‘The Fires of Creationism’

The first wise men who favored abandonment of superstitious mythological answers to questions about the origin and nature of the universe and the processes that go on within it were the 6th Century BC pre-Socratic philosophers of the Ionian Greek city of Miletus, on the west coast of Asia Minor. To replace religious faith they were willing to substitute the faith that was and remains the basis of scientific thought, the faith that the visible world conceals a rational and intelligible order, and that the causes of the natural world are to be sought within its boundaries with human reason as the sole and sufficient instrument for the search.

Logic, then, not superstition, governed the minds of wise men 600 years before the advent of Christianity. The effect of the Christian religion upon the Western world was to retrogress scientific intelligence to the age of mythology, even though it were a Judeo-Christian mythology. During the Christian era every major scientific concept has met fierce opposition by churchmen. Even today, 450 years after his death, the Catholic Church debates lifting the ban on Galileo for his belief that the Earth is not the center of the universe.

In this country, religionists were able to ban the teaching of evolution in the schools until the U.S. Supreme Court put a stop to that practice in 1968. But the creationists came back with efforts to mandate the teaching of creationism alongside the theory of evolution in science classrooms. That practice now has been effectively ended by federal courts in Arkansas and Louisiana. But the creationists can be expected to revise their creation-science bill, which was used for the legislation in Arkansas and Louisiana. They will pressure local and state voters for initiative measures, publish creation-science textbooks, and seek de-emphasis of evolution in standard biology textbooks. The fight against superstition goes on.

DONALD F. POPHAM

Long Beach