{"id":65200,"date":"2020-10-08T01:28:06","date_gmt":"2020-10-08T05:28:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/?p=65200"},"modified":"2020-10-06T16:35:24","modified_gmt":"2020-10-06T20:35:24","slug":"adam-laats-creationism-usa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2020\/10\/adam-laats-creationism-usa\/","title":{"rendered":"Adam Laats: Creationism USA"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Adam Laats is Professor of Education and History (by courtesy) at Binghamton University (SUNY)<\/a>. He is the author of <\/em>Fundamentalist U<\/a> (Oxford University Press, 2018) and <\/em>The Other School Reformers<\/a> (Harvard University Press, 2015). His most recent book, <\/em>appears this week. Adam is here this week with a piece to whet our appetites for his just-published book, Creationism USA<\/a> (Oxford University Press, 2020)<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"It\u2019s one of the most durable myths about America\u2019s culture wars. Religious Americans, we are told by everyone from the New York Times<\/em><\/a> to The Simpsons<\/em><\/a>, have always fought against science.\u00a0 It\u2019s a myth that endures despite repeated debunkings by scholars<\/a>. Yet it\u2019s simply not true. When it comes to the science of evolution, for example, the big differences are not between religious people and non-religious. They couldn\u2019t be, for a couple of reasons.<\/p>\n

First of all, most Americans are creationists of one sort or another, and the vast majority of them have absolutely no problem with evolutionary science. Second, opinions about evolution do not actually depend on knowledge of actual evolutionary science. Rather, they are about evolution as a symbol, a side in much broader cultural conflicts.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s examine those claims one at a time. Are most Americans really creationists? It\u2019s always hard to tell for sure what people believe, but poll results from the 1980s onward have been consistent. Since 1983, between 91% and 78% of respondents have told Gallup pollsters<\/a> that God must have played some role in creating humanity.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t mean that all creationists agree on the meaning of creationism. Though journalists often equate the term \u201ccreationism<\/a>\u201d with a rejection of evolutionary science, plenty of creationists have absolutely no reason to dispute mainstream science. Many of them might be Catholics who follow Pope Francis, who said in 2014 that God\u2019s creativity is not like a \u201cmagic wand as to be able to do everything<\/a>.\u201d God creates, Francis explained, and evolution evolves. Or they might be Muslims who agree with Sheikh Hamza Yusuf. In 2012, Yusuf explained his Islamic vision<\/a>: All we know for sure is that God said \u201cbe, and it is.\u201d Anything else humans might tell you about the facts of creation is the \u201cheight of arrogance.\u201d Or they might be evangelical Protestants who side with Francis Collins. As Collins explained<\/a> in 2007, \u201cThe God of the Bible is also the God of the genome.\u201d<\/p>\n

If so many religious people do not dispute the scientific truths about evolution, why do we keep hearing that they do? The true landscape of America\u2019s creation\/evolution dispute is not really about evolutionary science itself, but about the broader culture war in which evolution has always been embedded. In short, opinions about evolution are not really about evolutionary science, but about picking a side in culture-war politics. As science-communication scholar Dan Kahan has said<\/a>, statements about evolution are not about what we know, but about who we are.<\/p>\n

On one hand, people who say they believe in evolution tend not to know the science any better than those who say they don\u2019t believe in it. On the other, those who say they disbelieve do not dispute the importance of evolutionary theory itself, but only what it represents.<\/p>\n

Consider the results of a couple of studies of knowledge and belief. As one Harvard study concluded<\/a>, \u201cparticipants . . . were no more likely to endorse the statement \u2018natural selection is the best explanation for how a species adapts to its environment\u2019 if they understood natural selection than if they did not.\u201d In a different study<\/a>, just under a hundred non-majors in an undergraduate biology class were quizzed on their ideas about evolution and creation. The results? Among these students, researchers found \u201cno relation between knowledge and acceptance of animal or human evolution.\u201d In spite of the durable myths about creationism and evolution, knowledge is not simply on the side of evolutionary science. Plenty of people choose to believe in evolution without actually knowing what it means.<\/p>\n

On the other side, there are some creationists who reject evolution without really disputing its value as scientific knowledge. Unlike the majority of creationists who might agree with Pope Francis, Sheikh Yusuf, or Dr. Collins, these creationists\u2014in my new book I call them \u201cradical\u201d creationist<\/a>s\u2014dispute the implications<\/em> of evolutionary science, yet they do not dispute the importance <\/em>of evolutionary science.<\/p>\n

It can be difficult to recognize this truth about creationism, so it is worth repeating: Even the radical creationists\u2014the ones who believe the earth and humanity was created as-is within the last 10,000 years or so\u2014even these radicals do not dispute the scientific importance of the ideas of evolutionary theory. Even radical creationists such as Ken Ham at Answers In Genesis\u2014the man behind the huge replica Noah\u2019s Ark in Kentucky where models of baby dinosaurs ride out the global flood on Noah\u2019s Ark<\/a>\u2014even such radicals recognize the need for children to learn mainstream evolutionary theory.<\/p>\n

Pundits from Answers In Genesis, for example, preach that radical creationists should teach evolution to their children<\/a>. To be sure, they want children to learn about evolution in a different way. They want their children to learn about evolution so that they will understand why they shouldn\u2019t believe it. They think young radicals should \u201clearn about evolution from someone who will point out the weaknesses and inconsistencies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet even these radical creationists recognize that evolutionary science is one of the building blocks of modern scientific thinking. They agree that a complete education must include a thorough grounding in the ideas of evolutionary science. For radical creationists like the ones at Answers In Genesis, the problems with evolution do not derive from a knowledge of evolutionary science itself. Rather, the dangers of evolution\u2014from this radical perspective\u2014result from the implications of a broader sort of evolutionary thinking.<\/p>\n

As Ken Ham has argued<\/a>, evolutionary science itself is something that creationists should know about, precisely because evolutionary thinking has led to such catastrophic \u201cmoral decay\u201d in historically Christian societies. The sinister influence of evolutionary thinking, Ham believes, can be blamed for the legalization of abortion; for the growing acceptance of LGBTQ rights; for the diminishing influence of Christianity in mainstream culture, and even for widespread efforts to replace \u201cMerry Christmas\u201d with \u201cHappy Holidays.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Ken Ham and other radical creationists, the fight against LGBTQ rights, abortion, and a broad tendency toward a secular public square might be described as a fight against evolution. But it is not really a fight against evolutionary science. Radicals recognize the value and importance of learning evolutionary theory, if only to learn why they shouldn\u2019t believe it.<\/p>\n

On the other side, people who say they believe or accept the truths of evolutionary science don\u2019t often know what those truths are. At least, they are statistically not any more likely to know evolution than radical creationists are.<\/p>\n

Though America\u2019s culture wars are often depicted as battles of knowledge against belief, as fights of religion against science, they are in fact far more complicated. Belief, knowledge, politics, and religion are tangled together in a dizzying variety of ways. The dividing line is not between religion and science or between knowledge and ignorance, but rather between sides in a far more comprehensive culture war. The most important questions are not about evolutionary science, but far more basic: about abortion rights, LGBTQ rights, and the proper role of Christianity in mainstream culture.<\/p>\n

Americans, in the end, are not divided about the science of evolution. We are just divided, period. Evolution has become a symbol of those divisions, a flag we can wave to signal our allegiances.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adam Laats is Professor of Education and History (by courtesy) at Binghamton University (SUNY). He is the author of Fundamentalist U (Oxford University Press, 2018) and The Other School Reformers (Harvard University Press, 2015). His most recent book, appears this week. Adam is here this week with a piece to whet our appetites for his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1008,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3043,8],"tags":[5453,2319,1563],"class_list":["post-65200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guest-post","category-john-turner","tag-adam-laats","tag-creationism","tag-evolution"],"yoast_head":"\nAdam Laats: Creationism USA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Adam Laats is Professor of Education and History (by courtesy) at Binghamton University (SUNY). 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