Two weeks ago, I argued the legal and educational reasons why creationism should be taught alongside evolution. Despite any amount of legal justification, if the scientific evidence for creationism and against evolution isn’t sufficient to put both theories on a reasonably level playing field, we have no reason to teach both.
One important disclaimer: I am not a scientist. 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.
Many problems exist with Darwin’s evolution. If we accept “evolution by chance,” we must also accept a scientific chance explanation for the first step in the evolutionary process, namely the hypothesis that life on earth arose from chemical reactions in inanimate matter. Darwin himself admitted the “problem with his theory of evolution was to produce life itself.”
The backing for this imperative hypothesis is a 1952 experiment called the Miller-Urey Experiment. Chemist Stanley Miller recreated what he thought was an early earth environment using water, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen in glass tubes and pumping a continuous current (simulated lightning) through them and saw small organic compounds arise.
This key experiment has been found questionable and faulty. Miller himself asserted in 1996, “we really don’t know what earth was like 3-4 billion years ago. There are all sorts of speculations.”
Dr. Philip Abelson, a geochemist and physicist, notes, “The hypothesis of an early methane-ammonia atmosphere is found to be without a solid foundation”, and that “UV light in the earth’s early atmosphere would destroy ammonia more quickly than it would form.”
Problems arose beyond the extremely speculative nature of the pivotal experiment. Dr. Robert Shapiro, an NYU evolutionist professor, expresses his concerns, saying, “There are over fifty organic compounds that are the building blocks (of life). Only two of these fifty occurred among the preferential Miller-Urey products.”
Duke biology professors argue that we have no reason to believe lightning in pre-biotic earth would be continuous as it was in Urey’s experiment.
The fossil record is also telling. If species evolved the way natural selection insists they did, we should see a plethora of “transitional fossils,” yet these fossils are incredibly lacking.
Dr. David Raup, a renowned University of Chicago paleontologist who has dedicated his life to finding these very fossils admits, “120 years after Darwin, the fossil record of evolution is surprisingly jerky and ironically we have fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we did in Darwin’s time.”
Even outspoken atheist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins admitted in his book “The Blind Watchmaker,” that “it is as though (Cambrian fossils) were just planted there without any evolutionary history.”
Cambridge botanist and winner of the Darwin Medal and International Prize for Botany, Dr. Edred Corner, famously admitted, “I still think that to the unprejudiced, the fossil record of plants is in favor of special creation.”
Dr. Duane Gish, a famous biochemist at the University of California-Berkeley, has produced massive quantities of research that support a great flood, and UCLA geophysicist Dr. John Baumgartner has created a computer program to emulate these conditions.
Award-winning geophysicist and former president of the American Geophysical Union Dr. Allan Cox has produced research on magnetism that supports a younger earth.
The carbon-dating methods used to support old-earth conclusions have been attacked from many different angles. Recognized government botanist Dr. Alex Williams alone found and published seventeen flaws in carbon dating including concrete examples of misread dates and unfounded assumptions of static carbon decay rates.
There exist thousands of counterarguments as well as thousands of counterarguments to those, so 800 words aren’t nearly enough to do either side justice.
There are many scientists who support only evolution and whose lifelong research presents significant challenges to creationists. These scientists actually represent the majority. To dismiss the plethora of award winning scientists, however, who have come to opposite conclusions is both ignorant and dismissive.
These scientists have won numerous awards in their fields, have degrees from prestigious institutions, hold government positions, and head well-known scientific communities. They are not preachers who dabble in pseudoscience.
Though creation scientists (yes, they are scientists) may be working with a certain, even subconscious agenda, don’t evolutionary scientists do the same? Both parties feel pressure to conform to the “accepted” notions of their fields. It is understandable that evolutionary biologists would quiet their findings if they ran contrary to accepted beliefs in the same way pastors wouldn’t openly express a lack of faith.
When the former Chief Scientist and Minister of Israeli Education merely suggested, “If textbooks state explicitly that human beings’ origins are to be found with monkeys, I would want students to pursue and grapple with other opinions,” he was fired.
Dismissing creationism as an antiquated myth is unintelligent. Creationism has enough scientific backing and evolution has enough holes for the two to be academically juxtaposed.
Ben Friedman is a sophomore majoring in social entrepreneurship. His column runs weekly on Mondays.
