Living Witness
Page 42
Most people who reject evolution, however, are not young earth Creationists, and evolution itself is not their problem. What is their problem is far more complicated. It begins with the question of whether or not science is a suitable judge of all human values. And here, they have my sympathy. There’s been a fad recently in some quarters to declare that something is either scientific or it is “superstitious,” either scientific or not worth anything. It is a view that blocks a lot out of human experience besides religion: literature, for instance, and art, and all those areas where human beings have traditionally worked to learn to understand themselves. I still think Shakespeare knew more about human psychology than Freud. He knew light-years more about human psychology than the present run of psychological “experts” who testify in our courts and make our educational policies.
But the problem is this: fighting the “scientization” of everything by denying the fact of evolution is a recipe for defeat in the long run. Evolution really is a fact, and it’s a fact that isn’t going to go away. What’s more, it’s a fact about which more and more supporting evidence piles up every year. Trying to pretend it doesn’t exist will not return literature, art, philosophy, and religion to their position as authorities on human living and human morality. It will just make all those things look silly, outdated, and wrong.
If you’re still not convinced, start by heading over to the National Center for Science Education’s Web site (www.natcenscied.org). They’re the only organization in the world dedicated to defending the teaching of evolution in public schools, and they’ve accumulated a vast array of materials to help you understand evolution and the American debate about its place in education. The deputy director there, Glenn Branch, gave me great help finding all kinds of things (like a statement of the theory of evolution for one of the epigraphs) that I was having trouble finding on my own. I want to thank him and all the people he works with, and especially NCSE’s director, Eugenie Scott, for all the work they do on behalf of science education.
I’d like to thank a lot of other people, too. First, Carol Stone and Richard Siddall, who introduced me to Edelweiss, and who kept my life viable throughout the writing of this book in ways too numerous to list. They’re good friends of a kind and degree that most people never have the privilege to have. I’m lucky to have met them.
I’d also like to thank my agent, Don Maass, and my editor, Keith Kahla, and all the people at St. Martin’s Press who have worked on these books over the years and on this one in particular.
And finally, my sons, Matthew and Gregory, whose contributions to my life have been vast and incalculable, and whose primary mission is to remind me that it’s not good for me to sit at the computer so long when there’s the latest superhero movie to see . . .
—Litchfield County, Connecticut
May 2008