Creation DOES need to be taught with evolution

Hi David,I find it fascinating to read your ideas on science teaching, especially coming from a professor and experimenter in evolutionary biology. Although I agree completely with your first sentence here, I'm finding it hard to reconcile this with the subsequent one. Modern scientific methodology does not require the elaboration of multiple hypotheses. Multiple explanations may be developed to deal with specific observations or suites of observations, but it certainly isn't a requirement. For example, as was discussed in a previous thread, there was an observation made that end-Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions in North America appeared temporally correlated with the arrival of humans on that continent. There were three basic hypotheses developed by three independent groups to explain the observation. However, there was no requirement that any single group develop more than one. It was only when one of the hypotheses didn't appear to fully explain the available data that an alternate (in fact, two) was proposed. This is another odd statement. NS most assuredly does NOT predict this. Could you perhaps show, by use of specific references, where any evo bio text predicts this? The opposite is closer to the mark: NS predicts that functional features of organisms will be more on the lines of "good enough" for their environment, with constraints applied by the natural history of the particular organism. IOW, there are more examples of sloppy design, cooption, or making do than there are of engineering. If they were designed, it was done very poorly (possibly by a committee? ) Really? Have you seen this in university classes you teach on evolutionary biology? It's been quite a while since I took undergrad biology - "back in the day" there didn't seem to be much outcry for creationism. Anecdotally, all I can say is my 12-year-old daughter is becoming highly frustrated at the LACK of evolution being taught in her current public school system. Of course, she's a science junkie, so might be a bit unusual (now if I could just get her math up to the same level...I don't think pop gen is going to be her forte. Maybe she'll follow in Daddy's footsteps and go into ecology...). I completely agree. However, it should be remembered that at secondary school level (with the exception of programs like IB Biology, etc), the main goal is to provide students with fundamentals - IOW, the scientific concensus. Even at the first year college level, we're still dealing with basics mostly. I totally agree that more emphasis needs to be placed on the critical thinking skills which are the heart of the scientific method. It doesn't follow for me that teaching "creationism" as an alternative to the concensus scientific opinion on how the diversity of life arose contributes to this. I vaguely remember a freshman (?) biology course that included a section on the history of science as it pertained to biology which mentioned special creation, Lamarckism, Goldschmitt's saltationism, etc. I don't remember that the text did a very good job of explaining why these were discredited (except Lamarckism), leaving it up to the student mostly. However, that was a college course providing an introduction to the science - and much more detail was provided in later upper level courses. It wouldn't be unrealistic to provide a similar overview in High School, IMO. Somehow I don't think that's what you're advocating here, however. Actually, this isn't entirely correct the way you have presented it. We bring up Lamarckism, spontaneous generation, etc, in science classes as examples of theories or ideas that have been discredited due to the accumulation of new data and the action of new instruments. We can also discuss creationism, catastrophism, and even Young Earth etc, in the same vein. I imagine ID could be treated the same way. They are NOT presented as current alternative hypotheses because there is absolutely ZERO positive evidence available for either special creation OR ID. There is no data, there is no observation, there is no consistent hypothesis, and there is no experiment for either of them that can be used as a basis for proclaiming them equivalent theories to the ToE that should be given "balanced treatment" in a science classroom. If such should ever present itself, then the question can be re-evaluated. I think others have asked you this question, but succinctly: what would be a testable creationist hypothesis? Or a testable ID hypothesis for that matter?