Teaching Creation as Comparative Religion
By Bruce Malone
An ancient proverb (Proverbs 18:17) states that any story will sound true until the other side is heard. The primary strategy used to keep the evidence for creation out of public schools is to claim that teaching creation is introducing religion into schools. It is often suggested that the solution is to teach creation as a class on comparative religion.
Teaching the evidence for creation is not an issue of science vs. religion. The crux of the debate is whether students should be allowed to see all of the scientific data so that they can make up their own minds where we came from. Currently one religiously held belief (evolutionism) maintains a monopoly of thought such that students see only evidence favorable to it.
[Evolutionism is the belief that life formed itself and that a creature can transform itself into a completely different type of creature by some natural process.]
Meanwhile, the scientific evidence supporting the other possible explanation for our existence (creationism) is suppressed.
[Creationism is the belief that the design of life requires an intelligent designer, there is a natural limit to genetic variation, one type of creature has never turned into a completely different kind, and the vast majority of the fossil record is a result of an enormous worldwide flood.]
Neither evolutionism nor creationism can be proven because both deal with events of the past. Yet both provide models which can be tested by scientific observation.
There is no doubt that both natural selection and mutations occur. However, small variations within a given type of animal are driven by information already present in the DNA molecule by random mistakes. Dogs stay dogs and frogs stay frogs. Furthermore, there is an enormous amount of evidence supporting the creation model:
1.The fossil record shows a pattern of systematic gaps between creatures of vastly different types.
2. Scientists have not come even remotely close to showing how non-living chemicals could form a living cell.
3. If the same type of code found on the DNA molecule were transmitted to earth from outer space, it would immediately be recognized as having an intelligent designer.
4. The laws of thermodynamics show that matter and energy do not just appear and matter does not, by itself, increase in ordered complexity.
5. Accelerating the mutation rate of fruit flies by millions of times has never resulted in a new creature or even a new functioning feature.
6. There is abundant geological evidence for a recent massive flood of worldwide extent.
These, and many more evidences, involving biology, geology, and physics, belong in a science class - not in a class on comparative religion. It is not the desire of creation scientists to indoctrinate students in religion. Creationists merely wish for students to have a chance to see all of the data so they can decide for themselves whether creation or evolution is the most logical. Currently, students are only getting the selective evidence which supports a belief in evolutionism because that faith can only survive if evidence supporting creation continues to be censored.
A Gallop poll conducted in June of 1999 for CNN showed that 68% of the people in the United States want the evidence for both creation and evolution taught in schools. A 1978 controlled study in Racine Public School District of Wisconsin by Dr. Richard Bliss showed that students exposed to evidence for both creation and evolution actually tested higher on both evolution & creation knowledge than students exposed to only evolutionary evidence.
The evolution/creation debate is not about whether teaching the scientific evidence for creation will bring religion into schools. Scientific evidence belongs in a science classroom, even if that evidence points to a Creator. Allowing the evidence for creation provides students with the opportunity to think for themselves.
A complete set of articles examining science and reality from a Christian perspective can be found at SearchfortheTruth.net and in the book Search for the Truth by Bruce Malone.
