How to teach creationism
How to teach creationismGainsesville Sun, 9/2/2010 - OriginalScience is about inquiry, careful, thorough, and fair inquiry. Its methods, results, and reasoning are open to public scrutiny. Even when science finds an answer, the issue is always subject to further inquiry.
Creationism has one and only one purpose, and that is to bring inquiry to a halt. Its answer is "God did it." This is neither science nor theory. It's religious dogma, and it has no place in any field of science.
"Intelligent Design Theory" is simply creationism with an added dose of sophistry. Its advocates ask "How did something as complex as the human eyeball evolve?" And regardless of how you answer, their comeback is "Hah! It's too complex! It couldn't possibly have evolved! It had to be the product of a higher intelligence." But do they describe how they measure complexity? When is something "too complex" to have evolved? And how does demanding "How else do you explain it?" permit them to proclaim that the only possible solution is that "a higher intelligence did it?" Why do they ignore the natural selection process and misrepresent evolution as simply the accumulation of random mutations?
Advocating ID is like a game; if I can blindside you with a question, I win, then I get to declare the answer, and you have to accept it, as though I've been anointed Proclaimer of Answers to Unanswered Questions. So you see, students, when someone tries to present creationism and intelligent design as scientific theories, what they're offering is really the reverse of science. They want you to replace scientific investigation with their personal convictions. We're here to learn how to do science, so that we can find real answers for ourselves.
Jim Aikin,
Gainesville