COMMENTARY: The New Century’s Struggle for the Soul

c. 2000 Religion News Service (Huston Smith is a visiting professor of religious studies at the University of California, Berkeley. His new book, “Why Religion Matters,” is being published this month by HarperSanFrancisco.) (UNDATED) The hoopla occurred last year, but technically the third millennium begins this January. And as the recent presidential campaign made it […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

(Huston Smith is a visiting professor of religious studies at the University of California, Berkeley. His new book, “Why Religion Matters,” is being published this month by HarperSanFrancisco.)

(UNDATED) The hoopla occurred last year, but technically the third millennium begins this January. And as the recent presidential campaign made it permissible _ for the time being, at least _ to speak openly about religion in public life, this is a fitting moment to reflect on Harvard sociobiologist E.O. Wilson’s prediction that the choice between science and religion “will be the coming century’s struggle for men’s souls.”


As one who acknowledges that the atrocities that have been committed in the name of religion rival those of the atheistically mounted Stalinist terror and Mao’s cultural revolution, but who also agrees with Andre Malraux’s forecast that the 21st century will be religious or there will be none, I welcome the dharma combat between religion and science.

But I am troubled by the way both sides are behaving as the flag goes down.

On religion’s side, neither liberals nor conservatives are acting wisely. Flushed by the political clout they have acquired, conservative denominations have become bullies who are driving humanitarians of the stature of President Carter out of their denominations as they turn back the clock on the human rights gains of the last half-century. Meanwhile, liberal churches are reading themselves out of existence _ a 25 percent loss in membership in the last 25 years _ by accepting, in various degrees, Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong’s argument that the churches must change or die. It is a curious thesis considering the churches that have changed most are losing out to conservative ones.

One would expect the scientists would be behaving better, but they are not.

Shelving their motto to “sit down before the facts like a little child,” they are doctoring evidence to make it fit working premises aimed at rendering God superfluous.

Those who find this hard to believe should read Jonathan Wells’ recently published book, “Icons of Evolution.” The “icons” include faked drawings of embryos purporting to show that humans and fish share a common ancestor, staged photographs of peppered moths on tree trunks where they don’t normally rest, and eight other claims for Darwinian evolution that keep turning up in textbooks despite the fact that biologists now know they are bogus.

Additionally, scientists defending Darwinism have become bullies in their own ways. In 1992, a tenured biology professor at San Francisco State University presented students with the standard view of evolution but mentioned that some scientists do not think the origin of life can be explained without intelligent design. He was summarily suspended from teaching introductory biology, although the school’s academic senate eventually reinstated him.

In 1999, the school board in Melvindale, Mich., voted to put some books critical of Darwinism in the high school library. Darwinists tried to block the move.


When in that same year Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas, convened a symposium that included both critics and defenders of the Kansas State School Board decision on evolution in the curriculum _ now generally recognized to have been inaccurately reported by the news media _ biologists at the university boycotted the symposium.

Most recently, the Michael Polanyi Center at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, organized an international conference last spring to discuss whether nature can be explained by purely materialistic principles.

Baylor’s faculty responded by demanding a review of the credentials of the center’s director, William Dembski, and when they were found to be in order voted to shut the center down. Dembski remains at Baylor with no teaching duties.

As antagonists, neither scientists nor religionists can claim high moral ground as the battle of the century begins. Both sides will do well to make “New Century” resolutions to improve their codes of conduct.

DEA END SMITH

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