In the News Again

I thought it would be good to share some very interesting articles that have appeared during the last two days.

But before I get to the news—tomorrow, I will be engaging in another cultural experience! One of the traditions that has arisen in our lives is that each year in December or January, Mally and I and our friends Buddy and Kay Davis travel to Nashville, Tennessee, to attend the Grand Old Opry with our friends the Mitchells. Dr. Tommy Mitchell is now one of AiG’s approved (and popular) speakers. Of course, I have to put up with Buddy bemoaning the fact that he’s not appearing on the Opry stage as he’d like to (and I must admit, I believe he’s more talented than many of the performers we see there). We travel down Friday and come back Saturday.

It was a blessing to see the large numbers of envelopes in the mail for this week as many people send in their special end-of-year donations. Please continue to pray with us that the Lord will provide our needs. Thank you for your prayers.

Well, here we go:

In the News Again

The creation/evolution issue and AiG’s Creation Museum are once again sparking news stories. We suspect this will heat up considerably as the new year gets underway.

A positive article about AiG’s Creation Museum:

The Cincinnati Post—December 27, 2005

A sarcastic article about the Creation Museum:

The Columbus Dispatch (Ohio)—December 27, 2005

The second is from a syndicated column written by an Atlanta-based columnist (who grew up in Cincinnati). This commentary appeared in The Columbus Dispatch, a paper which had a very hard-hitting editorial against us last month.

Here are some excerpts from the article:

The compelling, and rip-snorting, ruling by a federal district judge against teaching intelligent design in public schools ought to end the drive to wedge religion into classrooms, but of course it won’t. The well-heeled campaign to drum ID’s pseudo-science will continue undeterred—in effect, a campaign to persuade the public that science and faith can’t coexist, each in its proper sphere.

A huge Creation Museum is rising near Cincinnati. It’s a $25 million project, with 80 percent of the money collected from public contributions. The museum teaches that Earth is just 6,000 years old, that dinosaurs gamboled in Eden and that after the Flood, children played with baby dinosaurs, which had ridden Noah’s ark to safety from the antediluvian world.

Against such drama, mere science is an unwelcome bother. […]

We are wasting time, treasure and energy on a gambit that will, in the end, only repeat the crash-andburn fate of creationism and other schemes for insinuating religion where it has no business evangelizing. […]

American kids’ understanding of science already lags that of students in just about every other developed nation, and small wonder. Nearly half of us believe God created humans along with Earth, presto, about 10,000 years ago. Science puts Earth’s age at around 4.5 billion years.

Compound that fog of misinformation with a project that, even if it can’t get its way in classrooms, means to intimidate public schools from teaching biology and geology straight-forwardly, and you have a formula for a once leading-edge nation to fall even farther behind. We are letting ourselves be hustled and bullied out of our future, oddly in the name of God.

Another article expounds great joy at seeing children denied teaching on Intelligent Design and the author seems to basically worship evolution:

Detroit Free Press—December 29, 2005

Here are some excerpts:

If you’re a hunter, angler or just like to spend time outdoors, it should have been music to your ears when a federal judge tossed intelligent design out of a Pennsylvania school system.

The biggest environmental and conservation problems we face result from human interference in natural systems, where countless creatures evolved together over millions of years. Our children will have to advance our imperfect understanding of how evolution works if we hope to solve those problems. […]

Anyone who studies nature soon becomes fascinated by the wonderful complexity that has resulted from 4 billion years of biological evolution. We should encourage children to seek a deeper understanding of how that process works, not put handcuffs on their brains. […]

This is the kind of science to which children should be exposed. Maybe some of them will grow up to find answers to other evolutionary problems that might be crucial to the survival not only of plants and animals, but humans as well.

Here is another state where the issue of evolution in public schools is brewing:

Agape Press—December 29, 2005

Thanks for stopping by,

Ken