My school, in contradiction to the majority of the public in Kentucky, decided to teach and accept evolution. In Randy Moore’s article, “Teaching Evolution: Do State Standards Matter?” there are statistics showing that the schools in Kentucky do an unsatisfactory job teaching evolution. “Sixty-nine percent of biology teachers want creationism to be taught in science classes. Twenty-one percent of teachers feel pressured to decrease their coverage of evolution or to increase their coverage of creationism, or both” (378). Why is it that creationism is favored over evolution? It is important for people to learn about different religions and their effects on the world; however, it is ridiculous to ignore the evidence of evolution. Those who try to cover up the evidence that has been found to support evolution are destroying an opportunity for the young developing mind to expand. If creationism is the only explanation taught in science classes then how do we explain existence to those who do not believe in any god? This is not to say that evolution is absolutely true, but it is a strong possibility.
WHO ME?
The belief that evolution and religion can coexist is best shown through John Scopes. Scopes is known for the now legendary, “Monkey Trial”. He was on trial for going against the state of Tennessee’s laws and teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution in his science classroom. What is most interesting about Scopes is brought up in the J.W.D. article, “Of Many Things,” in which he states that John Scopes converted to Catholicism in 1930. J.W.D. informs the readers that Scopes was not an atheist yet he still believed in and taught the theory of evolution. He goes on to show that the Catholic Church does accept the theory of evolution by remarking on the pope’s response to it. The pope feels that “the theory of the evolutionary origin of the human body does not conflict with the Catholic faith so long as it does not deny that souls are immediately created by God” (2). Larson and Witham, authors of “Debating evolution: The God who would intervene,” also quote the pope saying that evolution is, “more that a hypothesis, as long as one accepts that God intervenes the to create the soul” (1026). They also list multiple churches that accept evolution some of which are: Catholics, Protestants, Episcopal, United Methodist, and the American Jewish Congress. If these churches don’t feel that evolution is threatening their religion then why are the public schools, that are not suppose to let religion interfere with the state, worried about teaching it? People are fighting to keep the theory of evolution out of the classrooms because it is a threat to their faith, but at no means should they try to keep it out of the public schools.