American Leadership in the Sciences: Endangered?

A feature of the growing creation-evolution controversy in this nation is the near-universal misrepresentation or misunderstanding of the issues by most in the secular media. A recent article, “Stand by Science” in the magazine Edutopia (a pro-public school journal1), was particularly “over the top.” It claimed that America’s leadership in the sciences is endangered if evolution is questioned in schools.

The article espouses the mainstream view that natural selection, combined with favorable genetic mutations, is the irrefutable basis for evolutionary change (i.e., to turn particles into people). This is a belief that is presented almost every day somewhere in the secular media (and, of course, in science classes in public schools). The problem is that this common view regarding evolution’s supposed mechanisms is almost completely ignorant of not just the biblical creationist position, but of good science, too!

Answers in Genesis has long highlighted the vast chasm between variation/natural selection and evolution. Observational science indicates that genetic mutations that increase the genetic information necessary for molecules-to-man evolution are virtually nonexistent. The examples used to demonstrate evolution are nearly always degradation and decline instead of “upward change.”

The magazine (and evolutionists in general) are afraid that the influence of groups such as AiG will challenge the deeply entrenched belief in public education regarding the completely naturalistic origins of life on earth (and especially mankind). They pit “evolution as science” against “creation as religion.” The reality is that very few evolutionists realize or acknowledge that their stance is really a religious one (as admitted by evolutionists such as Lewontin and Todd.

While it is AiG’s goal to call Christians back to the authority of God’s Word and to reject the ideas of fallible man about the past, we are not advocating (as we are often accused of) mandating the teaching of creation in the public school system in America. (What would be the point of an unbeliever being forced to teach an inevitably distorted version of creation?) We are supportive, however, of those groups or individuals who are trying to introduce the teaching of the many problems in molecules-to-man evolution. These efforts can help ensure that many more in the next generation of scientific leaders will be able to critically analyze the religious belief inherent in the naturalistic view of origins called evolution.

Eugenie Scott, of the ill-named, anti-creationist National Center for Science Education, is lauded in “Stand by Science” for noting that “countries like Japan, Israel, and the United Kingdom, where religion isn’t taught as a science, turn out more students who pursue science careers.” This is another over-the-top statement in the article, for modern science owes many of its greatest accomplishments to pioneering scientists who were working from a biblical creation basis.2 Many historians of science readily admit that most branches of modern science were founded by believers in creation: Newton, Kelvin, Boyle, Linnaeus, Pasteur, Cuvier, Kepler and Pascal just to name a very few.

(By the way, we are not building the Creation Museum here in northern Kentucky, USA, just to be an in-your-face religious center—or as one recent harsh web critic put it: an “American Taliban Center.”3 In addition to the good science that will be presented in the museum, we will show that there are two worldviews in conflict: biblical creation vs. humanistic evolution.)

Conclusion

The Edutopia article opened with the comment: “Ideology masquerading as scientific legitimacy is sweeping into American classrooms.” We agree! That ideology is humanistic evolution: the concept that man, apart from God, can determine truth.

AiG exists to call Christians back to biblical authority, and to proclaim that God, not man, determines truth.