Creationism

Today on her radio program, Sandy Rios of the American Family Association hosted right-wing author and WND reporter Jerome Corsi to talk about his new book, The Bad Samaritans: The ACLU’s Relentless Campaign to Erase Faith from the Public Square. Corsi, who has written top conservative books such as Unfit for Command and Where’s the Birth Certificate?, told Rios that the ACLU is trying to “eliminate God and attack the family” in order to “make the United States a socialist country” that ultimately “takes away our freedoms.”

I think we are at risk of having a group like the ACLU remove God from America. This war on God, the ACLU’s roots—and I trace it in ‘Bad Samaritans’ back to its communist and very leftist roots in the 1920s—the ACLU since its founding has had an agenda to remove God. You cannot make the United States a socialist country unless you first eliminate God and attack the family. Marx said that religion was the opiate of the people and so therefore we who believe in Jesus Christ and take religion seriously are viewed as stupid or uneducated. The fundamental perspective of our founding fathers, which is what I believe, is that unless we have God at the core of the United States we lose our freedom because Thomas Jefferson when he wrote the Declaration of Independence declared our freedoms are unalienable, they’re given to us by God. If you eliminate God then it’s the state that gives and takes away our freedoms.

Rios, who earlier asserted that secular Jews often “turn out to be the worst enemies of the country,” asked Corsi about the “powerful Jewish forces behind the ACLU.” Corsi said that such forces are trying to make America “abandon the Judeo-Christian tradition” and therefore abandoning “values that are fundamental lynchpins of our freedom.”

Rios: I know that there are powerful Jewish forces behind the ACLU; can you just say a word about that very briefly, what’s that all about?

Corsi: There has been a real union between Jews in America and the Democratic Party ever since President Truman agreed with the partition of Palestine and created the state of Israel in 1948 at the UN. But my book is arguing for a Judeo-Christian faith, which is the heart of America. We cannot abandon the Judeo-Christian tradition. If we do we are abandoning our whole values that are fundamental lynchpins of our freedom.

After a discussion of the ACLU’s involvement in the Scopes Monkey Trial, Corsi said that the group is using evolution “to destroy America and eliminate our freedoms.” He said that the ACLU wants to make it so “we can’t have God in our hearts and our schools and our prayers and our public square” and that people don’t hear the “good scientific arguments” for Creationism.

He later maintained that the organization’s support for marriage equality and reproductive rights are part of “the destruction of the family and the attack on God,” which the ACLU hopes will prepare America “to embrace radical socialism.”

The ACLU is trying to say that science is evolution and anyone who doesn’t believe in evolution is just completely uneducated and stupid. That argument just doesn’t make any sense at all. I think there’s good scientific arguments for Intelligent Design, for Creationism of various kinds and theories. I mean look at the scientists nowadays coming with the Big Bang theory; the Big Bang theory sounds an awful lot to me like Genesis, and then God created light, that’s the beginning. So I think the idea that because we’re now so educated and so sophisticated we can’t have God in our hearts and our schools and our prayers and our public square, this is again something that is going to destroy America and eliminate our freedoms if we allow it to continue to happen.

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The attack has been not only on God but on the family. Now we have the ACLU promoting same-sex marriage, promoting a whole sexual agenda and abortion, fighting since the beginning in the 1920s for Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood. The destruction of the family and the attack on God, taking God out of the public schools and out of the public square, this is not just by accident. It is part of the ACLU’s plan to move America in a godless direction, preparing it to embrace radical socialism, which is really just scientific materialism.

A group of Arizona Republicans are out with a new bill to undermine the teaching of evolution and subjects such as climate change and cloning in the classroom. The National Center for Science Education called the legislation another “instance of the ‘academic freedom’ strategy for undermining the teaching of evolution and climate change.”

The proposed “teach the controversy” bill is a stealthy attack on evolution as it tries to make science classes give equal weight to nonscientific beliefs and theologies. It’s the equivalent of including claims made by the Flat Earth Society in a geology class, all for the sake of “balance.”

A. THE STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION, THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, COUNTY SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENTS, SCHOOL DISTRICT GOVERNING BOARDS, SCHOOL DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENTS, SCHOOL PRINCIPALS AND SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS SHALL ENDEAVOR TO:

1. CREATE AN ENVIRONMENT IN SCHOOLS THAT ENCOURAGES PUPILS TO EXPLORE SCIENTIFIC QUESTIONS, LEARN ABOUT SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE, DEVELOP CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS AND RESPOND APPROPRIATELY AND RESPECTFULLY TO DIFFERENCES OF OPINION ABOUT CONTROVERSIAL ISSUES.

2. ASSIST TEACHERS TO FIND EFFECTIVE WAYS TO PRESENT THE SCIENCE CURRICULUM AS IT ADDRESSES SCIENTIFIC CONTROVERSIES. TEACHERS SHALL BE ALLOWED TO HELP PUPILS UNDERSTAND, ANALYZE, CRITIQUE AND REVIEW IN AN OBJECTIVE MANNER THE SCIENTIFIC STRENGTHS AND SCIENTIFIC WEAKNESSES OF EXISTING SCIENTIFIC THEORIES COVERED IN THE COURSE BEING TAUGHT.

B. THE STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION, THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, COUNTY SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENTS, SCHOOL DISTRICT GOVERNING BOARDS, SCHOOL DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENTS, SCHOOL PRINCIPALS AND SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS SHALL NOT PROHIBIT ANY TEACHER IN THIS STATE FROM HELPING PUPILS UNDERSTAND, ANALYZE, CRITIQUE AND REVIEW IN AN OBJECTIVE MANNER THE SCIENTIFIC STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF EXISTING SCIENTIFIC THEORIES COVERED IN THE COURSE BEING TAUGHT.

C. THIS SECTION PROTECTS ONLY THE TEACHING OF SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION AND DOES NOT PROMOTE ANY RELIGIOUS OR NONRELIGIOUS DOCTRINE, PROMOTE DISCRIMINATION FOR OR AGAINST A PARTICULAR SET OF RELIGIOUS BELIEFS OR NONBELIEFS OR PROMOTE DISCRIMINATION FOR OR AGAINST RELIGION OR NONRELIGION.

Sec. 2. Intent

The legislature finds and declares that:

1. An important purpose of science education is to inform students about scientific evidence and to help students develop critical thinking skills necessary to becoming intelligent, productive and scientifically informed citizens.

2. The teaching of some scientific subjects, including biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming and human cloning, can cause controversy.

3. Some teachers may be unsure of the expectations concerning how they should present information on such subjects.

Janet Mefferd spoke to Focus on the Family official Glenn Stanton yesterday about a new study in The Quarterly Review of Biology which suggests that epigenetics may explain what causes homosexuality. Right off the bat, the two were wary of the study because its principal researchers work in the field of evolutionary genetics and anyone who believes in the theory of evolution should not be trusted. Stanton maintained that upholding the science of evolution “takes as much faith” as believing in creationism!

Mefferd: It’s strange, you have scientists here headed up by an evolutionary biologist at the University of California Santa Barbara and right away I saw ‘evolutionary biologist.’ Is there more of a propensity do you find for people who subscribe to evolution and have an evolutionary bias to buy into this?

Stanton: They do come with that bias but basically the evolutionary sociobiology as they call it is a very interesting field of study, basically as I read it and I read it all the time because that’s the norm or the orthodoxy, it’s basically trying to utilize evolutionary theory for explaining what God did: there’s a male nature, there’s a female nature, we’re affected by these things. So they talk about our evolutionary development for why men tend to be more sexually adventurous and why women tend to be more sexually conservative, well you know it takes as much faith to believe that these things evolved as it does to say, that’s the way God wired us.

He later argued that any instance where scientific findings contradict his religious views, the science is wrong and leads to rebellion against God.

Stanton: To understand it, at the end of the day there is no real separation between good science and our Christian faith. It was Christians and a Christian worldview that created scientific investigation; it has its roots in that. At the end of the day, God is right, he is true, he is lord, and he set things in orbit, not just inter-planetary, but within our human makeup. When we follow those things, good things happen; when we rebel against them, bad things tend to happen.

Stanton dismissed those who have researched the biological or hormonal link to homosexuality as biased and “politically motivated” ideologues, unlike say a Religious Right activist who has his masters in religion. He concludes by arguing that “quite literally there is more evidence for Bigfoot than there is that homosexuality is just who we are.”

Stanton: Up to now most of the scholars have been politically motivated, they have a very deep, personal interest. But here’s the thing and all your listeners need to know this, there is no evidence whatsoever that has come up in the last twenty years—and not for a lack of trying—but no evidence that has come up in the last twenty years that shows any evidence that homosexuality is solely and purely genetically driven, like we are not born that way. Quite literally, this is a provocative statement, but quite literally there is more evidence for Bigfoot than there is that homosexuality is just who we are, we’re just born that away because of our genetic makeup and you’re not going to hear that from the mainstream media.

Generations Radio’s Kevin Swanson spoke yesterday with Creation Museum president Ken Ham, who has written a book about how many Christian colleges “are going the way of Yale, Harvard and Princeton” and rejecting young earth creationism.

Ham recently lashed out at televangelist Pat Robertson after Right Wing Watch reported Robertson’s rejection of the idea that the Earth is only 6,000 years old. In his interview with Swanson, Ham accused churches and Christian colleges of “open[ing] the door to allow the philosophy of naturalism, and evolution, millions of years, to permeate into God’s word,” warning, “If we don’t shut that door, we’re going to lose this culture, America will be the England and Europe of tomorrow.”

“As you write this book,” Swanson asked, “Do you get the sense that you are effectively very, very close to Omaha Beach in the war of the worldviews?”

Ham: Evolution, millions of years, he naturalistic philosophy that permeates our education system, that’s really the religion of this age to explain life without God. And much of our church, our church leaders, have adopted that religion, sadly, and compromised it with God’s word.

Swanson: Ken, as you write this book, ‘Already Compromised,’ do you get the sense that you are effectively very, very close to Omaha Beach in the war of the worldviews? I mean, you are right there, where the ideas are being formulated, where the minds and the lives of the next generation are being formed by the millions across this country, I mean this is an important battle.

Ham: It is, it’s an extremely important battle. Because, you know what, it only takes one generation to lose a culture. That’s all it takes. And if you can capture one generation, you’ll have the culture. And just as, you know, when the Israelites crossed the Jordan river and there were 12 stones to remind the next generation of what God did and what did we find? They weren’t reminded, the next generation, they lost it in one generation, we’re losing this culture before our very eyes today because the church opened the door to allow the philosophy of naturalism, and evolution, millions of years, to permeate into God’s word. We need to shut that door. If we don’t shut that door, that’s where the battle’s at right now, if we don’t shut that door, we’re going to lose this culture, America will be the England and Europe of tomorrow.

Homeschooling advocate Colin Gunn is unrelenting in his attacks on the public school system in his documentary, “IndoctriNation: Public Schools and the Decline of Christianity in America,” which seeks to end the teaching of evolution and eradicate the “sinful” and secular public school system that he says subjects children to the philosophies of gays, progressives, and abortion rights activists.

In an interview with Voice of Christian Youth America’s Vic Eliason on Crosstalk, Gunn asserts that even the school bus is emblematic of the United States’ “totalitarian education system.”

Gunn alleges that public schools are persecuting Christians and compares public school education in the US to Nazi indoctrination through the Hitler Youth. Eliason echoes Gunn’s abhorrence of the public school system. According to Eliason, the teachers in the public school system who do not uphold and instill Christian ideology are performing “mental molestation,” which deserves to be recognized and punished alongside physical molestation.

Gunn: Draw a parallel between Nazi Germany where you have an authoritarian government that took over the whole nation, partially through the youth movement by co-opting all of the youth movement into the Hitler Youth, and therefore indoctrinating them into the class of this unbelief and this idolatry of the state. And so sadly that’s what we’re seeing very much today and we wonder why, why can’t people understand the abortion issue or these other issues that are political—well it’s because they’ve been indoctrinated. And we really can’t fix any political issue until we fix the public school system, controlling the future of America by controlling the hearts and minds of all the children that are sent there.

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Gunn: The nature of the public schools is it allows your child to be subject to those philosophies, whether it is gay rights or the progressives or evolution, if you send your child there be aware that he’s open to all of those views which he wouldn’t be if you kept him home or you put him in a private school.

Eliason: Right now the news is a blare with a man who molested children, and he’s going to prison for the rest of his life. That’s physical molestation. But folks, there is mental molestation going on in the public school, and the people are getting by scot-free. And I’m not criticizing many fine Christian teachers who are trying to do their very best as they are employed in the public schools, but the molestation is a philosophy that is being pushed over all that literally is a molestation of the mind and nobody has a penalty for that.

Gunn does not stop at equating public school education to Nazism. He further claims that the teaching of evolution can contaminate “the culture of a school” and trigger violent incidences such as the Columbine school shooting. Gunn cautions that the “faith of many children are undermined very quickly in the science class,” and that the Bible should be basis of “understanding of real science.”

Gunn: We cover the story of Columbine where a man loses his child to a system that teaches evolution, because as a result of the culture of the school, he lost his own son. So it’s really important to hear the testimonies in our film and be warned.

Eliason: I was talking to [Creationism advocate] Ken Ham about a pastor who was telling his young people, he said there are some people who believe in Creation in six days and some people who believe in the Big Bang Theory, but whatever you like that’s fine, and Ken put it this way, he said, if you can’t be sure about the miraculous power of God to create as the Bible says it, why should a kid believe anything else that’s in that book?

Gunn: Absolutely, I think the faith of many children are undermined very quickly in the science class when they’re taught and the Bible is literally discredited in front of them rather than it being an understanding of real science, which is creation science.

Eliason also alleges that the public school system is being pervaded by homosexuality, which he calls an “abnormal, aberrant lifestyle,” and claims that there is a correspondence between gay awareness and academic mediocrity.

The godless mentality of the issues of lifestyle, we’re talking about homosexuality being diversity, and pressing for diversity training to kids. And of course we’re not talking about hating people, but when you have abnormal, aberrant lifestyles that are being paraded as normality, isn’t there some wonder that parents would be upset?

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Some years back, Colin, here in the Milwaukee school system, they had manuals, three ring binders, hard-cover binders, complete with about at least an inch of material that had been put together. And they had hundreds of these binders that were being passed out to the teachers. The binders and the booklets were made by GLSEN, which is the Gay Lesbian Straight Alliance [sic]. They were hoping to provide vital information to teachers as how to infuse the subject of homosexuality in a way that would give more normal handling of it, as they talked about Heather has Two Mommies, or somebody else has two daddy’s. And we’re seeing this type of thing along with the weakness of academic excellence.

Criticizing the theory of evolution is not just one of a variety of Religious Right priorities, but is central to their cause as many social conservatives believe that evolutionary thought is the culprit behind much-despised notions like secular government, feminism and moral relativism. As leading young earth creationist Ken Ham explained at the Family Research Council’s Watchmen on the Wall conference, belief in a non-literal interpretation of Genesis is even responsible for President Obama’s support for marriage equality:

The mainstream scientific community rejects the Religious Right’s assertion that gays and lesbians can change their sexual orientation to become heterosexual: the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Association of Social Workers and the American Psychiatric Association all deny the effectiveness, safety and ethics of ‘ex-gay’ reparative therapy.

But that doesn’t stop right-wing activists from citing and exaggerating the claims of small, fringe organizations in order to bolster their support of reparative therapy and claim that such “therapy” has extensive backing in the medical community.

Today, Liberty Counsel heads Mat Staver and Matt Barber, who according to their official biographies have no background in psychology, dedicated their Faith & Freedom radio show to assailing the American Psychological Association, arguing that they have more psychological expertise than the APA. Staver pointed to a small, Christians-only psychological group has “the most definitive, most recent research that’s come out that says change is possible” for gays and lesbians:

Liberty Counsel even declared that the American Association of Christian Counselors is “larger than American Psychological Assn”:

In reality, the AACC has just one-third of the membership of the APA, which has 154,000 members.

Staver and Barber are far from the only anti-gay figures to promote the findings of tiny, religious groups over the claims of more reputable and mainstream organizations.

As reported on RWW, David Barton on WallBuilders Live last week falsely described the American College of Pediatricians as “the leading pediatric association in America” as he cited a memo from the group claiming that “most students will ultimately adopt a heterosexual orientation if not otherwise encouraged.” Barton used the ACP’s memo as evidence to show that all children will “end up being heterosexual unless [schools] force them to be homosexual”:

The ACP is not “the leading pediatric association in America,” but a far-right offshoot of the real leading pediatric group, the American Academy of Pediatricians, which vigorously condemned the ACP’s memo. Barton’s co-host Rick Green tried to defend his dishonest representation of the ACP, but as Warren Throckmorton points out, while the ACP has “probably less than 200” members, the AAP has around 60,000.

Moreover, Focus on the Family, Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America frequently cite the National Association of Research and Therapy of Homosexuality as a reliable source of information on reparative therapy despite the group’s history of fraud and promotion of anti-gay and racist views.

The argument over the efficacy of ‘ex-gay’ reparative therapy mirrors the fight over teaching Creationism and Creationist-influenced Intelligent Design in public schools. Religious Right figures have a tendency to call any study from a leading and mainstream scientific associations biased if it doesn’t reflect their views, and then find (or create) small, non-credible organizations to reflect their viewpoints. Desperate to reject the consensus of the scientific community, like clockwork Religious Right activists try to pass off these tiny groups as large, credible, and legitimate institutions in an effort to lend authority to their foundering arguments.

• Think Progress: Bachmann’s Husband Calls Homosexuals ‘Barbarians’ Who ‘Need To Be Educated’ And ‘Disciplined.’
• Beau @ Bold Faith Type: Faith Leaders Visit Akin's Office: Not Satisfied with Congressman's "Apology."
• Good As You: Maiming the 'Dr. Turek merely protects marriage' meme.
• Tim Murphy @ Mother Jones: Pawlenty Friend: He Told Me He's Pro-Choice.
• Rachel Tabachnick @ Talk To Action: Preview of "School Choice: Taxpayer-Funded Creationism, Bigotry, and Bias."
• Warren Throckmorton: John Adams’ Holy Ghost letter: David Barton strikes back.

Pseudo-historian David Barton visited the Christian television program Celebration on the Daystar Television Network with host Joni Lamb on Monday to discuss his right-wing, pro-GOP view of American history.

Barton, who says that the Founding Fathers like Ben Franklin opposed Net Neutrality, claims he also knows the views of the Founding Fathers in the debate over whether schools should teach Creationism alongside evolution in public schools. Naturally, Barton says that the Founding Fathers “already had the entire debate on creation and evolution,” and sided with Creationism. Of course, Charles Darwin wrote On The Origin of Species in 1859 andThe Descent of Man in 1871 – but apparently the Founding Fathers knew about evolution science:

Barton continues to lash out at “deconstructionism” in the education system for distorting the truth about the Founding Fathers, arguing that the Founding Fathers did not support slavery or engage in the practice themselves. While Founding Fathers like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Patrick Henry were all slaveholders, Barton has created his own theory of the cause of the American Revolution: the Founding Fathers’ desire to reject the British Empire’s endorsement of slavery. “That’s why we said we want to separate from Britain, so we can end slavery,” Barton said:

He concluded his talk by saying “I want to see Christians take over the Democrat Party, I want to see Christians take over the Republican Party, I want to have a fight for who has the more Biblical candidate.” Barton, a proponent of Seven Mountains Dominionism, called on people “to move the most Godly candidate through” both parties: