Alabama creation/evolution controversy percolates!
Published: 2 April 2001 (GMT+10)
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The creation/evolution debate in Alabama continues to be of immense interest for citizens in this ‘Bible-belt’ southern US state. In 1996, the State Board of Education ordered that a disclaimer be pasted inside all biology texts to be distributed in its public schools, declaring that macro-evolution ‘has never been observed and should be considered a theory’—and a ‘controversial’ one at that. It also encouraged students to ‘keep an open mind’ on how living things came to be.
A firestorm of criticism from evolutionists erupted within the state (and received wide notice across America). A counterattack was launched against this sensible and mild book disclaimer. In recent times, evolutionist activists have been pushing the state to change its science standards to teach the ‘fact’ of evolution.
This was the theme of a recent commentary, which appeared in the state’s biggest circulation daily newspaper, The Birmingham News, written by Dr Scott Brande, an associate professor at the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at the University of Alabama (Birmingham). CMI’s rebuttal to his pro-evolution commentary follows, which was submitted to the paper’s ‘letters editor’ on February 27:
Dear editor:
Scott Brande would have you believe there is no controversy within the scientific community regarding the acceptance of evolution theory, and therefore Alabama’s public schools should adopt a science curriculum that promotes evolution as the exclusively taught model of origins.
On the contrary, we note the following:
- There is a significant minority of scientists (literally thousands in America) who reject molecules-to-man evolution and accept creation as the better explanation of biological origins; furthermore, most of the founding fathers of science were creationists (and many of them lived during the time of Darwin and rejected his speculations).
- Brande cites whales with "bones for feet" as evidence that aquatic creatures evolved into land animals over evolutionary history; actually, these bones are not vestigial feet but have a definite function in aiding reproduction.
- Brande incorrectly equates evolution with gravity as "accepted scientific knowledge"; this "apples and oranges" comparison conveniently ignores the fact that gravity is a phenomenon that can be directly observed and experimented upon, whereas particles-to-people evolution occurring over millions of years falls outside the domain of such inquiry.
- Fish-to-philosopher evolution requires encyclopedic quantities of new, functional genetic information to be generated without intelligent guidance.
- Mutations are copying mistakes in the DNA, so have been observed only to corrupt genetic information, or at best leave it unchanged. But information-gaining mutations should be frequent if evolution were true, yet not a single one has been observed. Even the rare beneficial mutations like eyeless fish in caves or wingless beetles on windswept islands have still "lost" information for eyes and wings. Information cannot be increased by processes that reduce it, no matter how long a timespan is involved.
- Natural selection could never be the mechanism for goo-to-you evolution because it "removes" genetic information from a population by eliminating the "unfit"; it does not generate "new" information.
- The chemical hurdles required to be overcome for non-living matter to become life in the first place ("chemical evolution") are so insurmountable that a scientific law called biogenesis has been established (i.e. life always comes from life). These changes must happen "without" natural selection, because this requires a self-reproducing entity to start with.
Evolutionists are as biased toward naturalism as the creationists are toward supernaturalism. For example, Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin said (‘Billions and billions of demons,’ The New York Review, 9 January 1997, p. 31): " … we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."
At the very least, students should be aware of the major problems with evolution, and should not be taught demonstrably false evidence like the peppered moth photos (that were actually glued on to the tree trunks in a staged photoshot) and embryo similarities (actually the drawings were faked by Ernst Haeckel to hide their vast differences). It’s interesting that Brande relies on the Fordham report by his fellow non-biologist, Lawrence Lerner, but we have given this report the same F- grade it gave to Alabama for, among other things, failing to castigate such falsehoods used to indoctrinate students in materialistic philosophy masquerading as science.
To borrow Brande’s phrase, evolution theory should be exposed to the broad daylight of public school science instruction, including the scientific evidence (like biogenesis and the laws of information theory) that argues against it. For more information on the above topics, go to .
Sincerely,
Dr. Jonathan Sarfati (Ph.D. Chemistry) & Mark Looy
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