(Host) The scientific theory of Evolution has been accepted as fact for more than a century. Commentator Ruth Page believes it’s a sheer waste of time to be forced to defend it against those who want schools to question such solid science.
(Page) When scientists develop a new, comprehensive theory such as the theories of gravitation, evolution, atomics, relativity and others, they spend years accumulating solid knowledge in order to formulate it. Then they publish it in full detail in books and scientific journals for other scientists all over the world to consider. Everyone is invited to shoot holes in it. After some years go by, if other scientists find more and more facts to confirm the theory and none to contradict it — even though it may become more fully fleshed out as time goes on — it is accepted as fact not only by science but by all of us.
Scientific theories are not just bright ideas; they’re based on accumulated information and careful, logical thought. That’s why much of the American and foreign press is stunned to find out that some Americans refuse to accept evolution as fact, fearing it somehow impacts their religion. Science and religion are two widely different areas of understanding, the factual, and the spiritual; neither can damage the other.
The few school systems, including Georgia’s, that wish to teach creationism as well as evolution, indicating they are equal belief choices students can consider, worry the colleges and universities within their own states. They also invite a wide range of colleges country-wide to hesitate about accepting their seniors into the college’s freshman class.
The November National Geographic goes after the false reasoning of the anti-Darwinians head on. It points out that evolution is visible all around us (if viruses, bacteria and other quick-changers didn’t evolve, we wouldn’t have to worry about creating new controls for them).
In Georgia, science teachers were furious when the state school superintendent proposed a new science curriculum that dropped the word “evolution”, replacing it with “changes over time.” And starting in 2002, Georgia school officials in Cobb County got stickers on high school biology texts saying evolution should be “critically considered.” An Emory University biologist commented, “People want to project the image that Georgia is a modern state…then something like this happens.”
Scientists have many desperately serious demands on their time and hate being forced to defend facts that have stood the test of well over a century and a half of study and been fully vindicated. Let’s waste no more time on this outdated, wrong-headed notion and suggest that anyone flummoxed by the Theory of Evolution see what they can make of the Theory of Gravity. And if they fear evolution theory contradicts the Bible, what do they think of the Theory of Relativity?
This is Ruth Page, considering that the USA has a great deal more serious worries to trouble it, without rehashing disproven notions about evolution.