Creationism and Evolutionary Theory
I started teaching science to young children two and a half years ago. I teach everything; biology, physical science, geology, earth science, basic chemistry, astronomy, evolution. I'm a "big concepts" thinker. I see patterns, connections and am always wondering why and how things happen. One of the first concepts I wanted to share with my 300 plus students was the scale and duration of Earth's history. 4,600,000,000 years is a long time. Many people can not fathom what 4.6 billion years looks like.
I made a to-scale timeline. It is 46 meters long. Each meter (100 centimeters) represents 100 million years.
My classroom was able to accommodate this timeline beautifully. The perimeter of the room is about 44 meters. I zig zagged the first two meters of Earth's history as the Hadean, the time of coalescence and cooling. The rest travels around the room to demonstrate the scale of what billions of years of photosynthesizing bacteria looks like. This timeline really punctuates the power of time, water, photosynthesis and the tools of evolution; adaptive traits and changing environments. The fossil record demonstrates that Earth's history was dominated by blue green algae, which was responsible for converting a mostly carbon dioxide atmosphere into a nitrogen and oxygen atmosphere. Only in the last 600 million years (6 meters of 46) does complex life become apparent.
The Cambrian explosion is followed by the emergence of land plants followed by animals that breathe air through lungs instead of through diffusion or by way of gills. 250 million years ago (2.5 meters from the end of the timeline) The dinosaurs become the dominant species, occupying every environmental niche. They successfully adapt to land, ocean, shallow seas and air and they dominate Earth for one hundred and eighty five million years. Because the environment drastically changed during the Cretaceous/Tertiary mass extinction, niches that were once filled by the dinosaurs, opened up to mammals.
The mammals flourished. They occupied every niche, just as the dinosaurs had. As ice ages came and went, their sizes varied. Larger animals retain heat better than smaller animals. Some mammals took to the trees and adapted to arboreal environments. They developed stereoscopic vision to judge distances for jumping from tree limb to tree limb. Their digits migrated to form opposable thumbs which allow grasping hands to catch tree limbs at flying speeds. They ate fruit and bugs and nectar. Being mammals, their brains grew to be larger and more complex. this group of mammals were known as the primates.
Some of the primates were driven from the trees due to environmental changes. They learned to use their grasping hands to carry things like their children and to make tools. They learned to walk upright, as their cousins the apes are often seen doing. Their brains grew larger, the cortexes more folded, allowing for more neurons and more sensory perception. This was about 3 million years ago, 3 centimeters from the end of the timeline.
Modern Homo Sapiens show up 200,000 years ago, the last two millimeters on the timeline.
The reason I bring this timeline up is the current wish of some people in power to bring Creationism into the classroom to be taught alongside Evolution.
If I were to "teach" Creationism, I would say that according to creationist theory and the Bible, the Earth formed about 6,000 years ago, which is almost halfway through the last micrometer of the timeline. From my own memory of the Book of Genesis, In the beginning, God created the Heaven and the Earth the Earth was dark and void. God said, "let there be light" and there was light.
I believe it would be very hard for me to teach creationism. The Old Testament bible was written by male scholars 3,500 years ago. The new testament was written about 2,000 years ago. These books were written during a time when the Earth was believed to be flat. The flat Earth was believed to be surrounded by a universe and sun that rotated around it.
The Garden of Eden that supported Adam and then brought Eve via Adam's rib would be a contradiction impossible for a science teacher to teach with a straight face. It is the female of the mammalian species that carries a fertilized egg, or zygote, to an embryonic and then a fetal state, finally giving birth to a neonate of it's species. The navel is the site of umbilical connection of the fetus to the placenta and the mother's womb. If Eve was born from Adam's rib and Adam was created by God, neither of them would have a navel.
When I was a child, I was taught in Sunday School that the reason that women suffered pain during childbirth was because Eve, (and all women), was punished for eating the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge. My little scientific brain questioned this. If that was true than mammals other than humans should not feel pain during childbirth, which is not the case. This biblical story did not make sense to me.
I can not imagine any teacher teaching the falsehoods and fables of the Bible along with the hard evidence the fossil record has to offer. I, for one, am a terrible liar, so I can not teach Creationism. I can, however, field questions such as, "do you believe we evolved from apes?" and "where do Adam and Eve fit into the geologic timeline?", as these questions were asked to me by my students this year. Thankfully, my education arms me with facts and evidence from the fossil record and I do not have to resort to the myths written in a book thousands of years ago by people who did not realize this was our heaven and our Earth.
I made a to-scale timeline. It is 46 meters long. Each meter (100 centimeters) represents 100 million years.
My classroom was able to accommodate this timeline beautifully. The perimeter of the room is about 44 meters. I zig zagged the first two meters of Earth's history as the Hadean, the time of coalescence and cooling. The rest travels around the room to demonstrate the scale of what billions of years of photosynthesizing bacteria looks like. This timeline really punctuates the power of time, water, photosynthesis and the tools of evolution; adaptive traits and changing environments. The fossil record demonstrates that Earth's history was dominated by blue green algae, which was responsible for converting a mostly carbon dioxide atmosphere into a nitrogen and oxygen atmosphere. Only in the last 600 million years (6 meters of 46) does complex life become apparent.
The Cambrian explosion is followed by the emergence of land plants followed by animals that breathe air through lungs instead of through diffusion or by way of gills. 250 million years ago (2.5 meters from the end of the timeline) The dinosaurs become the dominant species, occupying every environmental niche. They successfully adapt to land, ocean, shallow seas and air and they dominate Earth for one hundred and eighty five million years. Because the environment drastically changed during the Cretaceous/Tertiary mass extinction, niches that were once filled by the dinosaurs, opened up to mammals.
The mammals flourished. They occupied every niche, just as the dinosaurs had. As ice ages came and went, their sizes varied. Larger animals retain heat better than smaller animals. Some mammals took to the trees and adapted to arboreal environments. They developed stereoscopic vision to judge distances for jumping from tree limb to tree limb. Their digits migrated to form opposable thumbs which allow grasping hands to catch tree limbs at flying speeds. They ate fruit and bugs and nectar. Being mammals, their brains grew to be larger and more complex. this group of mammals were known as the primates.
Some of the primates were driven from the trees due to environmental changes. They learned to use their grasping hands to carry things like their children and to make tools. They learned to walk upright, as their cousins the apes are often seen doing. Their brains grew larger, the cortexes more folded, allowing for more neurons and more sensory perception. This was about 3 million years ago, 3 centimeters from the end of the timeline.
Modern Homo Sapiens show up 200,000 years ago, the last two millimeters on the timeline.
The reason I bring this timeline up is the current wish of some people in power to bring Creationism into the classroom to be taught alongside Evolution.
If I were to "teach" Creationism, I would say that according to creationist theory and the Bible, the Earth formed about 6,000 years ago, which is almost halfway through the last micrometer of the timeline. From my own memory of the Book of Genesis, In the beginning, God created the Heaven and the Earth the Earth was dark and void. God said, "let there be light" and there was light.
I believe it would be very hard for me to teach creationism. The Old Testament bible was written by male scholars 3,500 years ago. The new testament was written about 2,000 years ago. These books were written during a time when the Earth was believed to be flat. The flat Earth was believed to be surrounded by a universe and sun that rotated around it.
The Garden of Eden that supported Adam and then brought Eve via Adam's rib would be a contradiction impossible for a science teacher to teach with a straight face. It is the female of the mammalian species that carries a fertilized egg, or zygote, to an embryonic and then a fetal state, finally giving birth to a neonate of it's species. The navel is the site of umbilical connection of the fetus to the placenta and the mother's womb. If Eve was born from Adam's rib and Adam was created by God, neither of them would have a navel.
When I was a child, I was taught in Sunday School that the reason that women suffered pain during childbirth was because Eve, (and all women), was punished for eating the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge. My little scientific brain questioned this. If that was true than mammals other than humans should not feel pain during childbirth, which is not the case. This biblical story did not make sense to me.
I can not imagine any teacher teaching the falsehoods and fables of the Bible along with the hard evidence the fossil record has to offer. I, for one, am a terrible liar, so I can not teach Creationism. I can, however, field questions such as, "do you believe we evolved from apes?" and "where do Adam and Eve fit into the geologic timeline?", as these questions were asked to me by my students this year. Thankfully, my education arms me with facts and evidence from the fossil record and I do not have to resort to the myths written in a book thousands of years ago by people who did not realize this was our heaven and our Earth.
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