I was raised by parents who had, “without any doubt” a faith in God as Creator. The time period was the 1950’s and 1960’s. The environment was a farming community that had very traditional values. My church [not Church of Christ] taught me to believe that the Bible was literally God’s words to man. It was clear to me that the Bible’s authors spoke many times about where matter, energy, and living organisms came from. I cannot remember a time when I believed that the Bible was vague about “origins”.
Of course my science teachers at Morning Sun, Iowa, schools all were college educated and taught a much different origins story. But like many science educators, although they taught it as fact, they did not make too much of a point about it. So I cannot remember being overly bothered by the “obvious” conflict. I always liked science and enjoyed the belief that I had the freedom to could think for myself. During my high school years the conflict wasn’t a concern to me. On the other hand, I had never ever read anything “scientific” that upheld creationist ideas.
I attended Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, during the mid- 1960’s. Geneva was a Christian college with a strong science department. While at Geneva I was never taught anything in any of my Biology major classes that would lead me to believe in creation or disbelieve evolution. Evolution was taught in a matter of fact manner that did not openly confront my, creationist, “religious” beliefs. I cannot recall any ideological war within my mind during my college years. The obvious dichotomy was oblivious to me. Perhaps I was too busy learning the facts and did not step back to view the larger picture. Perhaps I was just immature and naïve. By the time I graduated from Geneva I think I believed in evolution from a scientific viewpoint and creation from a religious standpoint.
I began my Biology teaching career at Seneca Valley High School, a small rural school in the Southwestern Butler County School District. It remained small until Interstate 79 was completed and “Crider’s Corners” became a major crossroad. As a beginning teacher, I had still not faced the obvious dichotomy between evolution and creation. They had remained seemingly in different compartments of my brain. I just sort of skipped over the basic topic of evolution with the fallacious belief that my students had enough information to decide for themselves if they wanted to believe in evolution or not. It was not a big deal to me. They could believe either way, as long as they were not too dogmatic.
In the fall of 1970 I entered the graduate school at Slippery Rock State College. The Biology Department was excellent and rigorous. Many of my classmates transferred to graduate programs at other universities that were “perceived” to be less demanding. My professors all aggressively promoted evolution by means of natural selection. That is, except for one. One professor raised “some” doubts about the validity of evolution. Dr. Kimball Erdman had great credentials and was a popular professor, but he moved on to another University after only a few years at Slippery Rock. I have no idea if his public doubts about evolution had any bearing on his move.
I can recall one of my favorite professors, making a point that he had nothing but disdain for “teleological” arguments about the origin of living things. He had no argument from me, because I did not know what “teleological” meant! The professors were pretty consistent with their use of their terminology about evolution. They rarely used the word “evolution” but they fairly often used the “process of natural selection” to explain where any kind of anatomy, physiology, or behavior had its origin. I believe their overt teaching that natural selection explained just about everything was the beginning of my quest for the truth about that issue. I gradually became a skeptic of orthodox evolution doctrine.
The real turning point for me was when I took the required course, Evolution. It was taught by the only professor that I had for my graduate coursework at Slippery Rock that I would rate as a very poor teacher. The more I studied the book and interacted with the professor, the less I believed evolutionary theory was scientifically valid. A requirement of the course was to write a major research paper on a topic of our choice. I was doing research for my thesis on red-backed salamanders [Plethedon cinereus] and had a keen interest in amphibians, so I did my paper on “the evolution of amphibians”. I read numerous articles in scientific journals and found they all presented their cases in a remarkably similar pattern. Each would have a bold title. The abstract and introduction summarized the study as great evidence for how the organisms they had studied had evolved. Their explanations were hardly ever presented as “tentative “ ideas. The introductions and summaries were always presented as undisputable fact! Then came the experimental methods, results and discussion. You would have thought you were reading a different report. No evidence was ever presented that would convince a fair minded skeptical fellow scientist that the advertised breakthrough in explaining the origin of the organism by means of natural selection had been accomplished. The concluding remarks would always revert to the same rhetoric of the abstract and introduction. It was remarkable to me that the journal reports were so consistent with this pattern.
That paper was probably a turning point for me. The definition of “science” that I consistently taught my students during my thirty-six years of teaching biology at Seneca Valley High School was: “Science is the process of searching for the truth about nature.” I was disturbed enough by what I had discovered that I became keenly interested in investigating the topic of evolution further. The more I read the more of a skeptic I became. I even started to report some of my problems with evolution to my classes. My students a Seneca Valley seemed to appreciate having a science teacher who was willing to think on his own and challenge scientific orthodoxy. I have always appreciated the caliber of student I was privileged to teach at Seneca.
One of my fellow teachers was the long time Physics teacher, Phil Hershey. Mr. Hershey was an outspoken “creationist”. He helped me along my journey as well. Although, I never became as outspoken until half of my teaching career at Seneca Valley had become history, he presented to me a good role model to observe. His faith in God was worn on his shirtsleeves for anyone to observe.
The year after I earned my Masters Degree in Biology I did some summer course work at the University of Cincinnati and became friends with some people at a church we attended near the campus. These friends at the Clifton Road Church of Christ invited me to come back in the fall to hear a speaker who was to speak about creation and science. John Clayton was a physics teacher from South Bend, Indiana and came from the same mold as Phil Hershey. He was very self-assured and presented his ideas in a convincing manner. He was an enthusiastic “Old Earth” creationist [OEC]. For several years he was my main source of creationist information. I became an enthusiastic creationist who could point to “nature” as the evidence for my “creationist” beliefs. I did not however, gain the disdain for “young earth” creationists [YEC] that John Clayton exhibited in his speaking and writing. I just felt a little sorry for the “religious fanatics” who believed that the Bible taught that the Universe was created in six “literal’ days. I was even taught that Noah’s flood was likely a widespread local flood that did not cover the whole of Planet Earth. Bishop Ussher and his literal Genesis were to be mocked. They obviously were misinformed and I parroted the open-ended length of the Genesis “days” that old earth creationists promote. I was simply more tolerant than my more orthodox brothers.
Thanks to John Clayton I became an active promoter for creationist ideas. The turning point towards changing my firmly established beliefs came in an interesting way. I was invited to present a series of lessons on the topic of science and the Bible to the teen group from Grace Church in Harmony, Pennsylvania that met in homes on Wednesday nights. Peter Everett was the youth pastor and he had heard that I was a creationist scientist and he wanted his teens to be exposed to those ideas. I was glad to offer my services and presented the lessons from an “orthodox old Universe” perspective.
One reason I can “tolerate” people who hold to “wrong” ideas is that they may have never been exposed to any convincing evidence that would stimulate them to change their mind. I think it is a good policy to distrust anyone who dogmatically claims to have all of the right answers. All competent scientists are skeptics at heart! I was wrong in the past and I am probably wrong about some ideas now.
Pastor Pete invited me to attend a meeting of a group called who called themselves, Creation Science Fellowship. They met in a library in the North Hills area of Pittsburgh. We went and I was hooked. They were “obviously” wrong about their young Earth ideas, but perhaps they had not been “enlightened” yet. But they seemed to have scientific reasons for their beliefs. Their most important aid to me was that they offered books for sale. I purchased several and devoured them.
I soon found myself eager for the next monthly meeting to come. Several members were a good influence on me. Bob Walsh, Dennis Blackburn, and Hank Jackson had a big influence in my conversion to being convinced, from a scientific standpoint, that the Universe was recently created. But my most important influence was the books I read. A video by Dr. Steve Austin’s research comparing the stratigraphic layers in the Grand Canyon and the eruption of Mt. St. Helens was especially convincing.
I have enjoyed almost 20 years of fellowship and learning from some very interesting people in Creation Science Fellowship. I dearly miss their fellowship now that I have moved to Georgia. A real service that our local CSF group provides is the hosting of the International Conference on Creationism every four years. This is a world-class peer-reviewed professional scientific conference. Each of the papers provides high quality additions to the body of knowledge about nature from a Young Universe Creationist perspective.
I enjoyed teaching Biology at Seneca Valley High School for 36 years. After retiring from teaching in a high quality public school I continued my career for another 9 years as a biology teacher at Greater Atlanta Christian School in Norcross, Georgia. Many people have asked me about how I taught biology in a public school as a creationist. I had always been careful to teach the truth about evolution in a manner that did not confront students in a controversial way. I was careful to teach only from a purely scientific base. I did not use the Bible as an authoritative source or say that God had created anything. I rarely even used the terms “Create” or “Creation”.
The administration at Seneca was always very supportive of me as a professional educator who had the freedom to think on my own and teach science in a factual way. I only had one incident in all of those years. I had the daughter of the head of the Science Department in my Advanced Placement Biology class. I shared with my students an article I had written for Creation Science Fellowship. My student was impressed that her teacher could write a high quality article and shared the article with her father. He was not as impressed and threatened to bring in the ACLU to protect Seneca’s students. Seneca’s administrators were proactive and called for a meeting of the dad, two administrators and me. The evidence was that only science and no religion was being taught. As a result they had no case and the complaint was dropped.
On many occasions I wished I could go ahead and tell the whole story. As the years went by, Creationist scientists as well as non-creationist scientists discovered more evidence that made Darwinian and neo-Darwinian evolution look even less valid. The evidence against evolution is so strong today that even faint-hearted creationist educators can feel comfortable pointing out the problems with evolution.
For the past decade and a half I have travelled to Perm, Russia on mission trips. During the summers of 2000-2006 I presented lectures in rented public halls that were intended to show the evidence against Darwinian evolution and for fiat creation by God as the better explanation for the origin of living organisms. Many of the Russian attendees of my lectures showed their appreciation for the truth about the defects in evolution being taught to them. One high school biology teacher started using my power point lectures in her public school classroom! Those lectures went beyond presenting evidence against evolution to include presenting the case for God being the creator! That is more than I could do in public schools in America! Our educational culture is being turned into a ”de facto” atheistic society by our public institutions! Disappointingly, as the years went on from 2000 that teacher had less and less freedom to teach what she believed to be true.
On the other hand, Young Universe Creationism [YEC] is also gaining a lot of momentum. There are more scientists and educators every year who have become convinced that the scientific evidence concerning Origins is clearly pointing towards “Young Universe Creationism” as having the better explanations. Even more scientists and educators are turning their backs on a purely naturalistic story of the origin of matter, energy, and life [nature produces itself] to a deistic explanation where a “grand designer” outside of nature did the creating. The “Intelligent Design Movement”, while not necessarily accepting Biblical Creationism, does lead people away from atheistic naturalism and points them in our direction. This happens because the materialistic explanations are now being exposed as ideas without evidence and that violate rational scientific explanation.
Answers In Genesis is an organization that promotes rational scientific arguments and they have been very effective with thousands of people around the world who are not scientists by their training. Their magazine and web site www.answersingenesis.org as well as their highly effective speakers are an extremely important part of this recent trend towards creationism. Creation Ministries International www.creation.com is another organization that is in the scientific research and education forefront of Young Earth Creationism. They even produce a world class peer-reviewed scientific Journal as does the Creation Research Society www.creationresearch.org
Another organization that has done very important research is the Institute for Creation Research www.icr.org.
I am happy that I had the good experience of teaching in a Christian school and had the freedom, and encouragement, to go beyond pointing out that evolution is devoid of good science, to telling “the rest of the story”.
So what does this have to do with the Pepperdine University 2014 spring lectures challenge?
Churches of Christ in Eastern United States were deeply influenced in the 1970’s to at least the 1990’s by “our” very own poster boy of an atheist-turned-Christian. Thanks be to God that John Clayton became our brother in Christ. The major focus of his seminars was “Proof from science that God exists. However John also taught, very effectively, that the Genesis record of origins needed to be viewed through the eyes of “science”. Wherever John presented his lectures in weekend seminars, he left a trail of church leaders who had become convinced that God created the Universe over billions of years. He made this paradigm shift possible because leaders in Churches of Christ were not well trained in science and the Bible, and also terribly inbred, not typically willing to hear about wonderful creation science work becoming well known outside 'the brotherhood.'
You might say there was a vacuum waiting to be filled. The 1960’s to 1980’s were in the heyday when anything scientific was to be honored. John definitely put on the role of the expert scientist who was willing to lead the sheep out of the desert of ignorance. Tragically, one of those outdated ignorant ideas was Young Earth Creationism based on a “literal” interpretation of the Genesis record.
There was valid creation science research going on back then but few in our fellowship had read the literature produced by the ‘Young Universe “camp.” I do not know if John Clayton has come to see all of the impressive science done by the proponents of the young Universe scientists and understand the tragic errors in his teaching. But here is the point. It would be impossible for John to go back to all of the thousands of eager Church of Christ folks and re-educate them into taking a look at the body of science generated by YEC scientists.
If our preachers attended a college, most of them will call Harding, Lipscomb, Abilene, Freed-Hardeman, or Pepperdine their alma mater. The same goes for youth leaders. There is little chance that they were “ever” exposed to a class that introduced them in a positive way to any of the literature of YEC. Their science classes would be expected to teach OEC as consensus science orthodoxy. After all, who wants to be perceived as scientifically ignorant at an institution of higher learning?
Evolution by means of Natural Selection has been taught in the Biology classes of our colleges for decades. The challenger recruited by the ACLU in 1925 was John Scopes. The crime he was convicted of was the teaching his students in Dayton, Tennessee that humans evolved from apelike ancestors and were not the result of fiat creation by any “Creator God”. Even though most of the evidence used in defense of naturalistic evolution (e.g., Piltdown Man, Nebraska Man, Java Man. ‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’) in the infamous Scopes trial has been debunked by mainline science, the atheists won the propaganda war. This was a lesson well learned by evolutionists: keep throwing the same information out there, regardless of the evidence, and the masses will follow unaware that much of the “evidence” has been disproved by mainline science.
So where can the teaching of theistic evolution lead? Many OEC have adopted the paradigm that can be described as: “Let us interpret the Bible through the lens of science.” Most YEC practice: “ Let us interpret science through the lens of the Bible. I fear our more intelligent young people who are students at COC universities will see the unavoidable dichotomy of the progressive philosophy of science and rid themselves of the influence of the “outdated” biblical account of origins. The short next step is the Bible being relegated the to literature classes. The Bible will be demoted from the authority in all things to fine literature written by mere men who had little understanding of real science.
The state the philosophy of science at our COC universities is extremely troubling. When our future [and present] preachers, teachers, and youth leaders graduate from our universities one of two things will happen. Most of them will be afraid to identify their philosophy on the origin of man to be THIESTIC EVOLUTIONIST. But they will be alert to try to stifle any foolishness about YEC. Or they will readily identify themselves as enlightened progressives and do their biblical teaching from that perspective.
I can imagine that leaders at Pepperdine were taken by surprise that there would be such opposition voiced by attendees at the 2014 lectures. Of course the teaching of theistic evolution as the philosophy about the origin of humans taught at COC Universities came as a complete surprise to many attendees. I can imagine the path from literal interpretation of the Genesis account to theistic evolution at Pepperdine University has been slow and subtle. I doubt that anyone at Pepperdine can trace the history of his or her paradigm shift. I can just about guarantee one thing. When they were in high school, to a man, they would all believe God created Adam and Eve as humans, created in God’s image and set apart from the animals. I can also imagine that most of these men believed Adam was created on the same day in the creation week as the land mammals.
Under the tutelage of church leaders who believe in theistic evolution, 30 years later our youth today can experience a shorter path toward “true believer” status. So what will the next step be for many of our youth? Will they be motivated to study their Bibles? Why would they be interested in the “words of men”? Agnosticism will be their destination! Do we want our grandchildren to lose their faith that the Bible is Special Revelation from God? Do we want our young men and women to lose their faith in God? I think not! Do any of the professors or administrators at Pepperdine have a desire to harm their students? I also think not. If thinking highly educated faithful Christians believe the consequences of teaching theistic evolution and a progressive view of biblical interpretation are that grave, why not open the doors to honest civil debate? That is our plea.
I understand that Pepperdine University has a lot at stake in this matter. I understand the risk Pepperdine University will face if they come out against progressive interpretation of the Bible and against teaching theistic evolution. To lose the perception of prestige would be a great loss. I understand that Young Earth Creationists are looked on as fundamentalists, in the worst sense of that label. We are believed by the uninformed that we are not intellectual equals to educated people who believe that man evolved from apelike ancestors. It will take a good deal of courage for Pepperdine to open its intellectual doors to debate on these two topics: 1-A proper paradigm of Origins includes the belief that the Genesis record is scientifically and historically valid. 2-The theory of theistic evolution has not been validated by science and is opposed to the simple historic message of the Bible, as it informs us about the origin of humans.
My final request is that both sides of this controversy honestly ask God for His guidance in this matter. When the Israelites of ancient times were at a complete loss of whether to do battle or how to do battle, they asked God for what His will was. Perhaps that needs to be our concerted effort: prayer.
Thank you for this forum to speak my concerns. God be praised.
Bob Harsh
Biology teacher (retired)
Norcross, Georgia
July 25, 2014
Of course my science teachers at Morning Sun, Iowa, schools all were college educated and taught a much different origins story. But like many science educators, although they taught it as fact, they did not make too much of a point about it. So I cannot remember being overly bothered by the “obvious” conflict. I always liked science and enjoyed the belief that I had the freedom to could think for myself. During my high school years the conflict wasn’t a concern to me. On the other hand, I had never ever read anything “scientific” that upheld creationist ideas.
I attended Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, during the mid- 1960’s. Geneva was a Christian college with a strong science department. While at Geneva I was never taught anything in any of my Biology major classes that would lead me to believe in creation or disbelieve evolution. Evolution was taught in a matter of fact manner that did not openly confront my, creationist, “religious” beliefs. I cannot recall any ideological war within my mind during my college years. The obvious dichotomy was oblivious to me. Perhaps I was too busy learning the facts and did not step back to view the larger picture. Perhaps I was just immature and naïve. By the time I graduated from Geneva I think I believed in evolution from a scientific viewpoint and creation from a religious standpoint.
I began my Biology teaching career at Seneca Valley High School, a small rural school in the Southwestern Butler County School District. It remained small until Interstate 79 was completed and “Crider’s Corners” became a major crossroad. As a beginning teacher, I had still not faced the obvious dichotomy between evolution and creation. They had remained seemingly in different compartments of my brain. I just sort of skipped over the basic topic of evolution with the fallacious belief that my students had enough information to decide for themselves if they wanted to believe in evolution or not. It was not a big deal to me. They could believe either way, as long as they were not too dogmatic.
In the fall of 1970 I entered the graduate school at Slippery Rock State College. The Biology Department was excellent and rigorous. Many of my classmates transferred to graduate programs at other universities that were “perceived” to be less demanding. My professors all aggressively promoted evolution by means of natural selection. That is, except for one. One professor raised “some” doubts about the validity of evolution. Dr. Kimball Erdman had great credentials and was a popular professor, but he moved on to another University after only a few years at Slippery Rock. I have no idea if his public doubts about evolution had any bearing on his move.
I can recall one of my favorite professors, making a point that he had nothing but disdain for “teleological” arguments about the origin of living things. He had no argument from me, because I did not know what “teleological” meant! The professors were pretty consistent with their use of their terminology about evolution. They rarely used the word “evolution” but they fairly often used the “process of natural selection” to explain where any kind of anatomy, physiology, or behavior had its origin. I believe their overt teaching that natural selection explained just about everything was the beginning of my quest for the truth about that issue. I gradually became a skeptic of orthodox evolution doctrine.
The real turning point for me was when I took the required course, Evolution. It was taught by the only professor that I had for my graduate coursework at Slippery Rock that I would rate as a very poor teacher. The more I studied the book and interacted with the professor, the less I believed evolutionary theory was scientifically valid. A requirement of the course was to write a major research paper on a topic of our choice. I was doing research for my thesis on red-backed salamanders [Plethedon cinereus] and had a keen interest in amphibians, so I did my paper on “the evolution of amphibians”. I read numerous articles in scientific journals and found they all presented their cases in a remarkably similar pattern. Each would have a bold title. The abstract and introduction summarized the study as great evidence for how the organisms they had studied had evolved. Their explanations were hardly ever presented as “tentative “ ideas. The introductions and summaries were always presented as undisputable fact! Then came the experimental methods, results and discussion. You would have thought you were reading a different report. No evidence was ever presented that would convince a fair minded skeptical fellow scientist that the advertised breakthrough in explaining the origin of the organism by means of natural selection had been accomplished. The concluding remarks would always revert to the same rhetoric of the abstract and introduction. It was remarkable to me that the journal reports were so consistent with this pattern.
That paper was probably a turning point for me. The definition of “science” that I consistently taught my students during my thirty-six years of teaching biology at Seneca Valley High School was: “Science is the process of searching for the truth about nature.” I was disturbed enough by what I had discovered that I became keenly interested in investigating the topic of evolution further. The more I read the more of a skeptic I became. I even started to report some of my problems with evolution to my classes. My students a Seneca Valley seemed to appreciate having a science teacher who was willing to think on his own and challenge scientific orthodoxy. I have always appreciated the caliber of student I was privileged to teach at Seneca.
One of my fellow teachers was the long time Physics teacher, Phil Hershey. Mr. Hershey was an outspoken “creationist”. He helped me along my journey as well. Although, I never became as outspoken until half of my teaching career at Seneca Valley had become history, he presented to me a good role model to observe. His faith in God was worn on his shirtsleeves for anyone to observe.
The year after I earned my Masters Degree in Biology I did some summer course work at the University of Cincinnati and became friends with some people at a church we attended near the campus. These friends at the Clifton Road Church of Christ invited me to come back in the fall to hear a speaker who was to speak about creation and science. John Clayton was a physics teacher from South Bend, Indiana and came from the same mold as Phil Hershey. He was very self-assured and presented his ideas in a convincing manner. He was an enthusiastic “Old Earth” creationist [OEC]. For several years he was my main source of creationist information. I became an enthusiastic creationist who could point to “nature” as the evidence for my “creationist” beliefs. I did not however, gain the disdain for “young earth” creationists [YEC] that John Clayton exhibited in his speaking and writing. I just felt a little sorry for the “religious fanatics” who believed that the Bible taught that the Universe was created in six “literal’ days. I was even taught that Noah’s flood was likely a widespread local flood that did not cover the whole of Planet Earth. Bishop Ussher and his literal Genesis were to be mocked. They obviously were misinformed and I parroted the open-ended length of the Genesis “days” that old earth creationists promote. I was simply more tolerant than my more orthodox brothers.
Thanks to John Clayton I became an active promoter for creationist ideas. The turning point towards changing my firmly established beliefs came in an interesting way. I was invited to present a series of lessons on the topic of science and the Bible to the teen group from Grace Church in Harmony, Pennsylvania that met in homes on Wednesday nights. Peter Everett was the youth pastor and he had heard that I was a creationist scientist and he wanted his teens to be exposed to those ideas. I was glad to offer my services and presented the lessons from an “orthodox old Universe” perspective.
One reason I can “tolerate” people who hold to “wrong” ideas is that they may have never been exposed to any convincing evidence that would stimulate them to change their mind. I think it is a good policy to distrust anyone who dogmatically claims to have all of the right answers. All competent scientists are skeptics at heart! I was wrong in the past and I am probably wrong about some ideas now.
Pastor Pete invited me to attend a meeting of a group called who called themselves, Creation Science Fellowship. They met in a library in the North Hills area of Pittsburgh. We went and I was hooked. They were “obviously” wrong about their young Earth ideas, but perhaps they had not been “enlightened” yet. But they seemed to have scientific reasons for their beliefs. Their most important aid to me was that they offered books for sale. I purchased several and devoured them.
I soon found myself eager for the next monthly meeting to come. Several members were a good influence on me. Bob Walsh, Dennis Blackburn, and Hank Jackson had a big influence in my conversion to being convinced, from a scientific standpoint, that the Universe was recently created. But my most important influence was the books I read. A video by Dr. Steve Austin’s research comparing the stratigraphic layers in the Grand Canyon and the eruption of Mt. St. Helens was especially convincing.
I have enjoyed almost 20 years of fellowship and learning from some very interesting people in Creation Science Fellowship. I dearly miss their fellowship now that I have moved to Georgia. A real service that our local CSF group provides is the hosting of the International Conference on Creationism every four years. This is a world-class peer-reviewed professional scientific conference. Each of the papers provides high quality additions to the body of knowledge about nature from a Young Universe Creationist perspective.
I enjoyed teaching Biology at Seneca Valley High School for 36 years. After retiring from teaching in a high quality public school I continued my career for another 9 years as a biology teacher at Greater Atlanta Christian School in Norcross, Georgia. Many people have asked me about how I taught biology in a public school as a creationist. I had always been careful to teach the truth about evolution in a manner that did not confront students in a controversial way. I was careful to teach only from a purely scientific base. I did not use the Bible as an authoritative source or say that God had created anything. I rarely even used the terms “Create” or “Creation”.
The administration at Seneca was always very supportive of me as a professional educator who had the freedom to think on my own and teach science in a factual way. I only had one incident in all of those years. I had the daughter of the head of the Science Department in my Advanced Placement Biology class. I shared with my students an article I had written for Creation Science Fellowship. My student was impressed that her teacher could write a high quality article and shared the article with her father. He was not as impressed and threatened to bring in the ACLU to protect Seneca’s students. Seneca’s administrators were proactive and called for a meeting of the dad, two administrators and me. The evidence was that only science and no religion was being taught. As a result they had no case and the complaint was dropped.
On many occasions I wished I could go ahead and tell the whole story. As the years went by, Creationist scientists as well as non-creationist scientists discovered more evidence that made Darwinian and neo-Darwinian evolution look even less valid. The evidence against evolution is so strong today that even faint-hearted creationist educators can feel comfortable pointing out the problems with evolution.
For the past decade and a half I have travelled to Perm, Russia on mission trips. During the summers of 2000-2006 I presented lectures in rented public halls that were intended to show the evidence against Darwinian evolution and for fiat creation by God as the better explanation for the origin of living organisms. Many of the Russian attendees of my lectures showed their appreciation for the truth about the defects in evolution being taught to them. One high school biology teacher started using my power point lectures in her public school classroom! Those lectures went beyond presenting evidence against evolution to include presenting the case for God being the creator! That is more than I could do in public schools in America! Our educational culture is being turned into a ”de facto” atheistic society by our public institutions! Disappointingly, as the years went on from 2000 that teacher had less and less freedom to teach what she believed to be true.
On the other hand, Young Universe Creationism [YEC] is also gaining a lot of momentum. There are more scientists and educators every year who have become convinced that the scientific evidence concerning Origins is clearly pointing towards “Young Universe Creationism” as having the better explanations. Even more scientists and educators are turning their backs on a purely naturalistic story of the origin of matter, energy, and life [nature produces itself] to a deistic explanation where a “grand designer” outside of nature did the creating. The “Intelligent Design Movement”, while not necessarily accepting Biblical Creationism, does lead people away from atheistic naturalism and points them in our direction. This happens because the materialistic explanations are now being exposed as ideas without evidence and that violate rational scientific explanation.
Answers In Genesis is an organization that promotes rational scientific arguments and they have been very effective with thousands of people around the world who are not scientists by their training. Their magazine and web site www.answersingenesis.org as well as their highly effective speakers are an extremely important part of this recent trend towards creationism. Creation Ministries International www.creation.com is another organization that is in the scientific research and education forefront of Young Earth Creationism. They even produce a world class peer-reviewed scientific Journal as does the Creation Research Society www.creationresearch.org
Another organization that has done very important research is the Institute for Creation Research www.icr.org.
I am happy that I had the good experience of teaching in a Christian school and had the freedom, and encouragement, to go beyond pointing out that evolution is devoid of good science, to telling “the rest of the story”.
So what does this have to do with the Pepperdine University 2014 spring lectures challenge?
Churches of Christ in Eastern United States were deeply influenced in the 1970’s to at least the 1990’s by “our” very own poster boy of an atheist-turned-Christian. Thanks be to God that John Clayton became our brother in Christ. The major focus of his seminars was “Proof from science that God exists. However John also taught, very effectively, that the Genesis record of origins needed to be viewed through the eyes of “science”. Wherever John presented his lectures in weekend seminars, he left a trail of church leaders who had become convinced that God created the Universe over billions of years. He made this paradigm shift possible because leaders in Churches of Christ were not well trained in science and the Bible, and also terribly inbred, not typically willing to hear about wonderful creation science work becoming well known outside 'the brotherhood.'
You might say there was a vacuum waiting to be filled. The 1960’s to 1980’s were in the heyday when anything scientific was to be honored. John definitely put on the role of the expert scientist who was willing to lead the sheep out of the desert of ignorance. Tragically, one of those outdated ignorant ideas was Young Earth Creationism based on a “literal” interpretation of the Genesis record.
There was valid creation science research going on back then but few in our fellowship had read the literature produced by the ‘Young Universe “camp.” I do not know if John Clayton has come to see all of the impressive science done by the proponents of the young Universe scientists and understand the tragic errors in his teaching. But here is the point. It would be impossible for John to go back to all of the thousands of eager Church of Christ folks and re-educate them into taking a look at the body of science generated by YEC scientists.
If our preachers attended a college, most of them will call Harding, Lipscomb, Abilene, Freed-Hardeman, or Pepperdine their alma mater. The same goes for youth leaders. There is little chance that they were “ever” exposed to a class that introduced them in a positive way to any of the literature of YEC. Their science classes would be expected to teach OEC as consensus science orthodoxy. After all, who wants to be perceived as scientifically ignorant at an institution of higher learning?
Evolution by means of Natural Selection has been taught in the Biology classes of our colleges for decades. The challenger recruited by the ACLU in 1925 was John Scopes. The crime he was convicted of was the teaching his students in Dayton, Tennessee that humans evolved from apelike ancestors and were not the result of fiat creation by any “Creator God”. Even though most of the evidence used in defense of naturalistic evolution (e.g., Piltdown Man, Nebraska Man, Java Man. ‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’) in the infamous Scopes trial has been debunked by mainline science, the atheists won the propaganda war. This was a lesson well learned by evolutionists: keep throwing the same information out there, regardless of the evidence, and the masses will follow unaware that much of the “evidence” has been disproved by mainline science.
So where can the teaching of theistic evolution lead? Many OEC have adopted the paradigm that can be described as: “Let us interpret the Bible through the lens of science.” Most YEC practice: “ Let us interpret science through the lens of the Bible. I fear our more intelligent young people who are students at COC universities will see the unavoidable dichotomy of the progressive philosophy of science and rid themselves of the influence of the “outdated” biblical account of origins. The short next step is the Bible being relegated the to literature classes. The Bible will be demoted from the authority in all things to fine literature written by mere men who had little understanding of real science.
The state the philosophy of science at our COC universities is extremely troubling. When our future [and present] preachers, teachers, and youth leaders graduate from our universities one of two things will happen. Most of them will be afraid to identify their philosophy on the origin of man to be THIESTIC EVOLUTIONIST. But they will be alert to try to stifle any foolishness about YEC. Or they will readily identify themselves as enlightened progressives and do their biblical teaching from that perspective.
I can imagine that leaders at Pepperdine were taken by surprise that there would be such opposition voiced by attendees at the 2014 lectures. Of course the teaching of theistic evolution as the philosophy about the origin of humans taught at COC Universities came as a complete surprise to many attendees. I can imagine the path from literal interpretation of the Genesis account to theistic evolution at Pepperdine University has been slow and subtle. I doubt that anyone at Pepperdine can trace the history of his or her paradigm shift. I can just about guarantee one thing. When they were in high school, to a man, they would all believe God created Adam and Eve as humans, created in God’s image and set apart from the animals. I can also imagine that most of these men believed Adam was created on the same day in the creation week as the land mammals.
Under the tutelage of church leaders who believe in theistic evolution, 30 years later our youth today can experience a shorter path toward “true believer” status. So what will the next step be for many of our youth? Will they be motivated to study their Bibles? Why would they be interested in the “words of men”? Agnosticism will be their destination! Do we want our grandchildren to lose their faith that the Bible is Special Revelation from God? Do we want our young men and women to lose their faith in God? I think not! Do any of the professors or administrators at Pepperdine have a desire to harm their students? I also think not. If thinking highly educated faithful Christians believe the consequences of teaching theistic evolution and a progressive view of biblical interpretation are that grave, why not open the doors to honest civil debate? That is our plea.
I understand that Pepperdine University has a lot at stake in this matter. I understand the risk Pepperdine University will face if they come out against progressive interpretation of the Bible and against teaching theistic evolution. To lose the perception of prestige would be a great loss. I understand that Young Earth Creationists are looked on as fundamentalists, in the worst sense of that label. We are believed by the uninformed that we are not intellectual equals to educated people who believe that man evolved from apelike ancestors. It will take a good deal of courage for Pepperdine to open its intellectual doors to debate on these two topics: 1-A proper paradigm of Origins includes the belief that the Genesis record is scientifically and historically valid. 2-The theory of theistic evolution has not been validated by science and is opposed to the simple historic message of the Bible, as it informs us about the origin of humans.
My final request is that both sides of this controversy honestly ask God for His guidance in this matter. When the Israelites of ancient times were at a complete loss of whether to do battle or how to do battle, they asked God for what His will was. Perhaps that needs to be our concerted effort: prayer.
Thank you for this forum to speak my concerns. God be praised.
Bob Harsh
Biology teacher (retired)
Norcross, Georgia
July 25, 2014