Why creationists are losing?

Gary North, in Business Reform magazine, bemoans the fact that creationists keep losing in their battle to teach their notions as science in the classroom.

Of course, from my perspective, the reason they keep losing is quite simple. They don't have any science to teach.

Gary North, needless to say, doesn't share this view. According to him, "Democracy doesn't count". The reason Evolution is taught, and creationism isn't, is a vast left-wing conspiracy.

There is a fundamental political issue that has divided American voters since about 1921: The legitimacy of a majority of voters to determine the content of whatever is taught to children in tax-funded institutions.

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The public relations problem for Darwinists is this: The percentage of Americans polled who affirm this view of biological evolution has yet to hit 15 percent. Despite a century of absolute control over public school curriculum materials and university science departments, the Darwinists have been unable to persuade more than 12 percent of the population of the truth of their position. This is not an impressive academic track record.

I'd love to see a poll showing what fraction of the population believes we should teach algebra in the schools.

Hmmmph!

Unfortunately, scientific truth is not determined by polls, but by the data. If 99% of the population believed medical schools should "teach the controversy" about Western medicine, that would not make the germ theory of disease invalid, nor make the use of crystals, sand paintings, or chanting any more effective than they are. Any given approach to the treatment of disease will either work or it won't, and all the votes and all the polls of all the people in the world won't change that.

Darwinian evolution is a theory. So is Newton's theory of universal gravitation. So is Einstein's theory of general relativity. So is the germ theory of disease. So is the quantum theory underlying solid state mechanics.

Your computer won't stop working because the population votes not to accept quantum mechanics. Your infection won't go away because you vote not to believe in germs. Gravity doesn't stand in abeyance while we vote on the merits of Newton vs. Einstein.

And evolution doesn't quit happening just because schools refuse to teach it.

North's solution: get out of public schools.

Darwinism has been on financial life-support for a hundred years. To put it out of its misery, voters need only pull the plug. Vote no on every school bond issue. Pull your kids out of the public schools. Pay as you go. As I said in front of 10,000 Christian activists at a rally in Texas in 1980, "If every Baptist in Texas pulled his child out of the public schools on Monday, there would be no public schools on Wednesday."

In general, I like this approach. Let those who want to learn go to schools that will teach them. Let those who don't want to learn go to schools that will keep them busy doing something else, and out of the hair of those who want to learn.

In the long run, the students who emerge better equipped to deal with the real world will be more successful. The ones who wasted their time in substandard schools will be stuck in menial jobs. They will very likely decide to put their kids in schools that turn out more successful graduates.

Think of it as evolution in action.