Why don't they teach Creationism in schools?

Question

Sure, Darwin found plenty of evidence for evolution on the Galapagos... but it's still a theory. I think that because though there are many athiests (who are pretty good at practicing law) in our country, not too many people would be religiously offended by their students learning about intelligent design or creationism. Why the heck don't they let students be taught those, all in their biology class?

Well, Intelligent design doesn't assume that there is a god. It assumes that someone planned this development. It seems to me that this could include early intelligent species breeding selectively to try to produce better species.

Answer 1

Religious schools can teach whatever they want, but public schools should teach science in science class, folllowing the idea of separation of church and state as called for the the US Constitution. By the way, there is a great deal of hard data on evolution, it's not just a theory.

Answer 2

1. Creationism is not scientific. It doesn't use the scientific method; ie, it's not parsimonious, it's not falsifiable, it has no positive evidence in favor of it, etc.

2. The term 'theory' in science has a different meaning then what you are using. In science, a theory denotes an explanation of facts and phenomenon. To label something a 'theory' in science does not mean that the theory is tenative. For example, no one denies heliocentric theory, or germ theory.

3. Evolution does not equate to atheism. One can be a theist and accept modern science. In fact, the majority of people who accept evolution are theists.

4. Intelligent design and creationism as I said, are not scientific theories. They can be taught in a religion class, but not a science class because they have no scientific support and do not follow the scientific method. At base they are appeals to ignorance.

Answer 3

In science, a theory is an explanation that best fits the facts. Evolution is accepted as the theoretical paradigm of biology because all known facts of biology, from several convergent disciplines (biogeography, ecology, comparative anatomy and physiology, systematics, population genetics, immunology, molecular genetics, developmental biology, paleontology, etc.) are explained by the theory.

There are no known facts which explain creationism or intelligent design and these notions make several assumptions that are contradictory to scientific methodology.

Because the purpose of public education is to give students an accurate grounding in science (and other subjects), mainstream biology is thus taught rather than unsupportable notions.

Answer 4

Because creationism has no scientific foundation. None at all. None. Zip.

So it has no place in a science classroom.

This has nothing to do with atheism. (I am not an athiest, and I am not a lawyer.) This has to do with science. Science does NOT teach that there is no God (atheism). Science is about understanding nature. So science ends where the supernatual begins. The minute you start talking about a being that can operate outside of natural laws, there is nothing wrong with that ... but you are no longer talking science.

As far as Intelligent Design ... it is also not a science. It asks a lot of interesting questions (about information, complexity, etc.) ... but a bunch of questions is not a scientific theory ... and second, all of these questions have answers, but these are in fields such as information theory, chaos theory, emergence, chaotics, etc. that a high school student has no foundation in. So all Intelligent Design can do is leave a high school student hoplessly confused that there is some sort of controversy in science.

There is no controversy at all among scientists. The vast majority of scientists (over 98%) accept evolution as the overriding theory of biology.

So teaching with the express purpose of leaving students hopelessly confused ... is *despicable*.

To put it another way, the way you do science is by convincing other scientists with evidence. You do it at the university level by publishing books and papers that let other scientists scrutinize your work and check your results. That's how Darwin did it, that's how Newton did it, and Einstein, and Maxwell, Mendel, Curie, Faraday, Hawking, Pasteur, Hubble, Dirac, Rutherford, etc. etc. Every single one of them convinced their peers using *evidence*.

None of these scientists said "I'm unable to convince other scientists of my theory ... so I'll try to get my theories into high school and grade school classrooms and 'teach the controversy'!"

Or to put it yet another way. Creationism and Intelligent Design are not explanations of anything, much less *scientific* (i.e. testable) explanations. An explanation is a description of a complex thing in terms of something simpler. Creationism and Intelligent Design are the *opposite*. They are descriptions of complex things in terms of something *far* more complex. God or an Intelligent Designer must be far more complex than anything created.

So the Creationism vs. Evolution debate is a great topic for a debate classs, or a politics class ... but not in a *science* classroom As evidenced by the pathetic understanding of evolution in many of the questions here on YA ... the Creationists have already managed to confuse kids enough.

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For an example of what I mean by "hopelessly confused" ... please see Zack B's answer.

For Zack B ... I think you mean "precise" not "precious."

And you misunderstand carbon dating ... that is not used for anything older than about 60,000 years. There are dozens of other methods used to date fossils and rocks well into the billions of years old.

And you misunderstand the age of the earth ... it is not just "millions and millions of years old" ... the evidence is that it is betwen 4.5 and 4.6 *billion* years old ... which is a relatively "precise" number.

And you misunderstand the notion of a flood "A lot of the time they say the earth was millions and millions of years old and it is totally precious unless their was a world wide flood." They (meaning scientists) say nothing of the sort. A worldwide flood (even if it were possible) would not change the age of the rocks. And where they disagree over the age of the earth it is on whether the earth is 4.5 vs. 4.6 billion years old ... there is no theory, no cataclysm, that would explain being off so much that the world could actually be only 6,000 years old ... that is about as plausible as would be the claim that the earth is only 6,000 meters (six kilometers) in in diameter.

And you misunderstand continental drift. Yes scientists believe that the the continents were once joined ... but this was 225 million years ago!

This is what I mean by creationism leaving people hoplessly confused. Little snippets of science here and there ... but no overall understanding.

Answer 5

Beacuse a scientific theory can be disproved and nobody has managed to do that with Evolution. There's no such thing as a science fact, just theories that haven't been disproved.

Creationism is a religious theory not a scientific theory and has been disproved. It's a matter for religious studies not biology or science.

Answer 6

Because there is nothing scientific about Creationism. It is a belief held by theists, and others cannot be forced to learn it.

You have misunderstood the meaning of the word "Theory", when used in a scientific context. The dictionary definition of the word is, "the analysis of a set of facts in their relation to one another". It does not mean "speculation", or "conjecture".

It is referred to as the "theory" of evolution because scientists don't understand all of it's mechanisms, yet. Gravity and it's mechanisms, are referred to as the "theory" of gravity for the same reason. That does not make gravity any less of a fact.

Evolution has been proven, and is a fact.

By the way, did you know that Catholic schools teach evolution to their students?

Answer 7

Because schools are required to teach the truth. They don't want their students looking like idiots when they graduate and don't know what evolution means!!
I would be offended BIG TIME if i or my future children were taught creationism in the classroom - it is not truth and therefore not acceptable to be taught in schools. If you want that, send them to a Christian school.

Answer 8

they do teach it in schools. they're called home schools by ignorant parents who are denying their child the right to hear both sides. "un"intelligent design should be taught in philosophy or ethics class, not science.

Answer 9

Perhaps you should ask a question about what a scientific theory is first, because the fact that you don't know sort of makes your whole question ignorant.

Answer 10

Because creationism isn't science, its religious propaganda, and in America we promote separation of church and state and also reserve scientific classrooms for scientific theories.