Liberal Christian rag: creationism and evolution are “competing myths”

Is evolution a “myth”?  Not according to any definition of “myth” that I can readily find.  The Oxford English Dictionary gives these as the first two definitions:

A traditional story, typically involving supernatural beings or forces, which embodies and provides an explanation, aetiology, or justification for something such as the early history of a society, a religious belief or ritual, or a natural phenomenon.

A widespread but untrue or erroneous story or belief; a widely held misconception; a misrepresentation of the truth. Also: something existing only in myth; a fictitious or imaginary person or thing.

Maybe it could qualify under the third definition, “A person or thing held in awe or generally referred to with near reverential admiration on the basis of popularly repeated stories (whether real or fictitious),” although that’s stretching it.  Evolution is a scientific theory and it’s true. It’s not fictional, as most people (and dictionaries) construe myths, nor does it enjoy “reverential admiration on the basis of popularly repeated stories”.  If evolution is a myth in this last sense, so is gravity.

Nevertheless, in a new article in the online magazine Religion Dispatches, “Creationism and evolution are competing ‘myths’:  creation science as mythic discourse.” Kelly E. Hayes finds it useful to couch these incompatible paradigms as “myths” because, she claims, this sheds light on how they function in American society.  Hayes is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and an adjunct in gender studies and Africana studies, while Religion Dispatches describes itself as “a daily online magazine dedicated to the analysis and understanding of religious forces in the world today, highlighting a diversity of progressive voices and aimed at broadening and advancing the public conversation.”

When a postmodernist addresses evolution in a “progressive” religious magazine, you expect an earful of nonsense, and that’s pretty much what you get: an overblown article loaded with the usual pomo words like “privileged” and “paradigmatic,” and sentences like this:

Since myth is more than just a coding device through which important information is conveyed but is also an act by which social groupings are constituted, at stake in the debates among defenders of each narrative are not only these structural conflicts but the different social arrangements that each narrative invokes and authorizes.

But on to the content. The thesis of this longish essay can be described briefly: evolution and creationism function as incompatible “myths” that unite their supporters but divide the disciplines.  This means the science/faith “war” is likely to continue, and if scientists want to win they’ll have to do something different.

As H. L. Mencken once observed in another context, this is a penny’s worth of sense wrapped in a bale of polysyllables.  And in my characterization above, I agree with the last sentence but not the first.  Evolution is not a “myth,” even in the sense that Kelly means.  But yes, if we want to vanquish creationism, we have to do more than just promulgate the “myth” of evolution.  Kelly suggests no solutions, but of course the only one that will really work is to loosen the grip of religion on Americans.  My theory about why Kelly goes to such lengths to push such a mundane thesis is twofold: she wants to devalue evolution by putting it in a category with faith (granted, she sort of admits that evolution is probably true), and she wants to pad her c.v. by trying to say something new.

Here’s why Kelly sees evolution and creationism as myths (she frames much of her narrative around Kentucky’s Creation Museum and an upcoming project in the same state, the Ark Experience):

Rather than ridicule or dismiss the Ark Encounter and its theme park sibling the Creation Museum, it’s useful to see them as examples of mythic discourse, using the definition that historian of religions Bruce Lincoln proposed in his book Discourse and the Construction of Society. Myth, Lincoln contends, is most productively understood not as a false story, but as a narrative that has both authority and credibility for a particular audience, for whom it functions as a paradigmatic truth. A particular type of discourse, myth constructs and naturalizes its authority by appealing to some sacred or transcendent realm that is ostensibly beyond the petty interests of individuals. Unlike most other types of discourse, myth is able to engender shared feelings of belonging and purpose among its audience, making it an effective sociopolitical instrument.

So she goes wrong from the outset.  Yes, both religion and evolution have authority and credibility for their adherents, but scientists and rationalists don’t see evolution as appealing to a “sacred or transcendent realm”.  It’s a scientific theory, for crying out loud! If evolution is such a realm, then we might as well also count astronomy, quantum mechanics, and mathematics as myths.  As an evolutionist, my only sense of “belonging” is to a group that accepts the theory, and it doesn’t particularly give me a purpose—except to battle those who try to prevent it from being taught.  The discipline and its findings often fill me with wonder and amazement, but I don’t see that as entering the realm of the “sacred and transcendent.”

Now Hayes does recognize the baleful implications of claiming that evolution is a “myth,” but circumvents them by some fancy but unpersuasive argument:

One could legitimately object that by treating evolution as a myth I effectively concede one of the major claims of the creationist movement: that evolution and creationism are equally persuasive and thus are equally valid understandings of the natural world. To this I would argue that insofar as science itself does not mystify its claims by appeal to a superhuman realm it is not a mythic discourse in the same way as creationism. However, the popular understanding of evolution and the kinds of claims that proponents make about it invest evolution (and by extension the scientific method) with a set of transcendent moral values that, strictly speaking, lie outside of science proper. For example, some argue that because science, as a discipline of logic, empirical investigation, and rigorous testing, is superior to blind faith, evolution teaches the moral imperative to think and question rather than simply accept the claims of received tradition. This claim invests evolution with a set of values that have sociopolitical implications and that mobilize sentiments of affiliation (among proponents of evolution) and estrangement (from proponents of the creationist narrative). In what follows, I hope to show how treating what I am calling the “evolutionist narrative” and the “creationist narrative” as examples of myth (as Lincoln defined it) is useful for thinking about the ways that specific groups appeal to these narratives in practice.

Wrong again.  Who among evolutionary biologists or their supporters says that the field is automatically associated with “transcendent moral values”? That is a claim creationists make about evolution: we’re atheistic, materialistic, cold and scientistic, approving of might-makes-right and so on.  And it’s simply ridiculous to say that evolution “teaches the moral imperative to think and question rather than simply accept the claims of received tradition.” First of all, that’s not an inherent imperative of evolution,  it’s is a methodology that, we have found, is the only reliable way to find out the truth about the universe.  If you don’t practice it, you don’t find out anything.

And it is a moral imperative? Certainly not.  Any scientist who didn’t think, question, and use rational methods of study wouldn’t be seen as “immoral”; he’d be seen as stupid and misguided.  Rationality is not a moral imperative, it is a tool in all empirical studies.  If that makes evolution a “myth”, then so is dentistry, oil exploration, medicine, physiology, air conditioning repair, and plumbing.  Any plumber who accepted on faith his client’s diagnosis of a leak, rather than following the water himself, wouldn’t last very long.  This kind of categorizing is simply something Hayes does, as an academic pomo, to squeeze out something slightly different from everybody else.

But enough.  Hayes goes on to insist that these “myths” are in eternal conflict because a). science can’t address creationism and b). we don’t want to, because that would dignify it:

Such an approach helps address why AiG [Answers in Genesis, who built the Creation Museum] and its sympathizers continue to insist that their literalist interpretation of the biblical creation account is scientifically accurate, despite the fact that any claim about supernatural agency, by definition, can be neither proved nor disproved by science. Indeed, part of the reason that scientists (and other supporters of evolution) have been loath to publicly challenge such assertions is that creationist claims so clearly lie beyond the purview of science that to respond to any suggestion otherwise would dignify an absurdity. So, then, why do Ken Ham and his colleagues persist in advocating the seemingly untenable position that the Genesis story of creation is science and not theology? This is precisely where Lincoln’s notion of myth is helpful in understanding how narratives function, not only as explanatory frameworks but as ideological mechanisms that construct certain kinds of social relations by eliciting powerful sentiments of affiliation or estrangement.

Ah, the old “science can’t touch the supernatural” canard!  The stuff about supernatural claims being refractory to being proven or disproven by science is, of course, pure nonsense.  Science has disproved the supernatural claims that the earth was created by God 6,000 years ago, that there are no transitional forms, that all life was created instantly, that we all descend literally from two human beings who lived at the same time, and so on.  In fact, later on in her piece Hayes implicitly admits that science has falsified creationist claims: she says “Simply put, the evolutionist narrative functions as an established myth [she means “truth” here but won’t say it], while the creationist version holds a lesser status—although it may be authoritative for some, it not not generally accepted as a credible account of past events” [she means “it’s false”].  Why? Because the supernatural claims of creationism have been disproven.  As we all know by now, any empirical claims that derive from supernatural assumptions are manifestly within the realm of science, and their falsification erodes the veracity of the supernatural.

And scientists are “loath” to publicly challenge creationist claims?  Has Hayes been living in Siberia? What have I, Dawkins, Kenneth Miller, the NCSE, and hundreds of other scientists and educators been doing for the past few decades? Hint: not twiddling our thumbs about creationists or their attempts to teach religion in the science classroom.

I don’t see where notions of “myth” are of any help here at all; in fact, I don’t see the usefulness of shoehorning science into that category along with religion. (Religion is, of course, a “myth” in nearly every sense.)  All it does is give us a fancy way of saying that the scientific truth of evolution is repugnant to the faithful because it attacks their false beliefs about the universe. And we already knew that.

In the end, by lumping together evolution and science as “myths,” saying that both come with moral imperatives, and arguing that science cannot address claims about the supernatural, Hayes not only gives a misleading picture of science, but obfuscates rather than clarifies the science-religion controversy.  She could have conveyed the true situation in just a few paragraphs, but nobody would have published it.  And what’s her conclusion? Simply this:

The forthcoming Ark Encounter and the presence of other creationist museums in Arkansas, Texas, California and Florida suggests that the war is far from over. It remains to be seen whether the leaders of the creationist movement will be able to effectively mobilize enough American voters to bring about the kinds of sociopolitical changes for which their paradigmatic model provides a superhuman charter. It is clear, however, that supporters of evolution would do well to implement a new strategy if they wish to counter these challenges to their preferred narrative’s authoritative status.

Now what would that strategy be?  To suck up to believers, as accommodationists suggest? As Hayes makes clear, that won’t work, for their “myth” is strong and magnetic.  Create a “rock stars of evolution” campaign, to lure the faithful using charismatic scientists?  Doesn’t seem likely.  Wait—I have one: dispel religious myths by showing how ludicrous and false they are! If that works, the challenges to our “preferred narrative” will simply vanish.

h/t: Diane G.