Creationism should not be taught in schools

Thank you for initiating the debate. It is an interesting topic, & I look forward to an enlightening debate. I want to make it clear from the out set. I am not arguing that 'Intelligent Design' or 'Critical Analysis of Evolution' should/ought be taught, but rather disagreeing with pro's statement that "any reference to 'Intelligent Design' or 'Critical Analysis of Evolution' should be removed from education guidelines and that natural selection should be unopposed as scientific fact." I am in favor of the right of a school to decide that it will teach a balanced approach to science in general, and specifically Darwin's theory of evolution. This can best be summed up in the words, "Teach the controversy". If we do not criticize science, we are doomed to repeat it. It is quite prevalent for scientific ideas to be found wrong.[1] Even in recent history, even the great Albert Einstein, held scientific beliefs which he swore by, that are now rejected by science, some of them even he was forced to reject due to new discoveries within his life time.[2] I personally believe that most "scientific" beliefs held by science today, will be obsolete within the next few hundred/thousand years. Today's science books will be tomorrows history books, today's science fiction will be tomorrows patents" History does repeat itself, and if the past is any indication of the future, there's no reason to expect scientific turn-over to stop. &, apparently I'm not the only one that thinks this way. Paul Lutus - "As just one example, Newton's "Law of Gravity" has been replaced by Einstein's "Law of Gravity" and, because of some theoretical problems, Einstein's "Law of Gravity" will eventually be replaced by a new "Law of Gravity" that is unknown at present."[3] ( He wasn't actually making this point here, he was just illustrating that there is no such thing as a "law" in science, but that rather everything is a theory. However his last line indicates quite strongly that he would agree.) Pro states that Darwin's theory of natural selection is "backed up by a huge fossil record..." This is in fact one of the weakest points in Darwin's theory of evolution, leading to wild theories such as punctuated equilibrium. In fact Darwin himself said: "Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against my theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record." -Origin of Species (292)[4] Well the record is pretty complete now & there are still missing links. Many evolutionists rejected Darwin's theory of evolution over 20 years ago. Stephen Jay Gould, a professor at Harvard University and one of the foremost authorities on evolution in the world said, "The extreme rarity of transitional forms (missing links) in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontologists,...we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study". Natural History, Vol. 86. Gould is still an evolutionist, he just rejects much of Darwin's theory. Mark Ridley, another evolutionist from Oxford University said in The New Scientist magazine in June 1981 p 831, "a lot of people just do not know what evidence the theory of evolution stands upon. They think that the main evidence is the gradual descent of one species from another in the fossil record. ...In any case, no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuationalist, uses the fossil record as evidence in favor of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation." Because the fossils simply do not support many small changes between kinds over a long period of time, many evolutionists have at least been honest enough to admit this and have come up with a new theory called, "punctuated equilibrium" or the "hopeful monster theory". From the fossil record, they know that change didn't take place in small gradual steps, so they assume that the change took place in quick "quantum leaps" over long periods of time. In Darwin's theory, the changes were so slow and gradual that science cannot observe the evolution. The new theory says the change takes place so quickly it that too cannot be observed. Because of the compete lack of missing links, evolutionists now accept as fact what creationists predicted from the creation model all along; namely, that no transitional fossils would be found. Evolutionists that still use Darwin or the fossil record as evidence of their theory in the '90's, are like stubborn and closed minded old country doctors who have not kept up with the latest developments of science. Then there are those who cannot even consider the possibility that there is a creator God. These scientists are so biased that they cannot not see how much better all the scientific data fits the creation model of origins as opposed to the evolution model. Archaeopteryx, a star attraction "link" between reptile and bird has been refuted . Nature Magazine, Vol. 322, p677, "Fossil Bird Shakes evolutionary Hypotheses", reported this in 1986, "Fossil remains claimed to be of two crow-sized birds 75 million years older than Archaeopteryx have been found...a paleontologist at Texas Tech University, who found the fossils, says they have advanced avian features. ...tend to confirm what many paleontologists have long suspected, that Archaeopteryx is not on the direct line to modern birds." Australopithecus or "Lucy", another big star to the evolutionists' stage show, has also been discarded by many evolutionists. Even the Leakey's never believed it had anything to do with the evolution of man. With good reason, they considered it simply and extinct ape. It stood three feet tall, had arms that hung down to the ankles and had a brain one third the size of humans. Adrienne Zihlman, U.C. Santa Cruze, said, "Zihlman compares the pigmy chimpanzee to 'Lucy', one of the oldest hominid fossils known, and finds the similarities striking. They are almost identical in body size, in stature and in brain size...indicates that pygmy chimps use their limbs much the same way Lucy did..." Science News, Vol. 123, Feb. 5, 1983, p89 [5] Pro goes on to write: "I believe this is fundamentally wrong as it teaches children to doubt scientific fact." In my opinion that's a good thing, we should doubt "Scientific fact". Doubt, not deny,disregard, degrade or, disrespect. A healthy dose of doubt is what science needs. Science is becoming over rated and over confident. Science needs to slow down, and admit that, they don't know certain things for sure. Science can speculate, observe, and theorize, but the term "scientific fact" gets thrown around way to much, and leads to embarrassing mistakes. Evolution is called a theory for a reason, I don't mean to say it's baseless, but there are many problems, & tons of different opinions. Pro continues by saying, "This is unhealthy for society". I presume in the next round he will elaborate on why exactly this is "unhealthy for society" [1] http://www.toptenz.net... http://blog.chron.com... http://listverse.com... http://en.wikipedia.org... http://en.wikipedia.org... http://superseded-scientific-theories.redconceptual.com... http://answers.google.com... [2] http://www.slate.com... [3] http://arachnoid.com... [4] http://www.seekthetruth.org... [5] http://www.bible.ca...