Biology Curricula Should Focus Equally On Creationism And Evolution

In US public schools, biology curricula should not equally focus on Creationism and Evolution, because Creationism is unscientific and does an extremely poor job of explaining the biodiversity of life on earth, and Evolution by way of natural selection and descent with modification is a fact and has great explanatory power with regards to the biodiversity of life on earth. ...and I'm a public high school teacher in Maryland, USA, so I'm directly associated in this debate. 1. Creationism is not science. Science is the collection of observations of natural phenomena. Biology incorporates and studies natural explanations for the structures and biodiversity of living organisms on earth. By incorporating "rather than natural" explanations, we are by definition out of the scope of biology and other observations/explanations of natural phenomena; creationism is by definition unscientific. There is also no evidence or mechanistic explanation of anything divine or of divinity's isolated effects on natural phenomena, so creationism is irrelevant in any science subject, because science is the study of natural--not supernaturally divine--phenomena. Without any MECHANISTIC explanation of HOW a divine agent accomplishes things, there's no reason to believe that anything "rather than natural" is occurring. There is also no need to infer divinity when it comes to scientific explanations, because explanations seek to solve mysteries; divinity is not an explanation, rather it's an attempt to solve a mystery by appealing to another mystery, which is divinity itself. 2. Creationism does not fit the evidence and does an extremely poor job of explaining the biodiversity of life on earth. All of the evidence suggests that current lifeforms on earth are all evolved descendants of prior life forms on earth, and, while Pro has not provided a mechanistic explanation of creationism yet, descent with modification is in fact antithetical to creationism's explanation that ALL lifeforms originated, in their current form, by some divinity, rather than by natural processes. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... Creationism presupposes that the biodiversity of life that we can examine today has been that way always, because some divinity created it that way; creationism is "rather than natural processes" so the original lifeforms that were created by some divinity CANNOT change naturally and all have completely separate lineages. When we teach the distribution of diverse genetics and anatomies across the vast landscape of earthly life to our students, explaining that "the differences were created that way and are all unrelated to each other" is dishonest, reprehensible, and if it were the case that teaching required me to support such dishonesty, I would leave the school system. You mean to tell me that spiders and crabs have non linking lineages? http://www.pnas.org... Aside from the above fossils, spiders and crabs have great homology, or structural similar from inheritance, which can be explained by a common descent with modification. http://evolution.berkeley.edu... We should be teaching our students that evolution can explain these homologous structures in crabs and spiders, because that's what the fossil, genetic, anatomic, geologic, and radiometric evidence has all indicated; inherited homologous structures are a large portion of the evolution unit of the biology curriculum. Creationism simply does not allow an evolution of crab-->spider; this evidence would negate that the spider was divinely created at the same time as the crab, without a link betwixt. For these reasons, Creationism doesn't deserve equal focus in a biology curriculum. We should focus the curriculum on something that actually explains the biodiversity of life with science, so that students can understand the principles of biology more coherently; that is the goal after all. I'm saying that creationism does not lead us to understanding biology any more coherently, it doesn't fit the evidence, and this is unacceptable for our public school students. 3. The Biology Curriculum. You know, the other day I was asking kids if they remembered some of the terms we had gone over last class: Me: Hey Johnny, you remember the cell structure vocab? Johnny: Yeah...somethin' bout nucleus or mitochondria... Me: Yeah that vocab...you should study that for tomorrow, and do you remember the DNA questions from the genetic engineering article? Johnny: Uhh yeah, the double helix thingy? Me: Yeah, study that too, but more so the conversion of gene sequences, because it's on the test. You know what absolutely didn't happen next? Me: So, Johnny you should really study up on purpose and morality, because the state assessment on biology is gonna be loaded with questions about morality and purpose, but it's a good thing we covered that in our creationism unit right? Johnny: Is this biology class? Look, Pro, how are we to fit a unit on morality and purpose into a loaded curriculum? Where do morality and purpose fit with the likes of: 1. cell structure 2. biochemistry 3. meiosis (cell reproduction) 4. energy flow 5. ecology genetics-mendelian/human 6. biotechnology-cloning/transgenic animals 7. function DNA fingerprinting/gel electrophoresis 8. evolution-population genetics 9. respiration 10. human/animal anatomy/physiology 11. cell cycle, 12. DNA replication/mitosis 13. taxonomy 14. protein synthesis 15. plant structure/function? Yes, that's all one question. If we're to teach "rather than by natural processes" equally to evolution and its sufficient constituents, we would be contradicting ourselves and would be failing to provide coherence to students on a number of biological concepts required by state assessments and integral to understanding basic biology. I'm also pointing out that morality and purpose are irrelevant to a biology curriculum, so Pro's "b" and "c" arguments are irrelevant; we should not equally focus on morality/purpose and evolution in a biology curriculum. Pro, why is morality relevant to a biology classroom? Pro, why should we teach rather than natural processes in a curriculum that explains natural processes?