When it comes to high school education, few subjects incite more fights than evolution. Many parents have argued that schools should “teach the controversy.” In other words, public schools should provide information about evolution and creationism. This allows the students to make up their own minds. Unfortunately for supporters of creation science, though, this argument doesn’t stand against even the lightest scrutiny.

Is Creationism Science?

In order for science teachers to offer information about creation science (AKA intelligent design) to students, the state board of education must decide that creationism contains some scientific merit. After all, you would not expect to teach literature in a biology class. If it isn’t science, then it had no place in a high school biology class.

Supporters of creationism often have difficulty understanding why scientists so often tell them that intelligent design doesn’t belong in a biology classroom. The supporters point to data, asking whether that doesn’t make intelligent design a form of science.

It doesn’t.

Scientists base hypotheses, theories and laws on usefulness. A theory must make a prediction about the world. It can’t simply describe a static event.

The theory of natural selection, for instance, predicts that some animals will have traits that allow them to mate more successfully pass on their genetic material to a larger number of offspring, and that this creates change over time. This has been shown accurate time and time again. Any person can recreate these experiments with fruit flies.

Creationism, however, doesn’t offer predictions about the world. It doesn’t have answers for what will happen tomorrow. Even from this limited perspective, it cannot qualify as science. High school biology instructors, therefore, have no business teaching it in their classes.