Should We Teach Creationism in Science Class?

    
     Mere outline of this event is that, the creationism supporting organization in korea submitted petition towards Ministry of Education, demanding deletion and rectification of contents about an archaeopteryx and evolution of horse on December 2011, and April 2012. As the result, Ministry of Education replied that they will delete and rectify as petition’s demands. This happening was hidden to the public until May. The situation got problematic after Nature published article with topic “South Korea surrenders to creationist demands (Publishers set to remove examples of evolution from high-school text books)” This article raised high controversy. And as the reaction, academia related to evolution immediately submitted petition rebutting the petition submitted by organization that supports creationism.

     On what logics the organization took issue with archaeopteryx and evolution of horse in the high-school text book? Before I looked at the petition, I had slight expectation of somewhat creative ideas. However, my expectation turned into sigh. Let’s start with the organization’s argument with archaeopteryx. They said “Because Academia regard archaeopteryx as extinct bird or extinct dinosaur with feathers, the text book’s contents which says archaeopteryx is intermediate stage between dinosaurs and birds should be erased.” This basically means that archaeopteryx is not the intermediate stage between dinosaurs and birds. Of course this is nonsense. Every Academia across the world believes that archaeopteryx does play role as intermediate stage. And there are also other species that play roles of archaeopteryx. Archaeopteryx is indeed the important evidence of showing evolutions, and there is no problem with the text book. Then how about the organization’s argument with evolution of horse? They claim that fossils which shows evolution process of horse getting bigger and reduction of number of toes are just mere imagination. This is also just forced interpretation of the organization.

     This happening ended with notifying the importance of education of evolutionary theory. The conclusion of this event ended by Ministry of Education stating “Contents related to evolutionary theory should never be deleted, however contents that may raise misunderstanding should be stated in more details with modern science findings.”

     But still, I don’t feel comfortable though the happening has ended. According to the research of EBS done in 2009, about 30% of korean do not admit evolutionary theory. Moreover, about 60% of korean answered “We should teach creationism theory with evolutionary theory.” Something more ridiculous is that for those who answered they don’t believe evolutionary theory, most of them said “They don’t believe evolutionary theory because it is not scientific.” How should I accept this statistics? Maybe lack of education on evolutionary theory is problem. However, I think people’s misconception about science is something that makes people to not admit evolutionary theory as science. Furthermore, maybe the misconceptions are the cause of people to misbelieve creationism as science. What kind of misconceptions of science do people have in order to claim such nonsense. What kind of activities are science? How science can be differ from just mere belief?

     Let’s start with this question. What is science? According to Popper, science can be science if it can be disproved. Popper said continuous criticism is the main basis of science and the source of science’s rationality, and objectivity. Science must fulfil, appropriate reasoning and process of checking again and again.

     Here goes the next question. Is creationism science? Creationism is basically not able to disprove. How can there be such counterevidence when they say “The god designed it.” There can be no checking process nor reasoning. Creationism cannot gain rationality, and objectivity in them. Therefore, creationism cannot be claimed as science.

     The last question is should we teach creationism is science class? As I mentioned earlier 60% of Koreans answered “yes” to this question. My answer is no. Teaching pseudo science would bring regression of human intelligence. Especially creationism which just criticize others without new hypothesis and expectation is just a mere negative campaign. And it obviously make sense to teach science in science class. There is no room for creationism to take in science class.