5th News Special Report: Evolution and Creation

evolution and creation Rick Roberts good evening where did we come from did all living things evolve gradually from a common ancestor or are we the product of a creator evolution versus creation an old argument that made its way back in the into the news last week when a court hearing was held in California Kelley Seagraves the director of the creation Science Research Center in San Diego brought the suit against the state of California over the teaching of evolution Seagraves walked into a Sacramento courtroom last week to challenge California's right to teach evolution is the only valid scientific theory of the origin of man it's a trial many called Scopes in Reverse referring to the famous Scopes Monkey Trial 55 years ago when biology teacher John Scopes was found guilty of teaching evolution which was illegal under Tennessee law today in science classes throughout the country evolution is the theory that man and other living things evolved gradually from a common ancestor is the accepted scientific explanation we fear that's a violation of the religious rights of my children after our they do believe in God and they believe that God created all things and so they learn one thing on Sunday and Sunday school or one thing in the home and now the school is telling them something else and I'm telling it as if this is fact and they must believe that during the first day in court Seagraves attorney attempted to reduce the legal argument to a simple question are his clients religious beliefs being violated he's got an absolute right to those beliefs and he's got an absolute right that this government protect those beliefs so long as their sincerely held the attorney for California schools was going to broaden the trial and argue that evolution is based on scientific evidence and creation is not these people are going to have to show that they are a scientific theory we did not avert that they are a scientific theory or an alternative scientific theory and without such an event without proof to that fact their complaint must fall the judge however did not let either side introduce testimony regarding the merits of evolution and creation and last Friday the judge ruled that the teaching of evolution does not violate the rights of those who believe in creation but the George judge ordered the California school district to remind all of its schools of the official policy that evolution is taught as theory not Dogma but the issue may not die in California fundamentalist Christian groups say the trial was only the beginning of a nationwide crusade against teaching evolution in schools without giving equal time to creation last year the Iowa Senate defeated a bill that would have required a balanced treatment of evolution and creation in public schools a similar bill has been introduced in the Senate this year in five TVs Rob Downey talked with the bill's sponsor well the reason we need the bill because many in the education field and in sense the science field are so biased that they don't want the other side to be also evaluated and made evident to the teachers in the state that they can teach it many of them think that they cannot educators come to you asking for a bill such as some have yet whereas most of your demand for this bill papers no it's not from a particular pocket but it's from individuals in various areas what do you think it'd be the main benefit do you think students right now are getting a well-rounded education so to speak some are and some are for instance in Cedar Falls there is the program put in place where they do you use both models but in many places they do not and some think they can't some don't because they don't want to because of their bias and so you have this old mix the issue of whether or not students should be taught creationism alongside evolution centers around one key question is it a scientific theory or just a religious conviction evolutionists call their view of man's beginning scientific because it was reached through experimentation and observation but creationists argue that while their review was not reached in the same way it is still a scientific theory and should be taught as such evolutionist counter this position with the charge that to label as scientific a theory which is based on supernatural elements is ludicrous the very idea of including supernatural intervention is foreign to science and this is the essence this is the very essence of creationism we're talking here about miraculous events that are being used to explain if you will a the spectrum of life as we now see it on the face of the earth science makes the effort to entertain seriously those proposals that are brought before it and it does so and then whatever proposals are brought before it have a very good chance of failing and when they fails I think this will throw them out they don't entertain things in the sense that this concept must survive at all cost this is the way the creationists however entertain their principles and so in in essence they are dealing they are dealing with an ideologies based on faith which which in their mind cannot fail there's no evidence that you could use to convince a creationist that there wasn't the creation it took place or that there was no creator but instead of denying the charge that their theory is unscientific many creationists argue that it is no less provable than evolution evolutionists point out principles of genetic similarities and natural selection is proof of their theory creationists on the other hand site examples of present-day conditions which could have resulted from biblical events probably the most popular is what they perceive as geological evidence of the 40-day flood while evolutionists say that fossils are the result of an evolutionary process creationists claim that they also could have resulted from Noah's Flood in his book scientific creationism dr. Henry Morris claims the research has shown today's geological conditions to be the same as those which would have resulted from such a flood but creationist stress that they are not necessarily touting their theory to be right and the evolutionists to be wrong they just maintain that they're both worthy of instruction Morris probably put it best when he said creation is just as much a science as his evolution and evolution is just as much a religion as his creation another popular criticism of evolution relates to the theories basic tenets of complex organisms developing from simpler ones they claim that no system will grow more complex without the direction of a guiding hand or possibly a creator in this way they dispute the evolutionists belief that life just randomly continued to develop into more and more complex forms they say that without any deliberate direction life would regress not move forward but Patterson flatly denies this view he says the laws of thermodynamics prove that elements do become more complex on their own but some creationists like microbiologist Lloyd Quinn go beyond theological criticism and attack the very beginning of evolution Quinn claims that the evolutionary idea of the sudden appearance of life on earth known as spontaneous generation is physically impossible I don't think any biologists believe in spontaneous generation a life from non-life that no matter how complicated or complex the mixture of chemicals may be that you screw up together it's some unless it's already living it's not going to generate life as a microbiologist neither I nor any of my colleagues ever see spontaneous generations or even the simplest form of life in the test tube it far as we're concerned it's impossible now but we asked Quinn how he explained experiments which have allegedly duplicated the conditions of ancient earth and yielded life this is an unscientific area no one has any way of knowing what the composition of the first atmosphere was back at the time that these people feel life originated you have to make some off the top of your head guesses and you can find people who supposedly are expert in this area who will say that it was rich in oxygen are those thing no it was not there's no oxygen there at all the creationist model presenting the Bible the evolutionary model that has come from the humanists both are models and I think it should be mentioned as as such the religious education belongs in the churches but there is enough support for the evolutionary model for it to be exclusively the only thing that students ever hear about evolutionists like Patterson say however that there is more scientific support for evolution than there is for creationism the majority of the country scientists seem to accept at least the basis of evolution in fact the Iowa Academy of Sciences officially announced their opposition to teaching creationism in the classroom but one intriguing question which arises here is how science teachers who believe in God and the Bible can teach evolution in good conscience the answer lies in a unique reconciliation of evolutionary theory with religious belief this requires the individual to interpret biblical events to be religious descriptions of the events in the evolutionary process for example the idea has been presented that each of the six days which the Bible says it took God to create the earth could have lasted a billion years apiece supporters of this idea say this would satisfy the evolutionist estimation of the Earth's age and the creationist concept of a creator aims high school science teacher Gerald Dunn subscribes to this theory and doesn't think a minimal instruction in creation is harmful I just believe that there set of rules out there and God laid those rules out and those rules and in my estimation took long period of time to go through easy and when it came time for Adam to be there and making him man or for example having any soul that could be done instantaneously even though the body took long periods of time to evolve you see I think that soul part could have been given in a moment or whatever it is do you think creationism should be taught in the classroom well let me put it in a frame of perhaps one hour of time I would say I probably spend about roughly fifteen minutes talking about the scientific creationist point of view concerning evolution and perhaps maybe 45 minutes been talking about the scientific point of view regarding the theory of evolution how do you view both sides well being a scientist of course I I tend to believe in cause and effect and I guess you would say I am personally believe in evolution and however I do feel that there's the other side evolution still theory and I think when you talk about it as a theory it's not facts and so we do tend to present both sides but I admit I don't spend as much time with the scientific creation part of it as I do that yeah the other part why not I feel more comfortable with the scientific part of it my background helps to be science and I'm much more comfortable with that and I'm less comfortable with the the readings of the Bible even though I have read them they're open to interpretation and so forth and I'm just not comfortable with that part of it so there are evolutionists who claim that creationism is not scientific enough to be seriously considered there are creationists who dispute the very core of evolution and then there are men like Gerald Dunn who are able to accept both theories sound confusing it is but if we find it perplexing what about those students who are directly affected by two very divergent theories does it confuse them well it doesn't really confuse me because I won't let it because I'll believe in in the Bible and I just I won't pay attention to what it says in the book you know I'm not that religious but you know let's say in the Bible I think it's pretty true but he teaches us about how people came from fish and Isaac now making had a man coming from the face no if you sit down II think about it for a couple minutes no it doesn't have you confused what do you believe I believe in the combination of the both yeah it does because they tell you in the Bible that God created everything and then you come to school and they tell you that you evolved from the apes or something it's hard to understand you don't know what to believe what conclusions have you reached from studying both ideas I still don't know there's that you're not sure about I mean if you believe in the Bible then you believe in that one and when you come here there's still a lot of doubts about it and they don't know for sure so I still don't know which one because it's you know they contradict each other so much in a moment we'll continue our discussion of evolution and creation with two in-studio guests joining us now are worn dolphin a biology professor at Iowa State University and Burt Wagner who has taught creation creationism to various classes in in Iowa what I'd like to start with you could you just kind of refresh our memory now as to what are we talking about evolution and the scientific case for evolution well the term evolution really has two meanings one to the physical scientist and one to the biological sciences the physical scientists will talk about how the universe has changed over time from the origin event if and the origin event as physical science has shown it to us is really the Big Bang occurring about 20 million years ago our 20 billion excuse me and then coming forward to the present time now we have this particular planet in the universe earth and about 4 and 1/2 billion years ago the conditions on the surface of the earth became such and that living forms could appear that is there was a cool-down in temperature and at that time there is a mixture of inorganic gases and elements on the Earth's surface and there have been some interesting experiments done by Sidney Fox it was a biochemist he used to be here at Iowa State in the biochemistry department and Fox and other associates and have shown that simple gases can combine to form organic kinds of molecules which in turn can form primitive cell like structures no one has created life out of this but we have some interesting hypotheses this might have been the way it occurred for the next four-and-a-half billion years we don't really know other and then what we can look back at and what we can look back at are the fossils and what we see in the fossils are that simpler forms tend to be in the lower sedimentary layers and more complex ones in the upper layers and in the 1940s and 1950s radio chemical dating techniques showed that those layers in fact represent a chronology using such things as potassium argon dating lead and uranium dating that it has been possible to show that the lower layers were laid down billions of years ago and that the upper layers have been laid down more recently so we speak of a fossil record a chronology in the last 20 or 30 years we've had tremendous developments in the field of genetics and what we have seen from the field of genetics is that there can be variation in populations natural selection can act on that variation leading to adaptation the biologists then studying these things in the current world then projects backward in time and says that these things would have applied and could be the means whereby the different forms developed in the fossil record the tremendous diversity that we see there so the scientist is taking data observations from many different fields putting them together into an overall theory and trying to make his explanations in that way we call it the theory of evolution what is that word theory well the scientists the theory into a scientist is different and then say the theory to people around the coffee or in a coffee break there I think it means it's just the best guess whereas in science we speak about gravitational Theory atomic theory and no one doubts that gravity exists no one doubts that atoms exist no one has observed atoms no one has gone in and seen protons and neutrons and electrons yet there are certain predictions you can make with that theory and in making those predictions you find that there are certain consequences likewise and with the theory of evolution some of the facts in the case are that we can see the genetic mechanisms today we can see the fossil record the theory projects back and tries to unite these observations along with observations from the physical sciences and it's a theory that can be tested in fact as a scientist I think there is an experiment that can be done that would actually falsify evolution we do a lot to change my life and that is that if you could prove that all of the organisms that are in the fossil record plus all the organisms that are present today if they occur existed at some time in the past they were all lived at the same time then in fact evolution has problems however that observation has been observations have been carried out in the along this line and the evidence that comes from that is shows that in fact we do have a sequence of organisms represented in the fossil record is that and we do not have the coexistence and so the whole heart of science is one of trying to put forward a theory trying to falsify that theory the theory becomes more and more probable as it resists tests of falsification so I does that answer your question - does it serious mr. Wagner what about a scientific case for creation well I've done a lot to promote this throughout the state I've made presentations to in sirs training teachers at the mass made a Mason City area what are you telling these people what I tell them I'd like to quote from the bill that's in the Senate and this will give you some idea of what we're actually talking about a sudden creation universe energy and life from nothing the inefficiency of mutation and natural selection and bringing about development of all kinds from a single source organism changes only within fixed limits of originally created kinds of plants and animals separate ancestry for man and apes explanation of verse geology by catastrophism including the occurrence of a worldwide flood we disagree with his explanation that these things were laid down over millions of years a relative recent inception of earth and living kinds we're interested in looking at the scientific concepts but to say that the evolutionary viewpoint is the only concept that can be presented in class is discriminatory against a great number of scientists today that say they find a great deal of scientific concepts that support a creation model can you just heard the definitions that I spelled out that would outline the model I've got a great deal of resource material that teachers can use in this area so that the science teachers he walks into class can give the student a scientific theory that is in competition with what the evolutionists are telling us today and it was mentioned that science has looked at this and found it in the test tube and the geologic records support this but in a national magazine in November it is now being brought out by the scientific community this is a November 3rd of Newsweek it says evidence from fossils and now points overwhelmingly away from classical Darwinism which most Americans learned in high school this is what we're concerned about let's look at all the scientific concepts but let's share with the students all that science knows and not just an evolutionary interpretation do you have any hard scientific proof well with your side I would say probably the fossil record is the hardest that's what most everybody looks at as being the real classical evidence and I've got a letter here from a paleontologist with the British Museum of Natural History he wrote a book on evolution so he classed himself as an expert but in this letter to a creationist on the East Coast he says if I knew of any fossil or living I would certainly have included them what this man asked for is give us an illustration of the transitional forms this man says there are no transitional forms in the fossil record and when you look at the fossil record what you see are the various types of organisms many of them we see today where are all these transitional forms as we look in our world today why aren't many of them living if we have seen this transition take place well mr. dorfmann what happens when a scientist tries to take this belief in creation and give it some scientific merit I think we have to examine what is science or even if we're going to include something like this in it and science is a way of finding out knowledge and finding out relationship and it is predicated on the fact that there is order in the universe and that that order can be explained through the operation of natural law it does not include an appeal to the supernatural and that a supernatural were brought in and in fact in the creation model if you read the various groups that put forward the creation model I see that I can borrow this birdperson the scientific case for creation as well as in the other writings of the author and who is the head of the Institute for the creation research that and they must refer to the Bible Henry Morris has said that if we are going to understand creation then and we are going to understand the duration and the methods of creation then the answers must be sought in the Bible the creationism movement is an attempt to bring in God as defined in the Christian religion is attempt and attempt to bring in creation as defined in the Bible which is the mainstay of the Curia the main book reference book of the creation of Christianity now science will not appeal to into the supernatural in its explanations because science operates by seeking to falsify theories that are put out and call them hypotheses and then if you're studying a situation you put out several hypotheses and now you go and you conduct experiments why are those experiments conducted in order to limit the hypotheses you rule certain ones out you falsify them and then you're left by default with a predominating hypothesis a ruling hypothesis and if that stands the test of time it develops to the staging of a theory if we were to bring in a supernatural it would be beyond by definition beyond the laws of natural science and would not be subject to this falsifying test it would be a dead end in science and that was what dr. Patterson was referring to earlier in the show mr. Wagner what about the teaching of creation in schools cannot be done without reference to the Bible keeping in line out separation of church and state I'm talking public schools yeah yes in fact I know of several teachers in the state of Iowa that are now teaching a two model program in a science class one of these recently presented his presentation to the House and Senate Education Committee members and every one of them that saw this said they condone and support that type of program being taught in public schools this is why we have the bill before our legislative session let me refer to a few I've done some writing in this area the state superintendent wrote me March 9th 1978 the paper titled creation evolution in public education places no restriction on the Urbandale Board of Directors or any other public or private school in this state the determination and a place for the evolution and creation models in the science curriculum is one of local determination I've also Aten to the National Science Foundation I asked them when they condone the censorship of the scientific concepts of a creation model from our teachers and students they wrote back November 18th 1980 the history of science demonstrates only too clearly what happens when countries or institutions attempt to dictate or censor scientific theories you can be sure the National Science Foundation for the good of the science and the goodness nation has not and will not dictate or censor scientific theories mainly the opposition is coming from the evolutionary community it's not coming from the community in general we have one minute left mr. dolphin your views on the teaching of creation in public schools or university and said I think that it's not science and in that I think they have had a fair hearing on that if we look at what has happened that most local school boards if we look at what has happened in the Department of Public Instruction in the state legislatures in the Iowa Academy of Science and the American Association for the Advancement of science the National Academy of Science the courts in each case they have been ruled against and what has the ruling been its religion it's not science now I defend Bert's right to teach that in church related schools but not to teach it in the classroom and I think I'm with the majority not only of scientists but clergy and the public in that position okay thank you that is all the time we have unfortunately we thank you for joining us tonight