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nine · Teaching Evolution during the Week and Bible Study on Sunday
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163 n i n e · Teaching Evolution during the Week and Bible Study on Sunday patricia h. kelley INTRODUCTION: A DOUBLE LIFE? I am a geologist who has spent her thirty-year career studying the evolution of fossil molluscs (clams and snails) preserved in sediments up to 80 million years old from the U.S. Gulf and Atlantic coasts. My knowledge of the fossil record in general, and my own paleontological research in particular, has convinced me that life has evolved through time. For instance, I discovered gradual increases in shell thickness over several million years within a number of mollusc fossil species preserved in sediments along the west shore of the Chesapeake Bay (Kelley 1989). This increased thickness was an evolutionary response to shell-drilling predation by carnivorous moonsnails. Thick shells represent good defenses against predators that drill holes in the shells of their victims; individuals with thicker shells survived such predation and passed the trait of thick shells on to future generations through natural selection. Indeed, species that were preyed upon most heavily evolved the most rapidly (Kelley 1991). Such changes in fossils through time provide strong support for evolution. Life has changed through time, and my own studies and those of other paleontologists indicate that the Darwinian process of “descent with modification” is responsible. In my judgment, evolution is the best scientific explanation for the sequence of fossils found in the world’s sedimentary rocks, and I avidly teach this explanation in my paleontology, and other geology, courses during the week. 164 · p a t r i c i a h . k e l l e y Sunday morning, however, finds me teaching in a different venue. I am a committed Christian, married to an ordained Presbyterian minister. For most of the past thirty years I have taught the adult Bible study class on Sunday mornings, except for five years in North Dakota when my husband served a three-church rural parish and we attended three worship services every Sunday morning instead. (In fact, in my son’s college application essay—for which he chose to write about science and religion—he mentioned that he had attended more church services than there had been Sundays in his life!) People are often surprised to learn of my double life: paleontologist and pastor’s wife. I recall being asked, back when my husband was in seminary and I was a Ph.D. student studying evolution with Stephen Jay Gould, “Don’t you and your husband fight all the time?” I would reply, “Not about evolution!” Others, assuming that evolution is incompatible with the biblical view of creation, have asked me how I reconcile what I teach during the week with what I teach on Sunday mornings. In the present essay, as a geologist with a deep religious commitment, I share my perspectives on science, faith, creationism in general, and the intelligent design controversy in particular. I discuss the differences between science and religion, reveal why creationism and intelligent design are religion rather than science, and explain how I reconcile my research and teaching on evolution with my faith. HOW SCIENCE WORKS I am convinced that much of the misconception that evolution and faith are incompatible stems from confusion about the differences between science and religion. In part, scientists have been so busy doing science that they have failed to educate the public about what science is and why it must operate the way it does. Many people assume that science resides in its facts, the pieces of data obtained by observing or measuring the world around us. However, science is not just a collection of facts about the natural world, such as the Grand Canyon is 277 miles long and up to 6,000 feet deep. Instead, science is a tightly integrated set of facts and theories attained in a very specific way, commonly referred to as “the scientific method.” One of the best, most succinct descriptions of science was stated in Judge Overton’s decision in the 1982 court case McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education, which judged unconstitutional the Arkansas law mandating balanced treatment for “evolution science” and “creation science” (Overton 1982). U.S. district judge [3.236.145.110] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 13:44 GMT) t e a c h i n g e v o l u t i o n a n d b i b l e s t u d y · 165 John E. Jones III...