Martin Hanson: Does New Zealand need a new Scopes trial?

In July 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee, John T. Scopes, a high school science teacher, was put on trial, accused of violating the Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of evolution in state-funded high schools and universities. Scopes was found guilty and fined $100 ($1500 in today’s money), but the verdict was overturned on a technicality.

The trial was deliberately engineered in order to bring attention to the theocratic approach to truth, freedom of speech and rationality in the Deep South at that time.

The trial received national and international attention, and was given the colourful title of “The Monkey Trial” of “the infidel Scopes” by journalist H. L. Mencken of the Baltimore Sun.

Over succeeding years, fundamentalist Christians have made several attempts to keep God alive in the classroom, most notably with the notion of ‘intelligent design’. But these have met with little success.

This is not surprising; overturning centuries-old beliefs was never going to be easy.

Until recently, New Zealand stood as the polar opposite to the Tennessee of a century ago. New Zealand education has always been proudly secular; while families and churches have been free to fill children’s brains with a ten-thousand-year-old Earth, creationism has always been kept firmly out of the classroom. So, you might think that New Zealand would be the last country in which creationism would figure in the high school science curriculum.

But you’d be wrong.

In its Annual Report published for the year ended 30 June 2021, the Ministry of Education published its intention to incorporate Maturanga Maori creation myths into the curriculum, with status equal to existing material. And this means incorporating a form of creationism into the school science curriculum.

An example of a Maori creation myth is how the kiwi lost its wings. Tane Mahuta, God of the forests, noticed that his children, the trees, were starting to get sick, because the bugs were eating them. He talked to his brother, Tane Hoka-hoka, god of all the birds, who called all of his children, the birds of the air, together. Tane Mahuta spoke to the birds, asking if one of them would come down and live on the forest floor and eat the bugs so that the trees could be saved. Of all the birds, only the kiwi accepted.

Tane Mahuta warned the kiwi that he would have to grow thick, strong legs to enable him to rip apart the logs to reach the bugs, and he would lose his beautifully coloured feathers and wings, so that he would never again be able to return to the forest roof and would never see the light of day again. The kiwi turned to Tane Hokahoka and said that he would. Tane Hokahoka told the kiwi that because of his great sacrifice, he would become the most well-known and most loved bird of them all.

Some might be reminded of a much earlier conversation, in Genesis Chapter 3 between Eve and a talking snake.

Were anyone to suggest incorporating the Genesis account of creation into the school science curriculum, it’s certain that such a suggestion wouldn’t even be listened to, let alone taken seriously. Yet the Ministry of Education considers that Maori creation myths should be woven into the NCEA science curriculum.

How can this be possible in a scientifically and technologically advanced First World country such as New Zealand?

Let’s start by attempting to define science, and how it differs from myth, before moving on to the way that the New Zealand scientific community has reacted to and dealt with the issue.

To most lay people, science is a body of knowledge about how the world works. But to the scientifically educated, it’s the organised process by which such knowledge is obtained. It usually begins with an observation, leading to questions and a tentative explanation. If this can be tested by experiment, it becomes a hypothesis; if not, it remains speculation. If experimental results do not support the hypothesis, it’s back to square one and a new hypothesis must be tested by more experiments. Only if repeated experiments by other, independent researchers, have results that support the hypothesis, can such knowledge be said to be ‘scientific’.

So what about matauranga Maori? How well does it stack up as ‘valid truth’? Even if practical knowledge such as when to plant seeds and cast nets to catch fish has not been obtained by experiment, it has been validated by trial and error.

The whole issue was brought into the public arena by seven University of Auckland academics, in a letter to the New Zealand Listener (July 23, 2021), in which they stated that traditional Maori knowledge or ‘Matauranga Māori’ was not science.

The result was uproar. Despite the fact that one of the signatories, Dr Garth Cooper, is himself Maori, two of Professor Cooper’s academic colleagues, Dr. Shaun Hendy and Dr Siouxsie Wiles, issued an ‘open letter’ condemning the heretics. She also tweeted:

"Calling all academics in Aotearoa New Zealand. Add your name to the open letter if you are also appalled by that letter claiming to defend science published last week in the NZ Listener. It's caused untold harm and hurt & points to major problems with some of our colleagues”,

and invited any fellow academics who agreed with them to sign. More than 2,000 academics dutifully obliged.

Wiles' use of 'argumentum ad numerum' brings to mind a story that Einstein was shown a German newspaper  claiming that "one hundred German physicists claim Einstein’s theory of relativity is wrong." 

Einstein supposedly replied that "If I were wrong, it would only have taken one." 

Not to be outdone in virtue-signalling, Auckland University’s Vice Chancellor Dawn Freshwater disowned the letter writers in a statement that began:

“A letter in this week’s issue of The Listener magazine from seven of our academic staff on the subject of whether mātauranga Māori can be called science has caused considerable hurt and dismay among our staff, students and alumni (emphasis added). “While the academics are free to express their views, I want to make it clear that they do not represent the views of the University of Auckland.”

Unbelievably, the Royal Society of New Zealand initiated an investigation into two of the academics involved, which could have led to their expulsion from the Society.

This is what can happen to you in New Zealand if you attempt to defend science against superstition.

Ironically, it didn’t seem to have occurred to Hendy, Wiles and their supporters, that in their extreme reaction to the Listener letter they were doing a far more effective demolition job on the scientific merits of matauranga Maori than the restrained and polite efforts of the seven professors. They seem to have conveniently forgotten that what most clearly separates science from myth and superstition is the challenging of established ideas in rigorous, public debate. In seeking to prevent criticism and debate they were unwittingly admitting it was not science, but doctrine, thus by implication proving the professor’s case for them.

Moreover, Hendy and Wiles ‘open response’ contained statements implying their apparent willingness to misrepresent and distort science to support a Woke agenda.

For one thing, they refer to “Western science”. There is no such thing, any more than there is American Science, Japanese Science, or Indigenous Science. There is just ‘Science’. Science is universal.

Hendy and Wiles also state that

the Professors say that "science itself does not colonise", ignoring the fact that colonisation, racism, misogyny, and eugenics have each been championed by scientists wielding a self-declared monopoly on universal knowledge…

This is a meaningless statement. Science as a process is quite distinct from the uses to which science has been put. One might as well say that nuclear physics is evil because it led to the development of the atomic bomb.

Though you wouldn’t know it from the New Zealand media, some of the world’s most distinguished scientists and intellectuals have poured withering scorn on what’s happening in New Zealand science education. Among these is Richard Dawkins, whom I mentioned in an earlier column. Other academic heavyweights include Stephen Pinker, internationally renowned in linguistics, and Lawrence Krauss, a leading cosmologist.

The most prominent among these international intellectuals is Jerry Coyne, Professor Emeritus of Evolutionary biology at the University of Chicago. Coyne is kept informed by numerous kiwi academics, who cannot express their criticisms in New Zealand for fear of compromising their careers. In his blog ‘Why evolution is true’ he keeps us informed about what’s going on in our own country. Such is the reluctance by print and broadcasting media to allow freedom of expression.

I’m one of those who remember when, in 1981, a monograph with the title “The Origin of Man & His Culture” was issued for high school biology teachers. It contained a dozen pages describing the Genesis account of human origins. Written by a Head of Biology at a leading Auckland secondary school, it was endorsed by a District Senior inspector of Secondary Schools. I’m sure the great majority of biology teachers were heartily glad to forget such a brief and embarrassing pandering to Biblical creationism.

So the intention of the Ministry of Education to bring Maori mythology into the science classroom will be greeted with shock and disbelief by science teachers.

What’s even more depressing is the complete absence of objective criticism in the New Zealand media. In a Dec 13, 2021 Stuff article headed “Richard Dawkins' foray into the NZ science curriculum isn't helpful” columnist Peter Griffin argued that Dawkins’ criticism of mātauranga Māori in the science curriculum “is devoid of cultural context”.

As if cultural context has any bearing on the scientific validity of Dawkins’ argument.

Griffin states that a rational argument can still cause offence. So what? As Lawrence Krauss points out:

“if a reasoned discussion by a group of scientists causes hurt and dismay among some, [it is] those who are hurt [who] own the problem. As I have argued extensively elsewhere, borrowing on arguments made by numerous colleagues, being offended itself confers no special privilege on the offended party, nor does it necessarily require an apology. What it should require from those who are offended is one of two options: Either a reasoned response or dismissing the offense.”

It's all too easy to despair of the extent to which New Zealand science has become suffocated by matauranga Maori. Certainly, it’s difficult to see how it can be brought back from its present state.

The First Rule of Holes is:

“When you’re in one, it’s best to stop digging”.

But it’s far too late for that. Only the most radical, innovative action can save us from the hole this government has dug for itself and, as a consequence, for the rest of us.

New Zealanders are acutely aware of our insignificance on the ‘world stage’, and television news broadcasts lose no opportunity in reminding us of our existence. Indeed, our tendency to over-compensate for our smallness is interpreted by some commentators as the result of a national inferiority complex. The journalist Karl du Fresne has drawn attention to this with headlined articles such as “A small country with a big inferiority complex” (Dominion Post, Jun 22, 2020) and “Parading our inferiority complex” (Nelson Mail and Manuwatu Standard, November 9, 2011).

If du Fresne is correct, this could render us particularly vulnerable to well-deserved, international ridicule. But our media have protected the average kiwi from comments by international heavyweights such as Dawkins, Coyne, and Krauss. As I see it, the only way of forcing kiwis to realise how ludicrous is the incorporation of Maori mythology into the teaching of science would be to engineer a new Scopes-type trial, for which we’d need a volunteer to put his or her head on the block. All it would require of the ‘kiwi Scopes’ would be a few carefully chosen words to a science class, such as:

“To say that rain is the result of tears shed by the goddess Papatuanuku is fine in social studies, but to say that it’s science is rubbish or, to use Richard Dawkins’ more colourful term, ‘bollocks’”.

That would light the blue touch-paper all right. The government would have to choose between two equally painful courses: 

• take the red pill and accept scientific reality or
• take the blue one, kowtowing to the Woke Inquisition, thereby inviting international contempt.

Even without a latter-day Scopes trial, the government would have deservedly painted itself into a corner. Either way, those of us who have long despaired for New Zealand science education can look forward with keen anticipation to the outcome.

Martin Hanson is a retired King's College science teacher and author of school textbooks, who now lives in Nelson.