Is God a Creationist? The Religious Case against Creation-Science Edited by Roland Mushat Frye (review)

scientific controversies atid competitions—all these are major strengths of the book. Its only major failing, in my opinion, is an underdeveloped comparative discussion of the issues in Just's doctrines of fertilization and cell biology. In particular, Just's positive evaluation by Ross Harrison of Yale is dismissed as the result of Just's usefulness for Harrisori's tissue culture studies, but the larger stories about kinds of organicism and the debates about development in the 1920s and 1930s do hot clearly emerge. Manning's examination ofJust's 1939 book, The Biology ofthe Cell Surface, is disappointing in its failure to put the latter in the context of such similar texts of the period as Harrison's Silliman Lectures and Joseph Needham's Order and Life. Just was a partisan of the cell surface, an honorable and well-populated political terrain in the embryology of the period despite repeated attempts at nuclear domination in the history of biology since the nineteenth century. A fuller use qf the literature of the history of biology would have stood Manning in good stead here. This book has already commanded a wide audience and appreciative critical commentary, and it will continue to be read with profit by diverse constituencies. It is an indispensable and analytically powerful tool in constructing the social history of modern science. Donna Haraway Kresge College University of California at Santa Cruz Santa CrUz, California 95064 Is God a Creationist? The Religious Case against Creation-Science. Edited by Roland Mushat Frye. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1983. Pp. viii + 205. $15.95. At the present time there is only a single legislative requirement mandating the teaching of "creationism-science" along With evolution in science classrooms. This is in the state of Louisiana, and legal actions are now in progress against that bill, The prospects are excellent for its eventual defeat, a result that will be viewed by many scientists as the final battle in an ongoing conflict against the creationist movement. For many scientists, the ultimate defeat of the Louisiana bill and the ringing clarity and expansive nature of Judge William Overton's decision against the similar Arkansas law have demonstrated that rational science has prevailed against irrational "mumbo jumbo." However, that view is essentially incorrect. Jack Novick, the ACLU lawyer who guided the Arkansas and Louisiana cases, has noted that there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution to prevent the teaching of bad science. Just because creationism is bad science, or nonscience, does not preclude its being mandated to be part of a science curriculum. In the Arkansas case, Judge Overton found specifically that "creation-science" was a series of religious assertions and therefore was in violation of the First Amendment prohibition against the involvement of government in religious affairs. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 28, 3 ¦ Spring 1985 \ 477 While we members of the scientific community may take satisfaction from the clear delineation of the nature of science contained in the Overton decision, we should not lose sight of the fact that the battle with creationism is fundamentally a religious one. Remember that the majority of plaintiffs in the Arkansas case were leaders of the major mainline religious groups in the United States today. Consequently, if we want to understand the ultimate nature of the creationism controversy, it is essential that we understand its religious dimension. R. M. Frye's Is God a Creationist? is a valuable tool in understanding this religious dimension. Frye, who is Schelling Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the Center for Theological Inquiry in Princeton, has assembled a literate and seminal collection of essays dealing with the relationship of science and religion. He assumes that the scientific community's evaluation of creationism, that creationism is nonscience, is essentially correct. Furthermore, the legal issues of the controversy also appear to Frye to be resolved . Thus, his book focuses on the religious aspects of the controversy and tries to support the assertion that creationism is not very good religion. The book is a collection of essays dealing with the religious underpinnings of creationism and is written by nineteenth- and twentieth-century authors of diverse theological, disciplinary, and...