Real science is the study of how nature works. Actually, none of it has anything to do with Evolution. When you get to the chapter on Evolution in your college intro-to-Biology text, notice it goes into pleading and story telling -- no longer is the Biology book interested in educating readers about how nature works.
I'm in the library right now and the Biology text in front of me is "Understanding Biology for Advanced Level", 4th ed., by Glen and Susan Toole. There is one chapter on evolution, chapter 11.
The first topic is population genetics. Everything here is observable and repeatable in the lab, as evidenced by Mendel et al.'s experiments, although probably not over the period of a college course.
The second topic is the Darwin/Wallace formulation of the mechanism of evolution, stated as 7 points: overproduction of offspring, constancy of numbers, struggle for existence, variation among offspring, survival of the fittest by natural selection, like produces like, and formation of new species. Again, all of these are testable and observable though probably not at a college-level investigation.
The third topic is natural selection, explaining types of selection (directional, stabilizing, and disruptive). Applications are resistance to antibiotics in bacteria, resistance to insecticides in insect pests, resistance to myxomatosis in rabbits, and heavy metal tolerance in plants. Again, observed though not testable at college level.
The fourth topic is artificial selection. Ditto.
The fifth topic is isolation mechanisms, allopatric and sympatric speciation. Ditto.
Over the weekend when I go back I'll check out my uni-level Biology textbook and see if your accusations stick up there.
My question is:
what does creationism have to offer in competition? How would you teach a class on creationism, what would you teach them, what experiments would you perform, and what good would this knowledge do them in future academic learning? I agree that the question "Where do we come from?" is very important, but the valid question to ask in a science class is "Where does
science say we came from?" and there the only viable scientific theory is evolution. If one wishes to explore the metaphysical implications of evolution or supernaturalist objections to it, by all means! But not in a science class where people might mistake it for science.
By the way, notice what all this "pleading and story-telling" has in common: testable experiments which can only be performed often at a Masters or PhD level (AFAIK) of research. This suggests to me what "empirical and observable science" really is: "if I can understand it, it's empirical and observable; if I can't, it's not."
