ustin, Texas is a strange place, and I am not talking about its music! Politically, Austin is like nowhere else in the world and sometimes defies logical explanation. Yesterday, a debate took place in Austin that put the spotlight of the nation, perhaps the world on our state and our thought process. It was a debate that some might think was settled ages ago, harkening back to the Scopes Monkey Trial, where William Jennings Bryan faced off against his old adversary, Clarence Darrow to decide the validity of Charles Darwin and a teacher’s responsibility to offer scientific principals in an otherwise sterile vacuum.  Of course, the trial at the time was seen as pitting nothing less than the Bible and modern evolution.  Most folks forget that while the debate was won in the newspapers by science, the court’s findings were in favor of continuing the creationist curriculum. That was in 1926 and Mr. Scopes, the man accused of teaching evolution to his students paid a $100 fine.

                Yesterday, the State of Texas once again raised the question debated so well in 1926, with Fundamentalists arguing for the return of teaching students their belief that the world was created in seven days and that man’s origins sit firmly with the creation of Adam and Eve.  Those individuals are not so naïve as to suggest that the theory of the Big Bang and the evolution of life began with a one celled creature, but rather demand “equal time” in our classrooms in Texas.  While I could debate the issue, or better yet question the thought process of those who seem to have a, “Don’t try to confuse me with the truth,” mentality, the discussion in Austin, at least in my mind, opens the door to exploring some other fundamental issues that seem to pit science against belief.

                Religion is a difficult thing to pin down for many; they freely accept the beliefs of one sect, while discarding wholesale those held by others.  In America, we tend to forget that Christianity is not the world’s largest religion. Does that mean the rest of the world is wrong in their theology?  That sounds absurd to the majority, but not all that far removed from the well entrenched fundamentalists who still argue against the majorities belief in evolution.  For most of us it is immaterial if the world was created in seven days or seven billion years or if god came down to create Adam or if a supreme being simply smiled at our hairy cousins and in some way uttered, “let it be so.”  My concern is that fundamentalist beliefs simply stifle the free exploration of what we call the sciences.

                As the leader of an organization founded to seek the true nature of man’s journey; the survival of the human spirit after death, I have to wrestle constantly to keep religion out of our research. There is no room right now to consider the implications of organized religion as it pertains to the topic we study and simply put I know my limitations. I have studied organized religions of the world, there are thousands of them and come to the decision I am not wise enough to know which one is “true.”  My training in social science leads me to think that claims made by some are beyond the limits as science has found them, but then again when I entered this field, discussion of parallel universes was denounced by the mainstream; today the discussion is not if such universes coexist, but how many and the limits placed by the sciences, requiring empiric proof of any claim of the paranormal has foundered, simply because science itself routinely works in a world where such proof has proven to be elusive.

                As I sit here today, I am writing not to denounce the fundamentalist’s concept but rather to warn everyone else that while they have the right to their own beliefs, my field of study requires the segregation of religion from our research.  We do not have a code of belief, all of our researchers believe what they chose, but once involved in our work, they must keep those beliefs to themselves; there is simply no place for proselytizing, no room to interject any one religious belief system.

                How does the fundamentalist view mesh with what we study?  Unfortunately, my personal encounters have been less than productive, especially with my personal formal education on religion. Most fundamentalists will suggest that ghosts, simply do not exist, because they are not mentioned in the Bible;  my response is simply, “Which Bible is that?”  Ghosts, risen dead and transformation all exist in the Bible I studied in my youth and I have no idea how a book so filled with mysticism has come to be characterized by anyone as not acknowledging what we now study.  But there in lays the trap; I could burn up precious hours debating what has already been debated over centuries, taking from the task at hand, so as a group, ASUP simply keeps individual beliefs to themselves and limits its work to the secular.

                To those in Austin who must now exhume the bodies of Darrow, Bryan, Darwin and perhaps poor Mr. Scopes, I wish you well, but then again I have to suggest, “Wouldn’t your time and money be better spent feeding the hungry and clothing the poor,” but alas that would be met with an outcry that we must not meddle in things obviously the business of the churches and better left out of the hands of our government… That indeed seems, at least to me, a truly unexplained phenomenon!

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