Students deserve academic freedom
Published 9:00 pm Friday, September 7, 2001
Greg Moore
Surveys indicate that over 85 percent of Americans believe in God and less than 10 percent accept the claim that human beings evolved from more ancient beings without any divine intervention along the way. One recent poll found that 79 percent of Americans want creation taught in the schools. So how is it that God and creation have become dirty words in the public educational system?
Public schools used to be responsive to parents and local community values. Now they are under the control of professional educators who are promoting a naturalistic agenda. The foundation of naturalism is that God is an illusion and human beings are simply a product of the forces of nature. Students are taught at an early age that evolution is a scientific fact and what is outside of science is fantasy. This is not something they are supposed to approach with open-minded skepticism but accept by blind faith. Whatever you may think the word "evolution" means, to those that direct science education it means that our existence is an accident and we are responsible to no Creator. Although the national motto my be "In God We Trust," clearly God has no place in the science classroom.
This is why evolutionists panic at the first sign of rebellion – they fear exposure of the godless agenda they are promoting. The science education establishment desperately wants to insulate the science classroom from dissent and one of the best ways to do this is to label creationists as religious fanatics. Thus, creationists are always portrayed as irrational people who are only interested in promoting their religious prejudices. However, creationists are not quite the yahoos that evolutionists portray them to be. While some creationists may dismiss evolution on religious grounds, most reject it because there is no direct evidence that the Darwinian mechanism of mutation and natural selection are capable of creating new life forms. So why should anyone dogmatically insist that evolution is a proven fact?
Clearly a person does not have to be religious, let alone a fundamentalist, to object to the way children are being taught. The truth is that evolution has come under increasing attack from reputable scientists in a wide range of fields. Astronomers recognize that the universe is not old enough or large enough for life to have evolved on its own. Mathematicians recognize that the odds of the ingredients of life assembling by chance are so remote that they can be considered impossible. Origin-of-life researchers recognize that the early Earth would not have supported life and they have no credible explanation for the origin of life or the assembly of the complex DNA code. Paleontologists admit that the fossil evidence does not support evolution. And, molecular scientists recognize that certain biochemical structures in cells could not have evolved in a step-by-step fashion.
If evolutionists really wanted to promote science, rather than philosophy masquerading as science, they would encourage students to explore these issues. Instead, they prop up evolution with evidence that scientists have shown to be false or misleading. These problems have been documented by molecular biologist Dr. Jonathan Wells in his book, "Icons of Evolution." Wells debunks ten major evolution arguments that are included in most introductory biology textbooks. One of these, embryo drawings that are supposed to prove that humans and fish evolved from a common ancestor, is known to be a fake. Yet, evolutionists continue to use them to indoctrinate students. When evolutionists have to resort to the sort of distortion, you know their theory is in trouble.
To believers in creation, evolutionists seem intolerant and dogmatic when they insist that their philosophy must have a monopoly in the public schools. They encourage lawsuits to suppress discussion and strong arm school districts into banning anything but evolution. Although such maneuvers may seem clever to evolutionists, all they do is stir up animosity. More important, they misrepresent what the Supreme Court has ruled on the issue of origins. In Edwards vs. Aguillard (June 1987), the court stated that it is constitutional for teachers and schools to expose students to the problems with the theory of evolution as well as to any scientific alternatives. In fact, suppressing alternatives constitutes "viewpoint discrimination" which the Court has elsewhere pronounced unconstitutional. Intelligent design theory and similar approaches not only fit the criteria the court has established but achieve the type of academic freedom the court envisioned.
Let’s educate students, not indoctrinate them. The dogma that life is the product of unintelligent material processes is not only unproven, it is extremely prejudicial. Students should be told about the problems with evolution and they should be encouraged to discuss other viewpoints. It is my hope and prayer (another dirty word) that students will have the academic freedom to explore the origin of life issue. This way, the creation-evolution debate will become an exciting intellectual adventure and students will be armed with the information they need to make their own decisions.
Greg Moore of Everett is a member of Reasons to Believe, a California-based group that focuses on science and the Bible.
