A Battle
for Men’s Souls
By Dr. David N. Menton, AiG–USA
What I heard and saw at the 172nd national
meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
in St. Louis is of great importance to all who are concerned about biblical
Christianity
and the future of public education in America. Christians be warned! Evolutionists—in
the name of so-called “science”—have challenged us to nothing less than a
battle for men’s souls.
‘Science’ under attack!
The AAAS is the world’s largest general scientific
society, and its annual meeting (this year it was February 16-20) comprises
well over a hundred different seminars and symposia, covering every imaginable
field of science and pseudoscience, from “Stem Cell Research” to “Astrobiology”
(the “study” of life forms around distant stars!).
Lawyers ensuring that schools remain “God-free
zones”
In one session, titled “Constitutional
Principles and Legal Strategies in the Creation and Evolution Debates”
(sponsored by the American Bar Association), lawyers crowed over their
victories against “intelligent design” (ID) and “creationism” in recent court
battles with school districts in Dover, Pennsylvania, and Cobb County, Georgia.
Apparently the AAAS is counting on lawyers to continue to keep our public
schools a “God-free” zone.
Raymond Eve from the University of Texas at
Arlington reported on how a belief in creation and a young earth correlates
with many politically “incorrect” views such as opposition to homosexual
behavior. Eve evoked disdainful laughter from the audience when he mentioned
such matters as the “fundamentalists’” belief in God, angels, the devil,
prophecy and the return of Christ. Eve’s biggest concern in future court
battles, however, is not the “fundamentalists,” but what he calls “ratchet
evolutionists.” These are people who accept evolutionism but reject “strict
naturalism.” Presumably, even a belief in evolutionism is not enough if it is
not accompanied by an unquestioning belief in a philosophy of crass
materialism.
Jay Wexler from Boston University declared
that teaching intelligent design is unconstitutional because it’s “religion,”
though he conceded that the Supreme Court has yet to define religion. Still,
Wexler felt that we could “defuse” the creation/evolution controversy if America’s
public schools were to “teach about religion.” What he has in mind, of course,
is that all religions would be granted equal coverage and taught as mythology.
While Wexler applauded the decision of Federal Judge Jones in the Dover case
that intelligent design is “breathtaking insanity” and “not science,” he was
leery of judges deciding what is science and what is not, lest it “come back
to haunt us.”
Steven Gey of
Florida State University exhibited anger and sarcasm against ID and creationism
as he spoke on “Field Strategies: What Proponents of Evolution Need to Know.” Gey insisted that we don’t even have to decide what is and
is not science when it comes to ID, since “everyone agrees that whatever
science is, this ain’t it.” Gey
warned that one of the strategies the ID proponents are now trying in the
courts is to ask that high school teachers be permitted to critically evaluate
the evidence for evolution, but he insisted that teachers below the university
level “have no academic freedom” to do this, and angrily declared: “You do not
have the academic right to be incompetent.”
Gey said that the
decision of Judge Jones against teaching ID in Dover was “great because it
scares...the school boards.” He said that school districts can’t afford to go
to court over teaching ID because when they lose, they have to pay for all the
legal expenses, and quipped that “lawyers make $500 an hour” and “eat at expensive
restaurants.”
Like Wexler, Gey
also proposed that teachers should be taught how to “teach about religion” in
our public schools in the hope of preventing a conflict between religion and
evolutionism. His solution is that we teach how religion itself evolved and ask
our students questions such as: “Why are you a Baptist?”
Alert!
People rely on religious explanations and prayer!
The program description for a symposium
titled “Science Under Attack” reported with alarm that
“Recent data indicates a growth in public support for biblical explanations and
a growing reliance on prayer and religious explanation.” Several speakers in
this symposium implied that this will have to stop if there is to be any hope
for science and, indeed, the future of America.
The lead-off speaker in this symposium was
Eugenie Scott, head of the anti-creationist organization pretentiously called
the “National Center for Science Education” (NCSE) and the darling of
evolutionary dogmatists everywhere. Scott lamented that education policy and
curriculum is decentralized in over 17,000 school districts in the United
States, and proposed that the science curriculum be centralized. No doubt her
NCSE stands ready to set the science guidelines for such a national curriculum.
Scott lashed out against the suggestion of
the ID movement to “teach the controversy” regarding evolutionism, insisting
that there is no controversy among those (who she feels are) entitled to an
opinion. She regards all scientific criticism of evolutionary dogma in the
classroom to be “religious” because “if you denigrate evolution, then God did
it” so you are really “sneaking creationism into the curriculum.” Although most
evolutionists have, in the past, argued that evidence against evolution
does not imply evidence for creation, incredibly Scott asked, “What
other designer other than God could have made all this complexity?” Those in
the ID movement who ingenuously deny that they have God in mind as the designer
could learn something from Scott—what other designer, after all, is there that
could have made the heavens and the earth and all its inhabitants? We can be
certain it wasn’t the mindless and purposeless process of random evolution that
Scott imagines.
Jon Miller of Northwestern University spoke
on what he called “The Erosion of Public Acceptance of Modern Science in the
United States.” Having convinced himself that the public support for science in
America has been waning over the last several years, Miller puzzled over the
incongruous fact that for the last 60 years, America has been a leader in
science and that Americans, in fact, generously support science and eagerly
adopt new technology. He conceded that the reservations that Americans have
regarding “science” are largely confined to evolutionism and embryonic stem
cell research. Still, he said, it was shocking that only about 13% of Americans
are convinced that evolution is true and lamented that no other country in the
world rejects evolutionism to the degree that Americans do. Miller concluded
that “fundamentalism” is behind this rejection of “modern science” (i.e.,
evolutionism). He defined “fundamentalism” as the belief that the Bible is the Word of God and that there
is a personal God who hears the prayers of individuals.
Shirley Malcom,
head of AAAS Education and Resources, believes that Americans are willing to
accept science until it involves a “clash of values” or has “politically
unacceptable implications.” Along with others, she proposed that we must reach
the young children because early education in science (i.e., evolutionism) is
essential for “adult literacy.” Roger Bybee,
Executive Director of the Biological Science Curriculum Study (BSCS), which,
over the past 40 years, has developed evolution-laced biology textbooks,
agreed, suggesting that “school programs should introduce concepts fundamental
to evolution beginning in elementary grades.”
Gerald Wheeler, Secretary and Executive Director
of the National Science Teachers Association and a strong advocate for evolutionism,
admitted that “every time I support evolution I get hate mail.” 
Wheeler
declared that “teachers lack knowledge of evolution” and that colleges are
“doing a dreadful job of teaching science [i.e., evolutionism] to teachers.”
Despite the heavy indoctrination in evolutionism that most students get in
the course of their education, many conference participants blamed teachers
(and those involved in teacher training) for the failure of Americans to believe
in evolutionism. Wheeler says that the two messages he tries to get across
to his creationist critics are: (1) “evolution is necessary for America to
remain competitive” in the world, and (2) “it is not fair to teach students
about nonscientific ideas.”
In yet another anti-creation symposium
titled “Anti-Evolutionism in America: What’s Ahead,” the venerated Eugenie
Scott once again took the lead to explain the different varieties of
anti-evolutionism and how to combat them. She described the two types of
creationism as being Bible-based
creationism and design-based creationism, commonly known as the ID movement.
She said that creation science is actually the richer and more scientific of
the two because it makes more “fact claims” than ID. Creation, for example, has
a “historical narrative” while ID has none.
Finally, she encouraged evolutionists to
ignore their creationist critics and “not stop using the peppered moth” as
evidence for evolution (despite the fact that it has been shown to be based on
fraudulent data). In fact, Scott encouraged her audience to ignore all evidence
against evolution because “any time you hear any evidence against evolution,
assume creationism is behind it.”
Outreach to school teachers
A special session called “Evolution on the
Front Line: An Event for St. Louis-Area Teachers” was open to teachers at no
cost (as opposed to a $350 fee to attend the rest of the conference).
Throughout the conference, teachers had been accused of a dismal failure to
teach science (i.e., evolutionism), but in this special session with many
teachers in attendance, teachers were warmly praised for their noble efforts.
The leadoff speaker was U.S. Congressman
Russ Carnahan, from Missouri, who said the best day of his life was “when we
passed the (embryonic) stem cell research bill in the House.” He assured the
teachers that he was totally opposed to ID and insisted that “questioning
evolution threatens all of science.” He urged teachers to show conviction when
teaching evolution and assured them that “evolution is compatible with
religion.”
A consistent theme among nearly all the speakers
in this session for teachers was that “there is no conflict between evolution
and religion.” In an apparent effort to prove this point, a noted Jesuit astronomer
was invited to address the teachers, but he was less than reassuring. Indeed,
no speaker was more controversial and irreverent than the Reverend George
Coyne, Director of the Vatican Observatory outside 
Rome.
In his address, “Is God a Scientist? A Catholic Look at Evolution,” he declared
that “if God is a scientist, He is a poor one.” He quipped that if God were
a scientist, “I would want an eye with 360 degree vision.” He assured his
audience that “God is not an engineer or a designer of the universe,” and
that if He were, “that would belittle God.”
Coyne also explained that “the Scriptures
were written before science was developed” and that its authors “couldn’t have
known the future.” According to Coyne, “God let the universe participate in its
own creation.” In a concluding statement that seemed to embarrass just about
everyone except Coyne, he said, “I’m sorry to be so emphatic about
fundamentalism, but the literal interpretation of Scripture is a plague in our
midst.”
Take-home lessons for Christians
What can the concerned, Bible-believing Christian conclude from the AAAS conference, and
how might we respond to its challenges? The first lesson is that we cannot look
to the courts to support the teaching of ID or creation in the public schools.
Perhaps the most that can be accomplished is to get the protection of the
courts for those teachers who elect, on their own, to
critically evaluate the evidence for evolution.
While it may well be true that ID is dead as
a legal maneuver to force change in the public schools, creation and ID are not
dead in the hearts of most Americans. Even the evolutionists concede that while
they are winning in the courts, they are not winning in the minds of most
Americans. Because they do not understand why this is so, evolutionists will
continue to try to correct the problem in the schools by crushing all dissent
and teaching evolution ever more frequently, stridently and dogmatically. Even
some of the secular press covering the AAAS convention commented on the zeal
and dogmatism of the evolutionists.
Evolutionists understand that most Americans
believe in a Creator God, and they also understand that they cannot win “the
battle for men’s souls” as long as the public understands that there is a deep
conflict between biblical Christianity and evolution. The AAAS tries to obscure
this fact and intends to take the battle into the church, where they hope to
convince both clergy and laymen that “evolution is compatible with religion.”
But this is a meaningless claim because while evolutionism is compatible with
some religions, it is certainly not compatible with others. Almost anything
could be said to be compatible with some religion.
Throughout the conference there were appeals
for “people of faith” to speak to the news media to show the compatibility of
evolutionism and “faith.” Some evolutionists are even getting into churches to
preach the “gospel” of evolutionism, often under the guise of titles like “The
Preservation of Biodiversity.” In 1995 the AAAS established the program “Dialogue
on Science, Ethics, and Religion” (DoSER) to
establish communication between scientific and religious communities. In a
notice for an upcoming book sponsored by DoSER,
called The Evolution Dialogues: Science, Christianity, and the Quest for
Understanding, are the following questions: “does evolutionary theory deny
the existence of God as creator?” and “must Christians choose between
evolutionary science and their faith?” They insist that “the answer to these
questions is a resounding NO!”
How can the AAAS make these claims when, by
their own estimates, about half of all Americans reject evolution in favor of
the biblical account of creation? The answer is really quite simple, though
they are reluctant to put it on the table for all to see. Apparently, it is OK
to believe in a “God,” as long as you do not claim that this God actually does
anything physical, like create natural things by the power of His Word or
physically answer the prayers of an individual. In other words, it is OK to
believe in a God who doesn’t actually do anything because the physical world
(all of reality) is the exclusive domain of science.
Finally, Christians should be very wary of
any efforts on the part of the public schools to “teach about religion.” Some
Christians naively think that this sounds like a good
idea, but evolutionists and the courts will ensure that all religions be given
equal status and all be considered mythology. Evolutionists can hardly wait to
teach young students how religion supposedly evolved in the mind of primitive
man, and to postulate about its adaptive value. They think that when the
students are presented with a bewildering array of purported religious myths,
students will conclude that none of them is worth their belief or
devotion.
We would do well to consider the warning of
the Apostle Paul to the Colossians: “Beware lest anyone
cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of
men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to
Christ. For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are
complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power” (Colossians 2:8–10).
Publisher’s Comment
During the conference the Board of Directors
of the AAAS also found it necessary to strongly denounce pending legislation
and policies in several states which they felt would undermine the teaching of
evolution. They feared that some of the bills would seek to discredit evolution
by emphasizing “flaws” in the theory of evolution or “disagreements” within the
scientific community. They were afraid that some of the bills would encourage
teachers and students to explore the concept of intelligent design or, God
forbid, “critically analyze evolution and the controversy.”
Imagine that! Scientists afraid of a “critical
analysis of evolution.” On second
thought, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that they would fear a critical
analysis of evolution because they know darn good and well what the results
would be.
Dr. David Menton, Ph.D. (cell biology), Associate Professor (retired)
of Anatomy at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, MO, is
a seminar speaker for Answers In Genesis – USA (Aig
– USA) who travels throughout American and abroad making presentations regarding
the Creation-Evolution controversy. This article first appeared on the AiG web site. For more information regarding AiG please visit their web site at www.answersingenesis.org.
