Keep Creationism Away from Children - Bill Nye

by Salman Hameed

Here is Bill Nye simply saying that evolution is an essential concept in biology, and if we want a scientifically literate society, then it is important to understand it. And for the sake of the future, keep the children away from the idiocy of creationism. This is a short 2 minute video - and I agree with his basic message. I liked his analogy of biology without evolution is like geology without plate tectonics. But what I didn't like was the sole focus on young earth creationism (YEC) - the idea that the earth is less than 10,000 years old. I know that this is the most popular form of creationism in the US, but this is  a geology/astronomy problem and not a problem of biology. If one starts with the premise that the world was created with the last 10,000 years, then the implausibility of evolution would naturally follow from that. From science communications perspective, I think it is better to separate out the the problem of understanding deep time and the fact that species have evolved over billions of years. By the way, this simple video has generated quite a bit of a reaction in the comments - and the video has been viewed 2.5 million times!

We have been looking at the responses to evolution in the Muslim world and find that young Earth creationism is completely missing (though biological evolution - and in particular, human evolution, is rejected by a significant part of the population, depending on the country). The only place it has popped its head is amongst some Muslim groups in North-America - which is a fantastic example of how cultural influences shape these views.