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THE ARMY OF NIGHT
by Isaac Asimov
Scientists thought it was settled.
The universe, they had decided, is about fifteen billion years old and the earth itself is nearly five billion years old. Simple forms of life came into being over three billion years ago, having formed spontaneously from non-living matter. They grew more complex through slow evolutionary processes and the first hominid ancestors of humanity appeared over four million years ago. Homo sapiens itself, the present human species, people like you and me, have walked the earth for at least 50,000 years.
But it isn't settled. There are Americans who believe that the earth is 10,000 years old at most; that human beings and all other species were brought into existence by a divine Creator as eternally separate varieties of beings; that there has been no evolutionary process and there never was. They are creationists, and they call themselves "scientific" creationists.
Such creationists are a growing power in the land and are demanding that schools be forced to teach their views. State legislatures, mindful of votes, are showing signs of caving in before them. In Arkansas, in Iowa, in Florida, in California, strong movements are on the way to legislate the teaching of creationism.
Is this really something to fear? Surely only a small minority of the nation is creationist--not vanishingly small, however. Jerry Falwell's television pulpit alone is supposed to have fifteen million viewers, and in parts of the so called Bible Belt creationists are in the majority.
They make up a fervid and dedicated group of followers, convinced beyond any argument of both their rightness and righteousness, and able to use their simplistic conservatism and sloganistic patriotism to lure to their side allies who are not directly interested in creationist views. Societies have been disrupted and taken over by smaller groups than this when the majority has been apathetic and falsely secure.
To those who are trained in science, creationism seems a bad dream, a sudden coming back to life of a nightmare, a renewed march of an Army of Night risen to challenge free thought and enlightenment.
The scientific evidence for the age of the earth and for the evolutionary development of life seems overwhelming to scientists. How can anyone question it? What are the arguments the creationists use? What is the "science" that makes the views "scientific"? Here are some of them.
1. The argument from analogy. A watch implies a watchmaker, say the creationists.
If you were to find a beautifully intricate watch in the desert, far from
habitation, you would be sure that it had been fashioned by human hands
and somehow left there. It would pass the bounds of credibility that it
had simply formed, spontaneously, from the sands of the desert.
By analogy, then, if you consider humanity, life, earth, and the universe, all infinitely more intricate than a watch, you can far less believe that it "just happened." It, too, like the watch, must have been fashioned, but by more-than-human hands; in short by a Divine Creator.
This argument seems unanswerable and it has been used (even though not often explicitly expressed) ever since the dawn of consciousness in order to fashion a world of gods and demons.
Thus -- To sprinkle water on flowers requires a watering-can; therefore, the rain descends from a divine watering-can held by a god and can be yielded or withheld at divine whim.
To cool your porridge with a breath requires human lungs; therefore the wind is the product of the divine lungs of god.
To travel long distances at a good clip requires a horse and carriage with yourself at the reins; therefore the sun in crossing the sky requires a flaming hose and carriage with a god at the reins.
One can go on and on. To have explained to prescientific human beings that the wind and the rain and the sun follow the laws of nature and do so blindly and without a guiding mind would have been utterly unconvincing to them. In fact, it might well have gotten you stoned to death as a blasphemer.
This argument reduces God to a one-syllable sound meaning "I don't know."
There are many aspects of the universe that still can't be explained satisfactorily by science; but ignorance implies only ignorance that may some day be conquered. To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature up to this time, and it remains premature today.
2. The argument from general consent. Some creationists point out that
belief in a Creator is general among all peoples and all cultures. Surely
this unanimous craving hints at a great Truth. There would be no unanimous
belief in a lie.
General belief, however, is not really surprising. From the analogy argument previously mentioned, any people, any group, that considers the existence of the world would assume it to have been created by a god or gods, just as human beings themselves fashion hunting spears and pottery.
Naturally, each group invents full detail for the story and no two creation tales are alike. The Greeks, the Norsemen, the Japanese, the Hindus, the American Indians, and so on and so on and so on, all have their own creation myths, and all of these are recognized by Americans of Judeo-Christian heritage as "just myths."
The ancient Hebrews also had a creation tale--two of them, in fact. There is a primitive Adam-and-Eve-in-Paradise story, with man created first, then animals, then woman. There is also a poetic tail of God fashioning the universe in six days, with animals preceding man, and man and woman created together.
These Hebrew myths are not inherently more credible than any of the others, but they are our myths and the only ones that the creationists are interested in or (in most cases) have heard of, and the only ones they want to propagate.
Surely, if it is general consent that proves the existence of a Creator, then general dissent disproves every other aspect of creation, since no culture believes any creation myth but its own.
In fact, if you come right down to it, general consent proves nothing and never has, for there can be a unanimous belief in something that isn't so. The virtually universal opinion over thousands of years that the earth was flat, never flattened its spherical shape by one inch.
3. The argument by belittlement. Creationists frequently stress the fact
that evolution is "only a theory." The impression this gives
rise to is that a theory is an idle guess. A scientist, one gathers, arising
one morning with nothing particular to do, decides that perhaps the moon
is made of Roquefort cheese and instantly advances the Roquefort-cheese
theory.
This is, of course, merely creationist naivete. A theory (as the word is use by scientists) is a detailed description of some facet of the universe's workings that is based on long-continued observation and, where possible, experiment, that is the result of careful reasoning from those observations and experiments, and that has survived the critical study of scientists generally.
For example, we have the description of the cellular nature of living organisms (the "cell theory"), of objects attracting one another according to a fixed rule (the "theory of gravitation"), of energy behaving in discrete bits (the "quantum theory"), of light traveling through a vacuum at a fixed measurable velocity (the "theory of relativity"), and so on.
All are theories; all are firmly founded; all are accepted as valid descriptions of this or that aspect of the universe. They are not mere guesses, nor are they wild speculations. And no theory is better founded, more closely examined, more critically argued, and more thoroughly accepted than the theory of evolution. If it is "only" a theory, that is all it has to be.
Creationism, on the other hand, is not a theory. There is no evidence, in the scientific sense, that supports it--not one shred. Creationism, or at least the particular variety accepted by many Americans, is an expression of early Middle Eastern legend. It may be fairly described by those who wish to belittle it as "only a myth." Nor is that really a belittlement for "only a myth" is exactly what creationism is.
4. The argument from imperfection. [Apparently your favorite--Joe] Creationists,
in recent years, have stressed the "scientific" background of
their beliefs. They point out that there are "scientists" who
base their creationist beliefs on a careful study of geology, paleontology,
and biology, and produce "textbooks" that embody those beliefs.
Virtually the whole "scientific" corpus of creationism, however, consists of the pointing out of imperfections in the evolutionary view. They insist that evolutionists can't show true transition states between species in the fossil evidence, that age-determinations through radioactive breakdown are uncertain, that alternate interpretations of this or that piece of evidence are possible, and so on.
Because the evolutionary view is not perfect and is not agreed upon in every detail by all scientists, creationists argue that evolution is false and that scientists, in supporting evolution, are basing their views on blind faith and dogmatism. (There, it must be admitted, creationists are on home territory. They have lived with blind faith and dogmatism from birth, and it is pleasant to see that they recognize it as an evil).
The creationists are, to an extent, right here. The details of evolution are not perfectly known. Ever since Darwin first advanced his theory of the origin of species through natural selection, back in 1859, scientists have been adjusting and modifying Darwin's suggestions. After all, much has been learned about the fossil record, and about physiology, microbiology, biochemistry, ethology, and various other branches of life science in the past century and a quarter and it is to be expected that we can improve on Darwin. In fact, have improved on him.
Nor is the process finished. It can never be, as long as human beings continue to question and to strive for better answers.
The details of evolutionary theory are in dispute precisely because scientists are not devotees of blind faith and dogmatism. They do not accept even a great thinker as Darwin without question, nor do they hesitate to improve on him, nor do they accept any idea, new or old, without thorough argument. Even after accepting an idea, they stand ready to overthrow it if appropriate new evidence arrives.
If, however, we grant that a theory is imperfect and that details remain in dispute, does that disprove the theory as a whole?
Consider! I drive a car and you drive a car. I, for one, do not know exactly how an engine works. Perhaps you do not either. And it may be that our hazy and approximate ideas of the workings of an automobile are in conflict. Must we then conclude from this disagreement that an automobile does not run, or that it does not exist? Or, if our senses force us to conclude that an automobile does exist and run, that it is pulled by an invisible horse, since our engine-theory is imperfect?
However much scientists argue their differing beliefs in the details of evolutionary theory, or in the interpretation of the necessarily imperfect fossil record, they nevertheless firmly accept the evolutionary process itself.
Nor can imperfection in evolutionary theory possibly, in and of itself, lend credibility to creationism.
Suppose that one group of people held that the Empire State Building, by the evidence of their senses, was a skyscraper, while another group of people, pointing to an eighteenth-century description of the site, maintained that it was a Cape Cod cottage painted blue and white. If it turned out that the skyscraper devotees were uncertain as to whether the Empire State Building had an observation deck or not, that would not in and of itself prove that standing on the site was a Cape Cod cottage painted blue and white.
5. The argument from distorted science. Creationists have carefully learned enough of the terminology of science to attempt to disprove evolution by mouthing that terminology. They do this in numerous ways, but the most common example, at least in the mail I get, is the repeated assertion that the second law of thermodynamics demonstrates the evolutionary process to be impossible.
The second law of thermodynamics (expressed in kindergarten terms) states that all spontaneous change is in the direction of increasing disorder, that is, in a "downhill" direction. There can be no spontaneous build-up of the complex from the simple, therefore, for that would be moving "uphill." Clearly, then, so the creationist argument runs, since, by the evolutionary process, complex forms of life form from simple forms, that process, as described by scientists, defies the second law, and so creationism must be true.
This sort of argument implies that a fallacy clearly visible to anyone is somehow invisible to scientists, who must therefore be flying in the face of the second law through sheer perversity.
Scientists, however, do know about the second law and they are not blind. It's just that an argument based on kindergarten terms, as so many of the creationist arguments are, is suitable only for kindergartens.
To lift the argument a notch above the kindergarten level, the second law of thermodynamics applies to a "closed system," that is, to a system that does not gain energy from without or lose energy to the outside. The only truly closed system we know of is the universe as a whole.
Within a closed system, there are subsystems that can gain complexity spontaneously, provided there is a greater loss of complexity in another interlocking system. The overall change is then a complexity-loss in line with the dictates of the second law.
Evolution can proceed and build up the complex from the simple, thus moving uphill, without violating the second law, as long as another interlocking part of the system -- the sun, which delivers energy to the earth continuously -- moves downhill (as it does) at a much faster rate than evolution moves uphill.
If the sun were to cease shining, evolution would stop and, indeed, so would life, eventually.
Unfortunately, the second law is a subtle concept that most people are not accustomed to dealing with, and it is not easy to see the fallacy in the creationist distortion. The fallacy becomes plainer, perhaps, if we consider the analogous treatment of another theory.
The theory of gravitation says, in kindergarten terms, that all objects in the Earth's vicinity are attracted to the earth and, therefore, fall to the ground. Consequently, balloons and airplanes and rockets are clearly impossible.
If you don't accept this, you needn't accept the creationists' kindergarten view of the second law of thermodynamics either.
There are many other "scientific" arguments used by creationists, some taking quite clever advantage of present areas of dispute in evolutionary theory, but every one of them is as disingenuous as the second-law argument.
The "scientific" arguments are organized into special creationist textbooks, which have all the surface appearance of the real thing and which school systems are heavily pressured to accept.
They are written by people who have not made any mark as scientists and, while they discuss geology, paleontology, and biology with correct scientific terminology, they are devoted almost entirely to raising doubts about the legitimacy of the evidence and the reasoning underlying evolutionary thinking, on the assumption that this leaves creationism as the only possible alternative.
Evidence actually in favor of creationism is not presented, of course, because none exists other than the word of the Bible, which it is current creationist strategy not to use.
6. The argument from irrelevance. Some creationists put all matters of
scientific evidence to one side and consider all such things irrelevant.
The Creator, they say, brought life, and the earth, and the entire universe
into being ten thousand years or so ago, complete with all evidence for
an eons long evolutionary development. The fossil record, the decaying
radioactivity, the receding galaxies, were all created as they are and
the evidence they present is an illusion.
Of course, this argument is itself irrelevant, for it can be neither proved nor disproved. It is not an argument, actually, but a statement. I can say that the entire universe was created two minutes ago, complete with all its history books describing a nonexistent past in detail, and with all the persons now alive equipped with full memories; you, for instance, in the process of reading this article in midstream with a memory of what you had read in the beginning--which you had not really read.
That, too, can be neither proved nor disproved.
Ask yourself, though, what kind of a Creator would produce a universe containing so intricate an illusion.
It would mean that the Creator formed a universe that contained human beings whom he endowed with the faculty of curiosity and the ability to reason. He supplied those human beings with an enormous amount of subtle and cleverly self-consistent evidence designed to mislead that curiosity and that reasoning ability and cause them to be convinced that the universe was created fifteen billion years ago and developed by evolutionary processes that included the creation and development of life on earth.
Why?
Does the Creator take pleasure in misleading us? Does it amuse him to watch us go wrong? Is it part of a test to see if human beings will deny their senses and their reason in order to cling to a myth? Is it to give him an excuse to consign us all to hell for not denying or senses and our reason?
Can it be that the Creator is a cruel and malicious prankster, with a vicious and adolescent sense of humor? If so, it might be just as well if the creationists were honest, and said so.
7. The argument from authority. The Bible says that God created the world in six days, and the Bible is the inspired word of God.
To the average creationist this is all that counts, really. All other arguments are merely a tedious way of countering the propaganda of all those wicked humanists, agnostics, and atheists who are not satisfied with the clear word of the Lord.
To be sure, the creationist leaders are careful not to use that argument because that would make their point of view a religious one and they would not be able to get it into our secular school-system. They have to borrow the clothing of science, no matter how badly it fits them and no matter how grotesque it makes them appear, in order to call themselves "scientific" creationists. They must also be careful to speak only of a "Creator" and never mention that this Creator happens to be the God of the Bible. The careful impression is left that he might, for all anyone knows, be Moloch or Chemosh or any of the other heathen abominations the Bible speaks of.
We cannot, however, take this sheep's clothing seriously. However much the creationist leaders might hammer away at their "scientific" and "philosophical" points, they would be helpless and a laughing stock if that were all they had.
It is religion, the simple fervor of medieval piety, that recruits their squadrons. Tens of millions of Americans, who neither know or understand the actual arguments for, or even against, evolution, march in the Army of the Night with their Bibles held high. And they are a strong and frightening force, impervious to and immunized against the feeble lance of mere rationality.
But let us move on. Even if I am right and the evolutionists' case is
very strong, have not creationists, whatever the emptiness of their case,
a right to be heard?
If their case is empty, isn't it perfectly safe to discuss it, since the emptiness would then be apparent? Wouldn't it be best to discuss it, so that the emptiness could be displayed?
Why, then, are evolutionists so reluctant to have creationism taught in the public schools on an equal basis with evolutionary theory? Can it be that the evolutionists are not as confident of their case as they pretend? Are they afraid to allow youngsters a clear choice?
In this connection, there are two points to be made.
First, the creationists are somewhat less than honest in their demands for equal time. It is not they who are repressed, for schools are by no means the only place in which the dispute between creationism and evolutionary theory is played out.
There are the churches, for instance, which are a much more serious influence on most Americans than the schools are. To be sure, many churches are quite liberal, have made their peace with science, and find it easy to live with scientific advance--even with evolution. But the majority of the less modish and citified churches are bastions of creationism.
The influence of the church is naturally felt in the home, in the newspapers, and in all of surrounding society. It makes itself felt in the nation as a whole, even in religiously liberal areas, in ten thousand subtle ways, in the nature of holiday observance, in expressions of patriotic fervor, even in total irrelevancies. Thus, in 1968, a team of astronauts circling the moon were instructed to read the first few verses of Genesis, as though NASA felt it had to placate the public lest they rage against the violation of the firmament. At the present time, even the current president of the United States has expressed his creationist sympathies [Reagan].
It is only in school that American youngsters in general are ever likely to hear any reasoned exposition of the evolutionary viewpoint. They may find such a viewpoint in books or even, on occasion, on television; but church and family can easily censor books and television, and only the school is beyond their control.
But only just beyond. Even though schools are now allowed to teach evolution, teachers are bound to be apologetic about it, knowing full well their jobs are at the mercy of school boards not noted for intellect or for their breadth of scientific view.
Then, too, in schools, students are not required to believe what they learn about evolution--merely to parrot it back on tests. If they fail to do so, their punishment is nothing more than the loss of a few points on a test or two.
In the creationist churches, however, the congregation is required to believe under the threat of hellfire. Impressionable youngsters, taught to believe that they will go to Hell if they listen to the evolutionary doctrine, are not likely to listen in comfort, or to believe if they do.
Well, then, creationists, who control the church and the society they live in, and who face the public school as the only place where evolution is even briefly mentioned in a possibly favorable way, find they cannot stand even so minuscule a competition and demand "equal time."
Do you suppose their devotion to "fairness" is such that they will give equal time to evolution at their churches? You know they won't. What's theirs is theirs. What's yours is negotiable.
Second, the real danger is the manner in which creationists want their "equal time."
In the scientific world, there is free and open competition of ideas, and even a scientist whose suggestions are not accepted is nevertheless free to continue to argue his case.
In this free and open competition of ideas, creationism has clearly lost. It has been loosing, in fact, since the time of Copernicus three and a half centuries ago.
Creationism refuses to accept the decision, placing myth above reason, and is now calling in the power of the government. They want the government to FORCE creationism into the schools against the verdict of the free and open competition of ideas. Teachers must be forced to present creationism as though it has equal intellectual respectability with evolutionary doctrine.
What a precedent this sets!
If the government can mobilize its policemen and its prisons to make certain that teachers give creationism equal time, they can next use force to make sure that teachers declare creationism the victor so that evolution may be evicted from the classroom altogether.
We will have established the full groundwork, in other words, for barbarism, for legally enforced ignorance, and for totalitarian thought-control.
And what if the creationists win? They might, you know, for there are millions who, faced with the choice between the Bible and science, will choose the Bible and reject science, regardless of the evidence.
This is not entirely because of a traditional and unthinking reverence for the literal word of the Bible; there is also a pervasive uneasiness, or actual fear, of science, that will drive those who care little for religion into the arms of the creationists.
For one thing, science is uncertain. Theories are subject to revision; observations are open to a variety of interpretations, and scientists quarrel among themselves. This is disillusioning for those untrained in the scientific method, and these people tend to turn to the rigid certainty of the Bible as presented by its thumpers. There is something comfortable about a view that allows for no deviation and that spares you the painful necessary of having to think.
Second, science is complex and chilling. The mathematical language of science is understood by very few. The vistas it presents are scary -- an enormous universe ruled by chance and impersonal rules, empty and uncaring, ungraspable and vertiginous. How comfortable to turn instead to a small world, only a few thousand years old, and under God's personal and immediate care; a world in which you are His peculiar concern and where He will not consign you to Hell if you are careful to follow every word of the Bible as interpreted for you by your television preacher.
Third, science is dangerous. There is no question but that such products as poison gas, nuclear weapons and power stations, and genetic engineering are terrifying. It may be that civilization is falling and the world we know is coming to and end. In that case, why not turn to religion and look forward to the Day of Judgment, in which you and your fellow-believers will be lifted into eternal bliss, and have the added joy of watching the scoffers and disbelievers writhe forever in torment.
So why might they not win?
Spain dominated Europe and the world in the sixteenth century, but in Spain orthodoxy came first and all divergence of opinion was ruthlessly suppressed. The result was that Spain settled back into blankness and did not share in the scientific, technological, and commercial ferment that bubbled up into other nations of Western Europe. Spain remained an intellectual backwater for centuries.
In the late seventeenth century, France in the name of orthodoxy revoked the Edict of Nantes and drove out many thousands of Huguenots, who added their intellectual vigor to the lands of refuge like Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Prussia, while France was permanently weakened.
In more recent times, Germany hounded out the Jewish scientists of Europe. These, arriving in the United States, added immeasurably to scientific advance here, while Germany lost so heavily that there is no telling how long it will take it to regain its former scientific eminence. The Soviet Union, in its fascination with Lysenko, destroyed its geneticists, and set back its biological sciences for decades. China, during the Cultural Revolution, turned against Western science and is still laboring to overcome the devastation that resulted.
Are we now, with all these examples before us, to ride to destruction under the same tattered banner of orthodoxy? With creationism in the saddle, American science will wither, and we will raise a generation of ignoramuses who will not be equipped to run the industry of tomorrow, much less to generate the new advances of the days after tomorrow.
We will inevitably recede into the backwater of civilization, and those nations that retain open scientific thought will take over the leadership and the cutting edge of human advance.
I don't suppose that the creationists really plan the decline of the United States, but their loudly expressed patriotism is as simple-minded as their "science" and, if they win out, they will, in their folly, achieve the opposite of what they say they wish.