Several years ago the Ohio State School Board voted eleven to four to remove language in the state’s science standards that encourages students to “investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolution theory.” Then school board member Martha Wise said her reason for voting to delete the language was because, “It is deeply unfair to the children of this state to mislead them about science.” That statement revealed Ms. Wise is poorly named.
The heart and soul of science is to investigate and critically analyze everything in the physical realm, including evolution. I cannot fathom how it is misleading to teach children to do this very thing. Anything less is not science; it is shamanism. If evolution is more fact than theory, if it is so unquestionably true, if its underlying premises are so faultless, why do evolutionists fear its examination? If all roads of life’s origin and continued existence lead to evolution, why are evolutionists saying don’t read the map?
Not long ago the Tennessee legislature voted to allow their children to take a closer look at the theory of evolution and to question its scientific basis. The Tennessee legislature may be trying to reverse the impact of the Thomas Scopes’ “Monkey Trial” back in 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee. The transcript of Clarence Darrow’s cross-examination of William Jennings Bryant makes for some insightful reading. Then it generated a lot of heat, but not much light.
This kind of recent legislative action even has “Bill Nye The Science Guy” concerned. According to one article Bill is concerned by “efforts by some Christian groups to cast doubts on evolution and lawmakers who want to bring the Bible into science classrooms.” In a video he made Bill passionately pleads for parents not to instill their beliefs in their children, “Because we need them.”
Well Bill, you and those like you have been slowly but increasingly teaching our children they are nothing more than the highest evolved animal on the planet since 1925. The big difference I see between then and now is our public schools are patrolled by uniformed law enforcement officers after manning the metal detector wearing bullet-proof vests in case there is a fifth-grader with an Uzi in his book bag gunning for a teacher, maybe a science teacher.
I do not reject the Theory of Evolution because it supposedly contradicts the Bible. There are those who embrace Theistic Evolution which is an attempt to syncretize the Theory of Evolution with the biblical account of Creation. The guys over at BioLogos would agree, although they employ different terminology. Instead of Theistic Evolution they prefer the term Evolutionary Creation. It’s the same idea clothed in different semantics.
The reason I reject Theistic Evolution or Evolutionary Creation is because it is predicated on poor science and even poorer theology.
As I have said before, science consists of gathering data through observation of natural phenomena or observation and recording results of experimentation in a controlled environment such as a laboratory. At its essence, science is observation. Observation reveals facts and scientists speculate on what the facts mean and this gives rise to theories. There is a huge gap between what science observes and what science speculates.
When it comes to the origin of life, that gap is about 3.5 billion years. Scientists theorize life began 3.5 billion years ago and they have formulated several theories about the origin of life, but the whole scientific community is not in possession of a single observed fact about how life began. They can only guess how life began because they did not observe how life began. If you think that last sentence is an exaggeration, read on.
In a publication entitled Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences, Second Edition (1999), page 7, we read, “Of course, even if a living cell was to be made in the laboratory, it would not prove nature followed the same pathway billions of years ago.” This is a stunningly honest admission by a body of highly respected scientists. Since the origin of life is an unobserved event shrouded in antiquity, they must admit they do not know what happened.
This is why I say Theistic Evolution is poor science, because they do not know with any certitude how life began. And this is why it is even poorer theology, because it is a theology accommodating an unproven theory.
Even though Bill says the scriptural record of Creation will eventually become obsolete, unless they come up with some hard cold facts, I think there is a better chance Evolution will become extinct.
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