Our collective response to COVID-19 is shining a very interesting light on one of our nation’s most profound policy decisions of the past 40 years, if not our nations entire history. This policy is the result of a series of court rulings that served to remove the concept of creation science from the classroom.
What could COVID-19 possibly have to do with creation science and government policy on classroom teachings? As it turns out, everything. But before I reveal the connection, let’s briefly review a few of the court cases that tossed creation design in order to fully frame this connection.
McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education challenged an Arkansas state law that mandated, “Public schools within this State shall give balanced treatment to creation-science and to evolution-science.” The law was stricken in 1982. The judge in this court case ruled that creation science was religious in nature, and therefore the Arkansas law was unconstitutional.
In Edwards v. Aguillard, in 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Louisiana law that required its schools to teach creation science along side of evolution science. As in McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education, the rationale of the ruling was that creation science was religious in nature, and therefore Louisiana law was unconstitutional.
In Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, the school district’s resolution stating, “Students will be made aware of gaps/problems in Darwin’s theory and of other theories of evolution including, but not limited to, intelligent design. Note: Origins of Life is not taught.” U.S. District Judge John E. Jones ruled against the district in 2005 finding that intelligent design was not science but was religious in nature. The judge then went on to chastise the Dover School Board for engaging in divisive and deceptive tactics.
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We can see a very clear pattern in these rulings. It’s that the courts, to include the U.S. Supreme Court, have consistently ruled that creation science, or intelligent design, is religious in nature and has no basis in “real” science. And supporting these rulings are the expert testimony of numerous scientists taking the position that genomes are purely the product of natural evolutionary forces, and that genomes are never the product of intelligent intervention.
Fast forward to 2020 and its COVID-19 crisis.
One of the very first questions that arose from the COVID-19 crisis was: “Is this a man-made genome (virus)?” While there is considerable debate over whether the virus that causes COVID-19 originated from lab experiments or not, there is exactly zero debate over mankind’s capacity to accomplish this feat. Which is precisely why the debate over the origin of COVID-19 has proven so vigorous and enduring; we can do this kind of stuff, and everyone knows it.
In fact, a quick survey of man’s abilities to manipulate genetics shows that we routinely hack genomes in ways that reflect the designer’s wishes. And this is nothing new. Think genetically modified foods and livestock, gene-based medical therapies, glowing fish and kittens to name but a few. All stand as testament to the fact that when it comes to genomes, we force nature to change its ways in order to satisfy our ways.
The tie between court cases that tossed creation science and COVID-19 is crystal clear: Universally recognized and accepted facts concerning mans capacity to engage in creation science, intelligent design, authorship of genomes, whatever label you want to tag this capacity with, serves to completely and utterly repudiate the “expert witnesses” in the cases that tossed creation science from the classroom.
Intelligent design is real; mankind does it every day. Creation science is science; mankind engages in it every day. Authorship of genetic sequences is reality; mankind really does author them every day.
And the state of genetic research when these “expert witnesses” provided their testimony proves that at best, these witnesses were grossly uninformed, because it was known at that point that humans could directly alter genetic sequences. At worst, and what is more probable since anyone with a Ph.D. has demonstrated both diligence and intelligence, these “expert witnesses” were knowingly slinging outright falsehoods in the court in order to promulgate their ideology.
As for the judges in these cases, including sitting members of the U.S. Supreme Court who ruled against creation science, they at best served as scientifically illiterate dupes for these “expert witnesses” and their ideology jihad. At worst, they were judicial activists in alliance with the so-called expert witnesses and together they knowingly defrauded the American public.
And it gets worse. Their thematic claim that creation science is religious in nature and not scientific in nature contradicts the most basic of facts. Any geneticist will tell us that man’s long-standing habit of selectively breeding anything that breeds in order to make it do, look and act like we want it to, is the single most productive means to date of altering a species’ genome. Take canines, for example.
The fact is, the religious book that these ideologues wanted out of the classroom, namely the Holy Bible, contains what is likely the earliest record of mankind engaging in selective breeding to produce specific traits. See also Genesis where Jacob is selectively breeding goats for spots.
So, let’s cut to the chase and expose these people’s true agenda. Because the facts prove that what they did had nothing to do whatsoever with ensuring that our students are taught accurately. These people are against the Bible; they are against Jesus himself. And they want both exterminated.
For the rational among us, the question that needs to be asked isn’t whether intelligent design is religious or scientific. That question has already been answered: It is science, and mankind does it every day. The question our students need to be taught to ask is: “Who else has done this?”
The cultural jihadists do not want our students asking this question. And they knew that the First Amendment clearly states that religion shall not be infringed. So, their only hope was to create an intellectual ruse and use it to deceive the American public – and boy did they ever deceive the public.
Perhaps once the nation emerges from the COVID-19 fiasco, we might entertain the idea of fixing this mess. But at least one good thing has come from COVID-19: a spotlight shining right on several very important court cases. And maybe, just maybe the nation sees the better choice is not to wait, but to fix this utter travesty forced upon our students now.
