Defending evolution theory

Why does religion try to replace science?

Koreans are no longer strangers to global attention ― both cheers and jeers ― economically and culturally. Yet the latest duel between evolutionists and creationists here and foreigners’ interest it has generated are hardly welcome, if not downright shameful.

“Nature,” the global science journal, recently reported that a creation campaign has forced Korean publishers to remove examples of evolution from school textbooks.

As it turns out, three out of the nation’s seven publishers took out descriptions of the evolution of horses and of the archaeopteryx ― an ancestor of modern-day birds ― from secondary school textbooks, accepting some Protestant-led groups’ argument that there were conflicting views on the earliest-known bird’s ability to fly.

Encouraged by their initial success, the groups appear set to remove all evolutionary “hypotheses” from education materials. But the onrush of responses ― sarcasm ― from global netizens makes one blush. “Thank you very much, Korea. You made us appear less foolish,” says one response to the article. “Koreans had better deal with degeneration, not evolution,” sneered another.

If science textbooks have to publish only perfectly proven theories and not hypotheses, they should be far thinner than now. Even considering the limitation of secondary school textbooks, however, the Christian groups’ propaganda on the elimination of two examples, the verification of which has long been debatable, is unduly self-satisfying and misleading. More irresponsible was domestic scientists’ negligence and laziness to update new findings.

The theory of evolution, or any other theory for that matter, cannot explain all mysteries of the universe.

Yet most people on this planet ― except for fundamental Christians, including those in some U.S. states ― admit it is at least far more reasonable than creationism that interprets Genesis literally. Which makes it all the more incomprehensible why Korean Christians, who make up about 30 percent of the population at most, are making “creationist accomplishments” that their American counterparts who account for 80 percent of the U.S. population, haven’t been able to.

Is it another successful combination of politics and religion in a country led by a Presbyterian elder President? Or are conservatives, who successfully distorted what happened in 20th-century Korea in history textbooks, duplicating their success in scientific area, too?

This globe has seen enough kinds of stupid things occur when religion tries to take the place of science. Back in 2005, the U.S. Federal Court’s Philadelphia chapter left a historic ruling refuting the creationism ― and its modern-day variation of “intelligent design” ― which claimed humans have not evolved from monkeys or amoeba but are creatures of some omniscient and omnipotent being.

We don’t pretend to have much scientific expertise. But if God created Adam according to his own shape, how come there are so varied types of his descendants? Aren’t the corrupt, greedy political, business and religious leaders here the less evolved samples in conscience if not in appearance and intelligence? <Korea Times>

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