Analysis

The debate between proponents of creationism and defenders of evolution, two fundamentally different ways of viewing the origin of living organisms, has arguably been at its most divisive when placed in the context of education – a veritable culture war seems to be taking place between the conservative religious groups who want their say in the classroom and the scientists and skeptics who want to exclude what they perceive to be faith-based origin stories from being taught in schools.

Simply put, biological evolution; is described as changes in genetic material from one generation to the next over a long enough period, these changes accumulate and can cause changes in a species population and possibly birth a new species. From evolution comes the idea of common descent, the idea that all living organisms, including humans, originated from a single organism. In sharp contrast, creationism is the belief that everything, from the cosmos to life itself, was created in a supernatural manner by an equally supernatural being (usually characterized in the form of a religious deity, and in this context synonymous with the Judeo-Christian God). In the context of the debate, it is also the rejection of evolution and other scientific facts. Related to creationism is the idea of intelligent design, a movement which posits that due to the complexity of things found in the universe and in the world, an intelligent designer had to have created them. Intelligent design was developed as a way to present the idea of creation without direct religious language, though many proponents of intelligent design nonetheless believe the designer to be the Christian God.

Those opposed to the teaching of creationism and intelligent design contend that they are not legitimate sciences and relegate them to the realm of religious belief or pseudoscience, citing their lack of falsifiability of their claims; some equate teaching creationism and intelligent design to teaching that the earth is flat. The worry is that quality of education for students would suffer as a result of these religious challenges to evolution, and additionally that teaching creationism would directly violate the first amendment establishment clause in the Constitution. Proponents of creationism and intelligent design argue that their beliefs are scientific and true by nature, and that the acceptance of evolution is due to societal and ideological factors such as bias towards naturalism or against faith, and some claim that evolution is intrinsically a religion . In many cases they make the claim that their views are being excluded from schools because they are a legitimate threat to evolution, or that they are being persecuted by the current scientific institution.

The current movement seeks to give creationism and intelligent design time in the classroom alongside evolution, with many proponents of creationism and intelligent design arguing that schools should “Teach the Controversy”; instead of trying to directly remove evolutionary teachings from schools, as was attempted in the past, creationists and design advocates posit that both evolution and creationism/intelligent design should be taught from an equal standpoint, with the students deciding between the two. Their detractors say that the controversy is manufactured and merely a religious ploy.

The controversy is not solely a battle of scientific integrity— it is also a battle between politics and ideologies. The mission statements of Answers in Genesis (a leading proponent of Young Earth Creationism) and the Discovery Institute (a major force behind intelligent design) both reveal ideological backings to their respective causes. Likewise, those who support creationism will often argue that evolution is bad for society and morality, and that it also has an atheistic bias. While naturalistic in nature, science does not seek to disprove religious faith; in fact, it cannot prove or disprove supernatural claims. Nonetheless, the incompatibility of some personal beliefs with science has led many religious groups to embrace creationism and intelligent design, as they view evolution and other scientific principles as a threat to their faith and representative of an opposing worldview.

In analyzing the issue, all of the components of this debate must be taken into account: on a surface level, the battle is simply between the scientific integrity of two different explanations for the origins of life; but on a deeper level, the politics and ideologies that back these respective explanations illustrate the conflict between science and faith in our society, and the way that it affects education. With concepts such as the separation of church and state held in such high regard in our society, it is necessary that we view origin explanations such as creationism in a highly critical light.
Though in recent years there have been many large losses for creationism in the courts and in public school systems, its proponents continue to push forward. They continue to distort what science is and appeal to moral or ethical claims and various straw-men arguments. Their arguments are never purely scientific in nature, relying on misinterpretation and misinformation to win followers. With no scientific or factual basis to stand on, creationism is a view that cannot be taught in the classroom; giving it time in schools would weaken scientific education in our country due to its attack on legitimate science, especially scientific principles as important as evolution. Creationism isn’t necessarily a threat to evolution itself, but to the public perception of science and scientific facts and theories. Furthermore, the creationism politically strives to place religion in the classroom, a violation of the constitution and the principle of the separation of church and state.

What Creationism is and Why it Doesn't Belong in the Classroom, Pt. 2

Despite its lack of scientific authenticity, creationism and intelligent design still have a large amount of proponents who continuously push and lobby for their inclusion in the classroom. I don’t think the movement has much ground to stand on; after all, what legitimate reason is there for something entirely faith-based to be taught in public schools as a legitimate alternative to a time-tested scientific body of facts? I think that the backlash against the teaching of evolution in schools is something that is entirely bred by misinformation and misunderstanding of not only what science is, but also what should be taught in schools.

The specifics of what should be included in education is a vast, comprehensive subject in and of itself; another blog for another time. But I definitely think that legitimate science is something that should be taught in schools and that religious ideas should be kept out, especially when they are taught alongside legitimate scientific ideas and theories. I consider such a notion to be a violation of the separation of church and state, and so does the U.S. Supreme Court. That last bit may sound rather tangential, but it’s important to note that creationism and intelligent design are essentially religious in nature, being non-scientific explanations for origins that invoke creators and deities, and as such can have those kinds of criticisms levied against them.

Science is not a discipline that is subject to the whims of those who dislike its ideas; it’s a naturalistic, method-dependent way of testing and proving observable facts and phenomena in this world. It’s important that that is what is instilled in students and not the faith-based ideas behind creationism that serve a religious agenda.

UPDATE: Formatting correction, enjoy the paragraphs.

What Creationism is and Why it Doesn't Belong in the Classroom, Pt. 1

As you've most likely been taught in high school biology, biological evolution is the change of genetic material in a population of organisms from generation to generation. In a context more specific to the question of origins, universal common descent, a facet of evolutionary theory, is used to describe the origin of animals, including humans. First proposed by Charles Darwin in his book On the Origin of Species, universal common descent is, within the framework of evolution, the idea that all organisms evolved from a single common ancestor. Nothing you haven’t heard already. It’s important to note that the ideas presented by evolution do adhere to the principle of falsifiability and are supported by numerous amounts of paleontological, geological, genetic, and biological evidence. Additionally, evolutionary biology and numerous other scientific disciplines (such as genetics) have long been building off of Darwin’s theories in numerous ways.

Now, creationism offers a much more religious explanation for origins. Creationism is the belief that everything, including life and the universe, was created by a deity or deities. The creator usually takes the form of the Abrahamic deity but nevertheless can be described as a number of deities. Not very scientific (and I’ll get to that in a bit). But proponents of creationism claim that theirs is a legitimate belief and with this persecution complex strive to put their belief in schools. Now here’s the fun part: using my previous definition of science, we can see why creationism is not scientific in nature. I know that’s a pretty strong statement, and I hope that I won’t come across as some sort of hopelessly biased blogger fighting armies of creationist straw-men; I feel that there are legitimate reasons for discounting creationism as a science-based belief, and I also feel that as a non-scientific explanation for origins it has no place in the classroom.

In one of my previous posts, I explained how important it is that scientific hypotheses need to be falsifiable. If a hypothesis cannot be tested, then there is no sure way to elevate it beyond the realm of speculation. As it happens, the basic tenets of creationism are not predictions that are simply not able to be validated in the context of our natural world. There’s simply no way to test the vague, metaphysical processes that creationists claim were used by whichever deity or intelligent designer of their choosing. We can’t ground such ideas with the scientific method. Furthermore, creationism is a blatant inversion of the scientific method – instead of striving to test hypotheses in pursuit of facts, creationism presents its facts first and attempts to justify them later. That's about as far from actual science as you can get.

UPDATE: Formatting correction, enjoy the paragraphs.

What about Intelligent Design?

Supremely short post. I'm not sure how I managed to exclude the idea of intelligent design from this blog's description. Anyway, when reading keep in mind that I'll also be talking about intelligent design as well as creationism (as well as how they're related). So it's not solely going to be Evolution vs bona-fide Creationism.

So what exactly is "science", anyway?

Before I can establish the scientific basis for evolution and creationism, I should first establish a working definition of science. Dictionary.com defines science as “systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.” That seems like as good a definition as any, but I do feel as if a bit of elaboration is in order if we’re going to be talking about what is and is not considered science.
All right, let’s elaborate on that definition. Knowledge is familiarity or acquaintance with facts and truth, as you most likely know. So, what’s with the systematic part? Science is very much dependent on a method—the scientific method. And the scientific method involves, you guessed it, observation and experimentation. That means that scientists have to set up tests or trials in a controlled setting in order to observe the way things work and in order to prove their hypotheses. Without experimentation and observation, scientists wouldn’t have any sort of reliable account of the natural phenomena that exists in our world. And the system of the scientific method is very much reliable—after all, it’s an integral component of science itself.
So, observation and experimentation: that’s how we go about performing science. So, what exactly is scientifically knowable? What can be scientifically knowable will be a recurring theme once I start describing the different positions I’ll be covering. An important aspect of science is that it can only validate or invalidate hypotheses and theses that are falsifiable. In this context, when a hypothesis is falsifiable doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s false, but it does mean that if the hypothesis happens to false that it can be proved false through the scientific method.
Well, that’s a simple exposition into what science is what it can cover. For my current purposes, this will suffice. In the future as more issues concerning the nature of science and non-science come up, I’ll be sure to cover them.

Hello, world!

The question of origins is one of incredible importance and relevancy in our modern-day society. After all, what we believe about the origins of our species has a profound influence on our attitudes concerning a number of different topics, but more importantly it frames our attitudes about science, religion, and the interaction between the two. Likewise, what we teach in schools about the subject of human origin is equally as important. In many regions of America, there is an ongoing controversy concerning the roles of the theory of evolution and the idea of creationism in our educational system. Does evolution have scientific flaws that compromise its validity? Is creationism a legitimate, alternative theory worth teaching? Exactly what sort of qualities should an idea have in order for it to be justified as being taught in a science class?

Those are definitely all questions that this blog is going to consider; however, the overall aim of this blog is to analyze the empirical and scientific backing of evolution and creationism, determine their overall scientific validity, and examine which one, if any, has a role in our American education system.

As a first-year student of a major research University of the United States, and as someone who has had a lot of first-time experience with both sides of the controversy, I understand the importance of the issue in our daily lives; what is at stake is more than just our individual beliefs and ideals, but the entire framework of which we place faith and science in our lives.