Survival of the fiercest.

Byline: The Register-Guard

American educators may eventually be forced to teach evolutionary biology in a way that accommodates the concerns of Christians, but that doesn't have to mean turning science class into Sunday School. It may just mean doing a better job of teaching science in science class.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans said in a recent poll that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in public schools. These weren't just conservative Christians. Majorities of secular respondents, including liberal Democrats and those who subscribe to the theory of natural selection, favored teaching both creationism and evolution.

Die-hards on both sides of the debate could find things to cheer and fear in the poll's results. The survey, conducted in July by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, reported that 42 percent of respondents held strict creationist views, agreeing that "living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time." Thirty-eight percent favored abandoning evolution instruction altogether and replacing it with creationism.

Across the aisle, 48 percent said they believed that humans had evolved over time. But of those, 18 percent said that evolution was "guided by a supreme being," and 26 percent said that evolution occurred through natural selection.

Analysts said the strong support for teaching evolution and creationism side by side reflected a combination of traditional American pragmatism and a preference for fairness in public debates. Appealing to both of those positive characteristics could offer a potential way out of the decades-old deadlock.

First things first: Science supporters must stifle the temptation to dismiss creationists' concerns with smugness and ridicule. Similarly, creationists must stop demonizing Charles Darwin.

What seems abundantly clear from the Pew Center poll is that American public schools have consistently failed to teach students the fundamentals and vocabulary of the scientific method. Critics of evolution constantly repeat that it is "a theory, not a fact," clearly implying that alternative "theories" ought to get equal time in the classroom.

But this is a semantic subterfuge that succeeds precisely because so many products of the U.S. public school system - including many who now serve on school boards - don't know the difference between a scientific theory and the common usage of theory to mean a hunch or a speculation. That's not at all what "theory" means in a scientific con- text.

In science, a theory is an established paradigm that explains the available data and offers testable predictions about undiscovered data. One of the key elements of a scientific theory is the somewhat paradoxical concept that its ultimate truth depends on the theory being "falsifiable" or disprovable. It's also a key difference between science and religion, in which some things are beyond doubt and cannot, in any event, be proved or disproved.

Scientific theories, such as the theory of gravitation or the theory of evolution, have been so thoroughly tested and used to accurately predict results that they are cornerstones of scientific knowledge, not some speculative hypothesis. They are end products of decades - often centuries - of research.

That doesn't mean scientific theories are unassailable. In fact, it suggests that students would benefit from a fuller explanation of how evolution came to be regarded as one of the most reliable and insightful theories in all of science.

What's wrong with presenting the creationist's critique of evolution? A science teacher would point out that science and religion have been intimately linked since the dawn of civilization, sometimes in harmony, sometimes in conflict.

Brilliant astronomers Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton both saw their work as support for the argument of a loving God's presence in the universe. Contemporary astrophysicist Stephen Hawking says that once scientists understand the fundamental equations that govern physics, they will know "the mind of God."

But until such time may come, today's science teacher will have to remind students that no empirical evidence yet exists to prove that a divine entity created the world. That evidence would first require scientific proof of the existence of the creator.

Evolution, on the other hand, is neutral on the subject of God, neither supporting nor opposing arguments for divine intervention in the origin of life. The science of evolution is interested only in what humans, with their limited vision and tools, can see and prove.

Schools don't need to "teach the controversy." They need to teach the difference.