proven. A theory does not explain everything in the area and additional hypotheses are constantly being tested and if they stand up are added to the theory. And there are areas that are not explained by a theory, and these may or may not be in the future, but no theory does or can explain everything. Brattin, who sadly has never been educated about the science of biology, believes that it is a scientific theory is a “belief structure” like a religion. However, to qualify as part of an established scientific theory the statements must have been subjected to demonstrative proof, usually by many different scientists typically using many different methods. And these results must be replicated over and over again. No religion can be proved the way a scientific theory can be and that should not surprise anyone as religion is in the domain of faith where science has not the methodology to validate or invalidate people’s religious beliefs. Likewise, religion has not the methodology to prove or disprove science not should it be expected to. Many scientists are religious and many are not. Many religious people are scientists and many are not. They have little to do with each other.
Stephen Jay Gould was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was one of the most influential and widely read authors of popular science of his generation. Gould spent most of his career teaching at Harvard University and working at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. In 1996, Gould was hired as the Vincent Astor Visiting Research Professor of Biology at New York University, where he divided his time teaching there and at Harvard.
