Strange Science

Young Earth Creationists, Gap Theorists, Day-Age Theorists, Evolutionists and Theistic Evolutionists…

These are the names given by our society today, to five siblings who just cannot stop arguing. More specifically, they are the names given to five classifications of believers (not so much Christian, but faith-based). When asking any Christian, Catholic, or Jew in this day and age, about their thoughts on the creation of the Earth, you will generally hear that it was “created in six days”. Unfortunately, because of studies held in Geology and Biology, people are beginning to differ increasingly on just what that “six days” was. The question “How old is the Earth?” has been tossed back and forth by many theologians for the last couple centuries. It is no new argument, nor is it ancient. Just recently, though, the argument has been picking up considerable amounts of steam. With the “Intelligent Design” movement sweeping the United States, zealous activists no longer need to feel as though they are the minority. The reality of it is that the number of people who believe in the theory of “Intelligent Design” is increasing quite rapidly.

The original aim of the YEC movement was to introduce Creationism, or Intelligent Design into the K-12 curriculum as an alternative to evolutionary theory as an explanation for the origins of life. They have slowly changed their game plan to include discussing neither topic in school (which I agree with to some extent). The reasoning behind this is simple: If we had to present every possible theory concerning the origins of life to our children, our science books would be huge and the classes would take forever. Not only that, our Science curriculum would have to be renamed Studies in Religion and Pseudo-Philosophy 103. So the most logical solution posed by the Young Earth Creationists is this: Explain how species can vary within their own genus, but don’t extrapolate that explanation to include formation of the entire Universe. While this seems like a harmless solution to the problem, it’s not easily attainable. Evolutionists in recent days have proven to be just as zealous as Young Earth Creationists. Both sides hold that their theory is one of significant “scientific importance” and should be heard in the classroom.

I for one, think neither is really that important to the public school system curriculum. I feel that to discuss the origins of life in the classroom, would be inherently dangerous to any single belief system. This comes from the fact that Biblical testimony states “six days” and public school science curriculum says “millions of years”. The reality of the problem is that neither testimony nor scientific theory is backed by any undeniable proof. Undeniable proof is the direct spawn of eyewitness testimony. While the Biblical account claims to be that of an eyewitness, there is no one alive today that can confirm that they witnessed either the event, or its documentation. On the same token, the evolutionist explanation of the origin of life, is derived from the extrapolation of mathematical and geographical data that still holds the assumption that “it happened that way”. This theory, while understandable, must still succumb to the fact that it is not undeniably provable. Therefore, to state in any form of public textbook that the “Earth is billions of years old”, or to in any way imply that anything definitely happened “millions of years ago” would be a violation of California Education Code 60200 (c3), which states that “California Textbooks shall be factually accurate and incorporate principles of instruction reflective of current and confirmed research.” We just simply have no way of knowing for sure. So, why teach our children that we do? That responsibility should be left up to family members.

So far we have only really covered maybe three of the five classifications that were mentioned in the beginning. Concerning Day-Age Theorists and Gap Theorists, these are merely compromises with evolution and the “millions of years” found in our textbooks. More namely Geology and Biology. These two theories serve a less than noble or noble cause, depending on your views. They chiefly try to prove that the scientific theory of evolution, and the age of the Earth as viewed by science, are not in conflict with the Genesis account. Once the views from both sides are presented, they accomplish what they came to accomplish. The Day-Age Theory states that each day in the “six day creation” was a different evolutionary time period. The Gap-Theory states that there may have been a large gap of time between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2, thus fitting in perfectly with Geology as taught in the classroom. These two philosophies, while they make sense, aren’t spelled out clearly enough in the Genesis account to be considered to possess empirical evidence of an eyewitness account in the Holy Bible. Plus, there are far too many references spoken from Jesus’ mouth stating a six-day creation for either of these theories to pick up overwhelming support. Ask anyone who has not been taught evolution to read Genesis and tell you how long it took to create the Earth. You will always get six days. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the point I am trying to make. All of these explanations are theories. So why not include all or teach none? They are all very plausible explanations for the origin of life. All of them, including evolution, are based on some form of assumption. Thus, they will ALL require faith and belief in some form or another. While I don’t believe faith based activities should be kept out of schools, I do believe that if any faith based principles or events, such as the origin of life and the universe, are pushed into history or science textbooks, those books should only be used in private schools or not at all. I say if we are going to teach our children about evolution in the public school classrooms, lets keep it factual…not philosophical. Keep discussions of origins out of school curriculum.