Evolution and the School Curriculum

The question:

Why is evolution no longer part of the standard school curriculum?

The reply:

The news that evolution is no longer being taught to Ontario's elementary and secondary students will come as an encouragement to some and an alarm to others, depending on where your own views sit.

However, the real news was not explored in this article - the reasons "why"?

It is true that proponents of creation have been effective in changing science curricula, but this isn't the point. It was surely true that the proponents of evolution were even more effective in banning teaching about creation out of the schools almost a century ago. The most famous example of this was the "Scopes Monkey Trial" in the southern U.S.

What is really interesting is why educators and school boards are sitting up and paying attention to these age-old arguments.

Basically, the theory of evolution has been substantially disproven and completely abandoned by the leading scientists themselves!

Darwin's original theory was that new species prospered and survived because they were uniquely adapted to a changed environment, while old species who could not change did not survive. The best known examples given - when I was in school ! - to support this were black moths in industrial England that outlasted white ones, and different coloured finches that survived predators because their colouring blended in with the background.

All of Darwin's examples were within individual species - these are variations of different members of a species. Even Darwin said that his theory would be disproven if science couldn't find examples - in life or fossils - to show that these variations and adaptations occur from species to species.

Over a hundred years later, no such examples have ever been found. The final nail in the coffin of Darwin's theory came with the discovery of DNA and a better understanding of genetics. Clearly, fish can't learn how to develop lungs and breathe air, reptiles can't learn how to develop feathers and fly, etc. That's not how genetics work.

So, scientists in the past 30 years have steadily - but quietly - abandoned the "theory" of evolution. And diehard humanists like Stephen Gould of Harvard have been passionately seeking an explanation of how complex life can be here, without God the creator.

Gould's latest effort is called the "hopeful monster" hypothesis. That DNA in one member of a species undergoes massive and radical mutations, creating a new hopeful species, which will usually die out, but once in a while will become a species and replace its old species, because its mutations add up to a big advantage. Gould's explanation tries to bridge the gaps in the fossil record (no "missing links" or slow evolution).

Others have their own competing hypotheses. And, of course, religious creation is still proposed as a viable explanation for the observations we see around us.

Yes, the real reason evolution is not taught in our schools is because there is no "theory" of evolution that has wide support among scientists themselves.

Dr. Science

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