This article was published in October 1986 as an unsigned editorial in the now-defunct but once great bi-weekly Little Rock alternative newspaper Spectrum. Five years later, the editorial with me listed as the author was reprinted with other Spectrum articles in a book called A Spectrum Reader: Five Years of Iconoclastic Reporting, Criticism and Essays, edited by Bill Jones, Philip Martin, and Stephen Buel.
There
are many simple questions for which science has no simple answers, and some of
the simplest involve life itself. Two of those questions pertain to current
events. One is "When did the human species come into existence?" and
the other is "When does the life of an individual begin?"
Science
does not have the answers to these questions. It does not have the answer to
the former because a definitive pattern of human evolution has not been
established. To the latter, science has no answer because it is not able to
answer a more fundamental question: What is life?
This
pair of simple questions is of current interest because of the points of view
espoused by the creationism and pro-life movements, both of which have received
considerable political attention and are about to receive more. Creationism
arguments emanating from Louisiana will be heard later this year by the United
States Supreme Court. In Arkansas, as well as several other states, the pro-
life movement has helped put an anti-abortion amendment on the November 4
ballot.
Both
the pro-lifers and the creationists have experienced setbacks in Arkansas in
recent years. In early 1982, U.S. District Judge William R. Overton ruled
against the equal-time teaching of creationism with evolution, saying that
"creation science" is a religious point of view, not a scientific one.
Two years ago, the Arkansas Supreme Court disallowed the ballot title of the
Unborn Child Amendment, saying the title was misleading. The amendment was
renamed "The Limitation of Abortion Funding Amendment" by the Unborn
Child Amendment Committee and will appear on this year's ballot as Amendment
65.
The
people responsible for the creationism and pro-life movements share a common
belief concerning the time scale of the beginning of life. Creationists say the
human species appeared virtually instantaneously, and pro-life proponents say
that the life of an individual begins in the same fashion. The pro-life
movement's point of view was stated a few months ago during a KLRE [public radio] interview,
when the vice-president of the Unborn Child Amendment Committee at one point
said, "Life begins at conception." Not "We believe life begins
at conception," but "Life begins at conception," as if the
statement represented an unquestionable fact.
Those
of us who will admit to not being sure when life begins must ask of the
pro-life movement, "How do you know that?" The only thing science has
to offer in this regard is that there is a unique set of DNA present after fertilization
occurs. But uniqueness and the existence of life are not the same thing.
More
satisfactory from a scientific standpoint is the view that life does not begin
at a certain moment, but rather that it evolves from one stage to another— from
separate and living sperm and ovum to fetus, and from there to a full-fledged
human being. Such a point of view does not imply that there is nothing wrong
with abortion. On the contrary, it says that abortion is very disrespectful of
the mystery of human life. However, by stating unequivocally that human life
begins at conception, the pro-life movement is also disrespectful of this
mystery.
Creationists
have also shown little regard for the mystery of human origins. There is
validity to the creationists' criticism that some people falsely accept
evolution as a fact. That is not a problem with evolution but with people's
understanding of science. This problem is only worsened by the arguments put
forward by the creationist movement, because the creationists have created the
perception that people must accept one theory or another, when in fact people
do not have to accept any scientific theory as fact. That includes such
now-obvious theories as Newton's theory of universal gravitation.
It
is appropriate to mention gravitation at this point, because it, like
evolution, can be said to contradict the Book of Genesis. Before Newton, it was
imagined that celestial bodies moved in accordance with divine law, not in
accordance with any natural law that could be described by humankind. What
Newton did for physics, Darwin did for biology. Newton discovered universal
gravitation and described it with a simple equation, and Darwin discovered the
evolution of species, which he described in terms of the law of natural
selection.
To
put the scientific viewpoint in its proper setting, the late UCLA astronomer
George Abell, who gave an energetic lecture at the University of Arkansas at
Little Rock one afternoon not long before he died, included a section called
"What science is and is not" in the first chapter of his
highly-regarded astronomy textbook. Abell wrote, "One could argue,
technically, that the sun and moon do not exist at all—that we are dreaming the
whole thing. Most of us accept the existence of a real world; moreover, we
accept many scientific theories as fact - such as the rotation and revolution
of the earth. But in this acceptance we are going beyond the rules of science
into religious belief. Science does not dictate as fact that the earth moves,
but only that its motion is required by Newtonian theory."
In
light of Abell's words, it should be reiterated that some people's acceptance
of evolution as fact must be regarded as scientific naivete or as a
pseudo-religious belief. But even if one chooses, for the sake of argument, to
consider the latter case, there is still no credence warranted for the
creationists' claim that the theory of evolution is itself the equivalent of a
religious belief. Evolution, including human evolution, is no more and no less
godless than the theory of gravitation.
The
creationists apparently are not satisfied with such a separation of religion
and science. They wish to take the literal translation of the Book of Genesis
and pit it against evolution in the arena of scientific theory. In doing so,
they force people to make a choice between evolution and Genesis, much as the
pro-life movement forces people to choose between the belief that life begins
at conception and the belief that abortion is perfectly proper. In short, the
creationist argument equates evolution with atheism, and the pro-life argument
equates abortion with murder. That these two arguments do not have any
scientific validity hardly matters if they are given political validity in the
coming weeks.
