It was a few years ago I discovered at a parents evening that the scientific explanation of how the universe started was taught in my child’s religious education (R.E) school classes. My child was 10 at the time, and this was 5 years ago (so hopefully things have changed).

As you may have gathered I was appalled that the evidence based explanation of how we came to be here, which best matches the observable facts, was taught along side creation myths. There is ample evidence to demonstrate that these myths cannot be treated literally (that or whichever deity you believe in is playing nasty tricks on us).

We should have a clear delineation between what is observable fact, and our best explanation of these facts and the things that are entirely unsupported myths. Myths where there is ample evidence to disprove them as a literal explanation e.g., the world is not 6000 years old. It is not right to teach our best explanation (based on the facts), as the same as myths (or even alongside myths) that have no bases in fact.

Often in this sort of discussion people like to point at the unknowns in out science based understanding e.g., dark matter, or things seeming to be older than we predicted were possible. Scientists do not avoid these problems with our current theories, instead they are some of the most interesting areas of research. Explanations of how these things are possible are actively searched for. We both explore what dark matter could be, and look for problems with our mathematical models of the universe that could explain these problems.

So far the explanation that these things are the way they are because they were directly created that way has proved unnecessary. For every unexplained problem in the past that has defied explanation and people have claimed it was created this way we have found an explanation which much better explains what is happening. Often the explanation has proved very helpful and allowed us to better manipulate the world around us.

An example very similar to the current dark matter problem was the perihelion of mercury. In 1859 it was noticed that according to Newtonian physics (the best model we had at the time) mercury’s orbit was wrong, it didn’t change year on year in the manner predicted by Newton’s equations. The scientists of the day tried various things to explain this problem including predicting another planet called Vulcan (which was then searched for, and obviously not found, so the mystery was left open). The mystery was finally solved nearly 60 years later when Einstein created a better mathematical model of our universe in 1915 which correctly predicted Mercury’s change in orbit. Sometimes finding the explanations for these problems can take a long time, but the explanations have to fit all the evidence. Finally it is important to note here that Einstein’s theories didn’t replace Newton’s. At low speeds/accelerations Einstein’s and Newton’s equations agree (to many decimal places). Einstein’s equations improve Newton’s resolving the issues seen at high speeds and distances. If we find a new theory it will have to almost entirely agree with Einstein’s (where we have observed evidence to show it is incredibly accurate).