Should evolution theory be taught in public schools?
When it comes to the scientific education of our children, it's vital that they be presented with facts, not fantasy or religious dogma. But, our kids are now being faced with a dilemma of whom to believe when it comes to the origin of man: their clerics or their teachers. However, the truth is that both evolution and creationism have faults that need to be presented during lectures.
The Book of Genesis teaches us that mankind arose when Adam and Eve begot Cain, who eliminated his competitive brother. Then, we learn that somehow Cain begat a whole slew of descendents. But, where did Cain's wife come from? Perhaps some pages are missing from this chapter of the Bible.
Darwin's Theory of Evolution asserts that mankind and chimps both evolved from a common ancestor. However, this missing link has yet to be found. Maybe all that kids really need to learn is that all plants and animals must adapt to biological, and social change, or become extinct.
Your opinions please!
yeahyeahyeah2008-02-22T16:47:46Z
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I believe that evolution should be taught in schools. If people want their children to learn about creationism they can take them to a religious institution for that. Religion has no place in schools, period. I grew up learning creationism and was horrified when I had to learn evolution in school. Now I am an adult and I can't believe that I ever though creationism was a real thing. People have a right to believe in anything they want to. However, I have studied many of the religions of the world to the point where I now do not believe that any of them are "the one true religion" or an answer to anything at all. Evolution, adaption, social change - these things are all science. Facts are facts.
Lots and lots of missing links have been found. There's a whole hominid family tree. They're still working it out, of course, and as new fossils are found the details of the picture get filled in. Science doesn't need to be complete before it's taught. That's the whole point of science, the march toward truth with the recognition that theories are rarely completely accurate. Theories make testible predictions. When the tests confirm the theory, that is evidence it is correct. When the tests don't confirm the theory, the theory needs to be changed.
The principles of evolution have been confirmed many many many times. For example, there was a prediction that there must be a fishlike creature that is a common ancestor for all reptiles that lived in a certain time-period. Sure enough, when biologists examined rocks in the right climate of the right age, they found just such a fossil only a few years ago.
Scientists have made predictions about the precise hominid family tree. Africanus Procanus has been hypothesized as the common ancestor. This specific theory is constantly being revised. The more general theory of evolution has been very well confirmed and there have never been any serious challenges to it that have withstood scrutiny.
There was a recent NOVA episode that catelogued the Pennsylvania case from 2006 where the school board tried to get creationism taught. The show discusses not only the legal and political history of what happened at the time, but also goes into tremendous detail into why evolution should be taught and why intelligent design should not be considered science. If you're curious to know more about it, you should look into that.
You skipped a lot of detail in both creationism and evolution. Both have their faults, but evolution should be mentioned. It provides a baseline to understand speciation. Creationism purports its teachings as irrefutable fact with little proof, and it has no scientific use. The evolution theory is not only concerning man, but all species. I liken the historical fossil record to a corrupted hard drive, and we are trying to determine what "data" was there. Not all of it is preserved, in fact most of it isn't, so if you're hoping to reconstruct all of history from it, you better be ready for some major disappointment.
Evolution can't be a theory either, it can't be proven. It is a concept. Aspects of evolution, like mutation, are facts and should be taught. They can be demonstrated time and time again.
There is a slew of hominid fossils that evidence intermediate species and individuals between humans and human/chimp ancestors.
For all the people who keep saying evolution is fact, etc....nothing in science is fact or proven (in regards to validity). Please remove these words from your scientific vocabulary. Proven should only be used to say a hypothesis was proven wrong. If the evidence supports a theory, it is evidenced for not proven correct. Likewise, a theory can only ever be supported by the evidence not fact.
Here is something you should read about Cain's wife: http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/who-was-cains-wife
You can't say emphatically that there are no "missing links." You should rather say, "While Darwin predicted that the fossil record would show numerous transitional fossils, even a century and a half later, all we have are a handful of disputable examples."
As Dr. Monty White has said, “All the evolutionists ever point to is a handful of highly debatable transitional forms, whereas they should be able to show us thousands of incontestable examples.”
Most Christians I know don't want biblical creationism taught in science classes. 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. Unlike leprechauns and a flat earth, etc., a significant percentage of the (tax paying) population believes in ID.
So many people these days are confusing biblical creationism with intelligent design. "Intelligent Design is the study of patterns in nature that are best explained as the result of intelligence" (Dr. William Dembski). That's it; it says nothing of who the creator is and how he/she/it/they did it. Intelligent Design encompasses every "creation" story, even aliens seeding life on this planet.