Evolutionary theory also plays a role in arguments in favor of transhumanism and other efforts to enhance human abilities and extend the human lifespan. For instance, some social conservatives charge that evolutionary theory serves to strengthen broader arguments that justify practices they vehemently oppose, such as abortion and euthanasia. Outside the classroom, much of the opposition to evolution has involved its broader social implications and the belief that it can be understood in ways that are socially and politically dangerous. This battle has ebbed in recent years, but it has not completely died out. The issue was even discussed and debated during the runups to the 20 presidential elections. Even over the last 15 years, educators, scientists, parents, religious leaders and others in more than a dozen states have engaged in public battles in school boards, legislatures and courts over how school curricula should handle evolution.
This basic concern with evolutionary theory has helped drive the decadeslong opposition to teaching it in public schools.
(See “ Religious Groups’ Views on Evolution.”) For many religious people, the Darwinian view of life – a panorama of brutal struggle and constant change – conflicts with both the biblical creation story and the Judeo-Christian concept of an active, loving God who intervenes in human events. So if evolution is as established in the scientific community as the theory of gravity, why are people still arguing about it more than century and a half after Darwin proposed it? The answer lies, in large part, in the theological implications of evolutionary thinking. Moreover, they say, a scientific theory is not a hunch or a guess, but is instead an established explanation for a natural phenomenon, like gravity, that has repeatedly been tested and refined through observation and experimentation. Most biologists and other scientists contend that evolutionary theory convincingly explains the origins and development of life on Earth. Concerns about how his ideas would be received by the public led British naturalist Charles Darwin, pictured here in 1878, to wait 20 years before publishing his groundbreaking theory of evolution.
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