Creationism and Evolution
Creationism is the term popularly applied to the views sustained by fundamentalist Christians about the creation of man and the origin of life. Fundamentalists believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible and, therefore, consider that Darwin's theory of evolution is false. Apart from its use to designate a philosophical posture, fundamentalism is also the name of a movement originated in the end of the 19th century by several Protestant churches which opposed the use of historical criticism in biblical studies. It received its name around 1920, and its object was to resist the adaptation of Christian doctrine to modern science. The term 'fundamentalism' has been also applied to certain Islamic groups.
The action of fundamentalists led various U.S.A. states to issue laws against the teaching of evolution in public schools. In 1925, the schoolteacher John T. Scopes was convicted for violating such a law in the state of Tennessee. The trial was much publicized under the name of "the monkey trial." The prosecution was in charge of the fundamentalist William Jennings Bryan, and the defense in charge of the criminal lawyer Clarence Darrow. The conviction was overturned by the state's supreme court, although the law was uphold.
After the Scopes trial, and with the advent of the Great Depression and World War II, fundamentalism lost most of its drive. Beginning in the 70s, however, fundamentalism again appeared in the United States as a movement against discrimination, arguing that the biblical narration of creation should be taught at school jointly with Darwin's theory. They sustained that not doing so violates religious freedom. Federal courts of the United States have ruled against such laws because they curtailed the separation of state and church.
Evidence of evolution
A scientific theory is a proposition whose acceptance o rejection depends on the proofs that sustain or deny it. When there is a consensus about its validity, a theory is sometimes renamed as a law, but this is not always the case. A theory that is fully confirmed is the theory of relativity, but it is still called a theory despite its infinite applications that have changed the world in which we live.
The theory of evolution, unlike the theory of relativity, is not a physical theory that can be proved by experiments. However, any person that believes in the human capacity to reason, cannot but agree that it is the only explanation to a number of facts that otherwise would be bewildering. When, on the contrary, the person believes in what is written in a book more than in his own reason, then he may be prepared to join a fundamentalist movement.
The theory of evolution has not needed experimental confirmation to convince the majority of scientists of its correctness; the evidences gathered from the study of the fossil record and from the study of the similarities and differences of living animals have been enough to establish its validity. Nevertheless, in these days a confirmation has been obtained when a population of animals has changed its reproductive habits as a response to a change in environment.
The fossil record is constituted by the remains of prehistoric animals and plants that were buried by sedimentary material in the course of many millions of years. Its study is accomplished by the science of paleontology, which divides the history of the Earth in eras: Precambrian (from the origin of life till 600 million years ago), Paleozoic (600-230 million years ago), Mesozoic (230-65 million years ago), and Cenozoic (65 million years ago till today). There is also a division in periods so that, for example, the Devonian Period covers 55 million years--from 400 to 345 million years ago.
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