In America they continue to debate between evolution and creationism
The vast majority of Americans think that creationism, according to which God created the world several thousand years ago, should be taught in schools, along with Darwin's theory of evolution. This is according to a new survey. The results of the survey, which was conducted in the city of Danbury in the state of Connecticut and included in-depth interviews with 1,500 people, were published late last week by the American Way Foundation, a human rights organization.
83% of the participants in the survey generally support the teaching of the theory of evolution in public schools, but almost half of them think that the theory is "far from being scientifically proven".
79% of respondents believe that creationism has a place in the curriculum, although the majority said that it should be discussed as a belief and not as a scientific theory competing with evolution. 68% of the respondents said that it is possible to believe in the correctness of the theory of evolution and at the same time believe that God created humans and guided their development.
About 30% of Americans believe that creationism should be taught as a scientific theory, with or without evolution in the curriculum. At the other extreme, 20% believe that evolution should be taught in science classes without mentioning creationism.
Daniel Yankelevich, chairman of the company that carried out the survey, said that both camps - those who support evolution and those who believe in creationism - can draw encouragement from the results of the survey. He said that the results, according to which most Americans think that creationism and evolution can be reconciled, point to the pluralism rooted in American society, or they express a postmodern feeling that a single explanation cannot provide a complete understanding of the formation of the universe.
Dr. David Haig, a biologist at Harvard University, said that "I was encouraged by the fact that most of the respondents said that it is important that evolution be taught in schools", but added that "it is possible to raise doubts about the existence of belief in creation alongside the recognition of the correctness of the theory of evolution".
The debate between the scientists and the supporters of the creation theory, which began 75 years ago in the "monkey trial", was reignited last year when the Kansas state education administration decided to remove most of the references to the theory of evolution from the state curriculum. Last month, a private school in New York state came under fire after teachers there said they would teach creationism as an alternative theory to evolution. And over the weekend, the newspaper "Columbus Dispatch" in Ohio reported that an organization called "Creation Club Young Earth" opposed the inclusion of evolution in new programs of science studies, set by the educational authority of the state.
Although there is scientific evidence that the earth was created billions of years ago, the strictest creationists interpret what is written in the book of Genesis literally and believe that the universe, the earth and all the biological species on it were created a few thousand years ago, in their current form.
However, only about a third of the participants in the survey defined creationism in this way. The rest said they understood it more loosely, as referring to God creating humans, but not necessarily as described in the Bible. People who were unclear about the exact meaning of creationism were given a definition based on the looser version, but were told that creationism was in sharp conflict with the theory of evolution.
The survey did not offer additional interpretations of creationism, such as the idea that God breathed the soul into humans and from there on allowed evolution to proceed on its course.
* The website editor's note, in the eight years of Bush's rule, the situation got even worse. This news only illustrates the seriousness of the situation.
More of the topic in Hayadan:
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The "theory" of creation?
The creation of the world written in the Torah is a beautiful and wonderful mythology and not a theory.
It is important to tell it to young children, because only through stories can you tickle the imagination, create curiosity and a desire to learn, and cause creativity to flow.
It is forbidden (!) to "teach" it as one of the theories, because then you take all the "soul" out of it and suffocate the above...