[FTC]    [Image][Image] [Image][TIME.com] TIME.com Home TIME Daily VIEWPOINT How We Became From TIME AUGUST 23, 1999 VOL. 154 NO. 8 Human: The Magazine evolution of TIME.com Dorothy, It's Really Oz Homo sapiens Newsfiles A pro-creationist decision in wasn't a steady Web Kansas is more than a blow against march from Features Darwin primitivism to TIME BY STEPHEN JAY GOULD perfection. Digital Instead, as TIME For The Kansas Board of Education voted newly Kids 6 to 4 to remove evolution, and the discovered LIFE Big Bang theory as well, from the fossils reveal, Homepage state's science curriculum. In so it was a Breaking doing, the board transported its turbulent tale, News jurisdiction to a never-never land full of false Boards & where a Dorothy of the new starts and Chat millennium might exclaim, "They repeated Magazine still call it Kansas, but I don't failures, Archives think we're in the real world before the anymore." The new standards do not appearance of Search forbid the teaching of evolution, culturally TIME.com but the subject will no longer be complex, [x2] included in statewide tests for technologically evaluating students--a virtual savvy creatures guarantee, given the realities of like us Subscribe education, that this central to TIME concept of biology will be diluted Creationism: Subscriber or eliminated, thus reducing Stephen Jay Services courses to something like chemistry Gould on a without the periodic table, or tornado out of [Other News] American history without Lincoln. Oz [spacer gif][spacer gif]Long Bond [spacer gif] Rallies The Kansas skirmish marks the TIME ARCHIVES Stocks latest episode of a long struggle TIME 100: FORTUNE.com by religious Fundamentalists and Scientists & their allies to restrict or Thinkers - [spacer gif]A Prospectus eliminate the teaching of evolution Louis, Mary & From Martha in public schools--a misguided Richard Leakey MONEY.com effort that our courts have quashed at each stage, and that saddens TIME.com Chat: [spacer gif]'Blair' both scientists and most Richard Leakey Director theologians. No scientific theory, Tells Tales including evolution, can pose any The First ENTERTAINMENT threat to religion--for these two Butcher WEEKLY great tools of human understanding Filleted bones operate in complementary (not and an ape-man [TIME Marketplace] contrary) fashion in their totally surprise: Could [Image] separate realms: science as an this inquiry about the factual state of big-toothed the natural world, religion as a scavenger be [TIME selections] TIME 100 search for spiritual meaning and our ancestor? Bookstore ethical values. (May 3, 1999) TIME Almanac 1999 TIME.com Book In the early 1920s, several states On Its Own Two Deals simply forbade the teaching of Feet evolution outright, opening an Kenyan fossils epoch that inspired the infamous suggest a new, Summer Reading 1925 Scopes trial (leading to the earlier date conviction of a Tennessee high when a human List school teacher) and that ended only ancestor first Music for the road & beach in 1968, when the Supreme Court walked upright declared such laws unconstitutional (August 28, on First Amendment grounds. In a 1995) [Quick links] Find JFK Jr. second round in the late 1970s, Commemorative Arkansas and Louisiana required One Less Find books that if evolution be taught, equal Missing Link Find videos time must be given to Genesis Bones from the literalism, masquerading as Ethiopian Find music oxymoronic "creation science." The desert prove Free Product Supreme Court likewise rejected that human Information those laws in 1987. ancestors walked the The Kansas decision represents earth 4.4 creationism's first--and surely million years temporary--success with a third ago (October 3, strategy for subverting a 1994) constitutional imperative: that by simply deleting, but not formally Lucy's Grandson banning, evolution, and by not A fossil skull demanding instruction in a implies that biblically literalist humanity's "alternative," their narrowly earliest known partisan religious motivations progenitors might not derail their goals. belonged to a single, Given this protracted struggle, long-lived Americans of goodwill might be species (April excused for supposing that some 11, 1994) genuine scientific or philosophical dispute motivates this issue: Is How Man Began evolution speculative and ill New evidence founded? Does evolution threaten shows that our ethical values or our sense of early humans life's meaning? As a paleontologist left Africa by training, and with abiding much sooner respect for religious traditions, I than once would raise three points to thought. Did alleviate these worries: Homo sapiens evolve in many First, no other Western nation has places at once? endured any similar movement, with (March 14, any political clout, against 1994) evolution--a subject taught as fundamental, and without dispute, BULLETIN BOARDS in all other countries that share Discuss early our major sociocultural traditions. man on TIME.com's Second, evolution is as well science documented as any phenomenon in bulletin board science, as strongly as the earth's revolution around the sun rather POLL: Do you than vice versa. In this sense, we believe in can call evolution a "fact." creationism or (Science does not deal in evolutionary certainty, so "fact"can only mean a theory for an proposition affirmed to such a high explanation of degree that it would be perverse to man's withhold one's provisional assent.) existance? The major argument advanced by the WEB RESOURCES school board--that large-scale American Museum evolution must be dubious because of Natural the process has not been directly History observed--smacks of absurdity and only reveals ignorance about the Human nature of science. Good science Evolution: The integrates observation with Evidence in 3D inference. No process that unfolds over such long stretches of time Take the Lucy (mostly, in this case, before Test humans appeared), or at an Was Lucy ape or infinitude beneath our powers of human? You direct visualization (subatomic decide particles, for example), can be seen directly. If justification PBS: A Science required eyewitness testimony, we Odyssey - Human would have no sciences of deep Evolution time--no geology, no ancient human history either. (Should I believe Julius Caesar ever existed? The hard bony evidence for human evolution, as described in the preceding pages, surely exceeds our reliable documentation of Caesar's life.) Third, no factual discovery of science (statements about how nature "is") can, in principle, lead us to ethical conclusions (how we "ought" to behave) or to convictions about intrinsic meaning (the "purpose" of our lives). These last two questions--and what more important inquiries could we make?--lie firmly in the domains of religion, philosophy and humanistic study. Science and religion should be equal, mutually respecting partners, each the master of its own domain, and with each domain vital to human life in a different way. MORE>> PAGE 1 | 2 COPYRIGHT © 1999 TIME INC. NEW MEDIA