Translated from GegenStandpunkt 3-2007
A controversy over religion in biology class:
The crowning of creation
Ms. Karin Wolff, the Minister of Education and Cultural Affairs for Hesse and a former religious studies teacher, has had a brilliant idea for educating the younger generation. She is following through on her mandate as formulated in the state curriculum that “philosophical and religious statements must complement and broaden scientific discussion” (Stern.de, July 11, 2007) and is making the case for linking the biblical creation story with the theory of evolution in biology classes. Her proposal has drawn harsh criticism from those who believe that science and faith should be kept separate in schools: “The creation story belongs in religious education classes, while biology classes should exclusively teach the scientifically based theory of evolution.” (Jürgen Schreier, Christian Democratic Union politician, in Spiegel 29/07) After all, biology classes are for teaching science – but here her opponents are somewhat mistaken about the education mandate of school.
That’s actually what the Minister is concerned with, and she makes clear what the knowledge to be imparted in biology classes at her institutions is all about. She has noticed “an astonishing correspondence between the symbolic biblical account of the seven days of creation and the scientific theory of evolution” (FAZ, June 29), and that is indeed astonishing – after all, the school’s science department teaches a subject in which the boundaries between religious fantasy and scientific knowledge are supposed to be indistinguishable. The education expert doesn’t reveal what she finds so astonishing about the similarities between Genesis and genetics, the Bible and biology. But she does let us know how to do away with the contradiction between faith and knowledge, so that the insights of science can be opened up by indulging in the pleasures of symbolist poetry:
“She advocates combining questions about the origins of humankind and the purpose of life, and for a modern biology curriculum that also addresses the limits of scientifically established knowledge as well as theological and philosophical questions about the meaning of being and the existence of the world and humankind.” (FAZ, June 29)
In order to “combine” Darwin’s scientific knowledge about the evolution of species with religious interpretations of divine creation, one need only reinterpret it as a contribution to “asking questions” that have nothing to do with knowledge of evolution in the first place. By foisting metaphysical questions about the “origin of humankind and the purpose of life” onto knowledge of the development of living matter through mutation and selection, the theory of evolution and religion become two different ways of answering one and the same fundamental question. Natural science becomes a toolkit for giving meaning, a way of testifying to the higher purpose of human existence and of interpreting the emergence of the species Homo sapiens from the higher primates in terms of a worldview: Of all things, the scientific refutation of the teleology of every creation myth in circulation by the theory of evolution is appreciated as a valuable building block for cultivating theological mystifications, and where every difference between interpretation and explanation is flattened, the quintessence of a ‘lesson’ that science has to offer can then be easily read into and out of literary symbolic worlds.
That’s why the educated woman immediately thinks of the “limits of scientifically established knowledge.” Anyone who imposes questions such as the ‘meaning of existence’ on the scientific explanation of human development – which it has no intention of answering because it is not philosophy – and then scrutinizes it for how everything that has come out of evolution is presented as meaningfully set up only needs to reverse their perspective from the standpoint of their interpretation: they will immediately discover the shortcoming of science, namely that it provides a highly imperfect answer to the question of meaning. Because it is only of limited use for what the Minister considers worth knowing and essential, science has “limits” and knowledge becomes its opposite, i.e. the imperative to be skeptical. As this, the theory of evolution is then very useful in educating schoolchildren. It then becomes a single document proving that, in the search for answers to “the question of the existence of the world and humans,” we must forget what we know about the nature of human beings and immerse ourselves completely in an image of human nature, which is informative here: the special feature of human beings, as the “crown of creation,” must be taken into account in school lessons, in biology as well as in religion. And humans do not become the crown of creation because they understand that they are the highest form of the organization of matter: they can only achieve this if they always bear in mind their nature as God’s most successful piece of work and at the same time servants and earthworms guided by His incomprehensible omnipotence – because no monkey can really imitate that!
* The Minister’s critics complain that she mixes up biology and religious studies and warn against “doing away with the clear distinction between faith and science.” (Spiegel 29/07) Anyone who pleads for a “clear distinction” between knowledge and faith is thus in agreement with the Minister that the teleology taught in religious courses is by no means refuted by the arguments presented in biology courses. Instead, one emphasizes the importance of a peaceful coexistence between what is taught in both subjects as respective “lessons” in the school curriculum. Both have their rightful place, just neatly separated in lesson plans, and thus the critics state for the record what the transmission of knowledge is for them as well: anyone who campaigns for a subject-specific division of labor between biologists and priests when the keyword “dawn of man” is mentioned at school insists not on knowledge about the subject of natural history, but on their own competence to impart the “lessons” to be drawn from it. It is this function of school teaching – to ensure the dissemination of ideological messages of one kind or another – that makes science and faith so commensurable that a mere plea to keep the two separate as before comes across as an anti-religious call for objectivity. Under no circumstances should the fable of a creator god be made interdisciplinary in school – and up to that point, everything preached in religious studies is okay for proponents of a “clear distinction.” An “anti-enlightenment regression” (Leggewie [a prominent German political scientist known for his work on democracy – trans.]) only occurs when biology lessons are no longer permitted to interpret world evolution independently – so everything is in good shape in terms of enlightenment in school, as long as the edifying ‘lessons’ they have to offer about bee colonies and other state-forming creatures, but of course also ‘evolution’ for human beings, can be taught without being watered down by religion.
* Mediators in the debate over the assignment of meaning therefore point out, to the relief of everyone involved, that evolutionary biology is only taught in the eleventh grade – so anyone graduating with a middle school diploma will never learn about it anyway. Religious studies, on the other hand, is taught to everyone from first grade onwards – and so, at least in school, and as far as the education there is concerned, no one escapes their “purpose.”