An Op-Ed Essay by Charles F. Austerberry, Ph.D.

January 19, 2005

Used by permission

Bryan moved to Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1887 as a young lawyer. At age 30 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. He was the Democratic nominee for president in 1896, 1900, and 1908. University of Missouri-Kansas City law professor Doug Linder writes of Bryan: "Although his dream of the presidency was never realized, Bryan succeeded in transforming the Democratic Party from a conservative party of Civil War losers to a coalition more focused on the interests of blue-collar workers, farmers, and religious and ethnic minorities." Bryan was also a champion of womenís suffrage, campaign finance reform, and consumer protection. Why did the progressive "Great Commoner" make his final and most passionate campaign an attack on the teaching of evolution?

Bryan witnessed "Social Darwinism" being used to justify exploitation of the poor and weak, in America and abroad, through unregulated capitalism, militarism, imperialism, and racism. He concluded that only morality rooted in the Bible could counter the "might makes right" philosophy he thought must be inherent in evolution. He felt that if manís special creation by God is lost, so too is manís special relationship with God. Many anti-evolutionists today share Bryan's belief that evolution undermines morality. Tom DeRosa of the Creation Studies Institute writes: "We understand that evolution is dangerous. It reduces the value of human life. It makes way for evils such as abortion, homosexual marriage, and racism."

Plenty of theists consider their traditional religion and morality compatible with evolution, including human evolution. But anti-evolutionists reject theistic evolution as making God's activity in the world too distant or subtle to have moral force. Bryan wrote in "God and Evolution": "The theistic evolutionist puts God so far away that He ceases to be a present influence." Similar objections are heard today. Creationist Bert Thompson predicts in Evolution as a Threat to the Christian Home: "Those who try to effect a compromise through theistic evolution . . . will watch the Bibleís authority come to mean less and less as the days pass. Children, convinced they are no more than ëglorified apes,í will turn to hedonism and utilitarianism by the untold thousands."

Theistic evolutionists (myself included) believe that being made "in the image of God" through evolution still entails moral responsibility. Albert Einstein was right in saying that "science without religion is lame." Equally important was the rest of his warning: "religion without science is blind." We theistic evolutionists believe that evolution disclaimer stickers have no place in biology textbooks. We expect historians to seek explanations for human history in human terms, without allusions to supernatural "Intelligent Nation Builders." Similarly, shouldn't we expect scientists to seek explanations for the natural world in natural terms, without substituting "Intelligent Designer" for "we're stumped"?

Dr. Francis Collins, an evangelical Christian who has directed the Human Genome Project in the United States, lamented: "We seem to be engaged in contentious, destructive, and wholly unnecessary debate about evolution and creation. From my perspective as a scientist working on the genome, the evidence in favor of evolution is overwhelming . . . Outside of a time machine, Darwin could hardly have imagined a more powerful data set than comparative genomics to confirm his theory."

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