By Sally Morem
Making the teaching of evolution illegal in Kansas or in Minnesota would be just as bad, if not worse, than making the teaching of Einstein’s theory of relativity illegal. It would render scientific inquiry suspect among the young and seriously mislead them as to the nature of the universe and our place within it.
Hitler and his extermination camps were made possible by the mistaken belief in a “master race” and “inferior races” among the German population, and their willingness to do anything to destroy the latter while encouraging the former to have large families. The Nazis considered their Fuhrer to be a kind of prize breeder, not an evolutionary theoretician.
Evolution, on the other hand, reveals that all life forms are descended from earlier successful life forms, which tended to pass on their more effective and efficient traits to more offspring than their competitors. Precisely which traits are more effective and efficient shifts over time as the organisms’ environment is transformed by climatic and geological change. The line of descent adapts. Hence natural selection. Hence evolution.
If you compare the two systems of thought, you’ll see that Nazism mandated a top-down, bureaucratic system of command, which could be and was easily corrupted. Evolution, on the other hand, is a wholly adaptive, uncommanded, self-organized system of biological change. It explains to ever-curious humans how the Earth became home to the complex network of organisms and ecological systems we see today. As an adaptive system, it can’t be corrupted. It merely exists.
School shootings are a human problem and must be dealt with on a human level. Evolution has nothing to do with it. Don’t outlaw evolution. Learn about it instead.