A recent Ipsos Mori poll commissioned by the British Council asked whether or not creationism should be taught alongside evolution in British schools. A staggering 54% agreed that "Evolutionary theories should be taught in science lessons in schools together with other possible perspectives, such as intelligent design and creationism."
Up till now the UK government has rejected the accounts of intelligent design and creationism as being unrecognised as scientific and therefore having no place in a science classroom.
The question though is why so many people can give credibility to such ideas? The notion of intelligent design argues that everything in the world is fulfilling some predetermined plan, that randomness is not a driving force in nature. This contradicts the evidenced mechanism of natural selection, the motor behind evolution.
When people have such little understanding of evolution, they can easily be led to consider it as simply a theory. But evolution is a fact, not a theory. Evolution is a fact with incontrovertible evidence.
The action of natural selection based on random mutations, in the development of species is now so well evidenced that it too is a fact. These are every bit as much facts as is gravity, the refraction of light, magnetism, or photosynthesis.
When evolution is demoted to the rank of just an idea, merely a theory, the door is opened to unevidenced ideas as if they are of the same rank, of the same validity.
We need to get across the idea that theories are derived from data, that they have to explain the data, and make testable predictions. Anyone can invent a story and creationism is just such a story. But there is a crucial difference between creationism and evolution and that of course is the evidence.
Considering creationism as a theory implies that it has some predictive power, that it adequately explains the data, when in fact it is nothing of the sort. It is nothing but a story. The questionnaire used the word perspective to describe creationism, rather than the word theory. One wonders what the results of the survey would have been if they had more accurately described it as a story.
