Ian Hacking Quotes
The anti-Darwin movement has racked up one astounding achievement. It has made a significant proportion of American parents care about what their children are taught in school.
Hacking, Ian. The Social Construction of What? Harvard University Press, 1999.
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.
A teacher had been arrested and threatened with jail because he had taught Darwin’s Theory of Evolution in a high school science class. The ACLU paid for famed attorney, Clarence Darrow, to defend Scopes in the famous trial that exposed the ignorance and bias of the schools that prohibited teaching about evolution as it contravened the Protestant fundamentalist Biblical version of the creation of humans. While the ACLU had a major victory, even today many school systems—mostly in the South—still prohibit such teaching and while no teacher can be jailed, they can be fired for not following the curriculum of the local school board.
This is an important quotation for several reasons. First, it demonstrates the extreme diversity of religion in America. To Swaggart, Evolution is a “Satanic Theory”. However, to most American religious leaders, Evolution, per se, is not problematic. The Roman Catholic Church has no trouble with Evolution; Catholic Universities teach Evolution as a basic part of their science curricula. Jews have no theological problems with Evolution. None of the main-line Protestant Churches have any theological opposition to Evolution per se. Yet there are other Protestant denominations who find that Evolution is in contradiction to a literal interpretation of the Bible and hence do not accept it. Second, it shows the extreme level of vituperation and disrespect that is given differing points of view by some of the extreme fundamentalists who do not have the traditional American religious tolerance for differing belief structures. Here Swaggart accuses the hundreds of millions of Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist and other clerics and laypeople who see Evolution as a well-established explanation of much of science, of being not only atheists but atheists in league with the Devil. A third factor is that this quotation is an example of a Minister telling people what is or is not science and scientifically demonstrated. If a scientist without any religious training of study were ever to render judgments on theology, most of us would laugh and see it as ridiculous. However when a cleric like Swaggert, untutored and ignorant of even basic science, makes scientific pronouncements, he (and many other fundamentalists) find that reasonable.
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.
While many people in America say they do not “believe in” evolution almost all of them do not know what evolution is much less understand what it is that they think is false. There are very few people who have studied evolution who reject it as being without merit in explaining life forms and their history. Almost all who are against it are religious fundamentalists who take the Judeo-Christian Bible literally. For their particular religion, evolution is a false doctrine, but there are many major religions in America for whom evolution is no problem. For example, Quakers, Unitarians, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Reform Jews, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox just to list some. Creationism, of which the quote author is an advocate, is an excellent religious solution to the contradiction between Evolution and the literal word of the Bible, but it is such terrible science, that it is not even considered science or taught in science curricula.
Bryan participated as a prosecutor in the infamous Scopes Trial in Tennessee where a school teacher was convicted of a crime for discussing the idea of evolution in a high school classroom. This view of opposition to Evolution was actually considered too liberal by many other Biblical Fundamentalists. They were just as distressed about the other animals as well as man. Evolution explicitly contradicted the literal story of Biblical creationism and therefore was blasphemy.
Ian MacDougall Hacking CC FRSC FBA is a Canadian philosopher specializing in the philosophy of science. Throughout his career, he has won numerous awards, such as the Killam Prize for the Humanities and the Balzan Prize, and been a member of many prestigious groups, including the Order of Canada, the Royal Society of Canada and the British Academy.
