Evolution & Creationism in Education

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Evolution & Creationism in Education

The twentieth century has witnessed the escalation of the creation - evolution debate through famous court cases and Supreme Court decisions on the teaching of evolution in public schools, culminating most recently in a Kansas Board of Education decision. As this highly controversial issue of the teaching of evolution in American classrooms rages on, it may be difficult for some individuals of Christian faith to form an alternative belief other than the extremes of creationism and evolutionism. Before discussing this issue any further, when I refer to strict beliefs in creationism or evolution as extreme views I am not necessarily implying that they are wrong, but are simply two views on completely opposite sides of the creation - evolution debate spectrum. For some creationists, accepting God as Creator as told in the Book of Genesis means the simultaneous rejection of evolutionary theory. For some evolution believers, accepting evolution ultimately results in the replacement of God as Creator with the process of evolution.

After reading the preceding two sentences, we can come to the conclusion that the creation - evolution debate is really a matter of faith, either there is a Creator or there is no Creator. However, at the same time the main battle of the debate is over what is taught in our public schools. This creates a problem, particularly for creationists, because separation of church and state keeps religious criticism to evolutionary theory away from the classroom. The Kansas Board of Education decision to eliminate evolution and the Big Bang Theory from statewide tests reflects the resulting pressure on school officials to chose between what many have come to view as two mutu...

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...l Bible Society.

Johnson, P. E. (1999). The Church of Darwin. Human Events, 55(32), 16.

Lane, C. (1999). Devolution. New Republic, 221(11/12), 6.

Marcus, D. L. (1999, August). Charles Darwin gets thrown out of school: A Kansas ban on the mention of evolution. U. S. News & World Report, 127, 32.

Merriam Webster's collegiate dictionary (10th ed.). (1995). Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, Inc.

Miller, L. R. (1997). Must Christians chose between evolution and creationism? http://www.goshen.edu/bio/Biol410/Biol410SrSemPapers97/millerl.html (1999, November 1).

The Scopes "monkey trial." http://www.dimensional.com/~randl/scopes.htm (1999, November 1).

Wright, R. T. (1989). Biology: Through the eyes of faith. New York, NY: HarperSanFrancisco.

Zimmerman, J. (1999). Relatively speaking: Creationism's political evolution. New Republic, 221(10), 13-14.

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