Author: Dr. Jerry Bergman
Subject: Science Education
Date: 03/01/2006
The following is a transcript of a lecture given by Dr. John R. Baker, professor in a class titled Biological Evolution 303, Section A on March 4, 1980. It illustrates the fact that creationism is often taught in the public school classrooms of America. What is taught is that creationism is not true and evolution. Supposedly no group that might be concerned about teaching religion in public schools challenged Dr. Baker, yet that is exactly what he was doing in this lecture! What follows is the lecture transcribed word for word which says much about what kind of anti-religious education our students are getting.
To start this course off, I’m sure we’re going to get into a little trouble with the creationists like I did last year. I thought I’d start this course off this quarter with a little discussion of creationism from my personal point of view. I want to explain one reason why I don’t discuss creationism in this class.
The lecture I’m going to give today, I’m going to give in three parts. I’m going to give a little introduction. Now I’m going to talk about fundamentalism. I’m going to talk about the origin of modern Christian fundamentalism and then I’ll talk about what you might call conservative or fundamentalist theology vs. science in a historical perspective, that is, what was the conflict between science and theology and the development of the modern view of the world in Western civilization. Then I’ll talk about contemporary American fundamentalism. Then I’ll talk finally about scientific creationism.
My discussion of scientific creationism will be based upon the handout, which is photocopied along with their statement of belief and objectives for Creation Research Society Journal. You know, it is by way of introduction I personally don’t think that there is any reason to debate evolution vs. creationism because the fundamental tenets in my opinion of creationism are all wrong. The way I look at it I compare this to the famous mathematical problem of trisection the angle. Everybody knows that you can bisect an angle very simply using a ruler and pencil and everybody who doesn’t know better thinks “Yeah, everybody should be able to trisect an angle with a ruler and pencil.”
Amateur geometers are forever bombarding professional mathematicians the proofs of the trisection of an angle. Professional mathematicians are understandable hot under the collar when they get these because they know that there has got to be a mistake somewhere because using analytic geometry it is possible to prove that this is not possible to trisect an angle. But, in other words, the professional mathematician knows that there has got to be an error there somewhere. And I feel the same way about the creationism: if the fundamental tenets are wrong there is really no point in debating creationism because you know that there has to be an error there somewhere.
Now let me look first at the origins of modern Christian fundamentalism. Fundamentalism arose among conservative members of various United States protestant denominations in the early twentieth century. The object of these movements was to maintain the traditional interpretation of the Bible and what they believed to be the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith. And all this was a reaction to what was then an emerging liberal theology and the attempt of this liberal theology to recast Christianity in the light of science and historical discoveries that were being done at the time. Science as we know has had a rather large difficulty with the archaeological and Biblical research that discovered other things about the Bible that were questionable.
The essence of fundamentalism has been from the 12-volume book called The Fundamentalist, which was published in 1910 to 1912. In The Fundamentalist you can boil that all down to five fundamental points of doctrine. Point number one: the virgin birth. Point number two: the physical resurrection of Christ. Point number three: the infallibility of scripture. Point number four: the substitutionary atonement. Point number five: the physical second coming of Christ. The only one of these three (five) points that I’m concerned with in this lecture is point number three, the infallibility of scripture.
And now part two of my lecture on this section of fundamentalism, I want to talk about conservative theology; that is to say, fundamentalist theology vs. science from a historical perspective. By way of introduction I want to point out that there are two questions that were resolved in the history of science. The question is: is the world or the universe of natural law which can be discovered by man’s endeavors or is the world and universe under the control of a capricious deity and no laws can be discovered. The latter, that is a capricious deity controls the universe, it is the essence of the Dark Ages or Middle Ages. I hear that the world or universe has natural laws that can be discovered by man’s efforts led to the age of reason, the science into the modern world.
I just have a brief review of some of the events in this warfare between science and theology. I just chose a few out of the many there are. For example, primitive people all over the earth believed that earth to be flat, a flat table or a disk with the sky as a sort of canopy overhead. The ancient Hebrews naturally thought this was the case and this is the case shown by numerous references in the Bible. And so there was a long conflict between science and theographers to try to show that the world was really round, and theologians were convicted based on scriptural passages that the earth must be flat.
This very long conflict based on scriptural passages that the earth must be flat. This very long conflict lasted all the way until 1519 when Magellan managed to sail around the world. But in spite of that there were still numerous people who still thought the world was flat for another two-hundred years.
And even more curious than that, in England in the 18th century that was a society called the Universal Zetetic Society. We would call them flat-earthers. I’ll read you an excerpt about the flat-earthers from an article by Shedewald in an article about the creationism bill that appeared in the Des Moines Tribune last spring:
“The Universe Zetetic Society (the flat-earthers) had a steel core of lecturers who criss-crossed England (unintelligible) negating the possibility that the earth was spherical. Because opponents were fitfully unprepared for the ingenious arguments, the flat-earthers sometimes won their case. The lecturers from the Institute for Creation Research use the same debate tactics and enjoy the same success.”
But anyway, we generally think today, except for a few isolated simplistic persons around.
Another famous problem of theology vs. science is the Copernican theory vs. the heliocentric theory. You have all heard of Copernicus, what with the planets rotating around the sun. Whereas the medieval theologians favored the idea that everything revolved around the earth. Copernicus did not publish in his lifetime because he was persecuted and knew that he would be thrown into prison, if not tied to the stake, for daring to suggest this. But he actually only got a copy of his famous work on his deathbed. Copernicus made a rather interesting statement. But you must realize that all
these people that were opposing the doctrine of theology at the time were Christians.
They had no qualms about the proof of Christianity. They just thought there was some other interpretation possible in the manner of the theologian of the day. Somebody said to Copernicus, “If your theory is right, Venus should show phases.” Copernicus replied, “Yes, that’s true. In God’s time, He will reveal to us the phases of Venus.” But this never did happen in Copernicus’ lifetime.
Galileo was probably the most famous of all scientists to be persecuted by the Church, mainly because he contended with the Copernican theory. As a matter of fact, Copernicus (Galileo) used the telescope and discovered the phases of Venus which Copernicus knew would have to exist. The theologians didn’t at all agree with the idea that the earth moved because in the Bible it clearly says Joshua commands the sun to stand still. Therefore the sun must be moving and not the earth. Related to the ideas of science making progress against primitive theology, or fundamental theology, it is peculiar that the progress is slower in the United States. For example, in 1822 the theories of Copernicus and books of Copernicus and Galileo were taken off the Catholics may read.
By 1850, the German-Lutherans had abandoned the heliocentric theory.
However, in 1873 the Missouri Synod of the Lutherans published a book against modern astronomy. We king of lag behind in that area.
Another thing that is kind of interesting is the idea created in the Bible that comets are balls of fire flung from the right hand of God to frighten sinful, grumbling mankind. In favor of this idea is a scripture text; a marvelous scripture, like in Revelation: “And the third angel sounded and there fell a great star form heaven burning as it were a lamp. And behold ‘a third of the world cometh quickly (?)’” Against this— against the theological viewpoint—is the idea that comets are bodies, astronomical bodies, subject to natural law. Of which almost everybody agrees they are today. And
even worse than that, modern astronomers have pretty well demonstrated that hardly being fire, they are made mostly out of ice. They think comets follow prescribed orbits, and not just come wherever they feel like it. The curious thing about this overthrow of the idea that comets are balls of fire is that no catastrophe is ensured either or religion or to morality. For example, in the realm of religion the passages of the Bible are no less beautiful or powerful knowing that comets are what they are today vs. balls of fire. It didn’t make a bit of difference.
Another place where religion and science had a conflict was in the scripture; the text in numerous places clearly sanctions the belief of sorcery and magic, both in the Old and New Testaments. Sorcery and magic are referred to as reality. Of course, I’m sure you are all aware that during the 15th and 17th centuries there was a very embarrassing (time) to the human race, outbreak of witch hunting in this era.
Another interesting factor in the Bible it sort of suggests that there is a diabolical agency in storms. Ben Franklin (you remember old Ben Franklin) threw up a kite to demonstrate that lightning was nothing more than electricity. When he published this, he was denounced, that is Franklin was denounced in pulpits in both Catholic and Protestant churches all over the U.S. for daring to suggest that there was something natural in storms. Just pure old electricity rather than various devils up there. Roger Bacon, another very famous name in science, living around 1200 to 1250. Bacon was well remembered in science because he invented the experimental, or what we call scientific method, or I should say the experimental scientific method. Bacon was condemned and persecuted throughout his lifetime, thrown into jail several times on the behest of the theologians of the day for his attempts to find scientific explanations for natural phenomena. As a matter of fact, Newton, who we all greatly honor as the founder of modern physics, was denounced in pulpits all over England. He dared to suggest that the universe was made of order that could be established by a few natural laws rather than a universe, which was run by God.
The conflict of science and theology that I have talked about so far didn’t really have any terrible persecution except for maybe Galileo. But there were several cases where things were kind of worse—like geography. In the Bible it clearly states that Judea is a land of milk and honey. A man named Servetus died in 1553. He wrote geography and he stated the simple geographic fact that everybody who had been to the holy land knew that it is a rather barren and inhospitable land. Then this got him in trouble with the rather famous Protestant gentleman by the name of Calvin. Kindly old Dr Calvin saw to it that Servetus was burned at the stake for this heresy, among other things.
The famous problem in geology is that of catastrophism vs. uniformitarianism. Catastrophism is the idea that the earth’s surface is shaped by catastrophe, visited upon it by a deity. Uniformitarianism is the idea that the earth’s surface is shaped by natural processes. That was a terrific conflict in the warfare of science and theology. An excellent source of information on this is a book called, The History of the Warfare Between Science and Theology, A.D. White (1900). In spite of the title, it is a very religious book, a profoundly religious book. It was written in 1900, or published in 1900.
In that day they thought that theology, conservative theology, had lost its battle, but apparently not.
And now let me talk about contemporary American fundamentalism briefly.
(Question from student: “I was just wondering when you mentioned about in the Bible where it says that the world is flat. Could you tell us somewhat where some of the passages are?”)
Not off the top of my head. But I could look come up. The Bible doesn’t say flatly out in words we understand, that the world is flat, but there are places where it refers to the four corners and things like that. And since the ancient Hebrews weren’t world travelers they had no choice but to think the world was flat. All primitive people think the world is flat.
The interesting thing about contemporary American fundamentalism is the numbers of members of fundamentalist churches has been rising since about 968 and the membership in the liberal churches—the Methodists, Presbyterians and the like—has been falling. Quite a spectacular change there. What is the attraction of fundamentalism? Well, I don’t know for sure, but I have several ideas. In my opinion, one of the major attractions of fundamentalism is the attraction of any of the salvation religions. That is, people who feel either politically or financially or perhaps even intellectually inferior to somebody else take revenge upon these people to whom they feel inferior by sending them to hell.
Another attraction of fundamentalism is the general idea that when groups of people like in the United States today or throughout the world sort of feel that we’ve lost control of our destiny. We have runaway inflation that we can’t control. I hear that war, atomic war, might start. The rate of cancer is increasing and so on and so on. Science isn’t helping us at all. When a group of people feel that it has lost control of its own destiny they may turn to mysticism. People start reading Von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods and believing it. People think that Velikovsky was right all along and things like
that.
Another possible attraction of fundamentalism that I’ve seen is in the way many, many children particularly in the United States are raised in a such a way that they become dependent. In other words, their parents don’t allow them to make mistakes on their own. Most mature psychologists realize that how humans grow into intellectual and emotional maturity is by being allowed to make a mistake, and learning from it. But, it is common among American parents to rather too strictly control their child’s life so they won’t make mistakes, so obviously they can’t get hurt emotionally, at least while they’re at home. And so when these children get out of high school and go to college, they still need somebody to act as a substitute parent. And an excellent substitute parent is the various fundamentalist churches, or fundamentalist organizations. One particular reason for that is that the fundamentalist is always right; everybody else is always wrong. So if you are a fundamentalist you can’t possibly be hurt. You can never be wrong.
Another curious thing about fundamentalism that I personally don’t like is that the fundamentalists apparently believe in the literal Bible. The Bible is full of sections where the Deity which is made up to be very cruel and very vindictive, very capricious; and the fundamentalist themselves, I fear, must also be cruel, vindictive, capricious. Another aspect of contemporary American fundamentalism is in America today there is very strong anti-intellectual and anti-scientific movement. This is related to the conflict between the layperson and who the layperson considers to be someone else
telling him what to do. For example, there is a lot of conflict in the control of education. Most people see that the education of their children is being run by a board of education run from a University or State office. They haven’t got any particular control here. This is a considerable source of concern for lay people of a certain type, who see that their beliefs are under attack. For example, if I wrote down some words to show the difference between how the layman looks at science and scientists look at science; how the layperson’s world works compared to how the scientist’s world works. These are two completely different worlds. The layman doesn’t understand the world of science, or the intellectual world as a whole. In the layperson’s world, everything is equal – all humans are as a political contention are all equal. In the world of the scientist, people are not equal. Scientists advance in science purely by merit. In the world of the layperson, things are decided by a unanimous vote. In the world of science, it is the elite. Science is very elitist. Scientists are forever almost worshipping, for example, the Nobel Prize. Well, you’d fall all over yourself thinking that so-and-so go the Nobel Prize. And scientists, in general, are elitists. They prefer to believe that the elite know what’s going on.
The result of this is that laypersons want a hand in education, for example. They also want a hand in science. An interesting example of this is what we had recently in Iowa. (It) was laypersons wanting to censor a book on the school shelves. Another case of this occurred way back in ’74 in the famous town of Kanawha, West Virginia. I’m going to quote a minister, a fundamentalist minister, involved in a textbook controversy.
In Kanawha, West Virginia the fundamentalist objected to certain books being in the school library which seemed to cast doubt on the fundamentalists. This also shows you what I said about how I sort of distrust fundamentalists because they appear to be vindictive and cruel. The paper quoted this minister: “‘I am asking Christian people to pray that God will kill he giants that have mocked and make fun of dumb
fundamentalists,’ the Rev. Charles Quidley (?) told the Charleston Gazette in an interview. The Rev. Mr. Quidley (?) said he wanted Russell Isaacs, Harry Standsbury, and Albert Hanson struck dead. ‘It is not a matter of hate or love,’ he said. ‘It’s a matter of anybody standing in God’s way and trying to bring Christianity to a halt. They must realize that this is God’s land and God’s country and Christianity has made America what it is today.’ He added, ‘I know several Biblical instances where men tried to stop the work of God and died’.”
What kind of an individual is that who wants to strike somebody dead?
Ordinarily, we’d call that somebody who is pathologically insane.
But anyway and now let me talk to another point here. My last point is my little discussion of contemporary American fundamentalist thinking. The fundamentalists believe that the Bible is true throughout. However, it is obvious and has been obvious for years to anyone who has read the Bible that it is full of internal contradictions. For example, here is a quotation. I am using a Revised Standard Version. Exodus 34:6-“The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sins, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and fourth generation.” It seems to me there is a slight contradiction there between the merciful God and God who is going to visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children of the third and fourth generation.
Another interesting case of contradiction in the Bible occurs in Genesis 6:19—“And of every living of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark to keep them alive with thee. They shall be male and female.” (Genesis) 6:20—“Thus did Noah.” I call to your attention that in these two passages two of every sort are brought into the ark. Genesis 7:2—“Of every clean beast, thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female. And of beasts that are not clean, by two, the male and female.”
(Genesis) 7:3—“The fowls also of the air by sevens.” (Genesis) 7:5—“And Noah did it unto all the Lord commanded him.” That is very difficult for Noah even granting an Omnipotent (?) deity to carry out two contradictory commands. To take two of everything vs. taking seven of the clean beast and fowls and two of everything else.
That’s a clear-cut contradiction any way you look at it.
The result of the fact that the Bible has numerous contractions is that the Bible has to be read as ritual (just mumbling over the passages without thinking about it and not analyzed) or else the Bible has to be interpreted. It must be the case that the Bible is interpreted in many cases or it would be to confusing.
If everyone, in my opinion, if the whole country – the whole Western civilization– thought like fundamentalist, the entire logical structure of Western
civilization would collapse. Consider law. If in a court of law, the witness is called before the bench to give evidence, the prosecuting and defense attorneys attempt to find contradictions in this person’s evidence. If a contradiction is found the jury dismisses the evidence. Compare this with the Dark Ages, when the Bible is thought to be literally true throughout. How did they establish guilt in the Dark Ages? Well, they tied the supposed
guilty party to the stool and threw him in the drink. If he sank, he was innocent, and he floated he was guilty.
Now, let me talk about scientific creationism. Now if you look at your little handout that I duplicated over the weekend, an issue from the Creation Research Society Journal. IF you’ll notice that I have in my handwriting listed little numerals a, b, c and so on. And I’m just going to go through these by letter and make some comments where I have indicated.
Number a: “The Society is solely a research and publication society. It does not hold meetings or engage in other promotional activities.” I don’t know about holding meetings. I can see why they wouldn’t want to hold meetings, or somebody might attack their ideas. But to say that they don’t engage in other promotional activities is clearly stretching the fact because members of the CRS appear before state boards, textbook committees, and Legislatures. The CRS publishes political manifestos and and I don’t really think they don’t do promotional activities. In statement two under b, it says that they have no affiliation with other scientific or religious organizations. Yet, if you look I the next column way down under b, it lists Henry M. Morris, Ph.D., Institute for Creation Research, and so on, and president of Christian Heritage College. Strange that he should be the treasurer of one and president of another, and still they say that there is no affiliation with a religious organization. And I would assume that the Christian Heritage College might be associated with a religious organization. I know those are trivial points.
Now number c: Statement of Belief. Anybody who wants to join Creation Research Society has to sign, if you get their Journal out of the library you’ll find an enrollment blank or application of membership and you have to sign that and be committed to believing that the Biblical record of Creation in early history is true. Now how can anybody who pretends to be a scientist subscribe to a full belief in something?
That’s the very antithesis of what science is all about. The essence of science is open mindedness.
For example, the Journal of Astronomy doesn’t have a statement in there that just members of the astronomical society of the United States subscribe fully to the Copernican theory of the universe, and the Journal of Evolution doesn’t have a statement of belief in the Darwinian Theory of evolution. But he Creation Research Society only wants to advance Christian creation. This is an example of what I think is intellectual dishonesty. If they were truly honest scientists—open-minded—they would consider and want to advance the creation stories of all peoples and religions. This is also an actual example of intellectual arrogance. They assume that they have the only truth whereas the evidence for all the creation stories is so similar that you can’t choose between them. A truly scientific hypothesis about creationism would ask the question which creation story
is nearer the truth?
If you look up above there I didn’t underline it but they removed the famous buzzword scientific creationism. This word scientific creationism is a blatant contradiction. If the fundamentalists believe that creation occurred exactly as in Genesis, which they say they do, it cannot be a science or a theory because a theory as we ordinarily understand the word is a hypothetical statement. Fundamentalists who say the creationism is a theory and justifies being taught in public schools are either denying the truth of the Bible if they believe the Bible is true, creation can’t be a theory or else they
are lying by holding reservations about the definition of a theory. Point d: “committed to a full belief in the Biblical record of creation and early
history, and thus to a concept of dynamic special creation.” I’m curious as to why they have the word “dynamic” in there except it sort of brings to mind the problem that there are two distinctive accounts of creation in Genesis. There is the instantaneous account where creation occurred instantaneously, then there is the other account where creation occurs in six twenty-four hour days. I assume that they say dynamic because they would rather have the six twenty-four hour days.
Point e: “we propose to reevaluate science from this viewpoint.” That’s a slight change from earlier. In the early 1970s, that paragraph read as follows, “We propose to reevaluate science from this viewpoint. Beginning in 1964, we are publishing an annual yearbook of articles by various members of ht society and thereafter a quarterly review of scientific literature.” And then in the earlier “70s, they said this, “Our eventual goal is the realignment of science based on theistic creation concepts and publishing textbooks for high school and college age. I’ve noticed that they’ve dropped the idea that their eventual goal is the re-alignment of science based on theistic creation concepts. That really is glaringly unscientific.
Under point f, I just point out again that it says all members of the society subscribe to the following statement of belief and again I ask, how can somebody claim to be a scientist who already subscribes to a belief?
Under point g: “the Bible is he written word of God”. Now that’s questionable. A simple example is that any author could write a book and say this is the word of God. How do you know? There is no possible way to know whether it’s the word of Go or not, so that’s doubtful.
And then another interesting thing here is at point h, “All its assertions are historically and scientifically true in all the original autographs.” Well, let’s just look at the statement, “historically and scientifically true.” “Scientifically true”—I’ve already given you a few examples of the conflicts between science and theology intended to show that the Bible is not scientifically true. However, just to emphasize that point, I have a couple of further examples in the biological sciences. The Bible claims that bats are birds and modern taxonomists clearly agree that bats are mammals. Deuteronomy 4:11—“You may eat all clean birds.” (Deuteronomy) 14:12—“But these are the ones you shall not eat.” Then there is a list in (Deuteronomy) 14:18, “the hoopoe and the bat.” Leviticus 11:13—“and these you shall have an abomination among the birds,” a long list. (Leviticus) 11:19—“the hoopoe and the bat.” The Bible implies fairly clearly that the camel does not have a divided hoof which is not true. Camels are artiodactyls, which have two toes on each foot. Each toe has a hoof. However, in Leviticus 11:4—“nevertheless among those that chew the cud, the camel because it chews the cud and
does not part the hoof is unclean to you.” The Bible is a little mixed up on the insects. They apparently say that insects have only four legs; for example, Leviticus 11:21—“yet these may ye eat of every flying creeping thing which goeth on all fours.” Four not six, “which have legs above their feet to leap with all upon the earth.” (Leviticus) 11:22—“even these ye may eat, the locust after his kind, the bald locust after his kind and the
beetle after his kind and the grasshopper after his kind.” Modern entomologists I’m sure would agree that these organisms have six legs rather than four. But anyway, that’s enough examples with that. It’s probably not true in my opinion that the Bible is historically and scientifically true throughout, unless you interpret it. And if you’re going to interpret it, you might as well interpret it to include the theory of evolution.
Another curious thing about the Creation Research Society is the statement that I’ve indicated is: “all its ascertains are historically and scientifically true in all their original autographs.” Now there is a really sneaky way out of it so the Bible I just quoted you, which is the Revised Standard Version, is not quite clear. The Creation Research Society implies they have somewhere hidden some original autographs, whatever those are. If the Creation Research Society were true, scholars really existed; they would publish them. Because they would be of incalculable value for Biblical scholars and the history of Christianity are later than the event. Certainly subject to a lot of recopying, retranslating, riddling with, so it the Creation Research Society had the original autographs they are really being very remiss in not publishing them. Point j. I point out to you that they use a few weasel words. While the evolutionist would clearly stick his neck out and say species, the Creation Research Society says “al basic types of living things”, leaving it u to later definition what a basic type is. And a weaseled role there—“whatever biological changes have occurred since creation week have accomplished only changes within the original created kinds.” The Bible doesn’t say anywhere that the originally created kinds change. Morris, the
treasurer of the outfit now, in 1971 published a little essay in Creation Research Society Journal in which he states the following, I quote: “In the biological realm many new varieties, or even species, or even genera depending on the terminology, may quickly be developed in response to environmental conditions.” That is good weaseling. That’s what the evolutionists are trying to say, isn’t it? Except we go a little bit beyond species
and genera.
It’s curious also that it’s just in the last couple of months the CSR was originally opposed to continental drift. In a debate they had with Patterson on this campus they opposed continental drift. In this issue of the Creation Society Journal has an interesting article about continental drift in which the gentleman proposes continental drift really happened, but it just happened in a much faster rate than geologists generally think. In point c, the great flood in point c: “The great flood described in Genesis, commonly referred to as the Noachian Flood, was an historic event worldwide in its effect and
extent.” There is no credible geological evidence that any geologist would say that the flood occurred. There is the problem of the patterns of sediment. Why did the flood produce the array of sediments that we find like in the walls of the Grand Canyon? Now where did al the water come from? What’s the distribution of animals? How come saltwater fishes weren’t killed when the rainwater filled the ocean and diluted the salt and so
on? Many arguments against the possibility of the great flood. Under point 4c, again I merely point out again that they have a statement of belief here which we just don’t have a scientist.
In conclusion, let me just say a quick word of conclusion. Particularly I want to refer again to the science textbooks and teaching creationism in universities and colleges and public schools. I do not object to creation being taught in the classroom but at the same time the basic tenets of Christian fundamentalism are subject to analytical criticisms. Fundamentalists can however, can only criticize other branches or knowledge.
They cannot critically examine their own traits. But what the fundamentalists propose to do in public schools amounts to preaching, not teaching creationism. If they were teaching creationism, they would obviously want to evaluate all the creation myths. But since they want to preach, not teach, creationism; it clearly belongs in church not school. Finally, I’d like to say that in my opinion, the great truth and beauty of the Bible
is in no way obscured by the results of science. The Bible is a much greater thing than all these little worries about whether the locust has four legs, whether evolution occurred or whether the earth is round. It is a great thing than that. God did not have to make the world in the narrow-minded way conceived by the fundamentalists. I sincerely believe He is smarter than that.
Now for the rest of the course and the next lecture I’m going to attack evolutionism. That’s not to say that evolutionists haven’t made a number of mistakes, too. Than after that, I’ll just proceed with the course as a standard course in evolution.