The Evolution Debate

This past Sunday I was having a “family” dinner with some of my friends, and we were watching the Simpsons while eating. I’m a big fan of the Simpsons, but I do not like the way that they portray Christians. This particular episode was on evolution and basically they had the Christians “ignorantly” protesting the teaching of evolution in schools. Now I actually enjoy arguing against evolution, but typically I won’t start the debate since the majority of people simply don’t care. Then tonight on my way home from the lab I was thinking about it and decided I should write a blog about it.

My first thought was to point out all the weaknesses in the evolutionary theory, but then I talked myself out of it because it isn’t fair to ridicule a theory without some one offering a counterpoint. Then I thought I should point out the strong case for intelligent design (e.g. irreducible complexity...I highly recommend Darwin's Black Box by Michael Behe), but I talked myself out of this because I simply haven’t read anything on it in over a year. So the arguments are quite foggy in my head, and I won’t be able to do them justice. As a result I decided to approach this from a more universal point.

People argue that the “fact” of evolution should be taught in school or that intelligent design should also be taught along side evolution. I would like to present a different question: why should either be taught to grade or high school students? They say evolution (I’m referring to Neo-Darwnism macro evolution) is a scientific fact, but it has never and will never be observed in nature or the lab. Micro-evolution (small variations between generations within a given species) is a fact, but it in no way proves macro-evolution…in fact one might say designing something to be able to adapt to its environment supports the theory of a designer. Now all I’m saying is that evolution is only a theory and that it should be left out of schools because it is only a theory. It is in no way comparable to the scientific fact of gravity, which has been observed both in nature and the laboratory. So I say why don’t we just teach the youth of America the facts of science that we know, and leave the theories to academia. I don’t see it likely that any theory about how polymer additives reduce drag in pipes will be presented in high school (this is the research I work on and the phenomena is a well established fact, but the mechanism of how it works is still theory), but the scientific community insists on teaching the theory of evolution…why? So don’t teach evolution or intelligent design…teach them science and the ability to think objectively.

Another interesting point to me is that this is being pushed so hard into schools in spite of the fact that only 15% of Americans believe it…seriously check out this CBS News report from 2005. 51% say that God made us the way we are right now and another 30% say that we evolved but with the guidance of God (I won’t but I can show how weak this stance is…perhaps another time and place). The reality is that those that believe evolution treat it as a religion and force it on others under the guise of science (as someone who loves science this really frustrates me). I am happy to see that they aren’t hiding it as much anymore…why else would they start putting their Darwin fish on their cars other than to be like Christians and proclaim their faith.