Of Rainbows & Evolution
Creative Creationists Try To Slip The Bible Into Science Class So what exactly is a rainbow?

In Genesis in the Bible the rainbow is described as first appearing when the great floodwaters finally receded, allowing Noah and his family and all the animals left on earth to leave the Ark and once again walk on solid ground. They were probably all a little nervous about God changing his mind and bringing forth another flood. So they camped out within sprinting distance of the big boat for the first few nights.

To reassure Noah and his family, the Bible tells us that God invented the rainbow as a covenant between heaven and earth. It is a sign that God loves us and will not destroy the earth again.

Physicists explain the rainbow as a phenomenon that occurs when light changes directions by traveling from one medium to another. Light travels at different speeds through different mediums and can be broken down into different wavelengths. The same way that a beam of white light is broken down into the separate colors of the spectrum through a glass prism, the waves of the sun’s light are separated into their individual wavelengths when they pass through misty droplets of water suspended in the air. When you have the right combination of sunlight and moisture, rainbows appear in the sky.

Which of these two explanations is correct?

I like to think they both are. I enjoy the logic of the prismatic explanation from the world of science and I find comfort in thinking that rainbows are pats on the head from God.

But I only want one of these explanations taught in public school science classes.

Science, like math, is a subject that is totally dependent upon things that can be measured in some way or another. To be taught correctly and effectively, these subjects have to be free from political and religious doctrine.

If you think that I am one of those people who feel that the Bible and religion have no place in public school, then I’m afraid you’ve pigeonholed the wrong pigeon. Religion has been one of the major driving forces in human history and to deny its influence in the areas of social studies, human migration, war, art, music, and other subjects is to invite ignorance into our schools. In music class, you cannot have an informed discussion about Handel’s Messiah without talking about who Christ was and why he was so important to the composer. When the invention of the printing press made The Holy Bible readily available to the masses, illiterate peasants all over Europe found their first impetus to learn how to read. That may have been one of the most important developments in the western hemisphere for shaping our resulting history.

But when folks with political, social or religious agendas start trying to throw their weight around in the arenas of science and math, it is nearly always the truth that suffers. Religious leaders tried for centuries to steer the science of astronomy toward the idea that the earth was the center of the universe with all other objects in the heavens orbiting around it (and they were successful until the 16th century). Proponents of slavery tried to enlist science to prove that Africans were an inferior race of humans (if human at all), to help assuage the public’s honest disinclination to “own” other people.

These days, the battle between science as a search for truth and pseudo-science as a propaganda tool is being waged in our public schools. On one side you have science teachers who are trying to explain to students how living things have evolved during the history of our planet. And on the other side you have a group demanding equal time for something they call “creationism.”

The first thing you glean when talking to proponents of creationism, is that they don’t even agree among themselves what creationism is. Some declare that evolution and species mutation exists but that it could have only happened through divine intervention or what they call “intelligent design.” Others are not open to anything but a strictly biblical interpretation of creation and believe that students should be taught the story of Adam and Eve in science class.

The latest tactic of creationists is to use the fact that no one, not even scientists, can tell us how or why our universe came into being. They use this unanswerable question as a foot in the door to try to usher in their particular vision of God into the science class. Another tried and true tactic is to state that evolution is just a theory, therefore it has no more credence in the study of life sciences than any other theory.

Justin Boulmay, a writer at the ASU student newspaper The Appalachian, wrote a February 8th editorial in which he stated that the theory that God created everything in the universe just as it is should be given “the same amount of attention and respect as the theory of evolution” in our science classrooms.

Justin, I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but evolution is much more than a theory. Like gravity, it is an irrefutable fact, even if we don’t know all of the whys and the wherefores of how it works. As scientists learn more about the history of our planet and the genetic codes that all animals possess, it becomes more and more clear that all life on earth started as simple one-celled creatures that over time developed into more complex animals. The forces that caused these changes are numerous and include natural variation among species (even among twins), weather and food source changes, competition and predation from other creatures, migration and population fluctuations, among others.

Was God behind all of these factors? There is no way that science can or should try to find out the answer to that question. It is like trying to determine scientifically where heaven is located. You can waste a lot of time and energy in the attempt but at the end of the day neither your knowledge nor your faith will have benefited from the effort.

Trying to use scientific methods to detect God’s fingerprints on the design of all living creatures is like trying to walk to the end of the rainbow.