Creationism In Biology Curriculum

Pro, no worries about the brevity of your post. Also, losing power sucks, so my condolences. Furthermore, I have made no round rules, so you may respond to any of my points at any time during the debate, and voters should not penalize you for such. Firstly, I agree that the universe "evolves" but this is not to be confused with biological evolution, which explains the biodiversity of life on earth. Darwin's theory of evolution ONLY addresses earthly life's diversity, as does biology. It's a shame that Pro's teachers did not believe in the big bang theory, but I must stress here that the big bang is a matter of cosmology NOT biology; we shouldn't be talking about the big bang in a debate about biology. Pro asserts: "The discussion of the foundation of the universe is extremely important to a biology curriculum because it provides an explanation for how diverse life forms are on our planet. " My response: Nope. Let me make an analogy. If you're a statistician for baseball players, stats that accrue during baseball games are your subject area. How the game got started, or how baseball was founded, or even the formation of the stadium in which the game is being played are all irrelevant to the changes in statistics during the game. Statistics presupposes that a game has started, the sport of baseball already exists, and the stadium in which the statistics are changing already exists. Well, biology presupposes that life, the earth, and the universe all exist. Biology focuses on the changes during life, like statistics focus on the changes during the baseball game. So, like the origins of baseball and stadiums are largely irrelevant to in-game-statistics, the origins of the universe and earthly life are largely irrelevant to in-life-changes. Would you say that the origins of the stadium provide an explanation of the changes in statistics in a baseball game? That should work as an analogy. So then Pro takes a shot at evolution: "The problem with [evolution] is that there are gaps in the fossil record where these evolutionary developments should be clearly evident." My response: Gaps in the fossil record are not indicative of a problem with evolution. I shall supply another analogy. Let's take the languages of Spanish, Italian, and French. We know they are three different languages, they exist today, and have existed in history. We also know that these three languages come from a COMMON language, Latin. How do we know this? When you look at the words, structure, syntax, phonemics, phonetics, and semantics of Latin, you find those exact same/similar characteristics in Spanish, French, and Italian, just like you find the exact same/similar genetic characteristics of apes in humans, homo habilis, and homo erectus. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... Not to misrepresent Pro, but I'm sure they believe that Spanish comes from Latin. So I could ask Pro: What's the missing language between Latin and Spanish? Do you know of Splatin? Or maybe you've heard of Latinish? Nope, no one has, and no one needs Splatin or Latinish (missing fossils) to explain that Spanish comes from Latin. We have enough evidence WITHOUT a transitional language (transitional form) to explain Spanish is a descendant of Latin. Just like we have enough genetic evidence WITHOUT other transitional fossils to demonstrate that humans come from apes. You might even call Spanish a modern Latin language, like you might call humans modern apes. Furthermore, when you keep demanding transitional forms, you create an infinite god of the gaps argument, because if we were to find Splatin somewhere in our history, we then would create a new gap between Latin and Splatin, and a second new gap between Splatin and Spanish. What we have: Latin -->?-->Spanish If we found a transitional language: Latin-->?-->Splatin-->?-->Spanish Notice after finding "Splatin" (a missing language) two more gaps (question marks) are made. If we find the next transitional languages, like Latsplatin and Splatpanish, there would be four new gaps and so on. One could say, linguists have more gaps in the history of languages than ever before... I'll bet you've never thought of language being evidence for evolution before, but it's such a good analogy. So the next time you hear someone say, "Where are the transitional fossils from apes to humans?" You can reply, "Where is Splatin?" Pro then brings up: "Furthermore, the scientific community has been able to produce very few fossils from the period before the creation of the Universe (using young-earth Creationism estimates: 8000 to 12000 years)." My response: Saying that the universe is only 12,000 years old is like saying that the distance between New York and Los Angeles is 10 feet. Either way, there are tons of fossils well over 12,000 years old. We have fossils of primates from the basal Eocene epoch that are 55 million years old. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... We have great ape fossils of H. laietanus that are 10 million years old. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... We have a hominid species' fossils that are 4 million years old. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... All of these examples indicate that we have fossils older than Creationism's idea of the age of the universe. Pro then takes a shot at carbon dating: "The principal means of dating the fossils that the scientific community has discovered is carbon dating, which is unreliable at best." My response: Carbon dating is very reliable within its range of 25,000 to 50,000 years. Thus carbon dating is not the "principle means" of dating fossils that are millions of years old, rather potassium-argon dating suffices for such dating. Potassium 40 is an isotope of potassium that decays to argon at a fixed half-life of like 1.5 billion years, so its decay in the geological strata where we find these ancient fossils can adequately account for fossils of millions of years old. Carbon 14 dating is very reliable when we have plant fossils, because the ratio of carbon 14 to carbon 12 in the atmosphere at any given point matches the ratio of carbon 14 to carbon 12 in any living plant; all plants absorb the carbon 14 from the atmosphere. Plants cannot absorb carbon 14 if they are dead, and plants are fossilized while alive; they then die. This means that at the time of the fossilization of a plant, the plant has the exact amount of carbon 14 that was in the atmosphere at the time of the plant's death. We can count the half life of decayed carbon 14 back to stable carbon 12 and determine the age of that plant. Since all plants absorb carbon 14 from the atmosphere while living, carbon dating of fossilized plants is reliable. Pro mentions DNA. I will say that DNA is a large part of biology, way more so than it is in chemistry (although I have taught chemistry lessons using DNA as an example of a complex molecule), and it is very important to evolution. DNA's origins are less important when talking about biology, because again, biology presupposes DNA's existence. But I am a science guy, so I will briefly demonstrate how organic compounds, like amino acids, RNA, and DNA can come from inorganic compounds. In chemistry, a compound is organic if it is covalently bonded to carbon. There are many inorganic compounds that contain carbon, just not covalently bonded, so the difference between inorganic carbon compounds and organic carbon compounds is not that significant. The Miller-Urey experiment in the 50's demonstrated that with an atmosphere, water salinity, electricity, and inorganic compounds likely of an earlier earth, inorganic compounds will produce organic amino acid compounds. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... "Sixty years after the seminal Miller-Urey experiment that abiotically produced a mixture of racemized amino acids, we provide a definite proof that this primordial soup, when properly cooked, was edible for primitive organisms." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... Also, these amino acids that were produced can fold onto each other and become biologically active like RNA. "The sequence of the amino acid chain causes the polypeptide to fold into a shape that is biologically active. The amino acid sequences of proteins are encoded in the genes." http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov... I honestly don't care that several studies show that "DNA had less than 1 chance in 10 to the 40,000 power to evolve via natural process." I respond to evidence that demonstrates that life can come from non-life, and I welcome anyone to check my citations to learn about this fact called abiogenesis, though it has little to do with a biology curriculum. To conclude: 1. Pro, please understand that biology is a very specific discipline that focuses on the biodiversity of life on earth. Invoking the big bang and the origins of life to explain the biodiversity of life on earth is simply as irrelevant as invoking the origins of a stadium or baseball itself to explain in-game-statistics. 2. Gaps in the fossil record between Ape and Human are like the gap between Latin and Spanish, or the gap between Latin and French...the gaps do not indicate a lack of common descent. 3. Carbon (my tattoo avatar) dating is reliable, in fact I argue some of the most reliable radiometric dating, but it is not used for the millions of years old fossils. Potassium argon dating is used instead, and potassium 40's half life allows for such. 4. DNA is important to biology, but its origins are less so...even still, I have provided data for that as well. Creationism should not be a major part of the biology curriculum, because evolution correctly explains the biodiversity of life on earth, and evolution needs no help from supernature (creationism) to do so.