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Lang Elliott wasn’t the kind of man who equivocated on any subject.

Ask the senator from Kentucky a question and you would get an answer which was not spoken in “political speak.” If he had no opinion, he would tell you. Hence, he was the darling of the press, although he often took them to task, or, the press would “have at it,” and neither would be the less for the wear. Great thing about telling the truth is that you do not have to remember the lies you have told.

Wednesday was an important day in Senator Elliott’s life. Because on this particular day his committee would open hearings on the provocative issue of Creation Science (The new word for the old one, “creationism.”) vs. Natural Selection. Charles Darwin and his contemporary Russell Wallace would have…and did equivocate as Lang Elliott saw it.

Elliott had read all the books on the subject and in the book, “Essentially Darwin”, the editor, Robert Jastrow states that many Darwin’s books belong to the category, which are much discussed but little read. Elliott had read the book cover-to-cover. Interestingly, both Darwin and Wallace according to Jastrow came to their conclusions at about the same time on the issue of Natural Selection in the bold new era of the discussion of Natural Selection as a method of evolution of the human, versus the widely accepted view of Creationism of all living things by God. Both, Darwin and Wallace credited a member of the Scottish clergy…a Reverend Malthus as the source of their inspiration. It was Malthus’s theories on population in any time period before the 19th century would have seen him burned at the stake as a heretic, or certainly, ostersized as was Galileo. But of course, the world now knows that in time, like so many important issues, the real authorities step forward as did Galileo and proved themselves to be correct.

But these were daunting, challenging times when men and women of science marched forward with new and provocative discoveries and theories to defy scholars of the past just as Copernicus had removed the earth from the center of the universe three hundred years before. Darwin now dares to remove man from the center of the world of living things. In that achievement he joined the ranks of other great men like Einstein; Newton…men who practiced science over prayer as a means to understand the world and man’s rightful place in it.

Twenty-one years in the making, Darwin’s “Origin of the Species,” was revered in the scientific community and reviled in the ministry and much of the underclass.

Coincidentally, Russell Wallace published a paper on the same subject prior to Darwin, and this convenient little triumph troubled Elliott because of its conclusions reached separately, ostensively, were an even greater source of discomfort to him. Why should anyone care about the opinion of a lawyer on a matter of science?

Some wondered if Elliott had gotten his inspiration from another lawyer? Had it come from the learned barrister Clarence Darrow who had defended John Thomas Scopes in the now infamous Tennessee Scopes Monkey trial? There was one thing we knew about Lang Elliott; we would all know his opinion when he took the floor in the Senate hearing room.

Although it was now nearly one hundred years since the State of Tennessee vs. John Thomas Scopes, a twenty-four- year old teacher, the case continues to resonate among fundamentalist Christians. During the nearly century old court case after court case, all the courts, including the Supreme Court have ruled against the rights of the states to teach Creation Science. As a result of this decision, most states omit the teaching of the beginning of the universe and the evolution of man altogether. This seems to be the answer from the fundamentalist, “if we can’t have it our way, there will be no way at all!” Obviously demonstrating the power of religion in America under a constitution which mandates a separation of church and state.

This issue was at the heart of the hearings to be held by Senator Elliott’s Committee on Public Education. During these hearings the committee would determine if the states have the right to preclude the teaching of Natural Selection to the exclusion of the teaching of Creation Science? It was to be an epic battle, in one corner the evolution of man without the assistance of God and in the other, a universe designed and created by God in seven (7) days.

One of those expected to testify against the state and the teaching of Creative Science would be the National Academy of Science, perhaps the nation’s leading scientific organization which would be expected to testify that ‘evolution must be a vital part of science instruction, and lessons on creationism do not belong in the science classes.’ The academy also said, “Evolution is supported by overwhelming scientific evidence.” In spite of favorable court decisions, the organization is concerned that there are widespread misunderstandings about evolution and that teachers are reluctant to teach the theory in classrooms today, fearing the majority fundamentalist will object, vociferously, and in mass…and could cost them the teaching positions.

As concerns rise, this organization has produced a guidebook, Teaching About Evolution in basic biology for children beginning in Kindergarten, stating,

“Teaching evolution is essential for explaining the most fundamental concepts of science," the guide states. But therein lies the rub, conservative faith and the First Amendment rights of the teacher, the state and parent are at significant odds today, and certainly the Minority Dissent in Lemon vs. Kurtzman gave notice that there may very well be a shift occurring on the Supreme Court. In this case argued before the Supreme Court, unlike the McLean case, the court was divided in its opinion. Justice Antonin Scalia, now deceased, filed a descent and Justice William Rehnquist joined in that descent.

The court has two appointments, both nominated by President George W. Bush, a staunch conservative and Creationist. Justice Scalia’s written dissent was telling. He wrote that Creation Science was a scientific theory, and that the “plain meaning of the term creation is not necessarily religious.” Scalia in his descent warned that “Striking down a law approved by a democratically elected representatives of the people is no minor matter.”

Tell that to President Abraham Lincoln, who’s well known and long battle with the Supreme Court over the Case of Dred Scott resulted in the great Civil War. Lincoln held that if the Supreme Court had applied the law, rather than reverting to politics…the Civil War would never have happened. But there are those who say that Lincoln’s intentional failure to fortify Fort Sumter, handing the south an invitation to take the Fort was the beginning of the Civil War and had nothing to do with Dred Scott, the slave who was an assistant to a traveling military physician, moved from fort-to-fort and was nothing more than a pack animal, a possession likely to be moved about as was any possession who maintained he was free because he traveled into free states and was therefore free.

As in the case of John Thomas Scopes, both sides of the slave issue came out of the woodwork. The despicable; underhanded, maniacal, abolitionist murderer of men and women opposed to slavery used men like John Brown to do their dirty bidding while striking the cleansed hand. On the other side of the issue the politically powerful southern planters, unlike the conniving abolitionist were front and center with guns; knives, swords, money and influence to support the cause of slavery.

In the end, men appointed to positions for life were not intimidated by either side but they were impudent by a predisposition on a matter which divided the country. Instead of applying the Rule of Law, as strict conservatives, the court in a majority opinion fanned the flames of bigotry and hatred in a decision which was politically biased and legally flawed.

The Scalia descent left the floor open for debate and the battle certain to be joined by fundamentalist seeking to reverse the test preserved by secular proponents who have long maintained that the teaching of Genesis in the classroom is in conflict with the separation of church and state. Interestingly, from what the press had been able to glean, Senator Elliott did not take umbrage with the big picture, only the principle that man did not have his own evolutionary track. In this theory, man came closer to the closely held belief of the majority…man was a product of the creator of all things, God, Himself. That man was of a higher and more select origin and had the same distinct opportunity to evolve separately and in different hemispheres, without the aid of the ape…Thank you!

It is this critical and equally transparent prospect that set Elliott apart from Wallace, Darwin and God. As to Wallace and Darwin, Elliott would try to prove that man came from the same warm pool, quite on his own, and evolved from the water in different parts of the world. Hence, the Asian came forth; the Caucasian came forward, the Black race came forward, the Native American race came forward, and each begat its own chain in the evolution of the human species, that is until interracial mating producing a race yet unnamed.

We must be open, Elliott argued, at some point in time, all species were vulnerable. How was an ape supposed to be more or less predisposed to the survival of the fittest when they are as historically sensitive and exposed to growth as is the human. But how do we know that the ape and the human were not as jeopardized, at birth, as was the sea turtle? It is well known that the sea turtles are hatched in the millions and are left to fend for themselves from day one…to get back to the sea and become a part of the food chain or to become part of the few survivors returning in time to hatch their own offspring to be fed to the sea.

Another source of confusion in thinking about evolution relates to the role of chance; according to the current scientific view, chance collisions between molecules led to the appearance of the first forms of life; than chance variations in the forms of life led to the evolution of complex forms out of simple ones; finally, after four billion years, man appeared, emerged out of a succession of more primitive forms and like the ape…seemingly the product of a long chain of random events.

“For most people,” writes Robert Jastrow “such an explanation of the origin of mankind is as improbable as the creation of the Mona Lisa through the random splatter of paint on the canvass.” But few scientists share this skepticism. The majority of scientist feel that Darwin’s law of natural selection removes the need for a guiding hand in the universe. In their view, the theory of evolution is complete and requires the action of no mysterious force beyond the reach of scientific understanding. The great evolutionist, George Gaylord Simpson wrote that evolution, “achieves the aspect of purpose without …a purpose, and had produced a vast plan without…a planner.”

Though Darwin saw no evidence of a beneficent design in the details as he struggled with the prospect of blind chance, and his own struggles with the issues of agnosticism and science would not permit him to believe there was a beneficent and patient hand…and not chance which permitted evolution and creationism as we know it today.

It was easy for Elliott to follow the historical record in Genesis. Much of what had been written by the Jews, preached by Jesus Christ and whose disciples; Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were chosen to record the gospels, later edited by King Constantine designee monks in deference to all the other disciples who had also written of the savior and his many works which he never recorded. Even the prophets in the Old Testament had weighed in on the matter and these writings could be verified by the writings of the Egyptians who kept nearly impeccable records. Though seriously flawed, the accounts of the Jewish deliverance by Moses is not contracted.

It happened pretty much as related in Genesis and Exodus without the production and insidious opportunity to right the history of the Jew, which the Jews are so want to do! Most especially in its treatment of King David who is believed by the Minimalist to never have existed at all. But you have to admit that the Jews are just so believable in their misery. God knows how much we love Woody Allen.

But where the creative writers went wrong…was to give man his origin in the Garden of Eden, through the assistance of God. Although there is one aspect of Creationism vs. Natural Selection which troubled Senator Elliott. Since the time of Adam and Eve, why have there been no discovery or witness to the generation of new species of man? According to Darwin’s massive body of work, convincing circumstantial evidence, that all forms of life on the earth have evolved out of other forms from just one lonely cell, which lived at an earlier time, and that those in turn had evolved out of still earlier forms.

According to Darwin, the chain of life extends far back into the distant past to some ‘ancestral strand of matter’, lurking in a warm pool. Every creature on our planet is a distant cousin to every other according to Darwin, all are related to one another by decent from common ancestors. Man is among those creatures; he too, has evolved out of a lower and simpler kinds of life, and differs in no fundamental way from other animals on this planet with the exception of the important fact that none of the other cousins have a moral underpinning.

Certainly the question in what appears to be the cessation of the human species bogs down scholars falling on the side of Darwin and Wallace. Because in the Darwinian Theory, he stated without equivocation that man will continue to evolve. If Darwin is correct, where is the empirical evidence of change in man? There is none in fifteen thousand years, nor anything else which has evolved…so there is some relative issue on the side of the creationist who say that God made all things, and that was the end of it. But there is a new Pandora’s Box filled with more than cat litter. Coming from none other than Dr. Steven Hawkings, the genius physicist who has determined there is life sufficient to sustain aliens on an earth like planet discovered recently in our universe. Dr. Hawkings states that it is disingenuous of us to believe we are alone, and as an avowed agnostic, he has taken God from the equation falling decidedly into the Charles Darwin camp of life and evolution.

But Darwin seems to say as well, that man has evolved over fifty million years…so change is slow. According to Darwin, man didn’t just “show-up!” one day in the Garden of Eden and wait for Eve to bring the noon meal. I make this point once again and will make it often that Darwin believed that man began, “as matter, lurking in a warm pool of salt water.”

If we can embrace Darwin, then there are all kinds of hope for the Transitional man in the theory of Lang Elliott. The proof will be in the telling, and in the main it will undo years of yarns and hours of agony. Of course Charles Darwin submitted the following statement, “I can entertain no doubt, after the most deliberate study and dispassionate judgment of which I am capable, that the view which most scientist entertain, and which I formerly entertained namely…that each species has been independently created, I now believe to be erroneous. I am fully convinced that species are not immutable (not changing or alterable); but that those belonging to what are called the same genera are lineal descendants of some other and generally extinct species, in the same manner as the acknowledged varieties of any one species are the descendants of that species. He went on to say, furthermore, I am convinced that Natural Selection has been the main but, not the exclusive means of modification."

All of that is unimportant to the theory of Lang Elliott, it simply means Darwin has come to a position that each species has not been independently created but have depended upon species of the same genera, as descendants of that species for the continuation of life into the next determination of the survival of the fittest. And we all know the human being is far less prepared to cope with life beyond the womb, or so it is presupposed. The consensus is that the average fetus is unable to survive outside the womb without the constant nourishment and protection of something or someone. So what comes first, the chicken or the egg? At some point in the natural selection process, the human was exposed, and took nourishment from another mammal. Lang Elliott believed, from experience on his thoroughbred farm that a foal could be fed by any other nursing creature, whether it be mare, donkey or cow, so long as there was a tit and milk coming from it.

Michael Behe had this to say in his book, “Darwin’s Black Box,” in which he challenged Darwin’s theory of evolution, claiming we can understand how something works but not necessarily how it came to be. He also claimed evolution means different things to different people and that the cell is no longer the mysterious black box that it was for Darwin. Behe claimed the complex structure of the cell depends on far too many interconnected parts to have been built up gradually, step by tiny step, over time.

Science journalist Richard Milton also challenged Darwin’s theory. Milton claimed there are “missing links,” in every evolutionary line, human and otherwise. He claimed as well that even if the evolutionary process occurred over the course of 3.8 billion years, which would not be long enough for complex life to evolve from a single celled organism. He concluded that to believe Darwin requires more of an act of faith than does a functioning science. It is good to remember that Milton is not a scientist but a science journalist.

Finally, the National Academy of Science, claimed that “evolution must be a vital part of science instruction, and lessons on creationism do not belong in the science classroom.” The Academy also said, “Evolution is overwhelmingly supported by evidence.” In spite of favorable court decisions, the organization is concerned over widespread misunderstandings about evolution which is manifested in teachers who are reluctant to teach the theory in classrooms today. There is little wonder that there is a misunderstanding because it has become the habit of certain organizations who make it their practice to conjure words and phrases which confuse the ordinary mind, for an example, the use of the word “choice” when speaking of abortion. The use of this word by proponents of abortion is intended to soften the impact of killing a fetus.

Welby Thomas Cox, Jr. (Editor)