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I’m constantly mystified during discussions where people argue “they should show BOTH sides of the arguement about evolution in science class.” What they mean is that they should discuss Creationism, the belief that god created everything, in science class. I’m ALL FOR teaching creationism in a world religion or a philosophy class. However, creationism does NOT fall under the scientific method as a means to prove anything so it should stay OUT of the science classroom. It’s for this reason that, for instance, evolutionary biologist and astronomers, etc usually avoid the idea of Creationism altogether. It’s not that they do not believe in god… in fact many well know scientist are very religious. The avoid the subject because it cannot be proven. There’s no mountain of recreatable/verifiable evidence to back it up.

For those who have never had the opportunity to find out about biology or science, claims made by those who believe in supernatural alternatives to evolutionary theory can appear convincing. Meanwhile, even among those who accept evolution, misconceptions abound.

Most of us are happy to admit that we do not understand, say, the string theory in physics, yet we are all convinced we understand evolution. In fact, as biologists are discovering, its consequences can be stranger than we ever imagined. Evolution must be the best-known yet worst-understood of all scientific theories.

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Wow, this is just an awesome speech. Alan Keyes says “Jesus Christ would not vote for Barack Obama.” Keyes claims Obama is not a true Christian, and Barack’s response is just awesome. If we had more people in politics who held religious beliefs but understood that while it’s perfectly reasonable to expect someone to have religious beliefs, but that those beliefs cannot be the only arguement for policy, our country would be a much better place. Obama discusses how to reconcile faith with our modern, pluralistic democracy.

“For one, they need to understand the critical role that the separation of church and state has played in preserving not only our democracy, but the robustness of our religious practice. Folks tend to forget that during our founding, it wasn’t the atheists or the civil libertarians who were the most effective champions of the First Amendment. It was the persecuted minorities, it was Baptists like John Leland who didn’t want the established churches to impose their views on folks who were getting happy out in the fields and teaching the scripture to slaves. It was the forbearers of the evangelicals who were the most adamant about not mingling government with religious, because they did not want state-sponsored religion hindering their ability to practice their faith as they understood it.

Moreover, given the increasing diversity of America’s population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.

And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson’s, or Al Sharpton’s? Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount - a passage that is so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let’s read our bibles. Folks haven’t been reading their bibles.

This brings me to my second point. Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God’s will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.”

You can, and in fact SHOULD, watch the video above or read the full text here.

National Geographic News has an article running that claims that the U.S. is less likely to accept evolution than other Western countries for a mix of reasons: religion, politics, and public understanding of biology. In fact, we came in second to last with only Turket coming in behind us.

 The story is loaded with interesting stats… most of which boggle my mind. For instance, the percentage of U.S. adults who are uncertain about evolution has risen from 7 percent to 21 percent in the past 20 years. It’s RISEN!?!?!? Yup! “…the researchers found that the effect of fundamentalist religious belief on opinions of evolution was almost twice as much in the U.S. as in Europe.”  Ya that sounds about right… I’ve been grumbling a while about how as a country we complain about fundamentalist Muslims, all the while we’re becoming more and more fundamentalist Christians. It’s clear this is part of the Republican platform. I think Bush used religion and his “morals” extraordinarily well in the last campaign. What I didn’t know is this started all the way back with Reagan when he’d slip statements like “I have no chimpanzees in my family,” poking fun at the idea that apes could be the ancestors of humans when giving speeches in the Southern and Midwestern states.

More mind boggling is that the researchers cite a 2005 study “finding that 78 percent of adults agreed that plants and animals had evolved from other organisms. In the same study, 62 percent also believed that God created humans without any evolutionary development.”  I dunno about you, but something doesn’t jive there. No suprise that less than HALF of American adults can provide a basic definition of DNA.

 One arguement that I continuously hear is that evolution is only a “theory”.

Many people learned in elementary school that a theory falls in the middle of a hierarchy of certainty–above a mere hypothesis but below a law. Scientists do not use the terms that way, however. According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is “a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.” No amount of validation changes a theory into a law, which is a descriptive generalization about nature. So when scientists talk about the theory of evolution–or the atomic theory or the theory of relativity, for that matter–they are not expressing reservations about its truth. In addition to the theory of evolution, meaning the idea of descent with modification, one may also speak of the fact of evolution. The NAS defines a fact as “an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as ‘true.’” If you look it up in the dictionary, you’ll find that “A theory in technical use is a more or less verified or established explanation accounting for known facts or phenomena.”

Another arguement is that we’ve never seen complete evidence of evolution. This just isn’t true. There are many famous fossils that show evolution from dinosours to birds, evolution of modern horses from the tiny Eohippus, and whales that once had legs and walked on land. Perhaps 20 or more hominids (not all of them our ancestors) fill the gap between Lucy the australopithecine and modern humans. Yet pure creationists will argue that since we don’t have EVERY iteration it cannot be proven. That’s a bit like saying you can’t look at a Model T and a Ford Mustang and conclude that one was born of the concept of the other.

If you’re interested in reading about the top 15 answers to Creationism check out Scientific American’s excellent article.

Perhaps most suprising to me is that evolution and creationism cannot live happily with one another. I can understand from a scientific point of view that some would dismiss the notion of a higher power; lack of scientific evidence. But what I don’t get is why those of strong religious background can flat out dismiss science (maybe it’s the devil tricking us?), or why modern science cannot jive with their religious beliefs. Who’s to say how long 1 god day is? Is EVERYTHING supposed to be taken literally in the bible?

National Geographic article

Scientific American article