Thesis: Accepting the theory of evolution as a possible explanation of how we came into existence does not deny God as our Creator or that He remains at work today. Instead, it is entirely possible to believe that God used the process of evolution to create the human species. In addition, evolution should continue to be taught in public schools, even if this requires the presentation of dissenting views so that students may formulate their own beliefs.

Outline

I. Introduction

II. History of the 20th Century Creation - Evolution Debate

A.) 1925 Scopes trial
B.) 1968 Supreme Court Epperson decision
C.) Late 1970's - Arkansas and Louisiana laws
D.) 1987 Supreme Court decision against Arkansas & Louisiana laws
E.) Kansas Board of Education decision

III. Creationism

A.) Differing views of creation
B.) Creation science
C.) Ethical issues of creation science

IV. Evolution

A.) Definitions
B.) Evolutionism
C.) Ethical issues of evolutionism

V. Creation and Evolution Within the Christian Life

A.) Creation and evolution need not be mutually exclusive alternatives
B.) Theistic evolution

VI. Creation and Evolution in Education

A.) Why is there a controversy with evolution & creationism in education?
B.) Possible solutions

VII. Conclusion

VIII. References

Introduction
The twentieth century has witnessed the escalation of the creation - evolution debate through famous court cases and Supreme Court decisions on the teaching of evolution in public schools, culminating most recently in a Kansas Board of Education decision. As this highly controversial issue of the teaching of evolution in American classrooms rages on, it may be difficult for some individuals of Christian faith to form an alternative belief other than the extremes of creationism and evolutionism. Before discussing this issue any further, when I refer to strict beliefs in creationism or evolution as extreme views I am not necessarily implying that they are wrong, but are simply two views on completely opposite sides of the creation - evolution debate spectrum. For some creationists, accepting God as Creator as told in the Book of Genesis means the simultaneous rejection of evolutionary theory. For some evolution believers, accepting evolution ultimately results in the replacement of God as Creator with the process of evolution.

After reading the preceding two sentences, we can come to the conclusion that the creation - evolution debate is really a matter of faith, either there is a Creator or there is no Creator. However, at the same time the main battle of the debate is over what is taught in our public schools. This creates a problem, particularly for creationists, because separation of church and state keeps religious criticism to evolutionary theory away from the classroom. The Kansas Board of Education decision to eliminate evolution and the Big Bang Theory from statewide tests reflects the resulting pressure on school officials to chose between what many have come to view as two mutually exclusive alternatives. However, is it really necessary to strictly chose either an evolutionary or creationist belief? Many Christians today would answer "no" to this question. Accepting the theory of evolution as a possible explanation of how we came into existence does not deny God as our Creator or that He remains at work today. Instead, it is entirely possible to believe that God used the process of evolution to create the human species. In addition, evolution should continue to be taught in public schools, even if this requires the presentation of dissenting views so that students may formulate their own beliefs.

History of the 20th Century Creation - Evolution Debate
The creation - evolution debate entered the education realm in the early 1920's when several states prohibited the teaching of evolution in the classroom. Stephen Jay Gould (1999) reports that this led to the famous 1925 Scopes "monkey trial" in Dayton, Tennessee, and the conviction of high school teacher John Scopes on the grounds of teaching evolution in a public school. An article on the world wide web entitled "The Scopes 'monkey trial,'" says the trial pitted prosecuting attorney William Jennings Bryan against defense attorney Clarence Darrow on the issue of the constitutionality of a Tennessee law, the "Butler Law," which specifically forbade the teaching of evolution in the state. Oklahoma, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Kentucky already had similar laws. David L. Marcus (1999) adds, however, that the Tennessee Supreme Court later overturned the ruling on a technicality. Jonathan Zimmerman (1999) further reports that the state bans on the teaching of evolution were then declared unconstitutional in the 1968 Epperson decision. At this time, Christian activists began to call for the teaching of the creation story of Genesis alongside Darwin's theory of evolution and, in the late 1970's Arkansas and Louisiana passed laws that required equal time for the teaching of creation and evolution in the science classroom. This movement, however, experienced a momentary set back in 1987 when the Supreme Court rejected those laws passed in the 1970's.

This brings the creation - evolution debate to the current battleground of 1999, the Kansas Board of Education. S. Carpenter (1999) reports that while a few states have recently reduced the teaching of evolution, including Nebraska, New Mexico, Alabama, and Arizona, Kansas has taken the most drastic step of any. In an August decision, the board voted six to four to remove any mention of macroevolution and the Big Bang theory from its required curriculum. This ultimately means that the topic will be removed from state assessment tests in all grade levels even though biology teachers can still teach these topics to students. However, Charles Lane (1999) writes that the decision does not prohibit the teaching of microevolution.

The elimination of evolution and the Big Bang theory from statewide tests raises a major concern for many educators. How will the Kansas Board of Education decision effect the quality of education of its students? Phillip E. Johnson (1999) states that after the decision many scientists and educators reacted with panic and declared that Kansas students would no longer be able to succeed in college or graduate school. Less drastically, however, Gould (1999) believes that it is almost a guarantee, given that evolution will not be included on statewide tests, that this central concept of biology will be largely reduced within science classrooms across Kansas. Lane (1999), on the other hand, takes an even less severe stance and believes that many Kansas school districts will continue to teach evolution because of the large amount of evidence that supports the theory. Nevertheless, he adds, Kansas will have a scenario "in which some students get a twenty-first-century education" while others "get a fourteenth-century education" (p. 6). In contradiction to all of these predictions, Carpenter (1999) reports that Tom F. Wills of the Creation Science Association for Mid-America believes that the new science curriculum will actually improve the quality of science education for Kansas's students. These arguments in the debate over the teaching of evolution in education are strong reflections of the long-standing creation - evolution debate.

Creationism
According to a student paper by Lana Miller (1997), it is fairly safe to assert that most Christians today hold the creationist view that God created the heavens and earth as stated in Genesis 1:1 of the Old Testament because this is a central doctrine of Christian faith. It is not safe to say, however, that all Christians are in agreement of the means that God used to create the heavens and the earth. This is because, according to Richard T. Wright (1989), Genesis says nothing about the mechanism that God used to create and, "it is fair to conclude that it was not the purpose of the author of this passage to attempt to describe God's creative techniques" (p. 74).

Lenny Flank (1995) asserts that those Christians who are strict creationists believe in a very literal interpretation of the Bible, specifically, that God carried out his creation in six twenty-four hour days and then rested on the seventh. These individuals are also sometimes called fundamentalist Christians. Furthermore, they hold to the theory of a "young earth" with an age between 6,000 and 10,000 years old, and are therefore called "young earth creationists." In contrast, there are so-called "old earth creationists" who accept geological evidence that the earth is ancient but reject the theory of evolution. According to Miller (1997), the definition of a "creationist" has changed to mean "creation scientist" since the 1960's.

Creation scientists are primarily those so-called "young earth creationists," because creation science states that the earth was created in six days some 6,000 to 10,000 years ago. Flank (1995) states that although creation scientists may belong to different denominations or have varying beliefs, they do have one belief in common. "Creation scientists all share a belief in an inerrant Bible, one that is literally correct in all its original writings on all subjects, including its description of the Creation, Adam and Eve, and Noah's Flood" (1st paragraph). Wright (1989) labels the model of scientific creationism as "substitutionism" because it replaces evolutionary theory with an explanation that there is a scientific basis for the origins of life as described in Genesis. This scientific basis is the fossil record. The gaps in the fossil record support their theory that God created living things as they appear today, as fossils or existent species. Furthermore, "the geological strata are essentially a record of the Noahic flood, and the massive extinctions recorded in the fossil record occurred because of the flood" (p. 134).

There are several problems and ethical issues with creation science. First, it rejects the large amount of evidence for the ancient age of the earth. Second, it creates a separation between God and natural processes because it contends that evolutionary processes are naturalistic and not God's work. In other words, a process may not be God's doing unless it is a miraculous event. Third, creation scientists do not accept criticism from others, even when those individuals are Christians. Forth, creation scientists insist that biblical Christianity must reject any belief in evolution (Wright 1989). The forth issue is especially troublesome for individuals who are trying to develop a Christian faith. When an individual encounters a creation scientist who insists that his or her beliefs must be accepted in order to be a true Christian, the individual's experience can turn into an obstacle on the way to becoming a believer. This leads to the following discussion of evolution.

Evolution
In today's society, definitions of evolution are many and varied. Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (1995) gives two applicable definitions. First, evolution is "a process of continuous change from a lower, simpler, or worse to a higher, more complex, or better state." Second, evolution is defined as a "theory that the various types of animals and plants have their origin in other preexisting types and that the distinguishable differences are due to modifications in successive generations" (p. 402). According to Patrick Glynn (1999), another much more controversial definition comes from a former official definition of evolution stated by the National Association of Biology Teachers. It states that evolution is "an unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable and natural process of temporal descent with genetic modification that is affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing environments" (p. 42). This definition came under fairly intense fire, so the board of the biology teacher's association agreed to drop the words "unsupervised" and "impersonal," but still hold to the implication that all life can be explained by chance-mechanisms alone.

Definitions of evolution, such as the biology teacher's definition, continue to draw intense criticism from creation scientists, but what really started the debate was Darwin's Origin of the Species, published in 1859. Darwin's theory of evolution can be stated in three simple principles. The first is the principle of variation, or members of a population will vary in minor ways. Second is the principle of heritability, meaning variations can be passed from generation to generation. Third is the principle of natural selection, meaning some variations will give an organism an advantage to survive (Flank 1996). Then, in 1871, Darwin published The Descent of Man, in which he asserted that man evolved from ape-like ancestors (Wright 1989). This concept was the most controversial of Darwin's claims because for some Christians it questions the purpose of humankind's existence by threatening the validity of Genesis and the Bible.

According to Wright (1989), Darwin's theory of evolution is the central organizing principle of biology. However, it is also more than a theory and organizing principle, it can also be the starting point for a worldview. "Then evolution becomes evolutionism - the belief that a natural process, evolution, has been entirely responsible for the development of all life as we know it" (p. 131). Evolutionism brings forth major problems and ethical issues. First and foremost, the role of God as Creator is replaced with evolutionary processes. Obviously this creates a major issue for creationists and, as Walter R. Hearn (1997) states, when evolutionists use Darwin's theory to support their naturalistic beliefs, they drive creationists to reject everything connected with evolution. If the belief of a Creator is replaced with evolutionary theory, will individuals make certain changes in behavior? As already stated, evolution by itself questions the purpose of existence for some Christians and evolutionary theory has been blamed for the undermining of religion and promotion of such as evils as communism and sexual freedom. How then would an evolutionism worldview effect society? Also, if we arose from chance mechanisms upon the appearance of matter and energy, as evolutionists argue, then where did the matter and energy come from? (Wright 1989). Replacing God as Creator raises problems with Christians, not just strict creationists, who hold onto the belief that God created the heavens and earth, even though they may simultaneously believe in evolution. The concurrent belief in evolution and God as Creator is a very possible alternative to extreme beliefs of creationism and evolutionism, and many Christians today possess this mode of thinking.

Creation and Evolution within the Christian Life
The creation - evolution debate is primarily a question of faith. It is a question of Creator or no Creator and not creation versus evolution. This is because creation and evolution are answers to questions at two different levels. At one level are questions of why and who, questions that apply to faith and belief. This is the level of worldview beliefs, either there is a Creator or there is no Creator. At the other level are questions of how, what and when, questions that require examining the evidence and choosing a theory that best explains the evidence at hand. This is the level of scientific explanation; either we have evolution or instantaneous origin. Just because we chose an explanation at one level does not mean we must chose a particular explanation from the level below it. For example, if we chose to believe in the existence of a Creator, we are not forced to simultaneously accept the explanation of instantaneous origin at the scientific level. Therefore, theistic beliefs do not necessitate an explanation of origins. This is a matter for scientific reasoning from acquired evidence. This ultimately means that evolution should no longer be a threat to Biblical faith for a person of Christian faith (Wright 1989). R.J. Berry (1999) implies that this also means evolution should not threaten our ethical values or sense of life's meaning because it does not infringe on divine questions.

Thus, those who are Christians can reasonably believe in evolution as a central organizing principle of biology while at the same time believing in God as Creator. There may always be people who use evolution to argue against creation or creation to argue against evolution (Gould 1999). However, it is my belief that Christians who believe in both evolutionary theory and a Creator need not feel a threat to their faith when challenged by the beliefs of others, and Berry (1999) helps to affirm this belief. "Reason tells me evolution has taken place in the way Darwin described it, while my faith tells me God ruled and controlled the process…Science and God, evolution and creation, aren't dueling alternatives. They're complements. The God of the Bible might well be a miracle-worker on occasion, but normally He is to be seen at work through natural processes (p. 9)." Randy Younce, a West Noble high school biology teacher who also holds strong Christian beliefs, acknowledged evolution as a possible mechanism used by God to create. Furthermore, he stated that his faith is not challenged when evolutionary theory places the age of the earth at some 4.5 billion years, whereas a literal interpretation of the Bible would place this age somewhere from 6,000 to 10,000 years. This is because he feels God has no concept of time, as we know it. Thus, time is something man has invented (personal communication, November 8, 1999). In other words, while the Bible may say 10,000 years, these years may not be years in the sense we know them.

Flank (1995) states that most denominations and scientists today hold this view that God used evolution to create and there is no conflict between God and evolution. He calls these individuals theistic evolutionists. This is also where I stand as a Christian and a student of science. Evolution and creation should not have to be mutually exclusive alternatives, and I do not believe that they are. In Genesis of the Holy Bible: New International Version (1984), nothing is said about how God created the heavens, earth, and humankind. It is up to science to try to answer this question. At the same time, faith leads me to simultaneously believe that God used the explanation provided by science, evolution, to create life, as we know it today.

Creation and Evolution in Education
If a majority of Christians today are simultaneous believers of evolution and creation, a perfectly acceptable alternative to evolutionism and creation science, then what can be said about the debate over teaching evolution in the classroom? It was previously stated that the creation - evolution debate is simply a matter of faith because questions of evolution and the existence of a Creator fall on two different levels. The implication is that creation and evolution are not mutually exclusive. So why is there still a controversy over the teaching evolution in public schools? First, while many have adopted the alternative belief discussed above, some still hold to an extreme view. Not everyone can be convinced that Wright's analysis for resolving the creation - evolution controversy is valid or that a middle ground could ever be reached. There may always be fundamentalist Christians or creation scientists who attempt to discredit and remove any teaching of evolution. An excellent example is the pressure put on the Kansas Board of Education, by fundamentalist Christians, to remove evolution from the state's curriculum. According to Marcus (1999), one of the board of education members, Steve Abrams, is in fact one of these fundamentalist Christians. Abrams "sees evolution as not good science" (p. 32). Furthermore, creation scientists try to point out problems with the current teaching of evolution in schools. Carpenter (1999) again reports on the view of creation scientist Tom Willis, who helped to change the state of Kansas curriculum. He believes that because "evolution cannot be reproduced in a laboratory, it should not be taught 'as though it is the only theory believed by sane individuals'" (p. 8). As stated earlier, he believes that the new Kansas science curriculum will be better for students because it will improve the honesty by which it is taught. Johnson (1999) supports Willis by giving his opinion of the way in which evolution is taught in the classroom. "Students first learn that 'evolution is fact,' and then they gradually learn more and more about what that 'fact' means. It means that all living things are the product of mindless material forces such as chemical laws, natural selection, and random variation. So God is totally out of the picture, and humans are the accidental product of a purposeless universe (p. 16)."

While Johnson's belief on the teaching of evolution may be a valid analysis of evolutionism thinking, I do not believe it is correct for Johnson to imply that teaching evolution in today's classrooms leaves God out of the picture. Simply because there is overwhelming evidence that evolution is a valid theory does not necessarily mean that biology teachers are preaching evolutionism to their students. In the past, creation scientists have attempted to prevent what they believe to be the teaching of evolutionism with equal time for the teaching of creation. This, as already mentioned, failed because of separation of church and state. As a result, creation scientists changed their aim to the elimination of evolution from school curriculum. What if, however, the presentation of dissenting views was allowed in science classes? Zimmerman (1999) states a problem he thinks would remain if some mechanism would allow for a free discussion on the origins of humans in public schools. He contends that the supporters of equal time are the same individuals who complain "children are taught fuzzy, inconsistent messages rather than fixed codes of right and wrong" (p. 13-14). Although this may be the case, Younce is in fact allowed by the West Noble School Board to present dissenting views of evolutionary theory while at the same time avoiding any deep debate with religious involvement. He first presents the material on evolution as taught in textbooks and then shows a video that gives some scientific evidence for a literal interpretation of creation. Another possible solution, an alternative currently in place in Alabama, is a disclaimer placed on biology textbooks that states that evolution is a theory and not fact (Zimmerman 1999). Although I am more in favor of the approach Randy Younce uses in his biology classes because it gives students more freedom to formulate their own opinion, this idea is at least better than the elimination of evolution from science curricula altogether. Therefore, I firmly believe evolutionary theory should be taught in public high schools because it is such a valid theory, and many others agree. Marcus (1999) reports that others insist that students should learn about the concept, "if only to better understand their beliefs. 'If they fear that ideas are going to take away their faith then they don't have very much faith,' says Don Munro of the American Scientific Affiliation" (p. 32).

Conclusion
The debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools will continue as individuals believe creation and evolution to be mutually exclusive alternatives or as long as dissenting views of evolution are not discussed in the classroom. Many Christians, on the other hand, have shown that we need not only believe in either creation or evolution. Richard T. Wright explains why we can simultaneously believe both through a model for resolving the creation - evolution debate. It leads to the conclusion for many Christians that God could have used the mechanism of evolution to create living organisms, including humans. However, there will always be differing viewpoints, and not everyone will come to this conclusion. Even so, evolutionary theory should be taught in public schools. In addition, presenting dissenting views of evolutionary theory may be necessary to keep both sides happy and to allow students to formulate their own beliefs. In the end, no matter what court or board of education decision is made with respect to evolution in the classroom, we must respect the beliefs of others and at least take time to listen to what they have to say and offer.

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