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Essays on creationism vs evolution
The debate on creation and evolution
The debate on creation and evolution
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Creationism and Evolution taught in schools
Introduction:
The education of evolution and creationism in the public school system has been debatable. Charles Darwin published his conclusions of evolution in 1859. This altered the teaching of science in the public school system intensely (Armenta, 1). Several court cases have been filed against the teaching of evolution. Because of the religious conservative legislators a ban was placed on the teaching of evolution and the equal treatment of evolution and creationism or intelligent design (Armenta, 1). The court case that stirred the controversy was the Scope case of 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee. Multiple major court cases followed; Epperson, et al. v. Arkansas, McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education, Edwards v. Aguillard, and Frailer v. Tangipahoa Parish Board of Education (Armenta, 1). In Louisiana and Tennessee a bill was approved that allowed teachers in the public school system to teach evolution alongside with creationism even if the principal and superintendence disagree. The author of the bill believes that it will help the students improve critical thinking skills and pupils will learn to be respectful towards other students’ beliefs (Jones, 1).
Evolution has always been controversy to teach in the public school systems, while creationism is too expensive to teach. This is because Texas is the largest producer of textbooks in the country (Jones, 2). This means that everything that is written in the public school system’s textbooks will be approved by Texas’s Centralized school board. A textbook is basically a curriculum for teachers to outline their classes. America is made up of fifty states that all have numerous and various different laws and bills pertaining to...
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In the novel Monkey Girl: Evolution, Religion, and The battle for American’s Soul, Humes tells the story of how 11 furious parents in the Dover Area school district decided to sue the school board and the district, because of the new learning objective requirement saying that all of 9th grade biology classes had to be taught Intelligent Design (ID), which is basically a form of creationism as a scientific alternative to evolution. They also believed that it “violated their first amendment right to information and ideas in an academic setting” (Humes, 2007, p. 221). This was the first legal trial to the perception of Intelligent Design. This novel is a narrative that captures nearly everyone’s view point in the Dover Area school District on the issue of Intelligent Design replacing evolution. There were numerous groups and organizations involved the trial including; The American Civil Liberties Union, Americans Unites for Separation of Church and State, Pepper Hamilton LLP, and the National Center for Science Education. This Trial was so major that even that national government was involved. George W. Bush sent a conservative appointee (John Jones) to the bench, which was done because it was “the early handicapping in the trial suggested a
In the uncertainty that the modern world is, there is one law that stays petrified in stone no matter what happens: “Things change with age.” No matter if it is in history, science, or even Pokémon, things change as time passes by and this process is called evolution. The theory formulated by Charles Darwin is the belief that all organisms have come from earliest creatures because of external factors (“NSTA…”). School boards everywhere have accepted the theory of Evolution as fact making it essential to be in the curriculums of science classrooms. However, over the years, controversy has arisen as the fact that is evolution is still only a theory with flaws and setbacks, efficiently making other theories (i.e. intelligent design) a viable alternate in the classroom. The law, on the other hand, had a different idea about these other theories with numerous bans them from schools, claiming them to be against the second amendment. Despite the bitter debate of rather or not it is valid and right for teaching (primarily alone) the theory of evolution lies as being the most reliable and accurate way to teach how the modern world came to be.
Firstly, in the town of Hillsboro teaching the theory of evolution to students was strictly against the law. Bert Cates was in opposition to this idea and, he believed that every student had the right to know about the Origin of species. Teaching the theory of evolution was against the law because it contradicted the teachings
The Scopes Monkey Trial was a beginning of independent thought throughout the country. After the trial, it stayed on the books until a 1967 Supreme Court Case overturned the Butler Act and declared it unconstitutional. In the end, evolution can finally be taught; students can examine the research that Charles Darwin did and understand why Darwin came to his belief in evolution. People can study this and decide for themselves.
Evolution and Creationism are both fact and theory but the question is which one should be taught in schools? Only a few school distracts have approved the teaching of evolution because it has more senitific evidence than creationism to prove that it is true. According to a new Gallup poll, just 39% of Americans believe in evolution. The Gallup polls also show that those Americans with higher education believe in the theory of evolution as opposed to those with only high school diplomas. The polls found that 74% Americans with post-graduate degrees believe in evolution theory compared to 21% of Americans with only high school diplomas. The Gallup polls suggest that the belief in the theory of evolution is associated with education. Evolution should be taught in schools because it has more scientific evidence to support it than creationism does. Also, public schools should not teach things that have to do with God, such as creationism, because the Constitution requires the separation of church and state. Finally, if we do not allow schools to teach evolution it would be a form censo...
Justice Felix Frankfurter stated in his opinion in McCollum v. Board of Education, "We have staked the very existence of our country on the faith that complete separation between the state and religion is best for the state and best for religion. If nowhere else, in the relation between Church and State, good fences make good neighbors." (Moore 1) For the last century in America and ideological war has been fought in our legislatures, courts, and schools. Some parts of the fundamentalist Christian movement have tried repeatedly to prevent the teaching of the Darwinian theory of evolution in public schools because they see it as a threat to their religious beliefs. Darwin's theory posits that species evolve over eons of time, changing in ancestor-descendant relationships from one species to another. This is often perceived as standing in direct conflict with the Bible account of the creation of the world as told in Genesis, which states that the world is only a few millennia old and that god created man and all of the species of animals in a single epoch. The latest battle in this conflict is over the theory of Intelligent Design (ID). Robert Weitzel states that "IDers maintain that life is too complex to have developed solely by evolutionary mechanisms. They believe this complexity could only have been engineered by an intelligent designer. Strategically, they refrain from identifying the nature of the designer. This tactic is designed to give their notion of creation a patina of scientific credibility and protection from First Amendment challenges" (1). Intelligent Design advocates have pushed forward on many fronts to try and introduce it into school curricula all over the country and they are meeting with a measure of success and a good deal of popular support. While the ID movement enjoys wide support from the populace, especially in traditionally conservative areas, it is imperative that the teaching of Intelligent Design is kept out of public school curricula because of the separation that must be maintained between religion and state.
In the United States, the average child goes through public funded schools that have a basic curriculum. According to the Texas Education Agency, some of the subjects include science, mathematics, social studies, English, and more. Nowhere in the subject is religion included. The basic curriculum is made in order to give students skills, knowledge, and to help develop the minds of the future. In science class, evolution is taught either briefly or detailed. It is taught because it is a popular theory that did not seem to choose a certain religion. So why believe that religion and science can be taught together? The evolution of Earth and the universe can be believed in any way an individual chooses.
Teaching of evolution has several issues. One of the main issue is that it is unfair to some students with a background of Christianity. Christians believe in Creationism, meaning God created the whole world or if not, most of the world. Darwin's theory of Evolution is complete contradictory of this. In the Bible, it is stated that God made humans in His image while Darwin's theory says that Humans evolved from monkeys. It is basically proving that God, does not exist, violating the first amendment, Freedom of Belief. The first amendment states "..respecting the establishment of religion..." When Christian students listen and are forced to learn the theory of Evolution, it is restricting them to worship without obstacles and is therefore, disrespecting the establishment of religion by defying the existence of God. "If Genesis were interpreted as symbolic, as a myth, fable or fantasy, then the entire role of Jesus would have to be reinterpreted."(http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_school.htm)
happen? If not, then why should science teachers teach that life evolved over billions of
John Thomas Scopes, a math teacher and football coach for Rhea County High School in Dayton, Tennessee, was pressured into taking the challenge by a friend, George Rappleyea, who saw the advertisement. With the school’s biology teacher out for the last two weeks of class, Scopes took over and began teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution. Soon after, he was arrested and charged with a violation of the Butler Act. Contrary to popular understanding, the worst punishment for this crime was a small fine.
The Scopes Trial, formally known as The State of Tennessee vs. Scopes but given the nickname “The Monkey Trial”, has been credited as starting the popular legal dispute between evolution and creationism in the court, and its impact in the 20’s was immeasurable.
Since the time that teaching evolution in public schools was banned as heresy and taboo for contradicting the Bible, most public school systems today take an opposite approach in which creationism is seldom ta...
Scott points out that school districts have boards in place that have people who “...may or may not know much about the field of education” (Pg. 87-8). He goes on to say that these people, despite the state mandated curriculums that are supposed to be used to guide the districts, have the final say in what their educators can teach. There are parallels between the disorganization of our school system and the religious matters in that there are many sects of Christianity, from which most of the antievolution ideals stem. The Fundamentalist movement in the 20’s is one of the main culprits against evolution as it called for a strict interpretation of the Bible. This movement led to the push to eradicate the concept of evolution from the curriculum due to the fear that it will shake the faith of the youth. This push resulted in the Scopes trial which put the controversy in a new light. Despite the odds, Scopes won but even after that even less schools taught evolution. Much later on, schools began to teach concepts that were scientific alternatives to evolution as creationism was viewed as a religious view and was not allowed to be pushed
simple terms: either Darwin or the Bible was true.” (265) The road to the trial began when Tennessee passed the Butler Act in 1925 banning the teaching of evolution in secondary schools. It was only a matter of time before a young biology teacher, John T. Scopes, prompted by the ACLU, tested the law. Spectators and newspapermen came from all over to witness whether science or religion would win the day. Yet, below all the hype, the trial had a deeper meaning.
Since the Age of the Enlightenment, the institution of religion has had to contend with the opposition of science regarding the issues of the origins of the world and of the human species. Up until around the end of the 17th century, the church was the authority on how the world and everything in it had come to be. However, with the great intellectual revolution came thinkers such as Galileo, Copernicus, Bacon, Descartes, and many others who challenged the biblical assumptions with empirically deduced scientific theories. The Catholic Church had a nasty habit of persecuting such ideological dissent toward creationism, calling it heresy and thereby somewhat suppressing a complete upheaval of the Scriptures. For many centuries to come, the scientific research grew and developed into theories like the Big Bang and evolution, though primarily in places where such progress was tolerated. The state of Tennessee in 1925 was not such a place. In the town of Dayton in Tennessee, a high school biology teacher was found to be in violation of a recently passed law, the Butler Act, because he taught the theory of evolution in his classroom. The debate that ensued has yet to be resolved, what with the modification of creationism into the theory of intelligent design. The argument in favor of creationism was solely based in scripture, though it had to be changed in light of its revamping, whereas the argument for evolution has only been strengthened by continued scientific discoveries.