It is urgent that something be done about the frequent attempts to censor evolution and/or promote creationism in the public school classrooms. For at least the past thirty years (not counting the period between the Scopes Trial and the 1980’s, which as far as I know didn’t have the outbursts we have seen recently), there have been repeated and concerted efforts to downplay evolution or stick creationism beside it as a genuine alternative. This controversy will either die in the coming few decades or it will not. Though I am skeptical about the creationist movement dying off or becoming a fringe position within society at large, there are reasons to think it may happen. Education has increased vastly, and information about evolution is easily accessible, moreso, I think, than in previous decades. Whether creationism will die or thrive, the shocking argument I intend to advocate will hold either way.
It may only be a matter of time before creationists find a legal loophole and drive their case home. It would be prudent to beat them to the task and find some way to compromise or partially satisfy their desires. However, we cannot sacrifice scientific integrity and allow creationism to be taught in a science class. Even creationists should agree that we ought not, at least under most circumstances, teach anything in the classroom except the consensus viewpoint of scientists. Not everyone’s pet theories and beliefs need be taught to kids (that would take up too much time, and be dangerously irresponsible) and it really doesn’t matter how layman believe a theory, because layman can not be expected to know as much as experts are.
Although it is not typical for science teachers, or history teachers, to teach anything at all about fringe beliefs (there is no place for the flat earth theory or holocaust denial in either setting) we must remember that a very large percentage of adults in the country believe in creationism, and under those circumstances it is reasonable to teach something about it. “Teaching something about it” does not mean that it is to be presented as a reasonable viewpoint, what this means, is, for example, if Holocaust deniers made up a huge percentage of US adults, it would be a good idea to do things like address and refute the anti-holocaust theories in the history book.
I suggest that high-schoolers ought to have a mandatory one-semester philosophy class in which the creation/evolution debate is used as the central example. We might take the route of designing a specifically pro-evolution, anti-creationism course, but I think in all probability this would only make the problems we have with creationists worse than they are now, and might even make many public school students feel as if they are being brainwashed. So if we do not design the course that way, how would it be designed? We might opt to have one evolutionist and one creationist or IDer write up a long essay or short book to make their side of the case. The problem that I have with this is that creationists and IDers tend to propound so many factual errors and blatant misuses of statistics that it would be irresponsible to present it to students. Even if the creationist were to have their essay fact-checked and corrected before being presented, I fear that nearly everything they had to say would be gone by the time we came up with something suitable. There’s another issue; we do not want evolution to be argued for poorly and creationists do not want their position argued badly, and such would be the risk present here.
So here’s my solution: The class reads both William Paley’s Natural Theology and Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species. The students will be asked to write position papers on both. I think this would be the best solution available: Most creationists give, as their main argument, something like Paley’s watchmaker analogy (Michael Behe uses the same analogy except with Mt. Rushmore), and most evolutionists give basically the same arguments as Darwin (with the exception of some arguments from genetics and the fossil record that weren’t available in Darwin’s time). I believe this would have the effect of satisfying the creationists, and it would have the side-effect of getting kids interested in science, philosophy, and critical thought.
I have heard other evolutionists worry that “teach ’em both” might confuse kids, make them less critical or more scientifically illiterate than they already are. This point is usually made in the context of teaching creationism specifically in a science classroom and in a very different way than I am suggesting. I strongly doubt that this point would apply to my suggestion. Kids are already very confused, uncritical, and ignorant about evolution, often having no more knowledge than the weak and very basic overview of evolution they receive in high school (which they may not even get, thanks to certain high school teachers) combined with the ignorant rhetoric and propaganda fed to them by their local Sunday school. I believe evolution can win in the marketplace of ideas (it already has, among biologists), and I’m confident that this will only be another victory.
I know that creationists will find plenty to disagree with here. I wonder if we can agree on the proposition that there should be a Darwin/Paley class. Can we?
