Dare suggest that America’s school children should be alerted to scientific problems with microbe-to-man evolution, and you can safely predict an outcry from evolutionists along two fronts. First, they protest, there must surely be a hidden agenda to teach the biblical creation story (including Adam and Eve), or the suspected subterfuge of “creation science” or the (even sneakier) argument from intelligent design. Then comes the usual party-line: “You can’t challenge evolution in the classroom, because that would violate the separation of church and state!”
Why the knee-jerk outcry against nefarious creationism even if none of the above scenarios are being proposed? Why is the vociferous protest invariably framed in terms of religion rather than science? Simple logic. Even Darwin knew that his naturalistic theory had but one real alternative: the realm of the miraculous, which is to say divine creation. Which, if taught in the classroom would—God forbid—breach Thomas Jefferson’s famous (if not strictly constitutional) “wall of separation.”
But do evolutionists who insist that religion’s creation story is the only alternative to evolution’s own creation story not realize the peril of that position? What if those challenging Darwin’s grand theory turned out to be (Holy Scopes!) not Bible-thumpers, but scientists?
As it happens, there’s already a hush-hush open secret among scientists: the quietly acknowledged “Queen of evolutionary problems” — the origin of sex — which, after countless studies, stubbornly defies evolutionary explanation.
Why is evolutionary sex so threatening that it dare not even be mentioned in textbooks or science classes? Given the unique nature of gendered, sexual meiosis compared with non-gendered, asexual mitosis, the first-ever generation of sexual reproduction would have required 1) a never-before-seen male organism and a novel female organism, 2) magically having compatible chromosomes, and 3) a death-defying process of precisely halving their chromosomes, mixing them together in a revolutionary way, and then recombining to produce, not a clone (as in asexual replication), but a unique offspring unlike any on the planet. Not to mention the minor details of geographic proximity and an evolved instinct to mate—all absolutely required in round one of sex to get the sexual ball rolling.
That’s only for starters. What school children must also never know is that the familiar “tree of evolution” (illustrating evolution’s bedrock assumption of common descent) could never have happened in actual fact. Natural selection could not possibly have provided simultaneous, on-time delivery of the first compatible male/female pair of each of millions of sexually-unique species. (Merely consider the weird, cannibalistic sex of the praying mantis! Or, even more problematic, the first-ever male and female reptiles, mating and reproducing as no amphibians before them.)
In his best-selling book, Why Evolution is True, even skeptic Jerry Coyne keenly appreciates where the crux of the evolution debate lies. “A better title for The Origin of Species,” says Coyne, “would have been The Origin of Adaptations. While Darwin did figure out how and why a single species changes over time (largely by natural selection), he never explained how one species splits in two.” (Would it breach “the wall of separation” to share an evolutionist’s corrective with school children?)
Coyne’s own attempt to hypothesize how species might have “split” has to do with “geographic isolation” causing genetic diversions. Problem is, there simply aren’t enough isolating mountains, rivers, or lakes on the planet to explain the origin of tens of millions of different species. So, we’re back to hard scientific reality. If there’s no evolved first generation of any given species, then there could be no evolution into any other species, nor certainly any higher species, most especially us humans.
Forget religion. Forget the Bible. Forget teaching creationism. On its own terms, the romanticized, politicized, (increasingly even theologized!) microbe-to-man evolution story presented as undeniable fact in the schoolroom is simply bad science. Why should anyone insist that students be taught bad science?
You say not even serious problems with evolution ought to be objectively presented in the classroom? I understand the danger. Do that, and bright young minds might well conclude that the sacrosanct evolution story is not science at all, merely science fiction. Then what creation story will they believe?
LaGard Smith is a former law professor (principally at Pepperdine University) and scholar in residence for Christian Studies (Lipscomb University). He is the compiler and narrator of The Daily Bible and is the author of over 30 books. His most recent book is Darwin’s Secret Sex Problem: Exposing Evolution’s Fatal Flaw—The Origin of Sex.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.
