CREATIONISM: WHAT I WAS TAUGHT

Wayne Everett Orgar

December 2005

When I was in the tenth grade at Eastridge High School, the subject of evolution was part of biology class curriculum for the year. My teacher, Mr. Lehr, introduced the topic with a brief explanation at the beginning of the study. He quite simply said that we are free to believe what we were told to believe by our parents or church about creation but as far as this class was concerned, he would present the facts of biology as they relate to the process of evolution. We should learn these facts and be prepared to answer questions on tests about these facts. He pointed out that answering these questions with information as presented in class did not require that we change our religious beliefs.

I was relieved. I could in rote fashion memorize and regurgitate information on tests as I did for other subjects. I had been taught that the universe had been created in six 24-hours days. I believed in creationism, the Jewish and Christian god Yahweh and that Jesus had existed and died for my sins so I would go to heaven, not hell. I had been taught to believe that an imaginary supernatural being made the world and that I should be afraid of this being. Believing through faith required no homework unlike the work required to discover and verify the facts of evolution.

I didn't start to suspect that something was wrong with creationism until in my senior year when my Sunday School teacher tried to rectify Biblical creationism with the facts of evolution. The tortured diagrams trying to correlate the appearance of various species with the Genesis account(s) on first glance seemed to explain it all away. However, it seemed too simplistic an account of the facts. An awful lot was left out of the explanation. I knew that there was a lot more facts about evolution to explain away than was presented in Sunday School. There was no way to gloss over all the evolutionary lines of species that became extinct. This also showed no intelligent purpose behind evolution. The damage had been done. I decided to learn more about this topic when I got to college.

The debate still persists between old-earth creationists and young-earth creationists. Hebrew linguists haven't helped for they also disagree on the correct interpretation of the word "day" in Genesis. Really, it wasn't an argument that a day means a long period of time until the facts of our universe made it necessary to contrive this longer interpretation around the mid-1800s. How could all those Hebrew scholars for thousands of years be so wrong about what their language means? It is obvious that the generations of humans described in the Bible do not account for the length of time our species has existed.

There was no hue and cry over the creationism/evolution debate in Rochester, NY at that time or in Ohio or Pennsylvania for that matter. Of course, fundamental Christians were always upset about the facts of evolution being taught in science classes. They have always had the paranoid idea that evolution is a conspiracy by scientists to deceive theists rather than to discover truth. It is in recent decades that conservative Christians have gathered the economic and political (not scientific) power to attempt to force their religious belief of creationism into the schools.

Evolution is a process supported by an enormous body of facts (not faith) that can be verified and that independently converge to the same conclusion from several different scientific disciplines such as biology, geology, biochemistry, paleontology, biogeography, and embryology. Creationism and intelligent design do not come close to the facts gathered for evolution. I learned that creationism is empty talk in its various forms.

Update-2/2/06: By now, most readers will have heard about December's court decision in Dover, Pennsylvania regarding Intelligent Design. Elsewhere on my site, I have pointed out the deception employed by Christian leaders. Intelligent Design is another such deception. The judge in this case pointed out the deception employed by the Christian school board members in trying to hide their true motivation - trying to force their sectarian religious views into the school. The ruling was that Intelligent Design is not science and does not belong in science classes. Complexity in no way implies design. Simplicity is more supportive of design. This religious/political fight will continue but where all the scientific facts can be put forth, Intelligent Design and other forms of Creationism will fail to be supported.

Suggested Sources on the Facts of Evolution

1. National Center for Science Education ( http://www.ncseweb.org)

2. The National Academy of Sciences ( http://nationalacademies.org/evolution/)

3. Talkdesign.org ( http://www.talkdesign.org/introfaq.html)

4. UC Berkeley ( http://evolution.berkeley.edu)

To understand the failings of Intelligent Design

1. Unitelligent Design. Mark Perakh. Prometheus Books. Amherst, NY. 2004.

2. Not By Design: The Origin of the Universe. Victer Stenger. Prometheus Books. Amherst, NY. 1988.