Still chewing my way through a vast e-mail bag (600+) on my evolution piece. Just one large general point that applies to about half these e-mails. As I made clear (I hope) in the piece, I don’t think it’s very important for kids to be taught advanced biology. I would much rather our schools produced good citizens than good scientists. America doesn’t actually need many good scientists, and such as it needs tend to be self-motivated anyway. I therefore think that the fuss about evolution vs. creationism in schools is a storm in a teacup. However, I am going to retreat slightly from that position, thus: while I don’t much care whether or not my kids learn advanced biology, I think I **do** want them to learn the difference between science and pseudoscience. There are a number of well-tried criteria for spotting this difference. The most accessible is Karl Popper’s criterion of falsifiability. The essence of a scientific theory (said Popper) is that it be falsifiable. The theory of evolution, for instance, is falsifiable. It would be falsified if we found a modern human skeleton fossilized in ancient rocks. Or it could be falsified by advances in our understanding of molecular genetics–which might show that natural selection is genetically impossible. Creationism, on the other hand, is not falsifiable, as it rests on the idea that an omnipotent God can do anything he feels like doing, even if it makes no sense to human beings. Ergo, evolution is a scientific theory (possibly a false one!) while creationism is a pseudoscientific theory.