As Texans Fight False Evolution 'Facts' in Textbooks, Ministry Equips Creation Defenders
by Jim Brown and Jenni Parker
November 10, 2003
(AgapePress) - Despite a setback in round one of the debate over what Texas public school students should be taught about the origin of life, critics of evolution are vowing they will not give up.Although the State Board of Education has approved 11 biology textbooks that promote evolution as a fact and fail to address the controversy surrounding the theory, a chemical engineer from Duncanville says the books could have been much worse.
Dr. Ide Trotter with Texans for Better Science Education says he is disappointed with the Board's decision, but he still feels progress has been made. "The textbooks that were up for final consideration are significantly improved over those that were first submitted," he says, "and this is a long, ongoing effort."
Although this battle did not end with the total victory that TBSE wanted, Trotter says "the war is ongoing and all the trends of science are in our favor. It just takes time for the scientific establishment to shift its gears."
Local school districts will now be able to select any of the 11 textbooks, and the state will pay for them using public school funds. Nevertheless, Trotter regrets that the approved books still contain inaccurate material. For instance, one of the texts published by Glencoe/McGraw Hill claims modern human beings and apes evolved from a common ape-like ancestor.
"There is a point in history where life first appeared. Everything that preceded that life was not governed by evolution or biology, but by physics and chemistry," Trotter says. Yet the engineer contends that the scientists and scholars who wrote the selected textbooks have put forth a "rather spurious, highly tentative past" to suggest that material science has explained everything about the origins of human existence. "It's not true," he says.
But while TBSE is fighting to get the real truth about evolution into the textbooks and classrooms of their state, one well-known writer and speaker is trying to let Christians know that plenty of evidence for the truth about creation is readily available, both in the Bible and elsewhere.
Creation More Than Credible
Australian author Ken Ham, co-founder of the Christian apologetics ministry called Answers in Genesis, agrees with those Christians who want to put the facts about evolution into teachers' and students' hands. However, Ham points out that facts do not speak for themselves; rather, they must be interpreted.
Ham asserts that believers and non-believers are not working with separate evidence for evolution or creation. "We all deal with the same evidence" he asserts, meaning that all can observe the same earth, the same fossil record, and the same present-day animals. But Ham says the different conclusions individuals reach lie in how they interpret what they study. He notes that many scientists reject the biblical account of creation as unscientific, all the while failing to realize that their own a priori assumption that God does not exist is unscientific and taints their conclusions.
Ham calls the Bible the "history book of the universe." He says Christians need to realize that the Word of God provides a reliable, eyewitness account of the beginning of all things, so they are wise and well-justified in using it to help make sense of the present world and its origins.
Answers in Genesis works to equip Christians to challenge evolution at its base and to defend the truth against presuppositions, assumptions, and wrong interpretations made by the unbelieving scientific community. "When properly understood," Ham says, "the 'evidence' confirms the biblical account."
