Why do most of Americans feel creationism should be taught in school?

Question

Creationism is not science, meaning it is not subject to falsification, and has no more evidence than what is written in the Bible.

Presenting kids with both ideas (evolution and creationism) implies that both are equally valid!!!, when in fact this is NOT the case.

Evolution is much harder to comprehend than creationism, and unfortunately Americans want something they can easily believe, and too often let their religious views get in the way of doing what is right.

The fact that this debate still continues is ridiculous. Creationism encourages the Christian faith over other religions, which is not only ignorant to others' beliefs, but violates the separation of Church and State.

Therefore many Christians changed it to "Intelligent Design", which is still pseudoscience with no evidence other than trying to find flaws in the evolutionary theory. However, disproving one doesn't make the other right.

Please tell me why you think creationism should be taught (if you do).

I did not pull this fact that the majority of Americans feel this way out of nowhere. Simply look at any survey dealing with evolution and creationism and you will find this is true.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/22/opinion/polls/main657083.shtml

Questioner, this is what I am afraid of: I am afraid that the general public, who is generally ill-informed of evolution, will get the idea that both ideas are equally valid.

I think any evidence against evolution should definately be looked at, and what you bring up there is a good point. However, SCIENCE explains what is NATURAL, not the supernatural. Why? Because the supernatural cannot be tested, and ideas about the supernatural will never yield an answer.

We, along with many animals, are not intelligently designed, for there are many faults with our bodies (though in my opinion I don't think we are "designed").

Unfortunately this debate will continue for many years, undermining science and showing an example of how the general American public is behind Europe in so many ways.

As I've said before, there really is no way of testing the supernatural.. whether Dr. Meyer considers this as science or not does not change this fact.

Because there is not a rational explanation for something yet does not automatically mean God, or some supernatural force did it. We have only begun exploring the world we live in, and do not have answers to everything.

If evolution is in fact not true, I hope it gets disproven. As for the other ideas out there, simple observation does not prove anything. From this intuition you now need to test and theorize your idea, before calling it equal or better than a theory that has withstood time and masses of accumulating evidence.

Finding things that are complex do not necessarily mean a designer was involved. Couldn't natural selection be this "designer," selecting advantageous (though mostly selecting out disadvantageous) traits caused by the mutations in DNA?

It is definately possible evolution will be falsified, for any theory in science is subject to that based on adequate evidence.

Answer 1

I have found that most Christians I know don't want biblical creationism taught in science classes anyway. What we want is for molecules-to-man evolution to be taught with all its warts (they are not even allowed to present evidence that would put evolution in a poor light).

And we want intelligent design to at least to be presented (that is science, no matter how much you yell that it is pseudoscience). Reliable methods for detecting design exist and are employed in forensics, archeology, and data fraud analysis. These methods can easily be employed to detect design in biological systems.

When being interviewed by Tavis Smiley, Dr. Stephen Meyer said, “There are developments in some technical fields, complexity and information sciences, that actually enable us to distinguish the results of intelligence as a cause from natural processes. When we run those modes of analysis on the information in DNA, they kick out the answer, ‘Yeah, this was intelligently designed’ . . . There is actually a science of design detection and when you analyze life through the filters of that science, it shows that life was intelligently designed.”

I agree with George Bush, "Both sides ought to be properly taught . . . so people can understand what the debate is about . . . Part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought . . . You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes.”

Good science teaching should include controversies. My question for you is: What are you so afraid of?


-Edit:
You said, "I am afraid that the general public, who is generally ill-informed of evolution, will get the idea that both ideas are equally valid." If Intelligent design is so rediculous, the general public should be able to see the difference if they are lined up next to each other. I think you are afraid of people being informed about ID.

Life is more than just physics and chemistry; life is built on information. Tightly coiled up inside the center of every cell, this information is contained in that molecule of heredity, called “DNA” which has a digital code inscribed alone its spine. The thing is, evolutionists have not been able to explain the origin of information in cells; information has not been shown to spontaneously arise from matter and energy. The existence of the information can only be explained through a pre-existing intelligence that put it there. Dr. Werner Gitt, Professor at the German Federal Institute of Physics and Technology, said, “A code system is always the result of a mental process (it requires an intelligent origin or inventor) … It should be emphasized that matter as such is unable to generate any code. All experiences indicate that a thinking being voluntarily exercising his own free will, cognition, and creativity, is required ...There is no known natural law through which matter can give rise to information, neither is any physical process or material phenomenon known that can do this.”

I'm sorry, but we know from experience: If you have a computer program, you need a computer programer. Any time we find information, whether it is in the form of a hieroglyphic inscription or a newspaper article, there was invariably an intelligent agent behind that information.

So you don't see design, huh? As Dr. Stephen Meyer has said, “Over the last 25 years, scientists have discovered an exquisite world of nanotechnology within living cells. Inside these tiny labyrinthine enclosures, scientists have found functioning turbines, miniature pumps, sliding clamps, complex circuits, rotary engines, and machines for copying, reading and editing digital information—hardly the simple "globules of plasm" envisioned by Darwin's contemporaries.”

And these elegant machines are of greater sophistication than we are capable of making. Dr. Michael Denton (a non-Christian molecular biologist) said, “Alongside the level of ingenuity and complexity exhibited by the molecular machinery of life, even our most advanced artifacts appear clumsy. We feel humbled, as neolithic man would in the presence of twentieth-century technology.”

In trying to understand these biological systems, molecular biologists actually need to “reverse engineer” them. Is that not strong evidence that they were engineered to begin with?


-Edit:
I don't really care what Dr. Stephen Meyer believes either. The fact is, reliable methods for detecting design exist and are employed in forensics, archeology, and data fraud analysis. These methods can easily be employed to detect design in biological systems. Sounds like science to me.


-Edit:
If it is true that, "We have only begun exploring the world we live in, and do not have answers to everything," then is it possible that we have messed up in our hypothesis of molecules-to-man evolution?

Swedish biologist Soren Lovtrup made an interesting statement: “I suppose that nobody will deny that it is a great misfortune if an entire branch of science becomes addicted to a false theory. But this is what has happened in biology...I believe that one day the Darwinian myth will be ranked the greatest deceit in the history of science. When this happens, many people will pose the question: How did this ever happen?”


-Edit:
As Hugo de Vries has said, “Natural selection may explain the survival of the fittest, but it cannot explain the arrival of the fittest.”

Natural selection is a logical process that anyone can observe. We can look at the great variation in an animal kind and see the results of natural selection. For instance, wolves, coyotes, and dingoes have developed over time as a result of natural selection operating on the information in the genes of the dog kind.

But natural selection can only operate on the information already contained in the genes; it doesn’t produce new information. There are limits. For instance, you can’t breed a dog to the size of an elephant, much less turn it into an elephant.

The different dogs we see today have resulted from a rearrangement or loss of information from the original dog kind; no new information was produced. What are they? Dogs. What were they? Dogs. What will they be? Dogs. There is a big difference between subspeciation (variation within a kind) and transspeciation (change from one kind to another).

To go from that first single celled organism to a human means finding a way to generate enormous amounts of new information. You need the recipes to build eyes, nerves, skin, bones, muscles, blood, etc. Without a way to increase information, natural selection will not work as a mechanism for evolution. Evolutionists agree with this and so they point to mutations (copying errors in the genetic code) to provide the new information for natural selection to act upon. So, the question is, can mutations produce new information?

Dr. Lee Spetner (a highly qualified scientist who taught at John Hopkins University) said, “All point mutations that have been studied on the molecular level turn out to reduce the genetic information and not to increase it.” Did you get that? He also said, “The neo-Darwinians would like us to believe that large evolutionary changes can result from a series of small events if there are enough of them. But if these events all lose information they can’t be the steps in the kind of evolution the NDT is supposed to explain, no matter how many mutations there are. Whoever thinks macroevolution can be made by mutations that lose information is like the merchant who lost a little money on every sale but thought he could make it up in volume.”

Dr. Warner Gitt, in answering the question (Can new information originate through mutations?) said, “...this idea is central in representations of evolution, but mutations can only cause changes in existing information. There can be no increase in information, and in general the results are injurious. New blueprints for new functions or new organs cannot arise; mutations cannot be the source of new (creative) information.”

Answer 2

THAT was a mouthful my friend!! There was a time when us dumb humans thought the world was flat, and we were the center of the Universe!! Yeah! Right! And WE are the only species who can, think, walk and talk - but! we will NEVER admit we are no better than any other species we share this world with! So they say! God created the Universe and us!! Boom! Here we are in all our glory!! We were supposedly made in God's image! WHO on this earth has ever met HIM!?? If we are like God, how come we all look different? Different colors, speak different languages etc etc!? We probably all came from the sea, cos that's where life began, and as time rolled along, certain species evolved into different forms. Isolation found it necessary to adapt for survival. became smaller or larger, depending on what food was available! There is a big gap - or lost time where WE actually started our own evolution! They say we were originally some kind of monkey! Some of us act like we are still swinging from branch to branch! Nobody really knows the answers, and never will, there was a man who calculated the world was created 6000 years ago, and a little later that was proven false! Religion got their two cents in with their version of creation! How the Hell did those guys know!? Religion is just a form of brain washing! If there is only one God, then why do all religions have different rules and regs!? You might as well join an LA gang! They make up their own rules, there's no difference! All religions should be kept out of public schools, even the Government states there is a separation of Church and State when it comes to running the country - I wish those guys in DC would remember that! Think about all the laws which are being passed with MORE than a touch of Religious interference!

Answer 3

Please don't throw all American's in the same category. Some religious freaks and people who can't comprehend science (those that failed after high school biology) may think we should teach it, but it's because they could pass that fairy tale class. Intelligent people do not want their GPA's based on religious beliefs. Science should be given more weight than religion and religion should stay in the church where it belongs.

Answer 4

Most? Who are these mosts? I certainly don't know any.....

I take it you are basing this from the crackpot fundies who feel it is their job to force their beliefs on other? Yeah they are actually the minority but because they are so bizarre and obnoxious they get the most media attention.

Trust me-it is not going to happen.


Ah I found your problem, you forgot to look at the bottom of the article : This poll was conducted among a nationwide random sample of 885 adults interviewed by telephone November 18-21, 2004. There were 795 registered voters. The error due to sampling could be plus or minus three percentage points for results based on all adults and all registered voters.

Hardly a representative sample. I love the media-they can take the most random stuff and blow it entirely out of proportion. You would also need to know exactly what questions were asked. A basic statistics class tells you that telephone surveys are bascially crap (I had to take one).

Answer 5

Doesn't matter what is right or wrong.
The point is; i think is to keep an open mind that both scenarios could be wrong!???

They are both theories... no?

We must keep our options always open...
As right as we think we are now... you think people back when, thought they were wrong??? when...
our "stagnant" minds one day, way back... realized that the planet "was NOT flat, but round" or the day... when the World realized that the Earth was NOT the centre of the universe and yet the Earth revolved around our SUN!
who knows.....No one knows...but what if an alien race... planted life on this earth (several different times; dinosaurs, humans, fish or birds ) as an experiment? or as a game... sort of like AGES of Empires... to see who lives/lasts the longest????
One Giant Foot ball pool???
Reality game, to the extreme???

hmmmmm.....

Answer 6

What happened the the seperation of church and state?
Last time I checked religion wasn't to be taught in school because in the States you would have to teach to many religions and spiritual paths in order to serve the masses. Either way the idea that the bible will be taught in school is utterly frightening to me.

Answer 7

Ummmm....let's see.........because it is true perhaps?!?

To think that anything in the world organized from an unorganized state - when everything in existence is moving from organization toward disorganization or decay/death - is not realistic. Evolution is falling by the wayside the more that the scientific community finds out.

How many times would you have to throw 100 pennies into the air just to get all 100 of them to land heads-up? How then do we think that the thousands of complex things "just happen" that have to be just right to form one cell of one tissue of one organ of one organ system of one organism of the thousands of organisms that exist?

The earth screams of creation - if we were any farther from the sun we would freeze - any closer and we would be incinerated - tilted at a different angle and we would not have seasons with productive crops - and the list goes on and on and on.

In the book of Job one of Job's "friends" even says to (paraphrased) ask the fish of the sea or the birds of the air and they will tell you - who among them does not know that the hand of the LORD has wrought all this?

Read "The Case for a Creator" - and keep in mind that the author was a card-carrying athiest before beginning his research.

Answer 8

That would be because MOST Americans believe in a supreme being of some sort, and MOST Americans believe in the "God of Abraham", whereby you have the 'created in 7 days' theory...that's why.

Answer 9

I think science should be taught in science class, not religious fantasies. Separation of church and state is being trampled on. CREATIONISM IS NOT SCIENCE.

Answer 10

teaching it is OK as long as it's not presented as SCIENCE.
Belief systems are all well and good, but don't confuse creationism with analytical, prove-able science.