On the evolution of religion
According to Satyapal Singh, the Minister of State for Human Resource Development, we should barrier students from the falsehoods of evolution. Scientists are reportedly aghast at the minister’s idea of education. Where does the balance of sanity lie?
First of all, who wants education to come fully into itself? The minister? The scientists? What is our idea of education? Often when we think of reforming education, our goal is to make education more market-savvy and competition-heavy. Correspondingly, when we consider the moral values to be imparted through education, we prefer those conducive to making citizens more conformist and domesticated. The need to make them full-fledged human beings who, for that reason, are also good workers and responsible citizens is peripheral to our purpose.
Minister Singh pits creationism against evolutionism. The doctrine of creation is a religious intuition of the mystery of life. It is not, by any stretch of imagination, a final or comprehensive theory of life. Evolution, its secular-scientific alternative, is akin to the outlook of modernity. But neither creationism nor evolutionism offers a complete view of what they purport to explain. The anxieties of religionists over the heretical nature of evolutionist hypotheses merely expose the insecurity that lurks behind the facade of religious dogmatism.
Religions are beset with a serious problem. If understood as closed systems, they become regressive, anti-progress influences. Such an entity is incapable of coping with the emergence of anything that cannot be fitted into the procrustean bed of mistaken orthodoxy. Mistaken; because this hinges on a misunderstanding of what ‘orthodoxy’ in religion should mean. Religious orthodoxy—or, authentic religious belief- doesn’t deny the reality of religions evolving over time. Religions that do not evolve perish in irrelevance. Whatever is living remains in a state of evolution. The inability to evolve is a feature of death, not life.
All religions acquired this anti-life orientation through their ill-conceived religious zeal. The pro-status-quo aberration of Western Christianity, lasting several eminently forgettable centuries of religious intolerance, discredited it as an anti-progress liability inimical to peace and progress. Such a stance is an insult to true religion; for religion is about life, and not about pickled dogmas and embalmed memories. The spread of disenchantment with regressive Christianity has been a major reason for its de facto rejection in the West by those who would have, otherwise, stayed with it.
What about evolution, then? In the heady excitement that enveloped Europe in the wake of Darwinism and scientific positivism, it was assumed by several thinkers, from the middle of the 19th century, that science would replace religion. It did not. Admittedly, Darwinism played a part in rationalising the separation of Church and state. It must be noted, all the same, that this did not alienate religion-based moral values from society or governance.
Our zealous minister assumes that the theory of evolution is stupid because “our ancestors haven’t mentioned anywhere that they ever saw an ape turning into a man” or because “nobody has ever seen an ape turning into a man”. This betrays a poorly educated mind. It is not necessary that a minister has exalted degrees. But it is desirable that an education minister has a rational and open mind. For Singh to assume that evolution is no more than apes turning into ‘men’—I would like to believe that he means ‘humans’—is to be unfair to himself. Surely, he knows better than that!
The essence of the idea of evolution is that struggle for survival is basic to existence and that, through the process of adaptation this entails, something new and unprecedented emerges.
Would Satyapal Singh, burdened by his regressive baggage, hinder the ‘evolution’ of India towards the fullness of her scope and stature? Would he have the Air India fleet replaced with pushpa vimanas? Would he undergo surgery according to ancient surgical lores and techniques locally, or check into the most expensive hospital in the West at the expense of taxpayers’ money? Would he equip the Army with chariots in place of tanks? The art of warfare has evolved! (I wish it hadn’t; but, alas, it has.) It hasn’t stayed frozen behind metaphysical fortresses of creationism!
What needs to be done, if we are serious about education, is to equip learners with a capacity to think; which is the one thing we seem keen not to do. We produce, as Carlyle said about British schooling, ‘disciples, not thinkers’. If the contribution of the religious outlook, especially in regard to education, is only to inhibit thinking and to regressively re-orient young men and women to being ‘un-caged parrots’, then it is better that we keep religion at an arm’s length from education.
No one needs to be convinced today that religion is shrinking in its relevance to the adventure called life, even as it is growing in its popular appeal. The problem is not with religion per se, it is with the protectors of religious turfs as enclaves of superstition and electorally powerful resources for mass mobilisation. Often, what seems profitable today turns out, in the long run, to be liabilities. Neither evolutionism nor creationism per se is profitable to education. What India needs is a dynamic vision for education through which learners cab be empowered to think rationally and act justly.
Valson Thampu
Former principal of St Stephen’s College, New Delhi
Email: vthampu@gmail.com