Creationist Claim CA040: Fairness demands that evolution and creation be given equal time.

Creationist Claim CA040: Fairness demands that evolution and creation be given equal time.
In fairness, creation and evolution deserve equal time in science classes. (H.J. Morris 1985, 197-198)

1. The teaching of creationism does not belong in science classes because creationism has no science to teach. It is based on personal religious belief, not on evidence. For the most part, creationism can fit with anything we find, making it unscientific. Where creation models do make specific predictions that can be tested against evidence, they fail the tests. Asking for equal time is asking for nonscience to be taught in science classes.
A 1999 United States poll found that most people favor teaching evolution--and that when creationism is taught, most prefer that it be taught either in nonscience classes or as a religious belief.

2. Equal time would open creationism, and by extension Christianity in general, to ridicule and attack. Saint Augustine recognized this in the fifth century:

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions,...and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking non-sense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. (1982, 42-43)

3. Equal time would mean teaching

• other versions of creationism from other denominations of Christianity (including young-earth, old-earth, day-age, gap theory, geocentrism, and flat earth). All have equal basis for being taught, since they are all based on exactly the same Bible. All are mutually incompatible (DYG 2000; H.M. Morris 1985, 215-247; Watchtower 1985, 186).
  
• other versions of scientific creationism from other religions. Claims have been made for Muslim, Hindu, and Native American versions of creationism.
  The only legal precedent favoring creationism in the United States in the last fifty years was an Interior Department decision finding, on the basis of native creation and flood myths, that 9,400-year-old Kennewick Man was associated with present-day Native American tribes (Chatters 2001, 266; see CJ311).
  
• creation traditions from more than 300 other religions and cultures, from Abenaki to Zulu.
  
• other ideas for the origin of life and the universe, such as
  
  • solipsism
    
  • Last Thursdayism, the unfalsifiable view that the universe and everything in it was created last Thursday with only the appearance of earlier history
    
  • multiple designers (Hoppe 2004)
    
  • Raelianism or other extraterrestrial involvement
    
  • creation by time travelers.
    
  Creationists do not want all of these taught in science class any more than science educators do. Clearly, creationism in school is an attempt to get greater time than all the opposing views, not equal time. That is not fair.
• Creationists do not advocate equal time for evolutionary theory in church services. Why?
  

Further Reading: Edwords, F. 1981. Why creationism should not be taught as science; Part 2; Isaak, M. 2000. What is creationism? http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/wic.html; Leeming, D., and M. Leeming. 1994. A Dictionary of Creation Myths; Sproul, B. 1991. Primal Myths.

From The Counter-Creationism Handbook by Mark Isaak