Creationism and education

Today I read an article written by in “The Crimson White” about why creationism should be taught in schools. The Crimson White is a student newspaper at the University of Alabama, and the particular article I read was called “Scientific support for creationism strong”. A sophomore student majoring in social entrepreneurship named Ben Friedman wrote in his weekly column on November 8th. The writer’s main argument in his column is that creationism has equally scientific strength to support it compared to evolution and should therefore be taught as well. I found a number of flaws in his justification of this stance. First he admits he, himself is not a scientist, second he defines evolution incorrectly during his argument, third he claims the fossil record does not support evolution, and finally he claims that scientists are bias towards proving evolution.

Right near the top of the article the author admits he is not a scientist. He says, “I don’t have a doctorate and I’m not a science major. However, there are qualified scientists who believe there are educational reasons to teach creationism.” After this claim he fails to reference any names of these creationism-supporting scientists. When he makes this claim without any references it sounds like he is just assuming that these scientist must be out there somewhere and that this assumption should be good enough for all of us. Well personally it is not good enough for me, anyone can write that that educated people believe in a certain theory or idea but without examples this really does not support an argument at all.

Later in the article he begins talking about the concept of “evolution by chance”. He claims that if one believes in evolution by chance then one is forced into also believing that life began as a random chemical reaction of previous non-living things. I do not see the logic behind this claim whatsoever. I think that the most glaring problem with his statement is a clear misunderstanding of what evolution is. Evolution does not explain how life on Earth first began but rather how it changes and becomes more complex over time once life was already present. Mr. Friedman follows this up with a clear incorrect quote from Darwin, “Darwin himself admitted the “problem with his theory of evolution was to produce life itself.”” This quote if examined a critically at all makes it clear that Darwin did not actually say this. Why would Darwin refer to himself in third person, and besides this quote is irrelevant with the correct understanding of evolution.

Following up on another false claim, the author states that the fossil record does not support evolution; this is actually quite the contrary. Although we do not have a fossil for every single step-by-step change of a species over generations, we do have quite a few transitional fossils. For example this skull on the left is an early ancestor to current humans, compared older fossils it has an increased brain cavity and a parabolic jaw and is therefore more closely related to humans then older fossils. Admittedly the fossil claim is a tough on to defend either way, creationists will always argue the record is lacking and evolutionists will always argue that what we have is sufficient. Without an arbitrary way of drawing a line between enough and not, this argument will continue.

The last claim that I take issue with is that scientists take a bias to proving evolution. I do not believe this is a fair claim because once again he is make a large assumption that he has no way of backing up. The only thing that he says is that bias scientist may withhold certain information that is goes against their understanding of evolution. I think it is safe to say that there is an equal if not larger bias with people on the creationism side of the argument due to religious extremists. Also if we look back at the title of this article it says scientific support of creationism, how is claiming a bias “scientific”.

To conclude it is easy to see that the author of this article failed to recognize some major flaws in his argument. I for one and not saying that creationism is wrong or that evolution is more correct, just that this article poorly defends their side of the argument. The biggest mistake I believe Friedman made was perhaps in his own understanding of what evolution suggests, not how life began on earth but rather how it changes over long, long amounts of time. This led him away from finding evidence against actual evolution. Perhaps he did have a proper understanding of evolution and just changed it in his article to fit his argument more.

Friedman, B. (2010, November 8). Scientific support for creationism strong. The Crimson White. Retrieved from http://www.cw.ua.edu/2010/11/08/scientific-support-for-creationism-strong/