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October 12, 2005, 11:55 am PDT
Should We Teach Creation or Evolution in Our Schools?
Quote From: fabalaI am a little biased on this topic, I suppose, because I am a bit of an agnostic athiest, but I shall try to be fair as I offer my suggestion. There has been a lot of scandal over this lately in my area because people insist that evolution is only a theory and shouldn't be taught as fact, even if there is a lot of scientific proof supporting evolution and very little to support creation. In my view, I think that we should teach evolution in Science classes as a tested theory as we always have, and then perhaps teach the various religious hypothesises in a Religion course. After all, there were a lot of creation ideas in Greek and Egyptian mythology that, when you think about it, are a lot like the current creation idea taught from the Bible. Evolution doesn't violate any strict religious beliefs as creation might (we would either be required to teach all the theories of creation in a single Science class or teach one and be unfair to other religious beliefs). I think leaving both of them in school would encourage children to become curious and look into all of the options themselves. There is not a lot of proof for evolution. There is actually very little. When Darwin came out with the Origin of Species, it was predicted that there would be all kinds of proof for it. Today, out of the millions of fossils that have been found, less than 1000 are called 'transitionals' . First off, the numbers don't jive. If there are millions of fully formed fossils, we should be finding millions or billions of transitionals. Secondly, take a look at some of these transitionals sometimes. Look at the fish for instance and see if you can see a creature in transition. They'll word is so that you think you are seeing some sort of transition by the wording beneath. Things like 'leg like fins" but these fins look exactly like fins. There is only one transitional that might be considered real proof for evolution and that is archeopteryx. However, if you look at the modern day platypus, it has even more features that belong to many species - it's warm blooded like a mammal, has a bill and feet like a bird, lays eggs like a bird, spews poison like a reptile, has fur and is warm blooded like a mammal, feeds it young like a mammal. Any fossils of the platypus show no change whatseover. I believe God created the platypus to make evolution look silly.
Gradulism is what was once considered how evolution happened, and it was taught this way with no proof. This is not using the scientific method the way it was designed. Due to the fact that there was no proof, a new theory of punctuated equillibrium emerged. This theory was devised out of desperation to keep the theory of evolution going and it needed to emerge because of a serious lack of proof. This theory states that changes happened very quickly. Arms and eyes grew suddenly instead of over a long period of time. The beauty of the theory of punctuated equiillibrium is that it requires no evidence! How nice! :) And how blatantly unscientific.
The theory of evolution leaves no answers as to how life began in the first place. So the theory of abiogenesis was devised. There is still no proof of abiogenesis and scientists have tried to create life in a lab, while manipulating all natural conditions but to no avail. So abiogenesis falls short of earning the label 'scientific'.
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