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 ello,
I’m Duncan Hopwood and I am a retired High School Biology Teacher. I
taught and coached for 35 years in Denver Public Schools, 20 of them at
Thomas Jefferson High School.
Gary Wiederspahn knew I was a Biology teacher and one Sunday, before
the service began, asked me if I believed in evolution. “Of course,” I
replied, “I am a Biologist.” He then asked if, in my opinion, believing
in evolution means that you can’t believe in God. “No,” I answered, “it
has never been a problem for me.” He responded, “would you like to make
a presentation to the congregation about your experiences as a teacher
who believes in evolution?” It was like getting an electric shock. I was
immobilized and terrified at the idea that I would speak to all of you
today. I am not sure if I said anything, standing there in a cold sweat
and mildly catatonic state. So Gary told me to think about it. I
thought, hey, I’ll just roll out a chalkboard, as usual, and give
another fascinating lecture about Evolution. I thought about it and here
I am, still nervous about speaking to you and without my chalkboard. The
title of this presentation is Teachers, Schools, and Evolution.
This title reminded me of a newspaper article that I recently read. A
Denver Zookeeper was walking by the gorilla exhibit and noticed that one
of the gorillas was reading two books. One book was the Bible and the
other was Darwin’s Origin of the Species. Curious, he asked the gorilla
what made him choose those two books. The gorilla answered - “well I
just wanted to know if I am my brothers keeper or my keepers brother.”
Briefly… I descended from a family of scientists. My father was a
biochemist at Colorado State University and my Uncle, now and Episcopal
Priest, was a Biology Teacher at Saint Cloud State in Minnesota. Uncle
Joe was my roommate for his first two years at CSU. It was like having a
big brother and I idolized him.
I was raised a Roman Catholic and in this environment I formed my
early ideas and feelings about the Bible and Evolution. They were two
very different concepts. Many religions such as the Catholic Church,
Episcopal Church, Methodist Church, and Judaism, to name a few, see the
bible and science as two separate fields of study.
My father’s field of study was endocrinology, the ductless glands.
Dad worked with steroids and was able to make super turkeys or muscle
bound cows. He worked with hormones and steroids and was called upon by
a Federal Grand Jury to testify as to what steroids do. Can they get
into the human food chain from farm animals. He also worked on male
birth control pills using prisoners at Canyon City Penitentiary but that
effort turned out to sterilize men and no drug company was interested in
that.
My father, never a man of controversy, signed a document with other
scientists that was sent to the Vatican explaining, in some detail, that
birth control pills worked in a way that did not violate Church Policy.
Consequently, he worried that he would be excommunicated from the
Church. I learned that my father, a seemingly perfect man in the eyes of
his young son, was in conflict about science and religion.
I recently visited my Uncle Joe and asked how he deals, as a
Biologist and Priest, with the conflict between Darwinian Evolution and
his religion. He said he sees no conflict.
We discussed what kind of devout people do have conflicts with
evolution and he told me those that literally translate the bible and
consider it to have no errors. He gave me a wonderful paper called: A
Catechism of Creation: An Episcopal Understanding.
I will quote from this document.
“Many Christians have been taught to believe that evolution is
opposed to creation, and that a believer cannot accept evolution and
also believe in God. Neither of these assertions is true. Scientists
seek to study and seek to understand nature using methods that make
no claims either for or against the existence of God.”
The stance that his church has taken on creationists’ claims was
addressed at their General Convention in 1982. They passed a resolution
(a) to “affirm its belief in the glorious ability of God to create in
any manner, (b) and in this affirmation reject the rigid dogmatism of
the Creationist movement. And (c) further affirm our support of the
scientists, educators, and theologians in the search of truth in this
creation that God has given and entrusted to us.” Again, the problem
with evolution begins when a religion or a person translates the Bible
Literally. They see the creation of earth and all living things upon it
getting here just as told in Genesis.
As a high school student and college student in the late 50’s and
early 60’s, I was taught that there were two Kingdoms used to classify
all living things - Plant and Animal. With continued scientific research
we now recognize five Kingdoms used to classify all living things. As
Scientists use DNA, biochemistry and other tools to learn more about how
plants and animals have evolved - it has been my experience that it has
strengthened Darwin’s theory rather than weakened it.
While teaching Biology it was not uncommon for me to be challenged by
students who had books and pamphlets about Creationism. I allowed
students to have a say, as is their right. They did not take over the
class as many had hoped. While these students presented many books and
pamphlets, it rallied the other students in the class to enter into
lively discussions with the Creationist Students. I had no problem with
them believing in anything else; however, the test questions were on the
scientific theory of evolution.
While reading about evolution, Creationism, or Intelligent Design in
preparation to speak to you this morning I began to get irritated about
the Religious Right imposing their beliefs on our teachers, school
boards, administrators, and even legislators. I struggle with the idea
that in 2007 we still argue the same things that Clarence Darrow argued
against in 1925 as he defended high school biology teacher, John Scopes.
While in Muskegon, Michigan, this summer, waiting for the elevator, I
was standing with one of our neighbors who is a retired Registered
Nurse. I had just read about a school board that was being attacked by
Fundamentalists and I wondered out loud how can anyone in the world
today not believe in evolution? She verbally assaulted me asking “how
can anyone who believes in God believe in Evolution?’ She was angry and
sticking up for what she knew to be fact and right. I was stunned to
think that a well educated nurse would not believe in evolution. I was
reminded, firsthand, that people still strongly believe in the
Creationist Theory.
I do not care if people do not want to accept evolution as science
interprets it. However, imposing their will on scientists and educators
does bother me. Quoting Ashley Montague from the introduction to the
book Science and Creationism “…science begins where bigotry and absolute
certainty end. The scientist believes in proof without certainty, the
bigot believes in certainty without proof.”
There are three basic views on Evolution. Creation Science (now
called Intelligent Design), Darwinian Evolution (the scientific view)
and a Theistic View.
Among the central tenants of Fundamentalism is the idea of Biblical
inerrancy. The bible, they maintain, has no errors and is always right.
This leads us to the group of individuals and religions that believe in
Creation Science based on Genesis. New Earth Creationists believe the
earth is less than 10,000 years old and Old Earth Creationists believe
that God created the earth and all living organisms on it although the 6
day interval occupied a much longer time. This group includes
Intelligent Design.
A second view is the Scientific view or Darwinian Evolution that says
that the origin of the universe occurred 15 billion years ago and that
the earth coalesced about 4.5 billion years ago. Life began forming
purely by natural forces.
A third view is the Theistic view. The earth formed 4.5 billion years
ago and evolution occurred just as scientists believe. However, it is
viewed as a tool created, used, directed and/or controlled by God in
order to accomplish a higher purpose - the creation of humans.
The Rev. Hal Charpening, Plymouth Congregational UUC says, “In the UU
Church tradition, intellectual integrity is central to our faith. We
seek to understand scripture as the rich stories of our faith, written
by distinctive peoples in particular times and places, rather than the
words of God dictated to an ancient transcriptionist. The Bible, in our
religion, is an indispensable guide to life and faith. It is not, nor
was it ever intended to be, a science book.”
Why does this matter in the world today? You are probably aware,
Christian Fundamentalists are active in various communities, including
CU at Boulder where they are sending e-mails threatening to kill Biology
teachers in an effort to force them to not teach evolution in their
Classes! They want Intelligent Design to be taught. To me, this is a
dangerous precedent and leads to religion being taught as science in our
schools. As Joanne Ostrow states in her article about the Creationists
court defeat in Dover Pennsylvania; “Unless lovers of freedom and
intellectual honesty stay on their toes, there are regressive think
tanks at work ready to shut the door on science.”
Ostrow goes on to state that science operates outside of the cultural
wars. “Faith is fine, and quite compatible with science, but it is not
subject to scientific testing, hence the term, faith.”
She points out that it is timely to be looking at evolution since
“three Republican candidates for president publicly rejected evolution
during their first televised debate.” She quotes a “Nova” report that
one in three adults reject evolution! President Bush states “that the
jury is still out on evolution!”
Creationists are lobbying for equal time in the science classroom.
Two opposing theories only deserve equal time if they both explain the
evidence equally well. The reason that Intelligent Design lost the court
case in Dover, Pennsylvania, was that they couldn’t prove that
Intelligent Design is science based but is in fact, religious based. It
was an effort to replace science with religion. We also must consider
that if we gave Intelligent Design equal time in the classroom then we
should give equal time to other cultures such as Native Americans,
Africans, Indians, Egyptians, Norse, and Chinese. This would leave
little time for the science teacher to teach Darwinian Evolution. We
must be vigilant as parents and thinking people to keep Intelligent
Design, or whatever you want to call it - OUT OF THE CLASSROOM.
Personally I believe that belief in God and Darwinian Evolution can
coexist and that they are mutually exclusive of each other. I personally
believe that Creative Design does not belong in the Public Schools. I
personally believe that there is God and that believing in evolution
does not diminish this belief. I believe that the Universe is expanding
from an event called the Big Bang. From that event, space and time and
various forms of matter and energy emerged. I believe the evidence for
biological evolution is overwhelming, well documented and deserves to be
called a theory. As Anglican minister Charles Kingsley Put it, “God made
a world that is able to make itself .“ I believe this to be true.
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