A Progressive, a Brontosaurus, and the Science of Intelligent Design

8-05-05, 10:00 am



I wonder: in America today, has the word “progressive” become just a museum exhibit?

Maybe.

On a summer day in Manhattan, my wife, daughter, and I escape the intense heat of midday by walking the shaded paths of Central Park. And though it’s cooler strolling among the trees, the humidity still hangs heavy and holds much of the day’s heat. So we exit the park on the west side and seek refuge elsewhere – in the cool, dry air of the American Museum of Natural History.

Inside, my wife stands in line to buy tickets, while my daughter and I explore the grand, cavernous entrance hall. Immediately, my daughter runs to the hall’s centre, staring with dropped-jawed awe at the enormous skeletal reconstruction of a Brontosaurus. Although I share her awe, I find I’m more drawn to the ornate, granite walls with rich raised lettering that record the words and wisdom of President Theodore Roosevelt, a lifelong naturalist who literally grew up with, and frequently contributed to, this museum.

One particular quote catches my eye. It reads: “A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy.” For a moment, I consider Roosevelt’s words, and specifically, the word “progressive.” Among other things, the word means “a person advocating social reform.” But, so too, it means “promoting or favouring progress toward better conditions or new policies, ideas, or methods.” I smile as I wonder what Theodore Roosevelt might think of President Bush’s aggressive antipathy toward the word “progressive.”

The thought stays with me as my wife appears with the tickets. Together we take our daughter by her hands and venture off, deep into the museum. After a stroll through the animals of Africa and Asia, we find the Hall of Human Biology and Evolution and look with great interest at the three million year old bones of Australopithecus afarensis – better known as Lucy, one of our earliest known ancestors – and at detailed dioramas of Neanderthal man and Homo erectus. While staring at the strange, and yet somehow familiar, dioramas of early humans, my six-year-old daughter turns to me and asks, “Who are they?”

So I try to explain. I tell her that we are descended from these early people, that these early humans are, in a sense, our relatives. She turns and looks again at the dioramas, wrestling in her mind, I suspect, with the notion of monkey-like forebears.

And as I watch her struggle with the idea of human evolution, I wonder whether I should have offered her a simpler explanation – perhaps something akin to babies and storks. But I’m immediately reminded of the newest attack on Darwinian Evolution – the pseudo-science of Intelligent Design, a silly circular argument that the complexity of life on earth – including man’s origins – can only be explained by the existence of an intelligent creator. Proponents of this new theory of man’s origins and of life on earth demand that Intelligent Design be presented in schools as an equal counter-point to Darwinian Evolution. And though Intelligent Design has offered no evidence as proof (except, ironically, for faith), the idea of Intelligent Design is gaining ground with many school boards and notable politicians, including the president. “I think,” President Bush recently said of Intelligent Design, “that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought. [If] you're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes.” For a moment, we might say the president is being positively progressive.

But the president’s new found progressive devotion to the exploration of ideas has limits. He isn’t quite so progressive when it comes to the same students being exposed to the idea of gay marriage. Or the idea reasonable gun control. Or even the idea that a war with Iraq might provoke more terrorist attacks than it stops. But some say the issue of Darwinian Evolution is different. They say that Intelligent Design should have equal time in schools because Darwinian Evolution is only a theory.

Of course, gravity is only a theory, too.

The truth is President Bush and the Religious Right are not so much interested in the progressive exploration of ideas as they are interested in the creation of collective ignorance. Or better yet, they are only interested in the elimination of the word “progressive” from American politics and culture. By demanding equal time for pseudo-scientific fairy tales – as well as for political-military fairy tales, and for global-ecological fairy tales – they create a tyranny of tolerance for any old “theory” that will best serve their purposes.

Back in the museum, as we prepare to leave, we return to the grand hall. I look again at the quote from Theodore Roosevelt: “A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy.” I might have been inspired had the quote not been the backdrop for the Brontosaurs. Instead, I couldn’t help but wonder: has the word “progressive” become, like the old bones in front of me, an archaeological curiosity – nothing more than a museum exhibit?

And if it has, what does that say about the future of America's great democracy?



--Steven Laffoley is an American writer living in Halifax, Nova Scotia. You may e-mail him ator steven_laffoley@yahoo.com.