c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) The evolution/creation debate rages on, and is likely to do so forever. It continues because the sides can’t agree on the rules for a fair fight. Until the opposing camps can come to terms on the terms of engagement there will be no true engagement, only one side claiming victory while the other refuses to recognize it.

“Monkey Business: The True Story of the Scopes Trial,” a book I co-authored with University of Texas professor Marvin Olasky, shows that this rules conundrum stretches back at least to the Scopes monkey trial of 1925.

For most of the court sessions, the two legal teams spent their time arguing over what evidence was admissible in court. The lead prosecutor, Thomas Stewart (famously assisted by William Jennings Bryan), insisted on defining the issue very narrowly: had John Scopes taught that man was descended from a lower form of animals? If he had he was guilty of violating a state law, if he hadn’t he was innocent, and whether evolution was true or not was absolutely irrelevant to the legal question.

On the other hand, Clarence Darrow came prepared to defend young Scopes with a raft of scientists and Bible experts prepared to testify that Darwinian evolution and the creation story of Genesis could both be true. In the end, none of his experts got to speak on the record, and even Darrow’s famous examination of William Jennings Bryan on the stand was entirely stricken from the official transcript the next day.

While there are plenty of closed-minded creationists out there, it is the scientists today who are the chief culprits when it comes to skewing the rules of debate. Those leading evolutionists whom professor and author Phillip Johnson calls “the Mandarins of science” have decreed that only scientists can participate in the argument and that they can include only theories and proposals generally accepted by their fellow scientists.

This is a tidy way to handle matters, because under these rules only scientists who accept the perceived wisdom of the Mandarins have the right to speak, which makes the evolution debate unique among scientific inquiries.

In every other case, scientists welcome information and suggestions from every quarter, subjecting their hypothesis to challenge after challenge in order to confirm, refine or disprove it. Only in defense of Darwin do the scientists do all they can to choke off discussion.

Therefore, nagging questions continue about evolution theory. Yes, natural selection can make a small bird beak bigger or a big beak smaller, but how does it account for the beak in the first place? How would an eye ever have evolved by random purposeless evolution if it was (as it is) completely useless until it is fully developed? And if millions of years of incremental change are responsible for the diversity of life on Earth, why is there no record of these innumerable variations in the fossil record?

Random selection tends toward disorder and not order: pounding a keyboard at random with your eyes closed tends to produce less order than looking as you type purposeful words. Nothing in the theory of evolution accounts for the creation of significant new genetic information. Where did eyes and beaks come from? Did antediluvian ooze really evolve at random into Beethoven?

The scientists say it had to because the only other explanation is metaphysical divine creation and scientists refuse to consider that because it doesn’t follow their rules. Intelligent design, the theory that life on Earth is the product of some unidentified intelligent force, may be a third way that leads to a final answer. The important thing is to keep searching.

Evolution theory is far from airtight, and the same problems with it remain whether the critic is a Christian or a druid, a scientist or a shoe salesman. We owe ourselves and our children the answers and must remain diligent in the pursuit.

As the closing thought of “Monkey Business” says, “Only truth, unburdened at last of politics and preconceptions, will ultimately resolve the conflict. It could have done so 80 years ago and can do so tomorrow morning. The challenge for all of us is to summon the diligence to seek that truth, the patience to find it, the wisdom to see it and the courage to accept it.”

MO/JL END RNS

(John Perry _ a historian, author and former editor of Home and Christian Life Review _ wrote “Monkey Business: The True Story of the Scopes Trial” with Marvin Olasky, a University of Texas journalism professor and editor-in-chief of World magazine.)

Editors: Search the RNS photo Web site at https://religionnews.com for a photo of Perry and the jacket cover of “Monkey Business: The True Story of the Scopes Trial.”