The Science Guy, but not the History Guy

Recently science teacher, comedian, and television personality Bill Nye caused an internet uproar when he released a 2-minute video entitled "Creationism is not appropriate for children."  As of this writing - just a week after the video's release the short film has over 3 million views on YouTube, almost 65,000 "likes," 13,000 "dislikes," and many many more comments.  Now, video defenses of evolutionist or creationist viewpoints are nothing new; in fact, they have become rather common fare over the past few years on video-hosting sites.  Neither is it uncommon for a well-known personality to attempt to appeal to an audience to embrace one side or another in this debate; Carl Sagan proselytized on behalf of Darwinism for most of his adult life, while Christian personalities like Kirk Cameron and Charlton Heston have publicly called for a return to a literal belief in the Scriptural account of our origins.

What was unusual in this instance and what seemed to raise the ire of so many in the creationist camp was Mr. Nye's appeal to parents to stop teaching their children creationism, regardless of their own personal beliefs, for the good of the country: 

“And I say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your world, in your world that’s completely inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe, that’s fine.  But don’t make your kids do it because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need people that can – we need engineers that can build stuff, solve problems.”

Now, having participated in a number of online and personal debates over the subject of evolution myself, I knew there was very little chance of convincing anyone in an online forum of the truth of creation as it has been revealed to us in Genesis.  As a member of the science and engineering community who also happens to be a believer, I did, however, take the opportunity to voice my objection to the main theme of Nye's message:  that a belief in a creationist world view and the ability to contribute in a meaningful way to science or to solve engineering problems are somehow mutually exclusive.  As many others - even some within the evolutionist camp, have correctly stated, Mr. Nye's assertions simply don't square up with centuries of history in which virtually the entire world held to some form of a creationist viewpoint, and in which tremendous strides were made in the fields of mathematics, physics, chemistry, medicine, and even biology.  Simply put, Bill Nye may be the science guy, but he evidently isn't the history guy.

I was struck by the outright hostility with which my comments were greeted by those in the evolutionist camp.  Though I did not directly attack the theory of evolution, contenting myself in this instance with a rebuttal of Mr. Nye's flawed assertion that creationists cannot be problem solvers, I was greeted with a volley of critical replies, most of which boiled down to attacks on my intellect.  I was assured that only the ignorant would dismiss evolution today and that if the great scientists of previous generations - Galileo, Newton, et al - were alive now, they would be evolutionists, too.  Even my appeals to freedom of speech and thought and the healthy discourse dissenting viewpoints can bring to the table were summarily rejected.

Simply put, atheistic evolutionists are no longer content with being allowed to express their own views; they have now set their sights on completely eliminating any public expression of "intolerant" Christian viewpoints from our society.  This is grim news indeed for our children and grand-children, but do not despair.  Take heart in the knowledge that the sovereign God who knows all things and who holds all of creation in His hand chose to reveal these things to us from far off, that we might not be dismayed to see them in our generation:

Romans 1:20-23 (New American Standard Bible)

²⁰ For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. ²¹ For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. ²² Professing to be wise, they became fools, ²³ and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.

Equally striking to me were the large numbers of posters claiming to have resolved their Christian faith with the theory of evolution.  "Why couldn't God have used evolution to populate His creation?" they argued.  "Doesn't the Bible say a thousand years is like one day to Him?"  If you are tempted to give in to this line of reasoning; to try and have it both ways as these posters have done, consider the following passage from Scripture:

Romans 5:12-14 (New American Standard Bible)

¹² Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned— ¹³ for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. ¹⁴ Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.

Now, if you are at all interested in science and have any kind of an aptitude for critical thinking, two things should be just about jumping off the page at you at this moment:

First, the Scriptures indicate that sin entered the world through one man - Adam.  The rest of us inherited a sin nature as a result of being descended from the original sinner.  In the evolutionist view, man is the result of billions of years of progression from protein chains to single-celled organisms to mammals, primates, and finally hominids.  In this view, by the days of Adam, there would not have been one man, but thousands, or even millions all across the earth.  How is it that all those who were not even descended from Adam would have inherited the curse of Adam?

Secondly, the Sriptures teach that death entered the world only after and as a result of sin entering the world.  In the evolutionist view, death is the mechanism by which natural selection operates. The strong survive while the weak perish.  How could there be such a thing as natural selection in a world without death?

As Dr. Henry Morris has said again and again, evolutionists are not wasting any time trying to resolve their views with Christianity; it's time for Christians to stop wasting time trying to harmonize their beliefs with a school of thought that is clearly in opposition to the truth of Scripture.