South Africa: Creationist paradise

The top (blue) bar indicates the percentage of adults who have heard of Charles Darwin and at least a little about his theory of evolution. South Africa comes in at the bottom of the class at a meagre 27%.

The bottom (red) bar indicates the percentage of adults who have both heard of Darwin and know a bit about his theory, and agreed with the opinion that “enough scientific evidence exists to support Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution”. So here South Africa just sneaked in ahead of Islamic Egypt – at just 12% (42% of the 27% above) . Great.

So what accounts for this lamentable situation? After all, South Africa has provided the world with some of its best known fossils and other evidence of evolution described by scientific superstars. Evolution should be as much a part of South African consciousness as, say is soccer. What makes South Africa a creationist paradise?

The obvious problem must be education. The fact that only 27% of adults have a at least a nodding acquaintance with Darwin and that he had something to do with the theory of evolution must be blamed fairly and squarely on poor education.

South Africa has had a long history of poor education. During the apartheid years black people were subject to what was called “Bantu Education” whose aim was to produce a class of labourers – hewers of wood and drawers of water. Religion was also heavily promoted amongst them and it was greedily accepted. There was no room for the teaching of foreign concepts like evolution there.

The privileged whites fell under a system called “Christian National Education”, which promoted a deeply conservative, Calvinist world view which simply had no place for evolution.  It was certainly not taught in schools besides some vague references to it in biology lessons. None of the current teachers were therefore schooled in evolutionary theory.

The current dispensation is not much better. Besides ill-equipped teachers, society at large remains a highly superstitious one with only about 15% of people reporting no religion. But on top of that is the race obsession of South Africans, particularly that of the government. But how would that effect views on evolution?

The following quotes culled from an article on introducing evolution into the curriculum illustrate both the religious and racial objections to evolution:

Josef de Beer, a lecturer in the faculty of education at the University of Johannesburg (UJ), said teachers of evolution might have religious concerns. “My experience in teaching evolution in a foundation-year programme at the University of Pretoria is that many students find evolution problematic because of their religious beliefs.”

At a recent conference at UJ, where teachers were trained in evolution, a teacher said: “I am disappointed about the fact that evolution attacks God’s creation. It also mixes Genesis with idol worshippers of Babylon, which were never there when God created planet Earth.”

Another said he thought the topic should be voluntary because he didn’t think it suitable for people who believe in God. “I am totally against evolution,” another teacher said.

Matters came to a head after snippets of a video, Tiny Humans: Finding Hobbits in Flores, was shown. The video traces the origin of tiny prehistoric humans somewhere on an Indonesian island. They are depicted as short and dark-skinned people. This offended some black teachers. They said that evolution was a racist theory. It “terribly undermines black people, everything bad gets a black colour. It means blacks were apes,” they said.

Sigh… What can you say? Well, I did say something when this article was published last year and you can read my (published) response below the fold:

Sir

I read Thabo Mohlala’s article (“Evolution to be taught in SA schools”) with amusement and then growing dismay. I’dlove to know what Mohlala understands by the term “evolution”, since his article gives no indication that he even knows it’s a scientific theory. His ignorance is however overshadowed by the lunatic comments of the “teachers” he quotes.

Mohlala presents the teaching of the theory of evolution as the introducing a set of (probably atheist) ideas as a means of critically thinking about religion. What about the science and the overwhelming scientific evidence in support of Evolution?  What about the fact that understanding the theory of Evolution is absolutely critical in the study of modern biology?

The article mentions that the theory of evolution has a “growing body of followers”, making it sound like a religious sect. It is one of the cornerstones of modern science, overwhelmingly supported by scientists, particularly in the life sciences. It is hard science, without any competing scientific theory.  In the 120 years since Darwin published his “On the Origin of Species”, not a single bit of evidence has been produced to refute it. No faith is required to believe it: evolution is a fact in the sense that gravity is a fact. By injecting a highly spurious and unsupported paragraph about some Christian parents in the US challenging its teaching at schools in 2005, he further casts evolution as a philosophical idea competing in the religious space. As far as teaching evolution in the US goes, evolution is taught as part of the school curricula – specifically because it is science, not religion. This has been upheld by the US Supreme Court in 1987, and more recently in the famous Dover, Pennsylvania intelligent design case.

But most alarming are the quotes Mahlala has gathered. Did this really come out of a teacher’s mouth: “I am  disappointed about the fact that evolution attacks God’s creation. It also mixes Genesis with idol worshippers of Babylon, which were never there when God created planet Earth.” Besides being the most jaw-slackening, uneducated religious twaddle I have ever read, the fact that it was uttered by a teacher who would conceivably teach evolution is sickening.

And the group of teachers who think that evolution is a racist theory also clearly do not have the slightest grasp of the theory of evolution. To say “[it] terribly undermines black people, everything bad gets a black colour. It means blacks were apes,” just shows that how important understanding evolution is when attempting to think about anything biological. The fact that the ancestors of all humans were probably black – for good biological and evolutionary reasons – should remove any offence. In fact evolutionary biology dispels racist myths.

“Teachers of evolution will need to be well trained.”  You think?

Tim Beck

By the way, if you want to partake in a British Council Internet survey asking the same sort of questions, head over here.