Creationism and Intelligent Design Should Be Kept Out of the Classroom
By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Over to your right, at the start of his U.S. News op-ed on creationism, Henry Morris contends that 60 percent of Americans believe in the Jewish and Christian myth of creation: that some 10,000 years ago, a Supreme Being created an Adam and Eve and so began the human race.
He cites this statistic as a reason for including creationism, along with Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, in public school biology classes.
By doing so, of course, Morris exposes the silliness in his own argument.
Humans believe in lots of stupid stuff. Ghosts. UFOs. Satan. Collateralized Debt Obligations.
Our ancestors believed that the sun was a flying God named Apollo. The Hopi, the Hindus, the Buddhists, the Mormons, and many other peoples have composed elaborately varying songs of creation. It is our nature, when looking out at the great twin expanses of space and eternity, to come up with comforting myths.
The alternative—"They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more"—makes for truly courageous literature, but too many sleepless nights.
Here's a challenge for Mr. Morris, as we consider the seriousness of popular opinion. Name one great movie star who hasn't played a supernatural being, or otherwise starred in a science fiction or fantasy flick.
The pop culture industry—that supposed font of liberal atheism—constantly fills our heads (and its bank accounts) with comforting imagery of dancing angels, talking pigs, kung fu pandas, star cruisers, zombies, cavemen riding dinosaurs, sensuous vampires, lost loved ones who linger as friendly spirits, comic book superheroes, cuddly aliens, prep schools for wizards, and cute beeping robots.
The Force is ever with us. When you add all that mythology to the pervasive influence of Sunday church services, religious schooling, and Christian rock radio, it's a wonder that science can carve out any space in our culture at all.
Skeptical journalism? Well, consider U.S. News—which gives Mr. Morris and his superstitions equal time, in homage to "objectivity."
And yet, we humans can compartmentalize. We may not want to weigh the pointlessness of life in every waking moment—there are too many fun things to do. But at some level we acknowledge that myths are myths and facts are facts and it's better for the race if we keep the two things separate. The place for that is science class. And we need to keep it that way.
- Read more by John Aloysius Farrell.
- Read more from the Thomas Jefferson Street blog.
- Read more about intelligent design.
Tags: public schools | religion | evolution | education | science
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Intelligent Design vs Evolution in Schools
Mr. Farrel,
As other commentators have pointed out, though there is much scientific support for micro evolution and natural selection, macro evolution is a theory, not a proven fact. Scientific fact is based on proof, not consensus.
What is wrong with the way I was taught in the late 70's? I was taught that evolution is a theory, to which many scientists subscribe. We were asked to study evolution as a theory, not to replace any beliefs we might have in the Divine, but to understand the scientific theory itself and Charles Darwin's place in history. We were not allowed to debate it's validity. The goal was to simply understand it.
Is it really necessary to engage in such a heated debate? For many of us, the two concepts are not mutually exclusive. Evolution could be a mechanism of intelligent design. As my son explained to me when he was nine, "I think when God created man, he created man to be what he wanted him to be today, and evolution and time have been God's tools."
We come back around
Once again, no matter what you provide as proof, it's not enough for the opposition.
I admit my analogy isn't perfect, but it's illustrating a point - there is a certain level of proof you simply cannot provide, ever. You may have plenty of historical and photographic evidence that your GGgrandparents existed. But, strictly speaking, you have never firsthand observed them, so you could conceivably be accused of not having a sufficient level of proof.
Similarly, you cannot directly observe evolution as a long-term process becasue we just flat-out don't live long enough, so no one can provide that exact level of proof. But as a theory, it best explains the evidence that we've pulled across disciplines. Yes, there are morphological holes in some transitional species - not everything fossilized, after all - but that, combined with what we know of genetics, and biochemistry, and so forth, suggest that evolution by natural selection is the best naturalistic explanation for the observations.
That's what theories do - they take the evidence we have, and figure out how to explain it. Contrary to popular opinion, science doesn't try and make the evidence fit the theory.
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