Delaware School District case

I don't intend to make a thoughtful post today. Instead, I intend to make a post about lack of thought on the part of some people. I've mentioned before that when it comes to how many types of life evolved, I'm in the Evolutionist camp. What I don't get is people who insist that a book last written 2000 years ago contains valid scientific theories on how the earth was created and why there is a variety of species.

In Pennsylvania, my home state and indeed a beautiful place – if you don't visit the coal regions – I don't quite get why a school board would even pass this. Actually, I do. Although the story I link to happens in the southeastern corner in a small town. Pennsylvania's small towns tend to be highly religious and conservative. Where I live iin the North Central part of the state it is also an extremely conservative and religious place. You can tell this because the bars in my hometown nearly outnumber the churches.

Folks, creationism and intelligent design are not scientific theories and should not be taught as part of your child's biology curriculum. If you want to add a High school course that exposes people to the beliefs of others, which I'm all for, you can include a unit on various creation stories in a theology class. What makes you so sure your view of how the world came to be is the correct one? (If you feel the need to take me up on this do not quote the Bible. I want to know why you're absolutely sure bronze age tribesmen know more about biological theory than current biologists. God tells me so is not an acceptable answer. He was working through human agents who despite their best efforts are never unbiased.)

Nor do I understand as people who insist evolution is godless. Anyone who has actually studied the theory knows it stops short of mentioning God and it does so for a reason. If you study how neatly DNA fits together and how simple it actually is. (If like me, you have a programming background, it's a lot like Assembly language.) In fact my feeble study of evolutionary DNA theory convinces me that a creator was indeed behind it.

Follow my argument for a bit. An omnipotent god could choose to develop the universe in anyway He wished. Now, I assume God is a busy person with a universe to run. He may be omnipotent, but I assume he wants to make his work as easy as possible, so He set up a system that allows species to evolve with little or no intervention from Him. At least I think that's how I'd do it, if I were charged with creating a universe. Thankfully I'm not, because I can't quite imagine what a universe I ran would be like.

The overall point is that Intelligent Design and Creationism have no place in a science classroom. They are simply not scientific theories as there is no way to disprove them. People like the Delaware school district board are doing their students a great disservice by suggesting there are 'gaps' in Evolutionary theory and saying it's not a fact. It merely means the school board is trying to impose their religious views on their students. It would be better, Delaware School district, if you taught your students to think rather than force your commendable but blind faith in this issue on your students. God gave everyone a brain. I pray our schools will teach our children to learn to use it.