Religion and science each have their own place

It is unusual for a local election to make national news. When the election in question is for a school board in Pennsylvania, the high profile is doubly curious.

Earlier this week, on Tuesday, voters in Dover, Pa., sent a potent message by tossing out all eight incumbents on their school board. The board has been the focus of national attention because of its advocacy of so-called &#8220intelligent design” theory in the district's high school science curriculum.

The board voted last year to include discussion in freshman science classes of intelligent design as a viable alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution. That decision led to a lawsuit by a group of Dover parents that was recently argued in federal court. The judge in the case has not yet ruled on whether the teaching of intelligent design violates the constitutional separation of church and state.

Dubbed by critics as &#8220creationism lite,” ID refutes the Darwinian notion of random mutation being responsible for the natural world by positing that the natural world is so complex that an unnamed &#8220designer” must be responsible for it. The theory has gained momentum in the last 10 years and spurred a national dialogue on what is appropriate material for science classrooms.

The local extension of that dialogue has been playing out on the Schools, Opinion and Religion pages of this newspaper. Judging by the content and number of letters it has inspired, the topic is as emotional here as elsewhere.

To date, the local school board has not invited its own controversy by suggesting that ID should have a place alongside evolution in Mat-Su science classes. And the state board came down firmly on the side of evolution in its reassessment of science standards last spring.

This is good news. Without diminishing the importance of religion and religious beliefs, biblical creation theory, in whatever form, has no more place in science classes than evolution does in Sunday school classes.

Those who choose to dismiss evolution are certainly free to do so - in the classrooms of private and home schools. Faith is an intensely personal thing that covers a wide range of beliefs. People are entitled to their own, but that entitlement does not extend to forcing a particular manner of belief on others.

Let the debate over evolution and creation rage. But let it do so respectfully and not be hijacked by the extremes of each side - the evolution purists, who say everything that needs to be known is found in the material world, or the biblical literalists, who presume to know every nuanced intent of God.

Both positions demonstrate the danger of absolutism and its utter neglect of the power and poetry of faith. They say, alternately, that Christianity and evolution cannot co-exist, without realizing, arrogantly, that it is not possible to know everything, to explain everything.

Isn't that the very essence of faith?