Creationism myths are not science

So the Fremont school board is receptive to teaching “Creationism” in science classes. This would be laughable if it didn’t reflect an appalling ignorance of the methods of scientific inquiry.

For openers, we’d have to settle on a definition of “Creationism.” Should we examine the Hopi Indians’ tales of the Spider Grandmother? Or Indian tales of Hiranyagarrha and Visvakarman? Greek tales of Zeus and the Titans? But I suspect they had in mind the Old Testament tales in Genesis.

Still, the questions would need to be answered: Which version? Why not other versions?

But let’s go with the Bible. Scientific inquiry demands proposed explanations be subjected to rigorous scrutiny of available evidence before being accepted as a credible hypotheses. Examine our sources for the Old Testament.

Oral traditions? Stories get altered in the telling and retelling.

Original documents? We have copies that were handed down from generation to generation. They were written years (centuries?) after the events described.

Those copies (of copies of copies) were all written down by hand. Scribes make errors when copying documents. Later scribes unwittingly perpetuate the errors.

Today’s English translations were made either from the original Hebrew, or a Greek translation of a Hebrew copy. Some words, phrases, concepts are unique to the language and difficult to convey outside the original language. So, in addition to copying errors, we should allow for translator variances. (Consider why we have different English language versions of the Bible.)

If you can’t provide credible, third-party evidence, then what are we left with? Hope. Trust. Belief. Faith. This is your argument for the “scientific” basis for teaching “Creationism?”

Chris Galaboff

Mundelein