c. 1997 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ Huston Smith, one of the nation’s pre-eminent religion scholars, says he is”appalled”by belief in”big `C’ creationism,”his term for literal acceptance of the Bible’s account of creation.

But he also thinks the National Association of Biology Teachers has overstated the case for biological evolution by calling it an”unsupervised”and”impersonal”process.

Smith, recently retired from the University of California at Berkeley, and Alvin Plantinga, a University of Notre Dame philosophy professor, want the association to strike those two words from its 1995″Statement on Teaching Evolution.”They say they are not trying to move the pro-evolution teacher’s group to change its stand, just to adhere to its own scientific standards.

Plantinga, past president of both the American Philosophical Association (Central Division) and the Society of Christian Philosophers, said calling evolution unsupervised and impersonal amounts to a theological judgment beyond the scope of empirical science.”The process of evolution is distinct from its catalyst, which science cannot determine with certainty”he said.

Wayne W. Carley, executive director of the Reston, Va.-based teachers’ group, said Tuesday (Sept. 23) he would present the request to the board of the 7,500-member association of high school and college biology teachers when it meets in Minneapolis Oct. 8.”They make a rational argument worthy of consideration,”Carley said of Smith and Plantinga.”Most people who complain about our statement just call us communists and atheists.” Biological evolution holds that all plant and animal species evolved from simplier life forms. Creationism says the origin of the universe and life rests with God’s actions.

In public school districts across the nation, religious conservatives have challenged the teaching of evolution as the sole explanation offered for the origins of life on earth.

Recent controversies over the issue have popped up in California, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Washington state, Louisiana and elsewhere. In 1995, Alabama education officials voted to insert a disclaimer in all biology books calling evolution just one theory explaining the origins of life.

In July, the larger National Science Teachers Association _ a 53,000-member organization of elementary-through-college educators _ updated its own statement in support of evolution. In it, the group decried efforts to introduce”non-scientific”creationism into the nation’s schools. “It’s an issue teachers in many states are having to face,”said Cindy Workosky, a spokeswoman for the Arlington, Va.-based association.”We wanted to provide them with more guidance to better deal with proponents of creationism.” In a Sept. 10 letter to the biology teachers’ association, Smith and Plantinga cited polls showing that 90 percent of Americans say they believe in God and that”a personal agent _ God _ supervised in some way our arrival on this planet.” Given that, they continued, the association’s statement as presently written”gives aid and comfort to extremists in the religious right for whom it provides a legitimate target. And, because of its logical vulnerability, it lowers Americans’ respect for scientists and their place in our culture.” In their letter, Smith and Plantinga only addressed one key paragraph of the biology teachers’ three-page statement. It reads:”The diversity of life on earth is the outcome of evolution: an unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable and natural process of temporal descent with genetic modification that is affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing environments.” In an interview, Smith said the issue of evolution and creationism is more complex than presented in that paragraph.”It’s so off the mark to believe you must choose between evolution and creationism, as if they are mutually exclusive,”said Smith, author of the 1958 classic text”The Religions of Man”(since reissued as”The World’s Religions”).”There’s `short-term creationism,'”which says the world is 6,000 years old (the approximate age ascribed to it by the Old Testament-based Jewish calendar.)”That’s been called nonsense on stilts, and I agree,”he said.”But there’s also `long-term creationism,’ which accepts the geological record and evolution of the species, but does not discount the possibility that it was all purposeful _ supervised somehow _ by an intelligent force we call God.” Smith and Plantinga said they only now launched their challenge to the 2-year-old biology teachers’ association statement because it just recently came to their attention.

MJP END RIFKIN