Articles

Guest Column on Evolution: Ideology Holds the Reins

Faith And The City E-Letter
Volume 3, Issue 2
February 9, 2004
By Greg Hampikian
(Reprinted from Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Feb. 4, 2004)

As a geneticist, I know that censoring scientific speech is a bad idea. One historical example may help illustrate this point. In the early 1900s Russia had a solid reputation in the biological sciences, including two Nobel prizes in medicine.

Genetics was then a new field, and many young scientists were drawn to study it.

Since Russia was the largest agricultural producer in Europe, Russian science was expected to make great improvements in food production by using genetic research to breed new strains of wheat and other foodstuffs.

But when Stalin came to power in the 1920s, he decided that the concept of the gene conflicted with aspects of his ideology, Marxism. The official view was that genes were a capitalist invention and did not really exist.

At first, Lenin did not forbid use of the word "gene," but it was dropped from the textbooks. After a while, researchers who insisted on using the word lost their government funding and thus their positions.

Within a few years, genetic research was completely arrested in Russia by a political program that promoted scientists based on ideology. Russian genetics made no progress for 30 years, until Stalin's death in 1954. It was another two decades before Russian education was freed from his ideological constraints.

Scientific principles are not subject to the whims of politicians or voters, but scientific progress is. The truth can't be changed by those in power, but the curriculum can be.

Let's be honest. Whoever proposed removing the word "evolution" from the Georgia curriculum was not objecting to a word but to a scientific principle, and they were not acting based on scientific knowledge, but rather on personal ideology.

Replacing the established scientific term "evolution" with the doublespeak gibberish "biological changes over time" is classic politburo.

I am not just a scientist in this state, but a parent who voluntarily substitute teaches and a Christian who directs a student ministry group. In all of these roles I am affronted by the new draft curriculum.

Greg Hampikian is an associate professor of biology at Clayton College and State University. He chairs the University System of Georgia's Academic Advisory Committee on biology.

(Editor's note: This guest column appeared in the Atlanta-Journal Constitution on Feb. 4, 2004, and is reprinted here with the permission of the author.)