Aired August 17, 1999 - 7:30 p.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

BILL PRESS, CO-HOST: Did our earliest ancestors pick apples from trees or swing from them? Tonight, creationism versus evolution: Which should our children be taught in public schools?

ANNOUNCER: From Washington, CROSSFIRE. On the left, Bill Press; on the right, Mary Matalin. In the CROSSFIRE, in Boston, Harvard Professor Stephen Jay Gould, author of "Rocks of Ages," and in Lynchburg, Virginia, Reverend Jerry Falwell, chancellor of Liberty University.

PRESS: Good evening. Welcome to CROSSFIRE.

Did we descend directly from Adam and Eve? Or did we evolve from ancestors who swung from the trees? Believe it or not, the old debate is back. And for now, creationism is winning and evolution is losing.

Last week, the Kansas Board of Education voted 6-4, over the objections of Republican governor Bill Graves, to remove evolution from the required school curriculum, thereby reigniting a national fire storm.

Conservative Christians insist evolution can't be proven and shouldn't be all that's taught in schools. Scientists argue, leaving evolution out ignores the truth and leaves students ill-prepared for college.

According to the latest CNN/"USA Today"/Gallup poll, the American people, by 68 percent to 29, want to see both theories taught.

So what's the right answer? That's our CROSSFIRE tonight. Are you now or have you ever been an ape?

Mary.

MARY MATALIN, CO-HOST: No, but I'm quite sure my husband still is.

(LAUGHTER)

MATALIN: Professor Gould, let's just start right in there. Bill has just suggested a poll noting that 68 percent of Americans want both theories to be taught. Here's another astounding number: 40 percent, according to Gallup, want creation taught instead of evolution. Why not teach both, given the sentiment of Americans?

PROF. STEPHEN JAY GOULD, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: I don't find the poll results discouraging. I think it just expresses that sense of fairness that Americans have, combined with, unfortunately, our dismal understanding of science, which leads most people not really to grasp how well-documented evolution is and how little a threat it is to religious values or to ethical principles, because science doesn't deal with such questions.

The basic answer, of course, is that ethical values and religion must be taught, but not in our science classrooms. They're different subjects, vitally important though each are.

MATALIN: But if the teaching of creation is so ludicrous, as measured by evidence, why not put the evidence that creationists have up against the evidence that evolutionists have and let the students make that assessment for themselves?

GOULD: Because they really have no credible scientific evidence. Any kind of evidence should, of course, be presented in science classrooms, but science is an enterprise of trying to sort out how the factual world works. Religion is an inquiry into ethics and values. I don't demand access to church pulpits to talk about the factual state of the world, and I don't expect that fundamentally religious issues will be raised in science classrooms, though both subjects, as I said, are vitally important.

MATALIN: Although creationists would say that they do have evidence to support their view of this. Let me give you another poll -- we're political here -- some 44 percent of students, Americans, after assessing the evidence of evolution still believe in the origin of life as stated in Genesis. What do you make of that?

GOULD: Many people read Genesis metaphorically. I can't tell you what that poll means, but again, if we're going to decide factual questions by poll results -- after all, most of what we deeply believe now will probably turn out to be wrong. Suppose you took polls in 1500 about the state of the knowledge of the earth and life. Everything would be wrong. You can't fundamentally assess factual questions by population polling. I don't think it makes sense.

PRESS: Reverend Falwell, I don't really -- I'm trying to maybe get your help on what the real problem is here. This country is the only country where this problem exists. Every other Western nation, all these other Christian nations, evolution is taught in the classroom and nobody has got an issue with that.

Why is it a conflict in this country for evolution to be taught? What are Christians so upset about?

REV. JERRY FALWELL, CHANCELLOR, LIBERTY UNIVERSITY: Bill, let me come to the defense of the school board in Kansas. They did not say, as Professor Gould indicated in his "Time" magazine article, they did not say that evolution could not be taught in the classroom. They rather said that it had to be taught as theory and that it had to be taught alongside other models or theories of creation and of origin of species, namely that creationism, evolution should all have equal footing, and that's called academic freedom.

And contrary to what the professor said a moment ago about the overwhelming majority of the people in this country who have an interest in creationism, I don't think the American people are ignorant or uninformed. And I think that when both sets of facts are placed before young people -- well, I'll give you an example. Here at Liberty University, we are a fully accredited university. Our debate team defeated Harvard last year, just to give us a little bit of credibility. We teach evolution and creation in the classroom. And as far as I know, we've never had an evolutionist graduate from Liberty after having both sets of facts presented to them and then go on to get -- my daughter's a surgeon. They go on to be scientists and all the rest.

And what Kansas is trying say is, they do not want to force graduates of four-year colleges before going into medical school or other schools to have to answer questions get in that violate what they really believe in their hearts. They don't want them to have to lie and be forced to know -- knowing the evolutionary model is fine; to say I believe it is something else.

PRESS: But wait a minute, Reverend Falwell. I mean, first of all, Kansas doesn't have any control over what the universities or the medical schools or whatever put on their test. What the Kansas Board of Education said is, that no questions about evolution are going to be asked in the statewide test. Professor Gould made that are point in his article.

FALWELL: That's what I was talking about.

MATALIN: But that means, if a teacher -- if students don't have to know it for a test, teachers aren't going teach it.

FALWELL: No, it doesn't mean that at all.

PRESS: So isn't this the dumbing down of the Kansas educational system?

FALWELL: It doesn't mean that at all, Bill.

PRESS: Sure it does.

FALWELL: Here at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, we teach both. And when my daughter and hundreds of others who've gone on to medical and other professional schools were tested and were asked questions that required information on evolution, they put down the answer that the questioner wanted, not the one they believed, because they had the facts. They were able to pass all the entrance exams, but that did not mean that for one moment they believe in the theory of evolution.

And why, if creationism is so ludicrous, so unscientific then why can we not just put the facts before the children with evolutionary facts, so- called, and creationary facts, so-called, and let the people decide? That is,..

PRESS: Go ahead, professor, I'm sorry.

GOULD: That's exactly what Kansas is going to make impossible. I don't think they should do that, because I don't regard creationism as science. You misstated what I wrote in my "Time" magazine article. The Kansas board has not said, as you did, that both a theories should be taught and other models should be presented.

The Kansas school board rules have simply said that evolution is now deleted from the requirements of the curriculum. You're still allowed to teach it. You don't have to teach anything else.

FALWELL: That's what you said, yes.

GOULD: It's like teaching chemistry without the periodic table, or telling teachers they can do American history but they don't have to consider Lincoln in the Civil War.

FALWELL: But, Jay, I believe you can trust the...

GOULD: I am Steve. You called me Jay.

FALWELL: I'm sorry? OK, I thought it was Jay Gould.

GOULD: Oh, he was a rich robber baron.

(LAUGHTER)

FALWELL: OK. All right. And, professor, I would not sell short the teachers of science in the Kansas public schools. I believe that you can trust them to give the students the information they know, those students will need later at med schools and other such schools around the nation.

GOULD: I was on a radio program this morning with an experienced teacher. He'd been 37 years in the system, and he said he's darn sure that's exactly what isn't going to happen, particularly in rural areas where creationism is strong, that's it'll just be more convenient to drop what they've been doing and avoid trouble.

When you say that something is no longer required and that something happens to be the central concept of an entire discipline, then that can't be anything but dumbing down and anti-intellectualism. I don't know what else to call it.

FALWELL: I would, professor, be willing to attest any graduate from Liberty University's science disciplines with any graduates from Harvard disciplines on a test as to whether they've been dumbed down or not. And I would think that the Kansas schools would prove that to be true out there as well.

And if anybody thinks that at all scientists believe evolution is the only model, you can go to the Institution of Creation Research, which is icr.org, and they will give you what scientists all over the world are coming to believe, that creation is more credible.

GOULD: Well, I think your poll data, in that respect, I can guarantee you, but we shouldn't sit here arguing; that is professionally-trained scientists virtually to a person understand the factual basis of evolution and don't dispute it. Questions about theories of evolutionary mechanisms are constantly being debated, but that shows that science is healthy. The factual character of evolution is as well established as anything we know in science, as well as established as the Earth's revolution around the sun, rather than vice versa, and is no threat to questions of value and meaning because science couldn't answer those religious questions.

MATALIN: But Professor, is this really a struggle between religion and science?

GOULD: Not at all.

MATALIN: Or is it a struggle between two belief systems?

GOULD: Not at all.

MATALIN: I'm quoting from...

GOULD: Not at all. Most -- I'm sorry.

MATALIN: Let me quote from you from Phillip Johnson, a Berkeley professor of -- excellent piece about this issue in "The Wall Street Journal," in which he talks about Darwinist Carl Sagan and your Oxford colleague, Richard Dawkins. "Sagan who had nothing but contempt," he says, "for those who deny that humans and all other species arose by blind physical and chemical forces over eons from slime." And Richard Dawkins, who says "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist." Isn't this a struggle between two belief systems, not science and religion?

GOULD: Not at all. It's not science versus religion. In fact, the vast majority of religious professionals are on our side of this debate. The pope has come out in favor of evolution, and why not? Because the Catholic Church has always been friendly to science. Vast majority of religious professionals feel as I and nearly all scientists do, that evolution is the only credible scientific version. It's a factual issue. It has nothing to do with religious questions about value and meaning, about...

FALWELL: Professor...

GOULD: Of course, it's not science versus religion.

FALWELL: If you're that confident, then why not be willing to allow both models be taught, and let the students decide at the end of the day which they believe?

GOULD: Because I'm trying to teach a science class. Science is an enterprise about factual information. No -- again, when you let me in your pulpit, give me equal time to present the...

FALWELL: But you don't own the science classroom. GOULD: But I don't want to.

FALWELL: The churches own the churches, but we also -- our people, also, are public people who, through their taxes, own the public schools. And when they say in -- 2 to 1 in America, that we want both models taught to our children, why should you as an intellectual elitist want to deny them what they pay for?

GOULD: I don't particular consider myself elite. But if education is simply a question of popular balloting, why not do that? Why have teachers at all? Why have training? Why respect professional competence? A good teacher is never dogmatic. A good teacher always tries to bring out originality, creativity, questioning and challenging, but there is something worthwhile in professional competence, and if what can be taught is to be determined by majority vote, that's not a system that works for education.

FALWELL: But if two-thirds of the American people, so unintelligent, so uninformed and so undeserving of having what they pay for, then I would say forget the majority rule, but certainly, when such a -- when you have two models, creation and evolution, and 2 to 1, the public want both taught, why, if they're paying for the schools, can they not get it?

GOULD: In 1900, a 100 percent of people...

MATALIN: Well, this is majority -- Professor, you're in the minority now. Majority rules here. We have to go to a break. When we come back, we'll pick it up there. Who does decide what's taught in our schools? We'll be right back on CROSSFIRE.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MATALIN: Welcome back to CROSSFIRE.

National politicians lost no time jumping into the debate between scientists and theologians, reignited by the recent Kansas City Board of Education vote to give more authority to local school boards to determine the origin of life curricula. Who should decide what our kids are taught? Sorting through this century old debate are Harvard professor Steven J. Gould and Reverend Jerry Falwell -- Bill.

PRESS: Reverend Falwell, you're a skillful debater, but I think from the beginning of the show, you've ducked the challenge that Professor Gould put to you.

FALWELL: What is it?

PRESS: Let me try again. That you have evolution which is fact and you have creationism which is religious belief. Evolution answers the question, how we got here. Creationism answers the question, who are we, what are our ethics, why are we different from other forms of life. Aren't they two different things? They both ought to be taught, but not as, you know, competing theories. One's theory and one's fact. FALWELL: All right. So that I don't duck anything, first of all, I reject out of hand that evolution is fact. It is theory. It is total theory. And I'm willing for you say to me that creation is theory. I am a born-again believer of Christ. And I do believe the Bible is the inherited word of God, and I do accept the Genesis account of creation, but that all aside, if you go to the Institute of Creation Research, icr.org in Alhambra (ph), California, they have coalesced thousands of scientists who may not be people of faith, but who have rejected the evolution model and who have gone now to the creation model. And all that one needs to do is just take a little time -- icr.org -- and find out for yourself.

PRESS: OK. Reverend Falwell, I think some of us believe that creation science is an oxymoron. You know, it's like Justice Thomas. I mean, the fact is that scientists tell us that there's as much fact to support -- evidence to support evolution as there is that the earth is round. I mean, take -- and you want me to take your word versus the entire body of scientists?

GOULD: We really need to also be clear on terminology. You say evolution is only a theory. That misstates what theories are. Theories in science are not things worse than facts. Theories are structures of explanation. Darwinism is a theory of evolution, a very well confirmed one, but there's a lot of argument about it. Parts of it may be wrong. Theories are not worse than facts; they're structures of explanations that explain facts. That's the scientific usage. Facts are the data of the world, like the revolution of the earth around the sun rather than vice versa.

Now, science doesn't deal in absolute certainty. I once somewhat facetiously stated, but I'm serious about it conceptually, that a fact in science can only mean something confirmed to such a high degree that it would be perverse to withhold one's provisional support. That's the status that evolution is in as a fact. The genealogical connection of all organisms, the three-and-a-half-billion-year history of life with transitional forms recorded in the fossil record: that's overwhelming; that's the factual basis of evolution. To say it one more time, it doesn't threaten a single religious view about the meaning of life or the ethical values by which we live...

(CROSSTALK)

FALWELL: It does for someone who takes the Bible seriously, professor. For those who believe the Bible to be the inert word of God...

GOULD: Not seriously. I take it seriously. You take it literally.

(CROSSTALK)

FALWELL: ... who accept the Genesis account of creation, literally as I do...

GOULD: Now, literally is not seriously.

FALWELL: ... as Dr. Billy Graham does, as millions of other believers do, both literally and seriously we reject evolution.

GOULD: Reverend, what does literal mean?

FALWELL: Let me say this, why -- I can understand you having the prerogative to say that it's fact -- evolution is fact as far as I'm concerned -- there are thousands of scientists just as competent as you who do not believe that.

GOULD: Not true.

FALWELL: And why are you not willing to -- well, just go to icr.org.

GOULD: I think that's your fifth advertisement.

FALWELL: Dr. John Morris, Dr. Dwayne Gish, and several thousand other scientists worldwide....

GOULD: Religious fundamentalists, not scientists.

FALWELL: They are -- none of them, most of them not even evangelicals, who have rejected evolution out of hand. Now, with that all aside, regardless, you may think that I am ridiculous.

GOULD: I don't.

FALWELL: And I may think you are, but I want to say to you that if we are fair in the name of academic freedom, which most people believe in, why not teach a model that two-thirds of the American people want taught and they pay for those schools along with the evolution model? Why not teach it and trust the teachers and the children to be intelligent enough, without your help or mine, to come to a decision.

GOULD: Again, because academic freedom is not a concept of teaching every single viewpoint that a lot of people believe.

FALWELL: It ought to be.

GOULD: It can't be. There would be accumulation of scientific progress. There would be no expertise.

MATALIN: But -- but Professor...

GOULD: There would be no learning.

Again, I'm not preaching dogmatism. I'm not teaching any of that.

MATALIN: OK. But there...

FALWELL: But then why don't you let me come to Harvard and teach evangelical Christianity. I'll be glad to come at no cost, spend a week with all of your students. You wouldn't let me walk in...

GOULD: Please do. Of course I would. You may walk on the campus and teach in the religion department. I don't expect you to let me teach in your religion department.

FALWELL: I would be glad to have you teach as long as I could have Dr. Henry...

(CROSSTALK)

MATALIN: Professor...

FALWELL: ... creation scientists rebut what you say.

PRESS: Hold on one second. Mary, go ahead.

MATALIN: OK. And guys, Bill and I want to come to Harvard to watch your debate up there. But what about this, Professor, in the marketplace of ideas and given the uncertainty of theories science: What about God guided evolution? Where is the creative power of natural selection? Isn't that a provocative concept that academics might want to pursue, think about?

FALWELL: And the Big Bang?

GOULD: As long as one accepts the factual basis of evolution, the interpretation of it in moral or spiritual terms is entirely open. If a religious person says, "I accept the factual character of natural selection but I believe this is God's way of making the world function and work according to his purposes," I have no quarrel with that. It may not be my personal belief. But that's a perfectly valid interpretation, because all -- but in science, you need to accept the factual data as given and then you interpret.

FALWELL: As you see it.

PRESS: Jerry Falwell, I want to ask you, you say you take -- and I believe you -- you take the word of Genesis literally, as we know.

GOULD: Different creation theories. That's just one...

(CROSSTALK)

PRESS: There are two -- thank you, Professor. That's what I'm getting at.

GOULD: Adam created...

(CROSSTALK)

PRESS: Professor, I'm trying to go ahead. There are two stories: There's one and two. In Genesis, first chapter, God created the earth, then he created all the other animals, then he created man and woman. In the second chapter, he created the earth, then he created Adam, then he created all the other animals, then he created Eve.

Now, if we're going to take the Bible literally, we're going to teach creationism, which version do we teach and who decides?

FALWELL: They're not two versions. They're all the same version.

PRESS: They're totally different.

GOULD: Not if you read it literally.

FALWELL: One is an enlargement on the other.

GOULD: Only if you interpret it, which you say you don't do.

FALWELL: And having read the Bible through hundreds of times over the past 47 years, I can tell you there is not one contradiction in scripture in any book against any other book or any other statement. And only those who don't study the Bible but rather look for apparent contradictions and who don't rightly divide the whole word of truth come to the conclusion you just reached.

FALWELL: Then you're not interpreting it literally.

PRESS: Reverend Falwell...

GOULD: If you literally...

(CROSSTALK)

FALWELL: ... that's right. I do not believe that for a moment. And if you...

GOULD: Who did Cain marry, and why did God put a mark on Cain if there were no other people on earth?

FALWELL: Bill, if you'll come down from Washington and visit Thomas Rhodes (ph) Baptist church Sunday morning, I'll preach on Genesis I and II and get it all straightened out for you.

MATALIN: Let's go. Let's go, Bill.

PRESS: Reverend Falwell and Professor Gould, we'll see you at Harvard for the great debate. Thanks for kicking it off here tonight here on CROSSFIRE. And Mary Matalin and I, we'll swing from the trees with some closing comments coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PRESS: Mary, you know, I can't believe we're even having this stupid debate. Look, to me this is the opposite of Genesis. I mean, this is saying let there be darkness again upon the earth. You can't deny the scientific evidence. And it is no threat to creationism. The two of them complement each other.

It's silly to think that there's a conflict between them.

MATALIN: Sure, you can rebut the evidence. And there's a lot of evidence for creation. But that's not the issue. Why are you so afraid to have values taught in the schools? What is so scary about that that two-thirds of the American people agree with it? If there's nothing to it, then let it be taught. Let people assess for themselves. And furthermore, we never got to the issue of parents making this decision. If you don't like it, vote them out.

PRESS: No. First of all I hope the majority never rules, never rules what is taught in the public classrooms. We'd be teaching all kinds of stupid things in the public classrooms.

And the idea is, as you said, what about values? Yes, teach values and ethics in religion class. That's what the professor said. He's right. Teach science in the science class and keep the theory out of the science class.

MATALIN: This is the fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans. You just said it: Majority doesn't rule in the Democratic liberal world. People don't. Elitists do. You're wrong. I'm right.

PRESS: Yes. You watch. Take a poll every day: What are we going to teach today? Take a poll. Idiotic!

From the left, I'm Bill Press, descending from the apes, proud of it. Good-night for CROSSFIRE.

(LAUGHTER)

MATALIN: And from the right, only married to an ape, I'm Mary Matalin. Join us again tomorrow night for another edition of CROSSFIRE.

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