Why creationism isnt science

Evolutionary biologists have written extensively about how natural selection could produce new species. For instance, in the model called allopatry, developed by Ernst Mayr of Harvard University, if a population of organisms were isolated from the rest of its species by geographical boundaries, it might be subjected to different selective pressures. Changes would accumulate in the isolated population.

If those changes became so significant that the splinter group could not or routinely would not breed with the original stock, then the splinter group would be reproductively isolated and on its way toward becoming a new species. Nautilus shell has become a symbol of evolution and biological change. As the creature that occupies the shell outgrows one chamber, it builds another, larger chamber next to it, creating a growing spiral pattern.

Natural selection is the best studied of the evolutionary mechanisms, but biologists are open to other possibilities as well. Biologists are constantly assessing the potential of unusual genetic mechanisms for causing speciation or for producing complex features in organisms.

Lynn Margulis of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and others have persuasively argued that some cellular organelles, such as the energy-generating mitochondria, evolved through the symbiotic merger of ancient organisms.

Thus, science welcomes the possibility of evolution resulting from forces beyond natural selection. Yet those forces must be natural; they cannot be attributed to the actions of mysterious creative intelligences whose existence, in scientific terms, is unproved. Speciation is probably fairly rare and in many cases might take centuries.

Furthermore, recognizing a new species during a formative stage can be difficult because biologists sometimes disagree about how best to define a species. The most widely used definition, Mayr's Biological Species Concept, recognizes a species as a distinct community of reproductively isolated populations—sets of organisms that normally do not or cannot breed outside their community.

In practice, this standard can be difficult to apply to organisms isolated by distance or terrain or to plants and, of course, fossils do not breed. Biologists therefore usually use organisms' physical and behavioral traits as clues to their species membership. Nevertheless, the scientific literature does contain reports of apparent speciation events in plants, insects and worms.

In most of these experiments, researchers subjected organisms to various types of selection—for anatomical differences, mating behaviors, habitat preferences and other traits—and found that they had created populations of organisms that did not breed with outsiders. For example, William R.

Salt of the University of California, Davis, demonstrated that if they sorted a group of fruit flies by their preference for certain environments and bred those flies separately over 35 generations, the resulting flies would refuse to breed with those from a very different environment.

Evolutionists cannot point to any transitional fossils—creatures that are half reptile and half bird, for instance. Actually, paleontologists know of many detailed examples of fossils intermediate in form between various taxonomic groups.

One of the most famous fossils of all time is Archaeopteryx , which combines feathers and skeletal structures peculiar to birds with features of dinosaurs. A flock's worth of other feathered fossil species, some more avian and some less, has also been found. A sequence of fossils spans the evolution of modern horses from the tiny Eohippus. An amazing fossil creature from million years ago named Tiktaalik embodies the predicted and long-sought transition of certain fishes to life on land.

Whales had four-legged ancestors that walked on land, and creatures known as Ambulocetus and Rodhocetus helped to make that transition.

Fossil seashells trace the evolution of various mollusks through millions of years. Perhaps 20 or more hominins not all of them our ancestors fill the gap between Lucy the australopithecine and modern humans. Creationists, though, dismiss these fossil studies. They argue that Archaeopteryx is not a missing link between reptiles and birds—it is just an extinct bird with reptilian features.

They want evolutionists to produce a weird, chimeric monster that cannot be classified as belonging to any known group. Even if a creationist does accept a fossil as transitional between two species, he or she may then insist on seeing other fossils intermediate between it and the first two. These frustrating requests can proceed ad infinitum and place an unreasonable burden on the always incomplete fossil record.

Nevertheless, evolutionists can cite further supportive evidence from molecular biology. All organisms share most of the same genes, but as evolution predicts, the structures of these genes and their products diverge among species, in keeping with their evolutionary relationships.

These molecular data also show how various organisms are transitional within evolution. Living things have fantastically intricate features—at the anatomical, cellular and molecular levels—that could not function if they were any less complex or sophisticated. The only prudent conclusion is that they are the products of intelligent design, not evolution.

In theologian William Paley wrote that if one finds a pocket watch in a field, the most reasonable conclusion is that someone dropped it, not that natural forces created it there.

By analogy, Paley argued, the complex structures of living things must be the handiwork of direct, divine invention. Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species as an answer to Paley: he explained how natural forces of selection, acting on inherited features, could gradually shape the evolution of ornate organic structures.

Generations of creationists have tried to counter Darwin by citing the example of the eye as a structure that could not have evolved. The eye's ability to provide vision depends on the perfect arrangement of its parts, these critics say. Natural selection could thus never favor the transitional forms needed during the eye's evolution—what good is half an eye? Biology has vindicated Darwin: researchers have identified primitive eyes and light-sensing organs throughout the animal kingdom and have even tracked the evolutionary history of eyes through comparative genetics.

It now appears that in various families of organisms, eyes have evolved independently. Today's intelligent-design advocates are more sophisticated than their predecessors, but their arguments and goals are not fundamentally different.

They criticize evolution by trying to demonstrate that it could not account for life as we know it and then insist that the only tenable alternative is that life was designed by an unidentified intelligence. Recent discoveries prove that even at the microscopic level, life has a quality of complexity that could not have come about through evolution. As a household example of irreducible complexity, Behe chooses the mousetrap—a machine that could not function if any of its pieces were missing and whose pieces have no value except as parts of the whole.

What is true of the mousetrap, he says, is even truer of the bacterial flagellum, a whiplike cellular organelle used for propulsion that operates like an outboard motor. The proteins that make up a flagellum are uncannily arranged into motor components, a universal joint and other structures like those that a human engineer might specify.

The possibility that this intricate array could have arisen through evolutionary modification is virtually nil, Behe argues, and that bespeaks intelligent design. He makes similar points about the blood's clotting mechanism and other molecular systems. Yet evolutionary biologists have answers to these objections.

First, there exist flagellae with forms simpler than the one that Behe cites, so it is not necessary for all those components to be present for a flagellum to work. The sophisticated components of this flagellum all have precedents elsewhere in nature, as described by Kenneth R. Miller of Brown University and others.

In fact, the entire flagellum assembly is extremely similar to an organelle that Yersinia pestis , the bubonic plague bacterium, uses to inject toxins into cells. The key is that the flagellum's component structures, which Behe suggests have no value apart from their role in propulsion, can serve multiple functions that would have helped favor their evolution. The final evolution of the flagellum might then have involved only the novel recombination of sophisticated parts that initially evolved for other purposes.

Similarly, the blood-clotting system seems to involve the modification and elaboration of proteins that were originally used in digestion, according to studies by Russell F. The same position could apply to other anti-science views including those opposed to vaccines or other validated medical procedures, to climate change denialism, or to other supernatural explanations for natural phenomena.

As educators, we can take the opportunity to tackle topics that students may see in the media, on social media, or around the dinner table, and model our thought processes as we explain how scientists come to conclusions. We can also allow students to practice their logic skills, and apply them to new topics that arise with each poorly informed Facebook meme, or celebrity fad.

Non-science and anti-science views do have a place in the science classroom, because they can be used to train students in the logic associated with scientific thought. The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. Alexander, P. Teaching as persuasion. Angus, R. Google Scholar. Barnes, R. Skeptic 19, 49— Confer, J.

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Diethelm, P. Denialism: what is it and how should scientists respond? Health 19, 2—4. Dobzhansky, T. Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. Goodwin, C. A History of Modern Psychology , 2nd Edn. New Jersey, NJ: Wiley. Grayling, A. Teach the Controversy video podcast. Halpern, D. Teaching critical thinking for transfer across domains: disposition, skils, structure training, and metacognitive monitoring.

Jost, J. On the structure and dynamics of human thought: the legacy of William J. McGuire for social and political psychology. Lilienfeld, S. The 10 commandments of helping students distinguish science from pseudoscience in psychology. APS Obs. Public skepticism of psychology: why many people perceive the study of human behavior as unscientific. Giving debiasing away: can psychological research on correcting cognitive errors promote human welfare?

McCaffree, K. Why is critical thinking so hard to teach? Pathological processes disease, aging, and death are presented in terms of the Fall and our mandate — following Christ's example — to bring healing and restoration wherever possible. In Biosystematics, we contrast the evolutionary concept of species origin with the concept of variation within created kinds, and we try to give students the background and interest to proceed, should the Lord so lead them, with the development of a taxonomic system that will be true both to God's Word and to God's world, the twin criteria for true progress in science.

In other words, Dr. Parker teaches creationism, loading in the religious doctrine of the college, and brings up evolution only to knock it down. But maybe this is because these college students have been "brainwashed" by evolution in the public schools before they get to the Christian college.

We need, then, to carefully examine the Creationist attitude toward Christian primary and secondary schools. Scientific Creationism , edited by Henry Morris, is frequently sold to Christian secondary schools. This is a book that gives only the Creation side of the question.

Christian schools are encouraged to use it as a central science text, supplemented only by general science material, not by books giving the opposite viewpoint.

Morris criticized the progressive education of John Dewey because it caused "the concept of education from kindergarten to graduate school" to be "reoriented from the teaching of a fixed body of knowledge to the teaching of methods of inquiry to be applied to the continually changing facts of existence.

This meant, of course, that there were absolutes to be discovered, in both science and Scripture, and that man's duty was to find and teach the truth in both. The result of all this was a rise in drug addiction and sexual promiscuity, not to mention the confusion and despair of existentialism.

Therefore: "Today, the ideal of a wistful search for truth by a community of scholars operating in academic freedom has an air of unreality, to put it mildly, or futility, to put it bluntly. Bring back the Biblical-based education of the past. After all, in its proper and primary role, "education is concerned not with discovery of truth, but the transmission of truth already discovered.

True education is conservative We can't forget, however, that some non-fundamentalist educators challenge aspects of progressive education too.

They favor more teaching of facts, and a "back to basics" approach. But this is not all that Christian Heritage creationists are saying. Neal Frey of the Department of History and Social Science at the college develops the idea further , leaving no doubt on where he stands.

He writes:. Only two types of knowledge exist — humanistic knowledge, whose view of being is not Christ-centered and whose center of value is nature or man, and Christian knowledge, whose views of origins and value are Biblical and Christ-centered There are no value-free facts, nor fact-free values There can be no knowledge without values, no education without initiation into some value system.

From the standpoint of value, all education is moral training. The momentous question is not, Shall education inculcate value? All branches of true knowledge are subdivisions of theology, dealing with various spheres of life under an absolute Trinity If students are merely exposed to rival systems of knowledge — hence to mutually contradictory assumptions of value — without having Christ-centered, Biblical truth rigorously defined, organized, and persistently brought to bear on the subject in question, those students will commonly select from each system the elements which to them seem most plausible, and will amalgamate them into a world view labeled "Christian.

Christian education should not insulate students from humanist scholarship. It should keep humanism at bay, at arm's length, while repeatedly and faithfully inculcating intellectually consistent Christ-centered knowledge based on scripture.

It should not deprive students of a truly Biblical liberal arts education by merely giving the Christian side "equal time" with humanism. There it is. The alleged education benefits of equal-time two-model instruction are not really accepted by creationist educators. In fact they are rejected as inferior! These further comments by Neal Frey show why. Nor will Christian truth triumph in competition with humanist error in the disciplines. The delusion that Christian truth could so triumph unaided is based on an unscriptural, over-optimistic reading of human nature.

It ignores original sin, which predisposes man against the truth. Man has a vested self-interest in error and in the self-centered organization of knowledge Truly "free thought" is the liberty to think in Christ-centered terms. Thought which has slipped out of militant subservience to Christian truth — which has become man-centered — is no longer free.

But in the current intellectual climate, humanist scholarship passes for enlightened free inquiry, while consistently Christian intellectual enterprise is stigmatized as "biased" and "narrow.

Added to this Christian Heritage College seems to have rigid requirements in the hiring of teachers to go along with the above philosophy of education.

James J. Veltkamp, professor in Education at Christian Heritage lays it down :. Veltkamp, a challenger of what he calls "intellectual libertinism" minces no words:. What right have these instructors to such academic freedom with its tremendous potential for influence?

Who supervises those thinkers and teachers to whom we entrust so much, while, in the name of academic freedom, safeguards are multiplied to free them from supervision? These questions themselves epitomize the monopolistic power of the national liberal-arts religion of secularism, with its mythological quest for the truth.

The illustration with this article includes a communist hammer and sickle under the words "Academic Freedom. This should leave no doubt that bringing creationism into the public schools is a straightforward effort to eventually remove evolution and bring dogmatism back into education.

Appeals to more stimulating education through the two-model approach are nothing but pretense. Pleas for "equal time" are nothing but emotional ploys. And the whole thing is just a stop-gap maneuver on the path to a far more radical solution.

Nonetheless, who can deny the public has strong opinions on this matter? Regardless of the legal, scientific, and educational issues, many people seem to want. Don't their voices count for something? That these voices may be in a majority is indicated by a few polls which have been taken.

Residents were asked the question, "Should evolution be taught in the public schools? When these same people were then asked, "Should creation be taught in the public schools? Bliss, In the same year, creationists surveyed 1, homes in Cupertino, California and found that When asked the question, "Should scientific evidence for creation be presented along with evolution? Bliss, ; Weinberg, The Midwest Center of the Institute for Creation Research conducted a random telephone survey asking, "Should evolution only, creation only, both evolution and creation or neither evolution or creation be taught in the public schools?

Bliss concluded, "While these data are limited, they nevertheless provide a good sampling of what adults feel is fair and proper for public schools. University students, as well as the public, seem to share this approval of two-model education in origins. This was brought out in a paper published in Origins in by Jerry Bergman. In reviewing the literature, Bergman noted the Christensen and Cannon survey of Brigham Young University students in the years and Over students were used in each sampling.

Bergman also noted John C. Troost's survey of secondary school biology teachers in Indiana. This study "showed that out of felt that evolution was a theory and not a fact, and out of thought that evolution should be presented as one of several alternative theories. His subjects were undergraduates in teacher-training programs and 74 graduate students taking courses in the area of biology.

Bergman admits, however, that Bowling Green is a "conservative" school and that only 5 out of his total sampling of were biology majors.

Yet, in spite of this, he maintained he was testing the "assumption" that "the vast majority of teachers would opt for teaching only evolution" and that his study helped demonstrate how "a clear majority of both parents and teachers are in favor of the two-model approach to origins.

Perhaps a survey of biology teachers, who are more knowledgeable in this area of science, should be taken to answer him. But regardless of the shortcomings of these various surveys, the question remains, how are we to regard this public outcry concerning the scientific teaching of origins? One thing to be realized is that this outcry is part of an overall dissatisfaction with the public schools, and creationists have been effectively playing on that dissatisfaction.

It also comes at a time when considerable public pressure is being brought to bear against "objectionable" textbooks. Mel and Norma Gabler in Texas challenge textbook selections every year.

TV evangelist Jerry Falwell feels that America is in a moral crisis. As a result, Judith Krug of the American Library Association notes that reports of book-banning or censorship were received by that organization in , a number greater than at any other time in at least 25 years.

One example was the Anaheim, California school board which, under pressure, weeded out most of the works of William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain in the city schools.

The people have power, and can have whatever type of education they choose to vote for. So the only response that can be given is that the public seems poorly informed on scientific matters, has not explored all the problems and ramifications of two-model teaching of origins gone into in this article, and is presently taking steps that seriously infringe on the constitutional protection of minorities from majority or supposed majority religious views.

It is not wrong to forthrightly declare the public is in error. They have been wrong before. Nor is it wrong to protect the integrity of science and science teaching from those who would impose public rule over matters of fact and evidence. Creationists, however, don't seem to respect science in this way. Ariel A. They hold that contents of textbooks and curriculum should not be left up to the public or legislative bodies, but to those with 'qualified professional judgment.

Carried to its logical conclusion, this would mean that if the public wants education, they should teach themselves, since Roth thinks they know what they want to be told, and hence must know what is true. In view, then, of the public's possible favoring of the two-model idea in education, is it right to say they should have it if they want it? It is more correct to say they will have it if they want it.

It is their choice. And the only task remaining for scientists is to start educating the electorate before the people cut their own educational throats. There is a freedom issue at stake here, too. The two-model approach, with its obvious religious overtones, won't only bring religious issues into the science classroom, but possibly religious controversy.

Science teachers will, regardless of which side they are on, find it hard to keep their own religious views private. Therefore, they will become marked men and women in the community if they are a minority.

Children will find themselves exposing their private beliefs during class discussions. Creationists may or may not want it this way, but, in actual practice, that is what will most likely happen. We must therefore ask the public if they support such invasion of privacy. That the public might not really want two-model education is still a possibility. At least some students are expressing their dissatisfaction with creationism being forced on them, and this is a good sign.

For example, when Nancy Leman, a junior college student at Palomar College in San Marcos, California, protested an evolutionary reference in her sociology book, a fellow student, Doreen Rabb, wrote the following letter to the San Diego Union shortly after the August, incident.

I and 40 other students had to sit through Nancy Leman's constant interruptions as she tried to force her Christian's view of life on the class. I resent the lost class time spent trying to satisfy Ms. Leman's uncalled-for comments. Leman simply does not understand that the entire world is not Christian, and does not want to have religion thrown at them.

When I registered for sociology this summer, I was registering for a science class, not a religion class. Perhaps if more students challenged creationism in this way, or lobbied for adequate education in the disciplines, the public might gain a better understanding of what is at stake. The American people are somewhat unique in the fervency with which they so often adhere to fundamentalist Protestant beliefs.

But this is a fact that cannot be denied, and should not be left out of public education. Material about the nature of various American, and perhaps world, religious beliefs ought to be presented to students.

Qualified instructors in this area should be sought. It must be understood, however, that biology teachers are not so qualified, and the science curriculum is the wrong category in which to place religious, or religious based, material. The Constitution makes a distinction between sacred and secular, and so should the public schools. The public, of course, can have the matter any way they like it, but they should be aware of what each approach to education implies, and what some of the problems will be if one particular minority scientific or religious theory is brought into the science classroom.

They should try to understand that mixing religion with science confuses students about the nature of both. They should be informed that there is no major controversy between scientists on creation and evolution, but that the controversy is mostly between scientists and nonscientists.

And they should realize that if creation is to be given equal time with evolution, astrology should be given equal time with astronomy; astrology's following being equal to that of creationism, and the theory being equally outdated. Though education should promote critical thinking, it should do so in an overall context of passing on factual information.

Critical thinking is a tool, not the whole ball of educational wax. A debating society is not a school, and mere exposure to variant opinions is not education. The practical necessity of seeing to it that students are adequately prepared for possible careers in science should not be overlooked. The teaching of pseudo-science as science does not further this aim. If creationism were just another pseudo-science, however, there wouldn't be the pressure to have it taught.

Creationism has such force only because it is a religious theory, or is supportive of one. People, therefore, have a larger emotional stake in seeing to it that it is included. But this guarantees religious strife since there are so many creation theories, not to mention so many non-creation theories, related to origins.

Furthermore, there are various religious alternatives on history, geography, and most other courses of study. To bring creationism in, then, would open up an explosive can-of-worms that would quickly endanger the constitutional guarantee of church-state separation.

It would also rob the educational system of valuable class time that should be devoted to imparting the knowledge of our day. Creationists argue, however, that two-model education stimulates students. No doubt it does, but religious pseudo-science is not the only possible educational stimulant. Real controversies in science are far more preferable in this age of rapid scientific progress.

Furthermore, creationists don't seem sincere about the educational advantages of two-model learning. They don't use it in their Christian parochial schools, and in fact claim it is inferior.

An evaluation team from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges felt that Christian Heritage College practiced "indoctrination" not education, and that this would militate against accreditation of the college. Furthermore, ICR creationists successfully saw to it that a course at Iowa State University in "critical judgement" was terminated because it dealt critically with creationism Zuidema, Though creationists participate in a two-model course offered by Drs.

Awbrey and Thwaites at San Diego State University, they have not promoted this in a manner consistent with their espousal of two-model education — perhaps because instructors on the evolution side are also included, instructors who are competent at critiquing creationist beliefs.

Creationists want to write the textbooks and certify the teachers. And though they push their creationist-controlled two-model teaching in all tax supported schools, colleges included, and demand equal time for creationism in all tax-supported institutions, such as the Smithsonian, their main emphasis is on the public secondary and primary schools.

This is because, there, creationists can more easily involve parents and play on religious sentiments. School boards are far more accessible to public outcry because they are directly elected. College boards of regents are often appointed. Legislation affecting public schools is also easier to obtain than legislation affecting colleges or museums.

Public pressure is what the creationist movement is about, which is why creationists put such emphasis on public opinion polls that favor two-model teaching. But scientific evidence is not determined by majority vote, a fact creationists hope the public will forget.

The promotion of two-model teaching in science by creationists then, seems only to be a way of getting Christian fundamentalist doctrines into the public schools to neutralize the effects that evolution teaching might be having on the spread of such fundamentalist beliefs.

Of course, it is possible for scientists to act unscientifically, to be dogmatic and dishonest. But the fact that one finds an occasional oddball or charlatan in the history of science or a person of integrity and genius among pseudoscientists does not imply that there really is no difference between science and pseudoscience.

Because of the public and empirical nature of scientific debate, the charlatans will be found out, errors will be corrected and the honest pursuit of the truth is likely to prevail in the end. This will not be the case with pseudosciences, where there is often no method of detecting errors much less of correcting them. Some theories are so broad or vague that they predict just about anything. They can't be refuted, even in principle. Everything is consistent with them, even apparent contradictions and contraries!

Other theories allow definite predictions to be made from them; they can, in principle, be refuted. They can be tested by experience and observation. A religious cosmology, such as that offered in Genesis and accepted as a literal account of the origin of the universe by fundamentalist Jews and Christians, is of the former type of theory. No scientific theory is ever airtight. A cosmology held by a religious group may be scientific, however.

For example, if a theory says that the world was created in B. But if, for example, the ad hoc hypothesis is made that God created the world in B.