Teaching any aspect of science as a religion is harmful to science --
not to religion. The science teacher does not expect most students to
become professional scientists. Many will forget the details of snails and
quasars. However, the teacher does hope that students will learn the
scientist’s way of thinking about nature. When science teaching succeeds,
students continue to apply their thinking through life.
The last thing science teaching needs is to take the scientist’s ways
of thinking about nature (evolution, for example) and turn them into
doctrines, to be believed in their own right. That is like staring at the
light bulb, instead of using it to illuminate a page. Not only will you
not see what you need to see, you will soon not see clearly at all.
Evolution has great explanatory power, but only when applied to subjects
it best explains, not when treated as a dogma into which all events in
life must be fitted. Indeed, part of what makes evolution controversial is
the persistent habit of some evolutionary biologists of using principles
derived from Darwinism to pronounce on controversial topics such as
religion. In these instances, their explanations often lack explanatory
power, principally, I suspect, because they are oblivious to the fact that
human culture is, as S.J. Gould pointed out, a Lamarckian, not a Darwinian
inheritance. People purposefully adapt their religion and culture during
their own lifetimes and pass them on. As a result, the evolutionary
biologist probably doesn’t even have an edge over the sociologist,
especially if the sociologist knows the turf better.
Evangelists for traditional religions sense the weakness of evolution
as a religion, and discredit it with little effort. That is part of the
reason that so much of the American public, for example, does not “believe
in” evolution. It was promoted as a religion to be believed in, failed to
make as many converts as hoped, and generated hostility. However, that
outcome should be no surprise; the evolutionists were amateurs matched
against experts.
Science functions best and teaches best with the knowledge that all
scientific hypotheses are provisional, and not a form of dogma or a rule
of life.
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