In a recent U.S. News & World Report debate, Glenn Branch, Deputy Director of the National Center for Science Education, speculated that Charles Darwin “would not be happy to learn that almost half of Americans don’t accept evolution.”1
Actually, Mr. Branch, the majority of Americans (some 66 percent, according to Gallup) don’t buy the “theory” that we all randomly evolved from fish and monkeys.
Minority activist groups like the NCSE, whose mission is to squelch free scientific inquiry in education, aggressively lobby to keep scientific evidence out of public view—evidence that is embarrassing to Charles Darwin and the atheist-leaning science elite of today.
In some circles, that’s still called censorship.
Countering the evolutionary push to expel sound science education from any classroom—public or private—Dr. Henry Morris of ICR wrote in the article he submitted to U.S. News & World Report titled “Creationism and Education,” that while “biblical” creationism must not be taught in “public schools,” good science education should be mandatory.2
Which should be taught in public schools? Quite clearly, [ICR founder Dr. Henry] Morris stated that “creationists should not advocate that biblical creationism be taught in public schools, both because of judicial restrictions against religion in such schools and also (more importantly) because teachers who do not believe the Bible should not be asked to teach the Bible.”3
But the sad reality is that peddlers of extreme Darwinian philosophy like Mr. Branch and Eugenie Scott, director of the NCSE, wish to censor good science from public and private schools alike. Lobbyists like these are fearful that your children and mine will actually apply critical thinking skills to scientific theories. Imagine!
“Weaknesses? What weaknesses? Evolution [a.k.a. “origins by accident”] is a fact! There are no weaknesses!”
If Mr. Branch had done his homework, he would have discovered that even the National Science Teachers Association encourages discussion of controversial topics in the science classroom. It’s the way students learn to discern fact from fiction.
And when the scientific method is applied to evolution, Charles Darwin’s lauded book, On the Origin of Species, turns up like a bad novel every time. As Morris writes:
Embarrassingly, this “theory” cannot be scientifically observed in action today, nor can it be forensically observed in nature’s record of the past. But it is, nonetheless, believed. And so ardent are its followers that many scientists refuse to admit the weaknesses of this doctrine, let alone “allow a divine foot in the door,” as Harvard’s Richard Lewontin warns.4
Evolutionary scientists know it, and some even admit it (as long as they are careful not to get expelled from their universities).
I imagine that activist Eugenie Scott is gloating now that she somehow contributed to a defeat for those ignorant Texas hicks on the State Board of Education in Austin who wanted to attach the words “strengths and weaknesses” to evolution. Believe me, she is not fighting for your children to learn truth—not scientific truth, not moral truth, not absolute truth of any kind—but rather that your children will simply “believe”—like an irrational leap in the dark—and place their faith in Charles Darwin.
References
- St. Angelo, S. ‘Should Creationism Be Taught in Public Schools". US News & World Report Weekly. Posted on usnews.com January 23, 2009, accessed January 23, 2009.
- It should be noted that U.S. News & World Report editor Steve St. Angelo mislabeled ICR's position on public schools, despite the clearly referenced statements by Dr. Morris to the contrary, such as "creationists should not advocate that biblical creationism be taught in public schools."
- St. Angelo, S. Ibid.
- Ibid.
* Mr. Ford is Executive Editor.
