Lawrence.com

Turns out, Paul Mirecki might be a prophet.

Or, Mirecki - the Kansas University professor who caught considerable hell for smack-talking religious fundamentalists - might at least be a spot-on social analyst.

We interviewed Mirecki, chair of the KU religious studies department, about the modern-day tension between science and religion shortly after the Kansas Board of Education's controversial November vote to revise classroom science standards.

That was more than a week before his controversial email - in which he referred to himself as "Evil Dr. P" and called fundamentalists "fundies" - was publicized.

At that time, he didn't know that conservative lawmakers soon would call for his job. He didn't know that, as even more divisive emails turned up, he would become a national figure in the ongoing hullabaloo over evolution, religion and education.

But when we asked for his take on the modern-day tension between science and religion, he attributed it not to genuine human soul-searching but to "a political movement to change society." And he said that more turmoil was afoot.

"It's basically politics," he said. "This is only the beginning."

Only the beginning indeed.

After Mirecki's emails surfaced, the science and religion debate flared up again, with his proposed class - "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationisms and other Religious Mythologies" - and email about that class serving as fuel on the fire:

"The fundies want it all taught in a science class, but this will be a nice slap in their big fat face by teaching it as a religious studies class under the category 'mythology.'"

His words outraged conservatives and others, and a horde of nationalmedia outlets, including Fox News' "Hannity and Colmes," sought interviewswith the professor.

He declined them all, but the "fundies" email traveled worldwide, becoming a featured quote in the latest issue of Time magazine.

Mirecki apologized for his words and later withdrew from teaching the course. But there was little forgiveness - State Sen. Kay O'Connor said he "has hate in his heart." Other state legislators questioned KU's integrity and the professor's competence. Mirecki's boss, Chancellor Robert Hemenway, called the e-mails "repugnant and vile." And Monday, Mirecki said that he was treated and released from the hospital after being beaten by two people who were making references to the controversy that had propelled him into the headlines.

Tracking the coverage surrounding Mirecki, one might gather that Kansas is a hotbed of civil war. It would seem there's an impassable rift between the God-fearing and the God-doubting. Between the far right and the far left. Between two caricatures: the religious crusader and the atheistic intellectual.

Yet two-thirds of respondents to a recent Lawrence Journal-World poll reported believing in evolution theory and God.

Could it be, then, that Mirecki was right? That an issue seemingly close to the human heart has been hijacked and exploited in the public sphere?

We set out to find what's really going on, from the most basic level of term definition to the cognitive formation of belief systems. We talked to a biologist, a religious studies scholar (guess who), a Christian pastor, a cognitive psychologist, the founding creator of the "Explore Evolution" exhibit at the KU Natural History Museum, exhibit visitors, a former Christian fundamentalist and a blogger of Kansas politics.

Interestingly, most of them said the same thing. We give you our findings.

Note: Our process was not scientific, and the results aren't quantifiable (though we do have a lot of interviews on tape).

Another note: Holders of many religious and spiritual beliefs may struggle to reconcile their ideologies with science. But, to our knowledge, the current political debate involves no evolution-wary Wiccans, nor fundamentalist Buddhists, Jews or Spaghetti Monsterists. So the discussion here focuses on organized religion and, specifically, Christianity.

Finding #1: By definition, religion and science hold different missions and purposes.

Leonard Krishtalka thinks people are confused about what science is.

Throughout the current evolution debate and the opening of the new exhibit, the director of the KU Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center has told the local press that mis-definition is at the root of the current uproar.

Science, he points out, deals with natural phenomena and is based on testing of evidence; religion deals with the supernatural, and is based on faith. Furthermore, science deals with how the world works, while religion deals with why.

"The two are separate in mission and approach by a definite, wide gulf," Krishtalka tells us. "They should not be mixed. Religion should not practice science, and science should not practice religion."

But it's a modern mandate, this separation of the tangible world and intangible gods. The Enlightenment happened just a few centuries ago, and humans have been constructing meaning and mythology since the time of cavemen.

So says religious studies scholar Karen Armstrong, author of the new book "A Short History of Myth". She writes: "In our scientific culture, we often have rather simplistic notions of the divine. In the ancient world, the 'gods' were rarely regarded as supernatural beings ... People thought that gods, humans, animals and nature were inextricably bound up together ... There was initially no ontological gulf between the world of the gods and world of men and women."

Mirecki agrees that the current demarcation between the natural and supernatural is anomalous in our vast human history.

"People didn't really deal with this issue in the ancient world," he says. "None of the Biblical writers dealt with it, because they never even conceived there would be a difference between the two."

Mirecki says we need to clearly delineate not just science and religion but knowledge and belief.

"You'll often hear fundamentalists say, 'Science is a religion, Darwin is the high priest, and you have to have faith to believe in evolution.' This is just nonsense," Mirecki says. "I don't believe in evolution. I accept the findings of scientists. There's a big difference between the two."

For Rev. Peter Luckey, pastor at Plymouth Congregational Church in Lawrence, the important distinction is between types of truth. Those who would insert Intelligent Design alongside evolution theory in textbooks are comparing apples and oranges, he says.

"Religion asks questions of meaning, of purpose. 'Why was the universe created?' Scientists can't give us the answers to questions of purpose. They can give us some theories about how the universe was created. But they can't get at the why questions. That's really the province of religion," Luckey says.

"I think the great fallacy of fundamentalists is that they want to put religious truth and scientific truth on the same plane and say they're the same kind of truth - and that they're in conflict with each other. I don't think the fundamentalists are able to accept the fact that religious truth is truth of a different kind."

Finding #2: In the modern world, people have found ways to reconcile scientific information and spiritual beliefs.

Growing up among a Pentecostal congregation in Andover, Kan., Burt Humburg learned extreme views on God and the world. According to his charismatic church, Jews and homosexuals were doomed, the world was flat and evolution theory was blasphemy.

Now a graduate of KU Medical School and an internal medicine resident at Penn State College of Medicine, Humburg remains a Christian. He's also an "evolution advocate" and member of Kansas Citizens for Science, an organization that has fought the rewriting of state science standards. But reconciling his religious roots with his scientific knowledge required some redefining.

"The God I was taught about as a fundamentalist Christian is not compatible with what I learned in the world," Humburg says. "The understanding of God I have now is compatible with science."

He says his current understanding, theistic evolutionism, "disarms the bomb" of conflict between science and God. Theistic evolutionism embraces scientific findings about the natural world, but allows that some force - albeit one that can't be proved by science - created that world.

"No matter what science says, God could still be behind it all. Behind everything," Humburg says of theistic-evolution theory. "What appears random, blind, uncaring, aloof - that's our inability to discern God's purpose."

Though she may not have heard the term "theistic evolutionist," that's just the philosophy that KU freshman Stephanie Strinko brought to the "Explore Evolution" exhibit, a hands-on look at the development of several species.

"The way I look at is, God created the pieces way in the beginning, and they came together," Strinko says. "They evolved on their own, but He put them there."

Another exhibit visitor, Lawrence resident Lisa Pazdernick, brought her four-year-old son to learn about evolutionary biology. Pazdernick, an OB/GYN, grew up as a Catholic intrigued with comparative anatomy.

"I never thought one made the other impossible," Pazdernick says. "My parents explained it to me that we don't know God's timeline. We don't know what his seven days were."

Religion and reason

On their way out of the exhibit, visitors may contribute written feedback about their experiences. The comment cards are meant to gauge visitors' reactions to evolution theory at KU and the exhibit's six other locations, says exhibit creator and University of Nebraska professor Judy Diamond.

"We're interested in how this exhibit is going to affect ways of thinking," Diamond says. "It's not going to turn a creationist into an evolutionist, but it may cause small shifts in understanding."

Comment cards from all exhibit locations will be analyzed by a team of researchers, including E. Margaret Evans, a professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Michigan.

Evans already conducted formative research to help create the exhibit. After interviewing randomly selected visitors to seven similar exhibits in Nebraska, Michigan and Oklahoma, she concluded that evolution theory is met by three types of reasoners - naturalistic reasoners, who rely on an informed scientific view; novice naturalistic reasoners, who blend some knowledge of evolution with creationist views; and creationist reasoners, who rely solely on creationist views.

"My research has demonstrated that most people are mixed reasoners," says Evans, who estimates that 10 percent of Americans are evolutionists, 10 percent are creationists, and 80 percent are some combination of the two.

Evans says it's a misconception that inconsistency causes human beings psychological turmoil.

"We can deal with contradictions," Evans says. "We can go to church and then go to science class."

The capacity to deal with contradiction varies among people, though. Some, for example, "accept the evolution of butterflies, but not of humans," Evans says. Accepting human evolution would be too uncomfortable for them in the face of religious teachings, she says. To demonstrate the cognitive process, she describes human interpretation of an ant gathering food. People may characterize the ant's behavior as planning, working toward a goal, when in fact the behavior is purely instinctual.

"We imbue the world with meaning - that everything has a purpose," Evans says. "That's why people have a profound feeling of discomfort when confronted with evolution. If you're going to have purpose, you're not going to get that from science. And as science develops, it's bringing out these contradictions with the way we view the world."

Many people are content with those contradictions, according to Evans's chapter in Diamond's new book, "The Virus and the Whale: Exploring Evolution in Creatures Large and Small". Evans writes, "Religion and evolution are perfectly compatible, with a few exceptions." One of those exceptions is Biblical literalism.

"Now clearly there is no way that evolution is compatible with fundamentalism," she says.

Religious studies professor Mirecki says that, while "a lot of Christians today read the Bible in the light of modern discoveries," it would be impossible to reconcile literal interpretations of the Bible with today's science.

"These major religions today that are very popular in the U.S. are based on an ancient, pre-scientific worldview where people express their ideas using impressionistic images, parables, poetic language," says Mirecki, who likens the current hoopla over evolution to 17th-century Catholic resistance of Galileo's findings. The church refused to accept his theory that the Earth was round and not the center of the universe.

"One of the main arguments against him was that the Bible says so many times that the sun goes across the Earth," Mirecki says. "We're still trying to live in this modern, scientific, technocratic world and still hold onto these ideas that go back three, four, five thousand years."

Lawrence pastor Luckey says that many of those ancient ideas are valuable after all this time. Stories of a seven-day creation, stories of flood - they're relevant even to the non-fundamentalist Christian, he says.

"We don't look at these as stories that reveal the factual truth," Luckey says. "We look at them as stories that reveal a religious truth. About life, about existence, about our relationship with God."

He cites the Genesis story of Adam and Eve.

"Did woman come out of Adam's rib? No. But does the story speak to the truth about the human condition, that human beings are creatures, that human beings have temptations, that human beings are tested in their lives? Yes, it does. It speaks to the deep truth about how we are and what our nature is. So the story is true, even if it's not factually correct."

Finding Darwin's God

Evolution advocate Humburg says that, while religious people reconcile their beliefs with science, many scientists conversely seek religious and spiritual meaning.

"As human beings, we don't have to be scientists with every step we take. I love my brother. But no one's going to prove that scientifically," Humburg says. "The biggest atheists in the world, I'm sure, have made decisions in the absence of empirical evidence. Like marriage. Marriage is an act of faith. We all use faith. It's not a dirty word."

One of Humburg's fellow members of Kansas Citizens for Science, famed blogger Josh Rosenau, admits that scientists tend to keep their thoughts on faith and God private.

"Many scientists seek to explain God's world through science - they just don't talk about it," says Rosenau, a KU graduate student in ecology and evolutionary biology. "Religion is a personal thing. You spend your days looking at empirical evidence, but you can't base religion on empirical evidence. Ultimately, there's what you feel in your heart, and that's the evidence." Natural History Museum director and biologist Krishtalka doesn't offer his personal view on the existence of God, but he does discuss the "magnificence" he sees in the natural world.

"That all organisms have a humble, yet in my opinion magnificent, genetic heritage that stretches back 4 billion years on a magnificent tree of life - that indeed makes us special."

Finding #3: A perceived conflict between science and religion has been constructed, through media and public forums, by people with political aims.

Krishtalka says that by attempting to place science and religion on the same plane - public school classrooms - Intelligent Design proponents have created unnecessary conflict.

"This is about politics. This is about the insertion of fundamentalism into the nation's laws and education," Krishtalka says. "It is this brand of fundamentalism that deliberately, through demagoguery, causes religion and science to clash. It does a great disservice to both science and religion. They are harming both institutions, both ways of thought."

Evolutionary biology student Rosenau fights politics with politics. Last year he created a blog, "Thoughts from Kansas," to track state political developments, mostly relating to the evolution debate. The blog is a huge hit, solidified by attention from Slate.com, and Rosenau recently won The Pitch's 2005 award for "best blogger." He doubts that a less objective, more personal blog would have been so successful.

"You can construct politics in a broad way. How I see it personally doesn't necessarily affect how other people see it," Rosenau says. "My goal is not to argue with people. My hope is to engage them in an issue."

Rosenau says the debate too often is categorized as "atheists vs. Bible-beating hicks."

"That's not constructive," he says.

Humburg, on the other hand, uses his unique story to connect with people on both sides of the issue. As a medical doctor with a fundamentalist-Christian past, he sees contributing to the political battle as a personal endeavor.

"It is kind of a Christian mission. Some people do their missions in Guatemala. I spread the word of science. How God is cool with it. He doesn't expect us to check our brains at the door to church."

One such mission occurred in September at an anti-evolution meeting in Dover, Penn. The meeting convened amid a federal trial between Dover residents and the local school board, which voted to include Intelligent Design in a revised curriculum. When the meeting's organizer claimed that teaching evolution leads to atheism, Humburg objected - a dramatic, Scopes-ian moment documented in a recent issue of The Nation.

Humburg says anti-evolutionists claim the education battle is about a balanced curriculum, when in fact it's about fear.

"What they're actually saying is, 'Evolution threatens my understanding of God,'" says Humburg, who admits that a similar sense led him to participate in the political discussion.

"Here I am as an M.D.," Humburg says. "Anything that undermines science is a threat to me. Be it politics, religion, Intelligent Design. As a scientist, I should have something to say about that."

Humburg points to another Kansas Citizens for Science member, Keith Miller, as a political activist who believes in science, religion and separation of the two. Miller, a paleontology professor at Kansas State University, has addressed the topic at state and national levels and edited the related book "Perspectives on an Evolving Creation."

As it turns out, Miller sums up our unscientific findings in a note at the bottom of his personal university Web page:

"The public 'Creation/Evolution' debate has been destructive to both the public understanding of science and to the discussion of important theological issues within the Christian community. The widespread perception of a 'warfare of science and faith' is an historically false caricature. Christian theologians and scientists, including evangelicals, since the time of Darwin have seen no necessary conflict between orthodox theology and an evolutionary understanding of the history of life. Modern science is not a threat to Christian faith, and people need not feel forced into a choice between evolution and Creation."

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