Teaching Creation Part 2
Is There Any Justification For Teaching Evolution In School?
Part 2
second, there must be an ability to reproduce the effect of whatever is observed. Creation can not meet either of these requirements. Dr. Morris comments that, Creation is not taking place now, so far as can be observed. Therefore, it was accomplished sometime in the past, if at all, and thus is inaccessible to the scientific method. It is impossible to devise a scientific experiment to describe the creation process, or even to ascertain whether such a process can take place (Creationism 5).
Thus, to call creation scientific would be a abuse of the word.
Likewise, in keeping with this definition of science, it is interesting to note that the idea of evolution being scientific has no better argument than does creation. Again, Dr. Morris states, If evolution is taking place today, it operates too slowly to be measurable, and therefore, is outside the realm of empirical science….The small variations in organisms which are observed to take place today are irrelevant to this question, since there is no way to prove that these changes within present kinds [a term used to denote the originally created entity] eventually change the kinds into different, higher kinds. Since small variations (including mutations) are as much to be expected in the creation model as in the evolution model, they are of no value in discrimination between the two models (Creationism 5).
Furthermore, even advocates of the evolution model agree at this point. A leading British evolutionary biologist, Professor L. Matthews, recognizes that the evolution model is no different to the creation model on the scientific level. In his introduction to the book, “On Origin of the Species”, he makes the following
comments: The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on and unproved theory-is it then a science or a faith? Belief in the theory of evolution is thus exactly parallel to belief in special creation – both are concepts which believers know to be true but neither, up to the present, has been capable of proof (x). The truth is that neither creation nor evolution is science.
Both are religious philosophies based upon individuals’ particular bias. Webster defines religion as “any specific system of belief.” The question of whether creation should be taught in school is not an issue of “science versus religion, but religion versus religion (the science of one religion versus the science of another religion)” (Ham 16).
Even though neither model can be proved, it is still possible to establish the probability of one model above the other. To do this, it has been proposed that the two models be used as systems for predicting data (Morris, Creationism 12). Consider for a moment that there is no data to support either model. Only two