What more engaging way, it struck me, to present the squabble over evolutionary theory and creationism than through a recasting--complete with rhymed iambic pentatmeter verse--of Chaucer's classic? Start the "General Prologue" not with sweet April showers and the rites of spring but with a description of natural selection. Then introduce a company of travelers, not on a pilgrimage to a shrine in Canterbury but on a field trip to a creationist seminar in Dayton, Tennessee (home of the Scopes "Monkey" Trial). Make our travelers mostly scientists, and let each traveler tell a "tale," a lively verse essay in his or her field of specialization on the evidence for evolution and the fallacies of "creation science" and "intelligent design theory." Then have a Bible scholar tell the last tale, in which he points out that evolution and creation--shorn of the Genesis creation accounts taken literally--are not incompatible concepts.
What indeed is the creation/evolution dispute all about? Briefly, science deals with natural phenomena, religion with the supernatural. Science and religion should therefore not be mixed. I am a Christian and a writer of religious music, but I also study science, and accept the overwhelming evidence for evolution. I believe in creation, just not the seven-day variety with a 10,000-year-old Earth. I also believe as a Christian in the separation of church and state, and teaching religion as science in public school is not only bad science but clearly violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits any governmental "establishment of religion." In 1987 the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana law that forced public school teachers to teach creationism whenever evolutionary theory was taught. Creationists still promote "creation science," devoid of any biblical references, for optional teaching, but this is constitutionally doomed for public schools. To replace it, there has been a movement to get "intelligent design" (ID), which is creationism reclothed, taught or discussed in public school science classes, and to have "teach the controversy" and "critical analysis of evolution" language included in state science standards for public schools. The intent of The Evolutionary Tales is to interest readers in further study of science in general and of the creation/evolution controversy in particular, and to show (through "The Scholar's Tale") that evolution is compatible with religious belief, as the Roman Catholic Church and several major Protestant denominations have officially stated.
I again wish to thank Heinrich K. Eichhorn, professor of astronomy, and Richard H. Hiers, professor of religion, at the University of Florida, for their critical comments and suggestions on the first edition in manuscript form. I wish also to acknowledge the encouragement and support that I received from the late Robert S. Dietz, cofounder of the theory of plate tectonics; the late Thomas H. Jukes, professor of biophysics at the University of California, Berkeley; and my late brother Terrell W. Ecker. I am grateful also to Anne Olson, Martin Gardner, Mary Alice Kier, and NCSE Executive Director Eugenie C. Scott for their assistance.