The recent denial by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) of ICR Graduate School's application to grant degrees in Texas may have been disappointing, but it seems like déjà vu. ICR's accreditation was not the issue. In California, the Graduate School was accredited through the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools. The ICR Graduate School continues to function out of California, but when we relocated the ministry headquarters to Dallas we originally intended to apply to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, which accredits schools in southern states. But first, we must obtain approval to offer a degree program in Texas. That approval can be granted administratively by the THECB, or judicially by an appropriate ruling from a state or federal court.
ICR supporters will remember a previous denial by a similar board in California. The Department of Education and its ideologue Superintendent of Public Instruction Bill Honig illegally moved to close our doors back in the early '90s. Our prayer throughout this lengthy ordeal was that our adversaries would fall into the pit they had dug for us (Proverbs 26:27) and that God would turn a seemingly tragic situation into a great victory. And that's indeed the way it turned out, to His great glory.
That case culminated in a sweeping victory in a California federal district court, preserving ICR's right to exist in California, and the right of any Christian school in California to hold its own statement of faith and to use it in the hiring of faculty and in planning its curriculum. It improperly required ICR to teach the standard scientific information (evolution) that a similar secular school would teach, but we were willing to do this, especially to show how it is inadequate and less scientific than an understanding based in truth.
What a strange coincidence for Texas to be caught in the act of censorship and institutional bias just after the blockbuster exposé Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed hit the theaters. Given that this state's population is rather Christian-friendly, perhaps major changes are in the wind. Wouldn't it be just like our sovereign God to orchestrate such a sequence of events?
Another remarkable "coincidence" is coming. ICR has long pointed out that natural selection is incapable of bringing about the major changes needed by evolution, even though educators grant it almost godlike powers. Natural selection detects a need for a certain trait or body part and provides it on cue--or so some think. But at best, natural selection can only "select" from among the existing variety of life forms those individuals that best suit the environment. It cannot generate new forms. (In other words, before evolution can try to explain "survival of the fittest," it needs to explain "arrival of the fittest.")
This summer at an exclusive meeting of leading evolutionists, the fact that natural selection does not help evolution will be the only agenda item. Evolution has no viable mechanism by which it accomplishes change. The scientists' purpose is to reformat evolution to operate without natural selection. Evolution is purported to be a "theory of everything," but a theory of everything without a mechanism cannot stand.
The THECB's experts faulted ICR for refusing to follow the evolutionary mandates of mainstream science. They fail to realize that we have a higher mandate (Mark 12:30).
* Dr. Morris is President of the Institute for Creation Research.
Cite this article: Morris, J. 2008. Academic Censorship, Round Two. Acts & Facts. 37 (6): 3.
