Different magicians, same old tricks

With the election of Barack Obama as the next president of the United States, many science-savvy folks have breathed a (tentative) sigh of relief. Perhaps we can finally put all this creationism in the classroom nonsense to rest now that a progressive Democrat is next up for the presidency. I'm not so sure, and there was a time when the loudest defense of Creation came from progressive Democrats.

The brand of young-earth creationism we are familiar with today is not so much rooted in Victorian responses to Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, but the fundamentalist fervor prevalent in America in the 1920's. The leaders of this movement were quite different from the super-conservative republicans we know today, however. William Jennings Bryan, for instance, was a progressive Democrat, and was actually politically supported by members of the Scopes defense team like Clarence Darrow. Indeed, the confrontation between Bryan and Darrow was more complex than the caricature of a liberal freethinker breaking down a stodgy conservative lackwit.

How, then, did opposition to evolution ferment during the beginning of the 20th century? As explained in Edward Larson's Trial and Error, the reasons are complex, owing to changes in social reforms, the textbook industry, and the first World War. Social progressives wanted to be sure that child labor was stamped out and that all children received an education (preferably by Christian teachers, in some cases). Schools grew in size, and specific-subject science textbooks that were popular in the 19th century (like ones that focused on botany or geology) fell out of fashion. The encompassing subject of biology became more widespread, and with it evolution was an important component.

Those opposed to evolution on moral grounds, like Bryan, were aware of evolutionary teaching but did not do much to stop it. They registered their disagreement but did not see it as especially important. The first World War, however, provided a spark to ignite the flames of controversy over evolution. An article "War for Evolution's Sake" by entomologist Vernon L. Kellogg that appeared in The Unpopular Review in 1918 summarized the perceived link between evolution and the violence of the war (with some xenophobia mixed in). The opening salvo reads;

In its last throes the cruel Neo-Darwinian philosophy of nature and man is having one terrible, final, satanic triumph, for it is in no mean measure responsible for this incredible war, and especially for its incredible brutality. For just as the war and the peculiarly revolting and degrading methods of its conduct bear the "made in Germany" stamp, so does the Neo-Darwinian conception of evolution and its method bear the same precious label. For it was not only that Weismann of Freiburg gave form and seeming validity to this conception, during the course of his violent attacks on Lamarckism, but it was his following troop of German biologists and natural philosophers who gleefully put the conception into final form for general assimilation. For, as we shall explain later, it was a kind of biological philosophy that fitted in beautifully with German political and military philosophy; everything to the winner, nothing to the loser.

The idea that morality would evaporate if humans recognized themselves as evolved was not a new concept (see "Reactions to Darwin's Descent"), but the Great War appeared to confirm the worst fears of the faithful. Critics no longer had to appeal to religious authority to warn of what might be; the worst had already come to pass. This was made all the worse in that Kellogg reported that he actually heard German military authorities using natural selection to justify their actions. Even if Kellogg did not denounce evolution outright, he was sure that natural selection and German philosophy were a deadly combination.

A similar allusion to WWI was made by the creationist George McCready Price, the forerunner of "flood geologists" and "creation scientists" of later years. In the preface of Q.E.D.; Or, New Light on the Doctrine of Creation, price wrote;

The great world disaster, ushered in with the dawn of that August morning in 1914, has already brought revolutionary changes in many departments of our thinking. But not the least of the surprises awaiting an amazed world, whenever attention can again be directed to such subjects, will be the realization that we have now definitely outgrown many notions in science and philosophy which in the old order of things were supposed to have been eternally settled.

Price's creationist program was outlined more fully in The Fundamentals of Geology And Their Bearings on the Doctrine of a Literal Creation, but like Q.E.D, it was more of a criticism of "Darwinism" than an explanation of a new scientific program. The reason for the popular summary instead of a scientific text, Price argued in Q.E.D., was that the ideas he had were too important to be hung up in the slow process of publication among experts. (This is similar to the rationale used by modern-day anti-evolutionists for their penchant for publishing popular materials but not doing any actual scientific research.)

Price's attempt to make creationist science does not seem to have been that important in the 1920's, however. He was somewhat before his time, as few were concerned with making Creation dogma science as later creationists like Henry Morris would also try to do. The opposition to evolution had more to do with fears of social decay and abandonment of "old-fashioned Christianity." This affected schools in that teachers were in the service of the state, and the state's residents had a right to say what should or shouldn't be taught in schools. Fundamentalist social progressives had fought for taxpayer supported compulsory education, and with that in place they were not going to allow their hard-earned money go to the moral decline of their children.

Modern creationism, in most any form, is still concerned with moral decay. While Christianity is a majority religion, fundamentalists make themselves believe they are a persecuted minority, a small group of "real" Christians that have not been poisoned by "the World." The evil influence of evolution, while cited as the cause of nearly every atrocity you can name, is not so much tied to modern international conflict as to the perceived backward state of society. It does not matter that homosexuality, theft, murder, abortion, etc. existed long before 1859; for creationists evolution is the root cause of every evil either directly or indirectly.

The important thing to remember about all this, though, is that there is not one creationist archetype that all fundamentalists can be lumped into. While similar in spirit, the fundamentalists opposed to evolution in the 1920's were very different than hardcore conservatives we are familiar with today. We should be careful not to let the current aspects of the culture war blind us to what actually occurred. It is all too easy to twist events for our own ends and make a monster out of history.