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Teaching Creationism in Schools

School systems are struggling with the dilemma of whether or not to teach creationism as an alternative view to evolution theory. If, as many scientific creationists believe, God's message is important in defining the content, aims, and conditions of educational practice, then creationism does belong in the classroom. However, those who propose that creationism is not science, and that "creation science" is a misnomer, are opposed to the intervention of religion into the public educational program; after all, public educational programs should be separate from concerns of the church.

Despite separation of church and state, religious ideologies are hardly ever without consequences for the practice of education. Fundamentalist Christians who support a creationist theory will differ from liberal Christians who have no problem reconciling their religious lives with evolutionary theory. Those who say that only Darwin was right, and that creationism is really "anti-science," will be at total odds with adamant creationists; somewhere in the fray are the scientific creationists who use scientific terminology to prove that only life can come from other life.

The phrase scientific creationism came into use in the early 1970s after a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1968. After the court's 1968 decision which overturned the 1928 Arkansas law banning the teaching of evolution, it became increasingly clear to creationists that they would get into the public schools of America only by advocating an alternative scientific theory.

For Ronald L. Numbers, the William Coleman Professor of the History of Science and Medicine at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the topic is not purely academic. He was raised as a creationist, and he has a reputation as a fair-minded scholar--one who could, with credibility, reconcile theology with science. As Numbers explains in an interview:

In the early 1970s, creationists made a conscious and...

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Teaching Creationism in Schools. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 03:12, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1692829.html