Kevin Basil

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Serbian Education Minister Ljiljana Colic has ordered primary school teachers to stop teaching natural selection as part of the biology curriculum. Unsurprisingly, biology teachers wonder how exactly they are supposed to teach anything, as natural selection is used as a model at virtually every level in biology.

Although most media outlets are reporting this as a power play by the Serbian Orthodox Church — Colic is Orthodox — a few are reporting that Bishop Ignjatije of Branicevo issued a statement controverting the religious grounds for the action. Bishop Ignjatije is the professor of dogmatics and ethics at the Theological Faculty of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Belgrade, and he heads the commission that introduced religious education into Serbian schools.

“Darwin never posed the question if God might have created men and the world,” said Bishop Ignjatije. “Darwin only spoke about ways that humans and the rest of the nature are connected. The connection must not be ignored by anybody, not even by us, theologists.” AP: Serbs in Dispute Over Darwin Vs. Divine, Misha Savic

I am not sure what gets me more riled, the unbelievable situation that people still think there is a dichotomy between science and religious belief, or the inane way in which this particular false dilemma is being reported by the media. A perfect example is the article on the BBC News website. Ignoring completely Bishop Ignjatije‘s statement quoted above, it describes the two “opposing” theories with these two statements:

Creationism is the belief that the Old Testament account of God’s creation of the world is true.

Darwin’s theory of evolution is the dominant explanation of man’s origins within the scientific community.

Oh, well, when you put it that way, I guess I’m a creationist. Who doesn’t dispute the second statement. Oh, wait. What’s the issue here?

It is not “creationism.” That would imply that anyone who believes God created the world also holds that belief to be incompatible with scientific models describing its origins. Many do not. It is more properly termed Scientific Creationism. True, Scientific Creationism is not really scientific, but that is not the point of the phrase. Proponents of this view believe that the Genesis account can be used as the scientific basis for a rebuttal of any model to explain evolution — the datum of the apparent development of life from primitive forms to complex forms. Is that too complicated for an article? Perhaps. But the issue is complex, and oversimplifying it is deceitful and libelous to believers.

Ms. Colic should step down and let someone who actually has a grasp on the issues confronting modern believers take the helm. She risks making the rest of us look like the geocentric fools who persecuted Galileo.

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